Telling Your Parents You Don't Believe

Pretty sensible advice for a very difficult situation.

How Orthodox Will My Wedding Be?

So, I'm engaged. Yay! I've been debating whether to talk about this because it pretty much gives away my identity to anybody who both knows me in real life and reads my blog... but then I thought, how bad can you be if you read my blog? :-) And, what's this blog for if not to discuss this sort of thing? Please respect my privacy if you figure out who I am. (But let me know by email, as I'm interested to see who YOU are!)

So anyway, we're just starting to plan the wedding. My fiancée and her family are Jewish but not Orthodox, my fiancée is a non-religous semi-agnostic, I of course am an atheist, and my parents are Orthodox. (Long-time readers may recall that I decided to only date Jews a couple of years ago so that I wouldn't break my parents' misguided hearts by marrying out. Obviously, that one worked out.)

We have just started negotiations with my parents regarding their needs. Here are the issues that have come up so far:

Shabbos and Kosher

Obviously, the wedding cannot be on a Saturday or my parents and half our guests wouldn't be able to attend and it must be kosher, or they won't be able to eat. Not a big deal, although a Sunday wedding requires us to either have it on a three-day weekend or put a burden on the mostly non-religious guests coming in from out of town who would have to go to work on Monday morning.

The Rabbi

I do not believe in God. I do not believe in Orthodox Judaism. To have an Orthodox rabbi officiate at my wedding, then, would make the ceremony less meaningful to me and make me feel like a hypocrite. If I were going to have a rabbi at all, I would want a Humanistic one, but obviously, he or she wouldn't count. And if he was a gay man or she was a woman, that would make the Orthodox people extra uncomfortable.

Considering it's our wedding, shouldn't we be allowed to create a ceremony that reflects our love and beliefs and nothing else? Why do we need all this religiocultural bullshit?

Yet my father insists it must be an Orthodox rabbi. Why does he get to insist? It's not his wedding. It doesn't directly affect him. I tried to press him on this and he just said that we wouldn't "really" be married if it weren't an Orthodox wedding. I also got some dark, vague muttering about future problems with kids and/or divorce if the wedding isn't halakhic.

But you don't even technically need a Rabbi to have a halakhic wedding! This debate is ongoing, although I'm leaning towards finding the most liberal Orthodox rabbi I can and negotiating with him just to make my parents happy.

Dancing

My fiancée and I want nothing to do with traditional, single-sex dancing. Admittedly, this is not so much an ideological issue as an aesthetic one, but neither of us would feel at home at our own wedding if we had it. My parents originally expected this and seemed okay with it (they are pretty modern, by Orthodox standards) but then a couple of days ago, my mom called and said that an Orthodox rabbi might not perform the ceremony if we didn't have at least the first dance be separate.

Well, what kind of hypocritical bullshit is that? Either mixed dancing is completely out of bounds, in which case the rabbi should have nothing to do with the wedding, or it's acceptable, in which case, what difference does the first dance make?

I think we're standing firm on this one, and if we're lucky, maybe that will get us out of the Orthodox rabbi question as well.

Blessings at the Reception

We haven't discussed this yet, but we want no part in any benching or sheva brachos. I'd probably be willing to have someone make motzi if necessary.

Wearing a Kippah

I obviously don't wear a kippah (a.k.a yarmulka.) I know my father will be embarrassed if I don't wear one to the reception (I'm willing to do it for the ceremony, I think) but I'd feel like a fraud wearing it. I think my dad's just going to have to deal with that one.

Not Being Counted as One Who Left

One of the things that bothers me the most about the Orthodox community is the way people who go off the derech just disappear. We obviously have to leave the community when we stop being religous, but we're also expected to sort of pretend to be religious when we come home and to not rock the boat. Any discussion about us has the furtive, whispery quality of a bunch of Victorians discussing a sexual deviant. From within the community, you'd barely know that anybody who grew up there ever left (or was gay, etc.) This marginalizes those who leave and it leaves the kids who are thinking about leaving without any positive role models. I emphatically do not want to give the impression to anybody that I'm still Orthodox.

