An Unorthodox ‘Orthodox Wedding’

March 2, 2017 Rafael Alvarez

I’ve been married twice in religious ceremonies separated by 35 years and whatever hovers between the Books of Moses and the Gospel of the Nazarene.

The first time, the ritual was officiated by a Jesuit priest in the chapel of what was then Loyola College, my alma mater. Though never a nonbeliever, I had little interest in religion, not mine (Catholicism) nor anyone else’s. What little I knew about Judaism I learned via Bob Dylan’s alleged conversion to Christianity.

My second wedding took place in April of 2015, the ceremony performed in the front room of my Macon Street rowhouse before HaShem, the State of Maryland and an Orthodox rabbi friend from Northwest Baltimore. In 1953, my parents’ wedding reception was held in the same house. My best man was my adult son from my first attempt at happily-ever-after.

In the three decades between weddings No. 1 and No. 2, I accumulated a small yeshiva’s worth of knowledge about Judaism through concentrated reading, a frustrating semester of ulpan lessons and hanging out with frummies up and down Park Heights Avenue. One of the things I discovered is for the devout Jew, marriage is rooted not in a place of worship — neither chuppah nor chapel — but the Creator’s braiding of energies both masculine and feminine in the Cosmos.

Two years ago — on a Sunday so as not to interfere with Shabbos — I agreed to be braided once more. I took for a bride the daughter of a stridently atheist Jewish father and a casual Episcopalian mother. My wife and I had been dating for several years when my buddy, a wisecracking rabbi, starting bugging me to marry her. His urging that I not only do the right thing but the smart thing led me to ask for her hand in a French bakery at the corner of Thames and Ann streets on Christmas Eve, 2014.

Planning a second wedding in middle age is quite different from orchestrating the first leap. When the betrotheds are not much more than kids, they are often too intimidated or naïve to speak their minds. Many decisions are made by parents. Like most everything else in the world, the one who pays the piper calls the tune. This time, it was up to us.

When, where, how? The courthouse — where people go to be sentenced or set free — was out. Another Catholic wedding would require the unnecessary annulment of my marriage to the mother of my children, with whom I’ve long been on good terms. And Elvis was on the road the day we wanted to get married and sent regrets.

So why not marry my unorthodox constellations of belief with the blessing of an Orthodox rabbi, a spiritual compatriot with whom I sip hot tea while sharing struggles from opposite ends of the alpha and the omega? He said he’d do it gladly “on one condition.” Before he made the stipulation, I began blathering about possible roadblocks: “graven images” (very dear to me) of Jesus and his mother Mary; rosaries hanging from the wrought-iron chandelier in my kitchen; our desire to recite the “Our Father” prayer at the end of the ceremony.

None of that was a problem for my friend. The only thing about which he was adamant was that the bride — a baptized Episcopalian with one of the more distinct Jewish surnames — was not Jewish. My statuary he viewed as just so much imitation Renaissance art. He needed to be certain he was officiating at the wedding of two non-Jews.

After some Hebrew prayers of his own — which we felt dearly but did not understand — we toasted our marriage — Mazel tov! — with sparkling water in wine glasses from which my grandparents drank before I was born.

Rafael Alvarez hosts monthly “Readings with Ralphie” at the Bird in Hand restaurant in Charles Village. He can be reached via orlo.leini@gmail.com.