24 July 2009

Two seemingly opposite Jewish events have been in my thoughts lately: Tisha B’Av and weddings.

The usual way these two are connected is through the breaking of a glass at the end of the ritual, preceded by the groom reciting “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem…” While inappropriately followed by applause from the audience, the symbolism here is a reminder that the world and we as a people are not complete as we await redemption, even on such a joyous day.

In this case, a friend of mine is getting married in several months and are looking for a rabbi. She’s from a family with a converted mother, went through an Orthodox conversion herself, and is being denied the right to be married by several rabbis because her fiancee is a Cohen (Cohens are not supposed to marry converts).

While I usually blog this time of year about how much I like Tisha B’Av, I wanted to link the day with something that’s always fascinated me: Cohens. The family name and its derivatives (Kahan, Kogan etc.) refer to those who descend from the Cohanim, the priests who tended to the daily sacrificial rite in the Temples. With their destruction (on Tisha B’Av), their priestly roles have been relegated to certain rituals and traditions. I can remember wondering what was going on when the rabbi would ask the congregation to lower their heads, at the risk of seeing what was happening on the bimah: Men, with their heads covered by their tallit, were reciting the Priestly Blessing while holding both of their hands like the famous hand sign of Mr. Spock. I always wondered if Mr. Spock was allowed to do that on national TV, why were we supposed to not look directly at the guys onstage?

Maybe I have an inferiority complex, as I’m considered “just” a commoner Israelite, or maybe the problem is that I think in such terms. Why do we need more boundaries between us Jews when the purpose of Rabbinic Judaism and Hasidism – not to mention Reform and Conservative Judaism as well – is to tear down such boundaries? In the absence of the Temple, whose rebuilding would require a massive physical ritual purification of Jews – not just Cohanim – why should theses title persist to the level they do?

Without disrespecting this and other Cohen- related rituals, it seems incredibly out of place in Rabbinic Judaism. The revolution that came with the founding of synagogues was that anyone who learned enough could be considered a community leader, potentially becoming a rabbi. The Pharisees, whose descendants are mainstream Jews, are the ones who outright rebelled against the Cohanim’s authority, claiming become too enmeshed in pomp & circumstance and less in the spiritual welfare of the people.

The same seems to be happening to a friend of mine, a tragic and maddening story. God Forbid they should build a Jewish house and family together, countering the rates of intermarriage that these same rabbis will happily rail against; and God Forbid two people so clearly in love with each other should want to marry each other if it risks the groom losing his ancestral title. Since when are rabbis in the business of preventing two Jews from getting married?

As always I’m inspired by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, who writes in his weekly commentary on the Torah portion that the longing for the Temple’s rebuilding is also (more so) about building ourselves as the light unto the nations we are charged to be by the prophet Isaiah. Jews haven't been in the business of listening to priests over prophets for a long time, why should we start now?

With that, with talk of weddings and to end on a slightly more hopeful note, here's a beautiful video sent to me today which put me in a great mood. Shabbat Shalom.



UPDATE: After thinking about it over Saturday, I decided to post the letter my friend wrote to explain her situation. It's best in her words, and I'm honored that she'd want it posted on my blog.

A seemingly simple question I posed recently to a friend getting married soon. “Who is performing the wedding?” I asked. “Oy, what a question,” she responded.
It all started more than 30 years ago, when my friend, we’ll call her B, well it all started when B’s parents, met, fell in love, from two different religio-cultural worlds. B’s father was Jewish; her mother was not. They decided, perhaps foolishly, that two religions and identities were invariably better than one, and that they would allow their children to determine their own identities.
Fast forward 15 years. Lo and behold, B did go on her own spiritual-cultural-identity quest as a teenager, embracing her Jewish heritage, upbringing (not to mention her Jewfro and Yiddish inclinations) and at the end of her journey, she embraced traditional Judaism, which eventually concluded in a dip at the mikveh and a certificate confirming her status as a Jewess. She was free to marry and flourish as a full-fledged Jew!
But alas, many years later, the foolish decision of her parents crept in to haunt B. She had been warned by rabbis that despite her piece of paper signed by the Orthodox Beit Din guaranteeing her status as a Jew, there were still restrictions: mostly, she could not marry a Cohen, and if she did, he would lose his status as such within the community.
But a Cohen is who she fell in love with. And though B warned her Cohen love interest of this potential gliche, he assured her, “it’s not a problem for me or my family! Is that even a rule anymore?”
Indeed it is still a rule, a black-and-white, unbending rule according to many. Shortly before B and Cohen became engaged, they started looking for a rabbi who would agree to bless their union. B started with the rabbi who had overseen her conversion process. His response, “I am sure the person you have chosen [as your future spouse] is a very worthy one; good luck.” Next, Cohen reached out to his family rabbi: “My hands are tied; there is nothing I can do.” And so proceeded conversations with another 30 “progressive” Orthodox rabbis, if such a thing really exists.
So what happens now?
Perhaps the most tragic occurrence to result from this situation is that two passionate, committed, educated Jews have now been turned away from the Jewish community in which they had hoped to raise a family one day. They now question in what kind of Jewish community they belong, and where their children will belong.
I know some of you reading this may think, well, according to Halacha (Jewish law), this is a forbidden marriage, so it is the right thing for these rabbis to refuse to marry the two.
In B and Cohen’s journey to find a rabbi, they met with many Torah-versed men, learning a great deal about this issue. In fact, one rabbi pointed out that according to some commentaries, B is considered “m’zera yisrael,” or, “of Jewish blood.” The next rabbi they spoke with helped to further this line of thinking, discovering a Tshuva by Rabbi Uziel, the First Chief Sephardi Rabbi of Israel, which stated that the marriage between a Cohen and a giyoret who is m’zera yisrael is indeed permitted since the real problem with a Cohen marrying a giyoret is that a Cohen must marry a woman of Jewish blood. B and Cohen presented this Tshuva to a few rabbis who all commented, “Well, that is interesting! Sorry, still nothing I can do.”
If this line of thinking still holds no appeal or credibility for you, I will leave you with a few thoughts to consider. The intermarriage rate in the United State nears 50%, and according to Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, 47% of all identifying Jewish students on North American college campuses have only one parent who is Jewish. So while B and Cohen find themselves without a solution for their upcoming nuptials, and now begin a new Jewish journey together as displaced Jews, I doubt that B and Cohen will be the last young Jewish couple to grapple with this issue. And if the American Modern Orthodox community fails to grapple with the reality of the American Jewish community’s makeup, they will not be the last young couple to find themselves without a Jewish home, at a time when numbers increasingly dwindle.