“Can a rabbi officiate at a wedding of two non-Jews?” a colleague asked on a on a rabbinic Facebook group last week.
Interesting question, I thought. As a hospital chaplain, I served the needs of people of all religious persuasions. I recited prayers for healing, brought religious ritual objects to patients, and in one case said last rites for a patient when a priest could not get there in time. All this time, I was acting as a rabbi with a grounding in my own tradition. Others acknowledged my standing as clergy and saw me as a conduit through which their religious needs could be served. The fact that I was a rabbi, and not from their faith tradition, did not matter.
Why then would it matter if two people who were not Jewish wanted a rabbi to marry them? It is starting to happen more often than you might think. A few years ago a non-Jewish friend of mine asked me if I would officiate at her wedding. In the end, she bowed to parental pressure and went with their minister, but she confided in me that it would have been much more meaningful for her to have me, a close, friend officiate than someone she really did not know. Several people I know have gotten on line “ordination” as a universal life minister so that they could marry friends or relatives. Remember the TV show Friends? Joey does this so he can marry his friends Monica and Chandler. Having a personal connection to the officiant is becoming more important than having an officiant from a particular religious tradition.
Does anything in Jewish tradition forbid a rabbi from officiating at non Jewish marriages? Not really. Until now, no one would have asked a rabbi to do such a thing. As a rabbi, I would make some changes in the traditional Jewish ceremony so that it would apply to the situation at hand. But my power as clergy in the US still makes it a legal wedding under US law. It may not be a valid wedding under Jewish law, halachah, but since these are non-Jews, whether or not it is valid according to Jewish law does not pertain. Many of the symbols of a Jewish wedding translate beautifully in to any wedding – a marriage contract where the two parties spell out their commitment to each other, a wedding canopy signifying the new home being created, a series of blessings for the new couple, and a broken glass to remind us of their commitment to each other in good times and bad.
So do I think that a rabbi can officiate at a marriage between two non-Jews? My answer is a resounding yes.
Let the celebration begin. Mazal Tov!
