Last night was the annual anniversary service. On this Friday evening in May, every year, the synagogue celebrates all married couples' anniversaries. It just so happens that our actual anniversary, May 30, falls very close to the date of this service... sometimes exactly on it. This is our 35th anniversary. Were you there Marly? I don't remember you being there, in the rose garden at Hollins.
In any case, it was really wonderful to sit with everyone in the sanctuary, singing together, and to have Richard sitting beside me, however unwillingly. He came so we could go up to the bima, the stage in the synagogue, together when the anniversaries were being honored.
The rabbi gave a really interesting service about Jewish weddings and the contracts used to formalize them--ketubas, using the English pluralization because I'm unsure of the Hebrew one for this word. And he talked about the figures for intermarriage in Judaism. When R and I got married, we couldn't have a Jewish wedding because no rabbi would do such a ceremony. Now over 50% of all Jewish couples married have a non-Jewish partner in them, though for some it is a 2nd or 3rd marriage. We also were forbidden (by my parents) to ask any of my side of the family to the wedding because my parents didn't want grandmom to find out I was marrying a non-Jew. They said they wouldn't come if I told any of my cousins on my father's side. I told the ones on my mother's side because they didn't care, but they couldn't come because they all lived abroad.
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