A Goyische Shehechianu

In January, 2002, after much though, many long talks, and a few drinks, I got down on one knee and asked the woman I love if she could bear to be my wife. The journey to the chuppah had begun long before, our story is of love at first sight, and we had an understanding of what may lie ahead; that is Shayna had an understanding. I was just beginning to understand. Immediately there were a million new questions and quests. My love is a nice Jewish girl and I am a goy. For that I make no apology. Our courtship was not fraught with pangs of family integration. Her family welcomed me with grace and affection. My family was grateful that I could find love and keep it and didn't care how I came into it.

My wife, Shayna, always imagined that she would be married under a chuppah by a rabbi in an idyllic outdoor setting, surrounded by friends and family, starting out a new life with a nice Jewish husband. Much of that dream derailed when she fell in love with me. I'm nice enough, and even circumcised, but not exactly Jewish. I loved the idea of an outdoor setting. Once I learned to pronounce it, a chuppah seemed like a great idea. We planned on having a Jewish family, raising our children Jewish, joining a synagogue (Go Beth El!) and observing Jewish holidays; the idea of being married by a rabbi just seemed to fit nicely. Now if only one would marry us.

The decision to consecrate an interfaith (or in our case, with my lack of religious adherence, extrafaith) marriage is a Gordian knot for any rabbi not expressly prohibited by a governing body from performing them. Not only is the rabbi marrying two individuals to one another, they are also marrying them to the community. The grant of sanction affects not only the couple but the greater group. Now that arranged marriages are out of vogue and the Jewish youth of today are marrying out of "love," there's no telling who they are going to fall in love with. It may or may not be a nice Jewish boy/girl -- it may be me. The Jewish community is then caught between attrition and dilution. If you welcome the goy there is a compromise of the Jewish nature of the community. If you don't, you risk losing your young Jewish population. It's the same slippery slope that has turned Chanukah into the Jewish Christmas. If you sanction the goy then the door's open to anything and you can't put that toothpaste back in the tube.

The resistance was at first hard for me to understand. In my Christian upbringing there was a focus on connecting with the Church of today. The issues of now. In Judaism, there is a fierce connection to the wandering tribes that escaped Egypt and created Israel. There is a direct line to the house of Abraham and the descendants of Isaac. It's a challenge for someone who can't trace his ancestry back more than a few generations to sit at a Seder table and comprehend the phrase "it was I who was a slave." I was not just marrying one woman, part of one family. I was marrying five thousand years of generations of women. I was marrying a queen and a slave, a conqueror and a vanquished, a subject of Solomon and a survivor of the Holocaust.

We received some very compassionate 'No's from the Omaha rabbis we asked. It was suggested that we use a Jewish judge to perform the ceremony. We could still have the chuppah, we could still break the glass, the ketubah -- well, we could wear kipot. My wife was not satisfied. No matter how Jewish the ceremony, it would still be strictly secular. Only a rabbi would do. The search was on.

Luck seemed to be on our side. A rabbi in Lincoln, Michael Weisser, agreed to marry us, offered South Street Temple as a location, sat with us for a nice chat, told us to call about six months before the wedding and we could start the preparations for the ceremony. It was great. We had a rabbi. Life was good; a giant weight was lifted. We were in high spirits until we read in the Jewish Press that Rabbi Weisser was leaving his position in Lincoln for an opportunity in New Zealand. We called and he said it was unlikely that he could make it back for our ceremony. He gave us a name of a rabbi in Kansas City that might perform the ceremony, expressed his regrets and boarded a Quantas flight to Auckland.

There is an unfortunate truth about some reform rabbis that perform interfaith ceremonies. They do so as a way to supplement their income. In many cases this is just a fact of survival. With smaller and smaller congregations, not all synagogues can afford the full salary to support a rabbi. So some rabbis have adopted an entrepreneurial spirit. They see a need and fill it. They assess what the market will bear and they charge it. The Kansas City rabbi, who will remain nameless, wanted $1,500 for his services. We wanted a rabbi, but we also wanted a reception after the ceremony and money was tight. We assumed that there had to be more rabbis in the Midwest that would perform the ceremony, and for considerably less.

There is a dearth of reform rabbis in a 300-mile radius around Omaha. I know because I called every reform synagogue and community center from Davenport to Denver looking for someone to ask us some questions under the chuppah. The response I invariably got from the receptionists at the synagogues and community centers I called was either, "Well, the rabbi only comes on the third Saturday of the month," or "We don't currently have a rabbi. Do you know of any wanting to relocate to the Des Moines area?" I did not.

