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Friday November 2, 2007

Returnees are always welcome at the marriage table

Married mere days, David found himself seated at the head of a table with his new wife, in-laws and a host of strangers, including some rabbis with long beards.

He wasn’t nervous around rabbis. His personal journey from California teenage martial arts aficionado to 20-something Orthodox yeshiva student was fueled by teachings from just such rabbis over the years, and by the inspiration he had gleaned from their lives.

But this Sheva Brachot — the festive meals served during the week after a Jewish marriage — was different from ones that had preceded or would follow it. He was in a city he had never visited before, his parents weren’t able to be present, and the only people he knew at the table were his new wife and in-laws.

The bride had been looking for a man with David’s combination of intelligence, calmness, sincerity and religious commitment.

Although Chana came from an observant Orthodox family, she knew when she first met David that she’d found her future husband. And she knew that her parents, somewhat atypically for their circle, would not hesitate to consider an otherwise qualified “ba’al teshuva” — or “returnee” to Jewish tradition — as a potential marriage partner for their child. His dedication, reputation and character were what mattered.

Though research into his Jewish genealogy, as in any such proposed match, would have to be done, David’s ancestry contained no mixed marriages or conversions.

Sadly, the proliferation of intermarriage and substandard conversions over recent decades have served to call into question the Jewish status of non-Orthodox families, at least from the perspective of halachah, or Jewish religious law.

Once upon a time, observant Jews could take it for granted that a family, by simple virtue of its affiliation with a Jewish congregation, was halachically Jewish. Tragically, those days are gone.

David’s in-laws were enamored of him and his parents, and overjoyed at their daughter’s marriage. They hoped their example might, in a small way, inspire other traditional Orthodox Jews to entertain the possibility of such matches from outside their community.

It cannot be denied that something valuable is gained when an observant Orthodox Jew from an Orthodox family marries an equally observant Orthodox Jew from a different background. David’s father-in-law was thinking those thoughts at the Sheva Brachot, as a rabbi at his side, a respected head of the local postgraduate yeshiva, turned to the groom and asked him about his Jewish educational background.

David responded with the name of a well-known Jerusalem yeshiva that caters to the newly observant.

The rabbi’s eyes lit up and he smiled. “I studied there too!” He related what a wonderful teacher he’d been privileged to have there decades earlier.

Wide-eyed, David replied that the same rabbi had taught him. And so the conversation continued.

Overhearing it all, the father-in-law felt a deep gratitude to heaven for the unplanned encounter. That an alumnus of the very yeshiva David had attended had become an admired Torah scholar was a poignant experience for David.

His smile broadened as he remembered that the rabbi was married to the daughter of a major American yeshiva dean. Chana’s parents could take pride in that illustrious precedent.

Rabbi Avi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.

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