Rituals and Other Concerns

In addition to being uncomfortable with giving the appearance of supporting Orthodox Judaism by having an Orthodox wedding, there are a number of specific things that really get my goat.

1. The notion of buying/acquiring the woman with a ring. The Orthodox ceremony is based on the idea that the man is buying the woman. Besides being entirely distasteful and out of date, this might make a modern ceremony with a ring exchange difficult AND, due to Talmudic nitpicking, will restrict us from using the actual wedding band we want during the ceremony because it has diamonds in it.
2. The notion that virgins are worth more money. This is in the standard ketubah. Spin all you want, that's basically what it says.
3. The idea that we're getting married "according to the traditions of Moses and Israel." Uh, no. We're getting married according to the traditions of America. She's not 12 years old and I'm planning on being monogamous.
4. The fact that the Orthodox rabbi would not perform an intermarriage or gay marriage. Would I have someone who refused to perform marriages for black people officiate my wedding? How can I support such a person? My father suggested that the rabbi might even investigate my fiancée's background to make sure she's halakhically Jewish. She is, but how intrusive and offensive is that??
   
5. The fact that Orthodoxy doesn't consider me (or, of course, my fiancée) a kosher witness. We need two kosher witnesses and yet neither of us is considered good enough to witness at someone else's Orthodox wedding.
6. The breaking of the glass for the Temple. I know there are other interpretations of this event, but I can't in good faith say that I mourn the destruction of the Temple or hope for it to be rebuilt.
7. The yichud room. (For those who don't know, this is where the bride and groom go immediately following the ceremony in order to have the opportunity to consummate the marriage. Although they generally don't actually do that in there, the idea is that they could.) This is just plain creepy and it contributes to the idea that premarital sex is wrong, which I do not agree with.
8. The rabbi's speech. Obviously, I can't have a rabbi up there speaking from our chuppah going on and on about God and how we must raise our children as religious Jews. I'm assuming I'll be able to keep the rabbi on some sort of leash here, but that remains to be seen.
   

Final Thoughts

We went into this process naively thinking that we would graciously accommodate my family by having kosher food and a Sunday wedding and then everything else would fall into place. It's not going to be that easy.

The problem is that anytime we want one thing and Orthodoxy demands another, it's just what we "want" versus what my parents "need." Orthodoxy is so rigid that compromise is impossible (except, hopefully, regarding the mixed dancing.) So we volunteer to have kosher food and a Sunday wedding, which are substantially different from what we would prefer, and we get nothing in return. We try to be gracious, and they just make more demands. Unless we are extremely careful and willing to get confrontational on things we absolutely do not want to compromise on, Orthodoxy will just take over the whole thing and it will feel like any other Orthodox wedding. Maybe my father will be able to compromise on the rabbi. It's just so hard to tell what's negotiable when everything is supposedly non-negotiable.

How Religion Causes Good Men to Do Evil, Part II

Abandoning Eden's parents have told her that they won't attend her wedding to a non-Jew.

I understand that you would wish for us to attend the ceremony planned for next April. However, asking us to attend puts us in a direct conflict of our values. As you must know, based upon your upbringing, education and communications we have had in the past, we are very committed to an orthodox Jewish lifestyle. I've even completed three parts of a "smicha" program, most recently receiving a rabbinical certificate this past January at the Yerushalayim Kotel concentrating on Jewish marriage laws. Unfortunately, as much as you say you love B, and I believe you do, Jewish law does not recognize a marriage between a Jewish person and a person of another faith.
Our attendance at such an event would be at the least a meaningless gesture and, at worst, might somehow convey the false impression that we recognize or sanction this arrangement.

Our hearts and home will always be open to you. You are always welcome and I hope you continue to maintain your relationship with us. If anything, we continue to hope that, as time passes, we will continue to foster an even closer relationship. We are not rejecting you as a person. However, with all due love and respect, we must decline your invitation to attend the planned April ceremony.

