geminigirl | Jan. 31st, 2005

zedrikcayne and I met with a potential rabbi candidate for our wedding.

The story begins shortly after we got engaged though, when Mom's colleague (who is an ordained rabbi) told her that he couldn't do the wedding for us because we're interfaith, but would help us find a rabbi. He provided us with a list of rabbis who would do the service, offered to help us write a ketubah[1], made some suggestions about what to ask the rabbi and told us a few rabbis to avoid.

Cayne and I took the list, we sat down and discussed some things that were important to us...someone who wasn't going to push conversion on Cayne, or demand that we were members of a synagogue (we'll join one when we settle somewhere, and when we find one that we really like) or demand that Cayne take a lot of classes on Judaism before and so on. And we did want a rabbi who would officiate same sex ceremonies-we felt like it was important to support rabbis who will do that.

So, we set an appointment and meet with the rabbi. He shakes Cayne's hand, he shakes my hand, and we're sitting in his office chatting, and I catch his rainbow bracelet. After the meeting, when I mention it to Cayne, he says that he saw it when the Rabbi shook his hand.

We do actually like the rabbi, though there is something amusing about managing to accidentally randomly, pick the gay rabbi off the list.

We had a long conversation with him about civil marriage, and whether or not it was something we wanted and why. We talked about ways to incorporate the injustice of marriage inequality into our ceremony. And one of the things we liked about the rabbi is his desire to create a ceremony that reflects us and our values.

[1] Jewish marriage contract
[2] I had trouble picking an icon for this post. Cayne says "Use the wedding hell one"-I countered that it was a good place to use one of my rainbow icons. He insisted it was a wedding hell post, and I reminded him where the icon came from.

cyan_blue created it from photos from the Emperor Norton drag event in SF. Cayne thinks that makes it perfect for this post.