As the hope of finding any ordained individual to preside at our wedding was waning, I made one last call to Sioux City, Iowa. I was not hopeful. Sioux City has a one-stop synagogue/community center for all denominations. After the rejections and empty rabbinates I assumed that I would find more of the same. Instead I found a rabbi that was unable to meet with me, or even speak with me because she had detached her cornea shortly after arriving in the city and was on bed rest. We couldn't catch a break. When she had an opportunity to call me back she agreed to meet with Shayna and me and said that likely she would be able to perform the ceremony. We set a meeting and a few weeks later, sitting in Rabbi Bonnie Levy's office she agreed to officiate our wedding. She found us sufficiently sincere in our desire to have a Jewish ceremony, and divined that it was for our reasons, and not to please our grandparents. Well, Shayna’s grandparents.

We started a regime of regular meetings with the rabbi and regular lunches at the Green Gables. Rabbi Levy recommended some books about Judaism (Jewish Literacy by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin is an excellent read), and spoke with me about what I could expect as the husband in a Jewish family and an individual in the Jewish community. In this whole process it was never suggested or implied that this would be easier if I just converted. Rabbi Levy, a convert herself, brought a perspective (raised Catholic, converted to Judaism) that bridged my heritage with Shayna's. She helped make the connections between what I knew from my Catholic upbringing and what I could expect with my Jewish family.

When it came time to think about the Ketubah, Shayna and I chose the text together. We selected a contract of love and mutual respect that leaned more secular than religious. Rabbi Levy translated the text to Hebrew. It concludes: "You are my life; you are my dreams; you are my joy; you are my love; you are my everything. At this moment you are all that I know and all that I see. As we grow old together and our love matures, may we hold on to the passion and affection for each other we feel today." Our Ketubah has the English and Hebrew text side by side surrounded by purple ornamentation. I transcribed the Hebrew, character by character, from a fax from Rabbi Levy. We laid it out with the help of our friend Jeff who's a graphic designer and had it printed by a fine arts printer.

Everything was proceeding. We were finalizing plans, booking venues, ordering flowers and tuxes and dresses; then came the planning of the ceremony and the hardest part of a Jewish wedding for a goy, like me. The Shehechianu. English is a language where all the sounds come from right behind your teeth, ticks, pops and hums -- not a lot of constricted aspirations. Hebrew, generally has a lot of sounds focused further back on the palette. I can handle that. I understand the dynamics in making the "ch" sound. I get it. It's like clearing your throat ever so briefly. I can say "baruch" with the best of them, but when it's right there in the middle of the word I cramp. I always get performance anxiety at the third syllable. I hesitate. I consciously shift the focus of the sound. I totally screw it up.

"No, you're pausing -- shehechianu, not shehe-chianu," Shayna would say. She was very patient, but it was becoming like a stutter. The more I wanted to not pause, the more I paused. The more I paused the more I paused. I couldn't sleep. I would mumble the word to myself over and over. Analyze the mechanics of my mouth. Watch myself say it in the mirror.

We signed the ketubah at our rehearsal dinner, after it was found. Yes. We lost our ketubah in a rental car swap. It's a long story that involves the airport police and a slim jim, but we got it back. One of my fondest memories of our wedding process is Shayna's grandfather witnessing our ketubah, a survivor of Auschwitz scratching out his name in Hebrew, performing a mitzvah and continuing the line of tradition stretching back thousands of years. It is an honor to just see it; a simple act much bigger than the people who are a part of it. It is one thing for a person to survive, it is another for a people to survive and continue.

May 18th of last year, the day of the wedding, it threatened rain. Outdoor Nebraska weddings in May are a crapshoot. It may be beautiful; it may be a tornado. It had been raining for the entire week. Shayna was very calm and unconcerned, in that screaming and frantic sort of way. Grandpa Flatowicz's tallis was affixed to the chuppah. Friends and family were gathered. Ushers were handing out the kipot. The clouds had cleared. We each walked down the aisle with our parents. When I reached the chuppah and turned to my father he was fighting back tears, and then I was fighting back tears. I embraced him as we both tried not to burst our crying. "I'm so proud of you son," he said. I then turned to my wet eyed mother, kissed her and thanked her. The chuppah was erected with a blooming lilac bush as its backdrop and the fragrance of the flowers was blowing over the gathered crowd adding another sense to the perfect scene and inflaming seasonal allergies.

The ceremony began and when it came time for me to say "shehechianu" I verbally fumbled, recovered with some grace and turned to the smile of my new wife, who loved me anyway. There are many questions we have yet to answer, and even more that we haven't thought of just waiting to crop up. We know where we want to go; we want a Jewish family and a happy marriage and healthy children. We don't know exactly how to get there. We're feeling our way along and trying to mark the path to remind us of where we've been. And maybe guide the way for anyone following behind. Shalom.