Abandoning Eden's parents are in a difficult position, because, as her father notes, they have a conflict between their love for their daughter and their religious values. However, to choose their religious beliefs over their child's happiness reflects a complete lack of humility about their belief system. If we could only convince them and others like them that their religious values are based on outdated myths and stories which are just not true, this sort of tragedy wouldn't happen.


(Previously: How Orthodoxy Causes Good Men to Do Evil, Intermarriage and Interdating Part I, Part II)

Link Roundup

Abandoning Eden is thrilled to be moving in with her (non-Jewish) boyfriend, but doesn't know when, if, or how to tell her parents, who frankly sound pretty scary. She also has a post about protecting her parents from reality. Congrats and good luck, AE!

The Holy Hyrax has a fascinating post examining various ways that Arachim censored their version of the Venetian Haggaddah, originally printed in 1609. Bare arms and the man in the moon? Censored. Disturbing racial imagery? No problem.

Beyond BT has a typically mirror-world (to us skeptics) post about having the seder without extended family.

DovBear thinks the rabbis are right to be scared of blogs.

XGH is back and required reading, as always. Even DBS is back, albeit with only two posts so far.

The Assumptions We Make

One of my best friends went to yeshiva in Israel for two years after high school and came back looking and talking like a rabbi. It was interesting how people responded to him. He told me that a lot of the more "modern" modern Orthodox people he knew as well as some non-Orthodox Jews would out of nowhere act defensive around him or even launch what he took to be a preemptive strike. "Why do you need to wear a black hat? What's the matter with the way you were raised?"

In a way, his very appearance and demeanor was of course an implicit critique of their religiosity, just as my leaving Orthodoxy is an implicit critique of Orthodoxy. I think, though, that a lot of their reactions were due to assumptions they were making about his beliefs that may not have been quite fair to him, or actually true.

I know this because I'm now one of those non-Orthodox people who gets instinctively defensive around some Orthodox folks. I went to an Orthodox wedding recently and although I wore a kippah out of respect, my non-Orthodoxy was obvious in my answers to the most mundane questions. (e.g. Where are you living? Not near an Orthodox shul.) I winced inwardly every time I answered such a question, sure that they were judging me negatively.

But every single one of them was nothing but kind and friendly and completely non-judgmental, at least outwardly. This was as true for the ultra-Orthodox people from Monsey as it was for the most modern Orthodox.

I just realized today that maybe they weren't all judging me negatively internally. I have no evidence that they were. Maybe they were just regular people trying to catch up. They happen to be Orthodox, and the probably think that's the best way to be, but they don't necessarily judge me negatively for choosing a different path.

I once told that same friend, who was now a rabbi in fact as well as appearance, that I was moving in with my girlfriend. Preemptively, I told him, "I'm sure you don't approve." He kind of laughed and said, "You didn't ask me." At the time, I took that as an implicit criticism, but I think I have to reinterpret it now. Now I think he really wasn't judging. If I had asked, he probably would have told me that (obviously) he wouldn't live with a woman before marriage, but that's not the same thing as judging me negatively for doing that same thing.

So now I'm going to be more careful about my assumptions.

Elsewhere

• Mark at Pseudo-Polymath asks how I can support Obama despite some disturbing religious statements he's made. It's a good question and although I replied at his place, I'll have to write a post about it.


• John Cole, former Republican, tears into his old party for going horribly, horribly wrong.


• Paul Krugman, on the other hand, argues that Bush is no departure for the GOP, but "the very model of a modern movement conservative." He does not mean that as a compliment.


• Ben Avuyah wonders if outsourcing one's moral decisions to a rabbi leads to the atrophy of "moral musculature."


• Some people are supporting Hillary just to make Rush Limbaugh's head explode.


• New blogger Orthoprax Anonymous shares about a difficult conversation with his wife regarding his shift away from the religious beliefs he held when they got married.

Essay Question for the Orthodox

I thought this would be interesting:

Imagine that, through no "fault" of your own, you come to believe that God does not exist and that Orthodox Judaism is not factually correct. Furthermore, you are so convinced of your new belief that you can't imagine ever going back to your previous beliefs.

