Wedding Bells
I’m not a fan of the Israeli rabbinate. You probably knew that, but this is just in case. They’re the ones protecting Benjamin Netanyahu by keeping his rickety coalition intact. The idea here is to stand by their man to keep yeshiva students from serving in the army. So far, it’s working. Netanyahu will dance until the end of time, managing to keep able-bodied Israelis at their studies and progressive women from worshipping at the Wall. Those are the deals required by political systems (like ours) where votes are bought with political favors. You might not like it, but them’s the facts.
One thing I do like just happened in Jerusalem, and it’s worth bringing forward as a positive development. Because of the complexities of Jewish practice, it’s difficult to find a wedding date at this time of year. The Orthodox world observes a black-out period that runs from Passover to the Feast of Weeks (Shavu’ot). The idea here is to commemorate a catastrophe from antiquity during which many students of Torah died. Scholars differ on the historicity of this account, and there are also conflicting calendars of local custom. The progressive Jewish world (my team) has largely set these scruples aside, but they still operate for some people inside the four walls of traditionalism.
What’s interesting for me is that they have now been suspended for everyone. It’s a one-year thing, for 2026, where anything goes in scheduling weddings. Rabbis Kalman Ber and David Yosef are the current Chief Rabbis of the State of Israel. They serve side by side in their respective communities, one representing Jews of Sephardic extraction and the other leading Jews rooted in Europe and much of Russia. Both have agreed that, because of the war, weddings may be celebrated in the former black-out period (the “Omer” count). It’s a very big deal for many Israeli couples when it comes to convenience, expense, and a measure of freedom. The articles about all of this feature a charming picture of Rabbis Ber and Yosef side by side. It looks like they met in an airport waiting area and just decided, on the spot, to do the right thing.
The surprise for me is that this happened at all. The Israeli rabbinate almost never does the right thing. It’s stubborn, intrusive, obstructionist, and combative. It treats Jews in the progressive, open-minded majority as traitors to the faith and deluded assimilationists. It positions itself as a guardian of the faith, and the world at large as a zone of contamination.
Yet here, in the case of Omer-period weddings, the rabbis saw an opportunity to set customary behavior aside and bow to the claims of comfort and joy. I repeat that this happens very rarely. It’s a shame that it took a war to get here, but we need all the common-sense flexibility we can get. I applaud these rabbis, just this once, for seeing the situation of the community in front of them, and responding generously to the felt needs of the Jewish people. It’s probably not a sign of things to come, but I never want to bet against a good decision.