In Fifteen Years Interreligious Relations Have Changed from a Field Of

MOSHE REISS A MARRIAGE OFFICIATED BY A RABBI AND TWO PRIESTS In early June 2005 I, a religious rabbi ,officiated at the wedding of a Jewish woman and a practicing Catholic man in Belgium. The ceremony was performed with two priests, professors at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium), founded in 1425. The bride and groom were our students; we met when I was a guest professor in Judaism. They agreed to raise their children (if they had any, with God’s help) in both the Jewish and Catholic traditions. The wedding was held with the approval of the Belgian cardinal, Godfried Danneels. The story began when I arrived in Belgium on September 12, 2001, to teach a graduate class in Judaism in this Catholic university. I was the first Jew invited to teach at the Faculty of Theology in its 575-year history. Among the students were, I discovered, ten priests and four nuns representing twelve different countries and five continents. Nineteen students were Catholic and one was a Canadian Jewish woman of Polish background. As a philosophy major (writing her dissertation on Hanna Arendt), she had received special permission to attend my class. The syllabus of the class noted that I would lecture on the Hebrew Bible, Jesus the Jew and the religion he created, Medieval Jewish Mysticism, and the establishment of the state of Israel. During the course of the semester I was invited on two different occasions to preach at university chapels. The focus on the first occasion was Abraham as the founder of monotheism and his covenants. On the second occasion the officiating priest made the following remarks: he announced to his fellow worshippers that when Jesus returns he will be circumcised, like the rabbi and not like the Catho- lics; he would not be able to eat at his home, which is not kosher, and he might ask the rabbi to take him to a synagogue to pray. Several weeks into the semester it became apparent that my brother was dying and my presence in Israel would be needed in connection with his burial. I took the opportunity to teach on Jewish mourning rituals and noted that I would have to mourn my brother’s death in Israel for seven days in accordance with the Jewish ritual of shiva. As compensation for my absence, I suggested that the class perform a play I had written, which had also been performed at Yale University during my time as rabbi there. The play is a dialogue between Reb Nachman, a well- 115 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 16 (2006) 1 known Hasidic rabbi who died in 1811 and the very influential Czech writer Franz Kafka who died in 1924. Three students responded positively to my call for actors; the Jewish woman Anya took the part of Reb Nachman and an Alaskan Catholic named Wolf played the part of Kafka. The third role, that of narrator, was played by young Flemish woman (the university’s official languages are Flemish and English). The play became a major source of inspiration for Anya and Wolf—the couple at whose wedding I would officiate. The university agreed that the play would constitute a good public “lecture” and we performed the play in a lecture hall on the Sunday after I returned. My comparison between an ultra Orthodox Jew living in a medieval environment and a secular Jew growing up in one of most secular urban centers in modern Eu- rope who never mentioned the words Jew or synagogue in his fictional writing made a point. I do not believe that secularism and religiosity have necessarily different values nor do the religions of Judaism and Christianity (or Islam). Real value judgments are the difference between fascism and democracy, between to- talitarianism and liberty and between tolerance and fundamentalism. Idolatry is the most important contra in the Hebrew Bible. What is idolatry? It is being against those values that God proclaimed in the Holy Books. This includes killing (including suicide bombing and genocide), misogyny (including honor killing), the disrespect of “other” human beings (intolerance, slave labor and poverty) and respect for things as opposed to people (this would include respecting land more than people). The last sentence that I uttered to end my course was the meta- phorical question: “If the three monotheistic religions all claim Abraham as their father, could one be a Jew, a Christian and a Muslim?” Toward the end of the semester it was obvious, even to a rabbi, that Anya and Wolf had developed a loving relationship. Shortly after I left Belgium Anya and Wolf moved in together and created a kosher home. One year later, when I visited Belgium, they asked if I, together with a priest, would marry them. Anya had grown up in Canada with very little understanding of Judaism. The few times she had attended a Reform (Liberal) synagogue she had felt no connection to spirituality. She confided to me that she had never experienced a connection to Judaism prior to meeting a rabbi teaching at this Catholic university. She had attended McGill University in the French Catholic part of Canada and grew up in a home infused with memory of the Holocaust and a love for Polishness. Her father, Christopher, had been jailed as a young man by the Polish communists and eventually left for Canada where he met Wanda, her mother. He supported the Solidarity movement and eventually returned to Poland. He is connected to cur- rent Polish political leaders and is a published writer in Polish. Anya went to Po- 116 A MARRIAGE OFFICIATED BY A RABBI AND TWO PRIESTS land during the negotiation for Polish entry into the EU and gave a talk at a con- ference about Poland and the Holocaust. Wolf came to the Catholic University of Leuven as a seminary student intending to become a priest. Wolf’s mother Cecilia had been raised in Austria as an active Catholic, in a neighborhood where the Catholic-Protestant conflict continued into her lifetime. Her family were anti-Nazis. Wolf grew up in Alaska. He came to the Catholic University of Leuven as the youngest of eight children, intending, with his mother’s blessing, to become a priest. However, prior to meeting Anya he had re-evaluated his calling and decided the priesthood was not an appropriate life choice for him. His chose to do his Ph.D. work in comparative theology. Very un- derstandably, his decision to marry a Jewish woman who would not convert to Catholicism was a source of great disappointment to his mother. Anya, Wolf and I devoted many hours struggling with the dilemma of how to raise their future children. They were convinced that their children would understand their hybrid identity; I was less convinced. Nonetheless I agreed to officiate at their wedding if all the Jewish rituals relevant to a Jewish wedding would be observed. The couple and my collegial priests agreed to these stipulations. The wedding week began five days prior to the ceremony. Family and friends were invited to meet and discuss this unique wedding. I spoke both publicly and privately with Anya’s mother, father, paternal grandmother, brother and other relatives. I met privately and had deep meaningful conversations with Wolf’s mother (his father was unfortunately too ill to attend) and other relatives and friends. Anya’s family—primarily Polish and Holocaust survivors—were secular Jews; Wolf’s mother and family were traditional Catholics. His mother, Cecilia, was indeed disappointed that her son chose to marry a Jewish woman but was certainly not anti-Semitic; in fact, she had been asked to translate the German Bishops’ pro-Jew statement (January 2005) into English for her Alaskan community. I stressed to her how distressed my mother would be if I married a Gentile and, furthermore, that she would strongly disapprove of my decision to conduct a ceremony marrying Cecilia’s son to a Jewess. Cecilia finally decided that if I, a Jewish rabbi, could be such a mensch (decent human being), perhaps Jews “were not so bad.” She concluded that perhaps a Jewish woman was better than a Protestant and she decided she could now be considered a Jewish mother (-in-law). Anya’s family had been forced to conceal their Judaism in Poland, had survived the Shoah and were then forced to endure Stalin’s atheistic Communism. They had lost their Judaism. Anya had studied at two Catholic universities (McGill and 117 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 16 (2006) 1 the Catholic University in Leuven) and had finally openly embraced her Judaism, despite choosing a Catholic young man to marry. Her family did not disapprove of the marriage and were rather amazed at her return to Judaism. It appears that she had to attend Catholic universities to find her Judaism. The wedding was held in the late afternoon on the first Friday in June 2005. Since Jewish weddings require signing a ketuba (marriage contract) and breaking a glass —both being acts forbidden on the Shabbat—the ceremony needed to be concluded prior to sunset, the beginning of the Shabbat. The wedding ceremony would be connected with the beginning of the Shabbat and include a kabbalat Shabbat (the welcoming of the Shabbat) dinner. The wedding ceremony took place in a church. The Jewish rituals included a chuppa, a cloth canopy held by four poles, i.e. an open but marked space under which the ceremony took place. The women of both families and friends designed and decorated the chuppa. 1. Prior to the wedding Anya was immersed in a mikva (free standing water—the basis of Christian baptism), a ritual which all Jewish brides perform in order to begin their marriage in purity.

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