If you haven’t received any wedding invitations recently, you might not know anyone in the right age group. Or you’ve been too tied up with graduations.

Because although it is most definitely graduation season, it is also wedding season. Specifically, Jewish wedding season. 

This is because Shavuot is behind us, and Jewish couples can finally get married. Between Passover and Shavuot is the Counting of the Omer. Weddings are forbidden, also getting a haircut. It is an official period of semi-mourning.

According to the Talmud, the rationale is that we are mourning for the 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva who died during the Omer count from some kind of plague. Or perhaps because they did not show appropriate respect for one another. Or maybe it had something to do with the Bar Kochba rebellion. The deaths reportedly took place around the same time as the revolt against the Romans, from 132-135 CE.

Whatever the ancient reason may be, in the contemporary religious collective experience, these are still seen as days of mourning. 

Most American Jews living outside the Orthodox world know very little about this. Countless American Jewish couples have gone to their family’s rabbi and asked for a wedding date in May and been told, “not yet. Not until after Shavuot.” Maybe with no explanation at all.

Other than happening after Shavuot, what makes a wedding Jewish? There is the exchange of rings, but our Christian neighbors do that too. Veils – check. Officiant – check. Flowers – check. Friends and family – check. Vows – check.

But the vows themselves, and much of the Jewish wedding ceremony ritual, are unique to us. So what is the status of a wedding if a Jewish couple skips some, or all, of the requisites? Have they had a Jewish wedding?

The question has become a huge debate in Israel lately, and not because of something the ultra-Orthodox said or did. No, it is because a famous young Israeli couple did things differently.

The couple are Yuval Caspit, a famous fashion designer, and Nimrod Ron, a famous entrepreneur. Both have been listed in Forbes magazine’s 30 under 30. Both are extremely successful. Both are incredibly good looking and popular.

Interestingly, no one is carrying on about what the bride wore. Although if you google their wedding pictures, you are going to see a lot of skin. A lot. 

No, what has created an uproar is that the person who officiated wasn’t a rabbi and there was no chuppah. 

One Israeli reality star said: “If you don’t believe in marriage according to the law of Moses and Israel, then in whose honor is the kippah?” Yes, the groom wore a kippah; the bride a wide brimmed hat and veil.

Others said simply, “How dare you?” 

The argument goes like this: “There is only one version of Judaism, and only we know what it is.”

This view of Jewish observance in Israel is rooted in the rule of the Orthodox hierarchy, upheld by the government.

The uproar over this wedding has made it to Israel political circles, of course. Yair Lapid, a leader of the opposition party, said in an article about the Caspit-Ron wedding, “…Part of the power of Judaism, throughout the generations, stems from the fact that no person, rabbi, institution, party or reality star could say ‘I am the sole voice of God.’ Judaism believes in God, but is very suspicious of people who claim to speak in God’s name.”

I was fascinated by the responses to his article. One person wrote, “It sounds cute and so democratic for everyone to make up their own rules and styles to reach or deny God. But there are rules of Torah that have to be adhered to, whether you like it or not!”

Another wrote: “Judaism is not a religion. We are a nation…. But we have a 3,000 year old covenant with Hashem and an operating manual called the Torah and Tanach. If you want to be a citizen of our nation you must abide by our laws and customs. If not, you may abide in another tent.”

What surprised me (aside from the outright prejudice) is that neither of these writers, nor others like them, mentioned the Talmud, the source of many laws about weddings. Not the Torah or Tanakh.

But I was heartened to see other responses, such as this one: “At a time when so many feel pushed away rather than invited in, this is a powerful reminder that Judaism has always drawn strength not from uniformity, but from moral depth, questioning, humanity, and the multiplicity of voices that make up the people of Israel.”

And I’ll share one more: “What our people need today is a Judaism that is authentic, pluralistic, diverse, inclusive, and profoundly humanistic – one that inspires belonging rather than fear, meaning rather than coercion, and love rather than exclusion.”

I will also point out that a person can live a complete and fully engaged Jewish life without ever needing a rabbi. We rabbis are a convenience, to be sure. It’s nice to have someone around who knows the many ins and outs of Judaism. We teach, we visit the sick, we give sermons, we are part of the community. We serve in whatever way we can, to the best of our abilities. 

Here in the US, we are experiencing deep and important changes to Jewish practice, most importantly from intermarried couples who have chosen to bring up Jewish children. 

These couples are not arguing about whether or not their wedding was Jewish. Often, it wasn’t. But their homes are. Their children are. Their children’s grandparents are, and these are people who love engaging in their families’ lives. 

It’s not what happens during the wedding ceremony that matters. If a Jewish couple go to the courthouse and get married by a Justice of the Peace, they’ve had a Jewish wedding. Simply because they’re Jews who got married. 

The format of the wedding, the rituals, or the words spoken, might not have been Hebrew or spoken by a Jew. They simply have to have been meaningful to the couple.

It established the foundation of a Jewish home. What can be more Jewish than that?

What matters isn’t the wedding. What matters is what happens after the wedding, after the glass is broken, and everyone shouts mazel tov.

This is an abbreviated version of the sermon I delivered this Shabbat at Temple Beth Israel in Longboat Key, Florida.