What do you imagine doing and thinking about over the next few weeks? How does this affect the future you always imagined? How does it change your relationships?

Answers of "that could never happen to me" will be roundly booed. I'm especially interested in answers from Orthodox people with no serious doubts, but this is open to everybody.

An Atheist Comes Out to His Parents

Via Ed Brayton, an atheist comes out to his parents.

What if I'd Gotten Married When I Was Still Orthodox?

It seems to me that the essential determinant of the divide between the frum skeptics and those of us who left Orthodoxy completely is whether we were married at the time we started having serious doubts. Orthodox culture is such that it's not generally plausible for a man or woman to come out as non-Orthodox without causing adverse consequences for his or her family. These consequences can include divorce, shunning, and even difficulty finding mates for one's children. I have nothing but sympathy for those who choose not to make their doubts or disbelief known even to their families.

Corresponding with a few of these frum skeptics recently, I got to wondering what my life would have been like if I'd married my last Orthodox girlfriend before I'd gone too far down the path away from Orthodoxy.

We would have had an Orthodox ceremony, of course, making it as liberal as I could get away with, but still containing language I could not agree with and some antiquated notions of marriage. I would have suffered through sheva brachos.

After the wedding, I suppose I could have attended shul the way I did anyway at that time in my life: go for the short Friday night service and try to enjoy the singing, and time my arrival perfectly on Saturday morning so that services were just letting out and it was time for kiddush (i.e. socializing.) We would have attended Shabbat lunches at other couples' houses and had them to our own. I would have made kiddush and sat through benching either letting my mind wander while moving my lips or actually saying some of the words to pass the time.

What of my intellectual explorations? Would I have dared to read Dawkins? To join the Internet Infidels Discussion Board? Or would I have settled with a hodge-podge of Jewish mysticism and apologetics? I doubt could have actually believed that stuff, but I probably would have been careful not to look at it too hard. What would have happened when I discovered the J-Blogs?

How would I act at work? Could I ever be comfortable as "the Orthodox guy?" What would I feel about explaining why I couldn't eat bread next week or why I couldn't attend the company social event? How could I answer my gay coworkers when they asked about Leviticus?

And then, kids? How would I feel at a bris? Would I have chuckled to myself during the pidyon haben? Or felt cheated if my daughter only got a simchat bat?

And then, preschool. How would I feel when my 3 year old came home and told me that God is everywhere? And when he asked me to say the shema?

Could I have handled it when she got a little older and asked why her Rabbi said that all non-Jews secretly hate Jews on the inside? Or what the word schwartze means? Or whether I would slaughter her if God commanded me to?

Then what if she asked me why the boys got to learn Gemara when she was stuck in Navi? And what exactly is a "firmament," andyway? And why does God command the murder of women, children, and even sheep? And is it really wrong to be gay?

What if my wife wanted me to start getting to shul earlier? And being a good role model for my children on Yom Kippur? And what if the gabbai asked me to lead the prayers or read from the Torah? What if a friend asked me to be a witness at his wedding and I knew that I wouldn't be a kosher witness because I turned lights on and off on shabbos? Would I start to hate being asked to lead the benching?

And what if my son didn't want to read his bar mitzvah portion? Could I insist? Would I? What if he went to summer camp and came back with a black hat and a well-worn set of mishnayos? Could I learn with him while holding my tongue about what I really thought? What if he decided my wife and I weren't being strict enough about kashrut and that our oven wasn't kosher enough? What if he went to yeshiva in Israel and wanted to stay a second year? A third? To eschew college and become a Rabbi?

Or what if he started reading Dawkins and was asking questions about evolution and the age of the universe? Could I pretend that saying "yom" means "age" solved the problem? What if he honestly believed in Orthodoxy but wondered what the deal was with the Documentary Hypothesis? What if he became an atheist while my daughter became ever more frum?

How long could I stay silent? What would its toll be on me and on my marriage and on my kids?

What of grandkids?

I'm just glad I got out when I did.