Rabbi Dearest, knowing you as I do, I have every confidence that even without prodding from above, you will welcome and embrace my marriage — to my brother.
Rabbi Dearest,
As you know, I have a brother, long divorced, whom I adore. But, though he hates to admit it, he is not financially as secure as I am, and as we age he’s beginning to worry about his future, materially, medically — you know the particulars. We’ve talked, consulted experts, and accumulated piles of spreadsheets. And then finally, we came to a decision.
We have decided to get married.
Apparently, as we understand it, only then will he be eligible for the estimated 100-plus financial and legal benefits that come with marriage, as so often enumerated by the homosexual-marriage lobby.
Perhaps you’ve met my brother at family functions. If so, you’ll remember what a charmer he is, how funny, how sensitive, how intelligent. What I am asking of you is that you consecrate this marriage. I ask more: that you celebrate our union and welcome us into the congregation with the warmth and affection for which you are so justly well-known in the gay community. For of course, ours too will be a somewhat irregular union. I’m not saying abnormal, of course, because you have forbidden that “hate” word.
Now, you will say, what about Dan, my current (and beloved) husband? How does he feel about this? Here I must admit I need your counsel. My own feeling is that my having two loving husbands would work. For one thing, the three of us are beyond child-bearing age, and more important, we are all Jewish. It would never have occurred to me to make such an unprecedented request of you had I not heard your inspiring sermon last year, when you proclaimed your embrace of non-traditional marriages. You said then that you would not officiate at interfaith marriages, but — especially as the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in its wisdom had just declared homosexual marriage legal — you were more than happy to join in matrimony two people of the same sex — as long as they were both Jewish. You said, and I hope I’m quoting accurately, “If they are both Jewish, and so part of the Jewish community, and able to take each other in marriage as Jews, according to the Jewish understanding of marriage, then I can officiate.” I must confess I didn’t quite understand that then, but I think I do now. You were implying — correct me if I’m wrong — that Jewish texts like Leviticus and the Sidra were hopelessly outmoded, totally irrelevant to today’s lifestyle. In fact, now I remember: you quoted the rabbinical exegesist, Bob Dylan. With that warm smile of yours, you continued, “We can confidently say, ‘The times, they are a-changing….’”
So it seemed to me, when I reviewed this, and your many succeeding remarks on the subject, not to mention the multiple public demonstrations you have participated in, that you would be able to take our potential little family under your wing, too. If there were doubts, I figured perhaps you could consult Rabbi David Saperstein and his colleagues at Reform Judaism’s Religious Action Center. These leaders of Reform Judaism lobby so vigorously in favor of homosexual marriage, while giving the theological boot to the bigots on the religious right, that surely they would accept our loving, if untraditional, family.
But then again, knowing you as I do, I have every confidence that even without prodding from above (no, no, I didn’t say “Above”), you will welcome and embrace our union. I know we’d be received with open arms by our innovative and loving congregation, where the triad of civil rights, social justice, and personal fulfillment has been virtually inscribed on our doorpost. And so, I would assume that, in this atmosphere of inclusion, the archaic concept of taboo, like so many of our other aboriginal superstitions, has been banished.
Dear friend and spiritual advisor, as we enter this new year of new beginnings and new hopes, may I trust that you will give some thought to this request? L’shanah tovah!
Janet Tassel is a contributing editor at Harvard Magazine.
