My Brother's Christian Wedding

Since my brother is Christian and my sister-in-law is Hindu, they had two wedding ceremonies: the first, Hindu, and the second (which was this past weekend) was Christian. In addition to their religious differences, the weddings differed in size. The Hindu wedding had about 550 guests, and the Christian wedding had about 65 guests.

Basically, the Christian wedding guests were some of our parents' local friends, some of my sister-in-law's immediate family (including her brother's fiance), our grandfather, and our uncle and aunt and cousins from PA (father's side). My sister-in-law's brother was best man, and I was the maid of honor. Since the wedding colors were green and ivory, I wore a long green Grecian-style dress, and my brother and the best man had light green, similarly patterned ties. My mom wore a elegant textured red skirt suit, and my sister-in-law's mother wore a red-pink and gold sari — definitely not typical mother of the groom/bride outfits.

The ceremony itself was simple and straightforward. The wedding party processed into the chapel. First the parents were asked if they were happy with the marriage. After a hymn, three readings (mine was Psalm 139, with a reference to murder edited out), and the minister's reflection, the couple exchanged vows. They didn't do the "for richer or poorer…" vows repeated in American movies. Instead, they were more poetic: "to laugh with you in joy, to grieve with you in sorrow…" My mom wrote the vows as interlocking rings on the wedding pulpit hanging she made, which made for a crisp, straightforward, yet also very profound addition to the stone chapel. After the vows, the minister announced my brother and sister-in-law as married. We sang another hymn before the recessional.

Between the ceremony and the cocktail/lunch reception was the family photo shoot. Since the number of family members at this ceremony was much lower than the Hindu wedding, there were fewer family groups to coordinate. While it was a little annoying to break away from conversing with our guests to be photographed, there are very few occasions in our family for nice photos. In particular, this wedding was the first time our PA cousins and our grandfather were in the same place with us in about 5 years, which is a special occasion in itself. (We see our cousins and our grandfather each about twice a year, but rarely at the same time).

The guests went to the reception, which was held in an event room at the Boston Science Museum, in a yellow school bus, which seemed appropriate for the venue. The wedding party and my grandfather piled into a limo. It was my first time in a limo, and I was expecting it to be very exciting. In fact, I found it uncomfortable to get into and out of the limo, since I had to slide along a very long curved bench in a long dress and heels while it was raining outside. However, arriving at the museum was a lot of fun. There was an elementary school group in the main lobby, and once they saw my sister-in-law in her gown, they started clapping and cheering. We were also admired in the elevator to the reception room. It was a lot like being in a celebrity's entourage, except without the fear of being blasted in gossip magazines.

In addition to the joy of celebrating my brother and sister-in-law's wedding, I had the unexpected gift of the first long, uninterrupted grownup conversation I've had with my PA aunt. We ended up talking about her wedding, which happened when she was my age, and how she and my uncle fell in love on their first date. But we also ended up covering a lot of family history, Catholicism, Judaism, and how her life has taken a path entirely different from what she imagined (but, in the end, in a positive direction). After having little snippets of grownup exchanges on Facebook in the form of wall messages and comments on each other's statuses, it was a joy to learn more about her not just as an aunt, but as a fellow adult. It's peculiar, being in transition from relating to your relatives (and grown-up acquaintances) as being "too old" to relate to, to starting to be able to relate to them not quite as equals, but as people. But it's a good feeling, one I was most aware of on this joyous occasion.

The Acceptance/Alienation of the Convert

In the Bible, the Hebrew word for what in the modern era we call a convert is "ger," which roughly translates to a foreigner or stranger. While one would not generally refer to a religious convert as "Joe the stranger" in conversation, I feel that after "coming out" as a convert, people treat me differently. Overwhelmingly, their reactions are very positive: "Wow! When/why/how did you convert?" At times, though, the person I'm talking to begins to mock themselves in the form of a compliment to the convert by saying something like, "you're so well-informed … I was born Jewish but didn't know about that."

What's harder, though, are the moments of confusion when someone assumes that I was born and raised Jewish until I say something about my parents going to church or visiting my grandparents for Christmas. Before I went to college, I didn't have to explain that I was a convert in the middle of what started out as simple conversation about plans for winter break or upcoming Jewish holidays.

Harder still is finding a place for yourself in the community when your family isn't Jewish. Since so much of Jewish observance is centered around family meals and celebrations, if your family isn't Jewish (or observant, as is the case for some) you become dependent on the goodwill of Jewish outreach services for finding a place to celebrate a Passover seder, light a menorah, make holiday food and celebrate the sabbath (unless you're lucky enough to be a college student on a campus with a large, engaged Jewish community).

That shaky interim period between calling your parent's house "home" and creating your own that seems to start in college I've tried to see as a time of intense religious reflection, because once you become responsible for a spouse and children you have much less time or space to make big changes religiously. When you're a convert and also the only Jew in your family, you're forced to think for yourself a lot anyway. Much earlier than most of your religious brethren, you have to keep track of the holidays for yourself, pay your own membership dues, find places to go for holiday meals and services and educate yourself. There are, I think, advantages to this, but it at times it feels quite taxing.

Given that most converts to Judaism that I've met seem to convert around birth (for adopted children) or marriage (for a non-Jewish person marrying someone Jewish), I wonder how many other converts have that awkward period of being tied to your birth home and needing to make your own home. For me, the ultimate fulfillment of marrying and having a family would be to observe the holidays in my own home, with my children, and not having to rely on others' charity. Even more than that, the relief of no longer feeling so stuck, in many respects, outside both my family and the Jewish community.

Christmas is Coming

Coming from a good ole' semi-traditional Protestant family, one of my first visual memories is the shadows a Christmas tree makes on the wall behind it at night. The silhouettes of pine needles in duller hues of the lights on the tree all mingled together in the frigid silence of a New England December night.

My first Christmas after I had started going to synagogue junior year was, needless to say, kind of awkward. The childhood memories of Christmas and family traditions of selecting a Christmas tree and decorating it were still strong. Though the religious significance wasn't there for me, I wasn't blind. My parents still wanted to have Christmas, and I still lived at home, so I agreed to sort of keep the family aspect. On Christmas morning there was a dreidel in my stocking and I didn't have presents marked "from Santa."

The following year was easier, since I had studied more and my parents gave me a menorah and dreidel-shaped cookies. So, for eight days we had a lit menorah in the living room window and a fully lit and decorated Christmas tree in the background. 

The year after, I had been Jewish for nine and a half months and was at school for Chanukah, so I got a freebie menorah and candles from the semi-off campus Chabad house and celebrated in the midst of finals.

This year, I've ending up working retail during the ever-growing "holiday" (do you think you're fooling anyone, PC-ish stores?) season. I realize that I can't really view Christmas as a "national" or "secular" holiday, yet I can justify enjoying Christmas songs on the radio by telling myself that there are, indeed, secular-ish aspects of the holiday and that, well, Jingle Bell Rock is *really* fun to listen to.