Marriage by Jewish Law or Assimilation: A Choice That Matters

Ori asks: "Hello, as someone who has returned to religious observance, I've encountered friends who are traditional but oppose marrying through the Rabbinate, wanting their own ceremony without a rabbi, *rachmana litzlan*. It's very uncomfortable when I receive such an invitation, as it creates a friendship crisis... I would greatly appreciate if you could help me explain to them why it's important to marry through the Rabbinate and sanctify according to the laws of *Moshe and Israel*."

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Hello, Ori, and thank you for your question.

I would appeal to your friends' Jewish feelings, to the preservation of our Jewish identity and unity as the nation of Israel.

Every "civil marriage" harms the Jewish people and leads to their assimilation. I have no doubt that no Jew wants to be part of the destruction of the Jewish people, or to join, God forbid, the enemies of Israel who seek to erase us from the world. After such a strong statement, you'll surely be asked, what's the connection between civil marriage and the destruction of the Jewish people?

Well, for thousands of years we survived as the nation of Israel due to the simple fact that Jews married only Jews according to the laws of *Moshe and Israel*.

Beyond the severe halachic obligation, it is also a historical survival strategy: the laws of *Moshe and Israel* ensured that marriages were only between kosher Jews - whose Jewish lineage was known and valid; rabbis and witnesses ensured that our ancestors were registered and recognized as kosher Jews from generation to generation, preventing non-Jews from assimilating into the nation of Israel and eroding its identity.

What will happen, God forbid, if marriages are conducted without kosher rabbis and witnesses according to the laws of *Moshe and Israel*?

Exactly what is happening now in the United States, where civil and "Reform" marriages are prevalent: Jews are marrying non-Jews, losing their identity within a generation. Even if their descendants wish to return to the Jewish nation and marry recognized Jews in the future, they will be unable to prove their ancestors were truly Jewish - because their ancestors did not marry through a Jewish wedding!

Those who believe this claim is mere fear-mongering can look at the numbers: as of 2010, 55% of American Jewry has already intermarried. "Reform" weddings are civil in essence, as they lack any halachic conditions of any form or type, allowing any Gentile to "declare" themselves as Jewish and marry Jews, just like in a civil marriage. This outcome was predictable: since the 1950s they lost half of their community among the Gentiles, and the Reform community in the U.S. is heading towards extinction! We see with our own eyes that only the Orthodox Jews who marry through Jewish weddings have survived and continue to survive as Jews.

Unfortunately, this danger is also fully present in Israel, where the phenomenon of questionable conversions, Gentiles who feel "Israeli" yet call themselves Jews without any real connection to Judaism, is widespread. I have personally heard shocking personal stories from traditional Jews who discovered, after many years, that their spouses were actually devout Christians believing in the cross, even demanding visits to churches and baptism of their children in the church, all after claiming they converted in their youth... Such a situation would not occur in a kosher Jewish wedding, where lineage is checked and credible testimony is ensured from generation to generation among kosher Jews and Jewesses.

"But I'm clearly Jewish, and she's Jewish, so what's the issue with a civil marriage?"

Even though your friends are fully Jewish, their very agreement to a civil marriage paves the way for other Gentiles to marry Jews in civil ceremonies, thereby making them partners in that civil establishment that’s eroding the Jewish people from within: "Your destroyers and those who devastate you will come from within you" (Isaiah 49:17).

Even if your friends know today they are Jewish (only because their loyal ancestors married in a Jewish wedding according to the laws of *Moshe and Israel*), how will their grandchildren and descendants know this? Even if they tell their children they are kosher Jews, the same story will also be told by all those assimilated and Israeli Gentiles who married in a civil ceremony like them... So how will we know in the future who is telling the truth and who is not? In the not-so-distant future, it will no longer be possible to discern who among them is Jewish and who is not.

Therefore, civil marriages will split the Jewish people, ultimately creating two nations: one that married according to the laws of *Moshe and Israel*, remained loyal to its Judaism with rabbinic testimony certifying its validity, and another, mixed and confused with Gentiles of different cultures who claim "Israeliness", many of whom have half-hearted or incomplete conversions.

(Photo: shutterstock)

This means that anyone who marries in a civil ceremony also harms their children, who will belong in the future to that questionable and semi-assimilated part of the nation, struggling to discover and attest to the Jewishness of their ancestors, and therefore unable to marry recognized and kosher Jews within our people! How will his unfortunate descendants prove if their great-grandparents were kosher Jews or Gentiles, genuine converts or fakes?

Therefore, choosing a civil marriage, apart from causing a severe rift within the nation of Israel, actually chooses to erase his own children from the Jewish people for generations. Even if the descendants wish to repent, they might be forced to undergo a strict conversion.

Would your friends truly want their grandchildren to belong to a different people, separated from the people of Israel, who can no longer intermarry with our nation? Would they want to be partners in the loss and, God forbid, destruction of our people? Obviously not. It is likely that what initially led your friends to seek a civil marriage is the rebellious spirit of the Western culture currently prevalent in Israel, this spirit opposed to institutions and dismissive of their existence, similar to a child running away from their civilized home to live in the forests until they learn firsthand why humans need homes...

Everything mentioned concerns only the technical aspect, but it’s also important to explain why Jewish identity is so crucial and unlike any other culture.

Civil marriages create a rift in the nation of Israel, since through them non-Jews marry Jews, causing their descendants to be unable to prove whether their ancestors were Jews or Gentiles (especially when many Israeli non-Jews claim to be Jewish without having converted according to proper law), leading to a state of two nations unable to intermarry, losing a vast part of the Jewish people, heaven forbid.

Therefore, this is a technical answer that will convince any Jew who feels connected to his people and doesn't want to cause unnecessary pain to their children. Now we will discuss the root and essence, understanding the Jewish identity that differs from any other tradition, and what preserves it.

The State of Israel is known to be very young, it hasn't even reached a hundred years, so it clearly didn't establish our identity as the eternal nation. So, what defines our Jewish identity that unites us as brothers and sisters with a shared destiny for 3300 years?

The fact is that for 2000 years, our people lived in exile, without a state or army, even worse - they were geographically divided, speaking entirely different languages, wearing different clothing, eating different foods, following different customs - yet despite all the major cultural differences, they were nonetheless united in heart and soul as Jews, members of one nation under a shared fate, which allowed Jews from all over the world to reassemble here once again in our ancestors' land and fight for our Judaism. But why, really?

If you ask a Russian citizen or a French citizen what defines them as Russian or French, you will always hear cultural reasons: language, clothing, food, literature, songs, customs, government, and most importantly - geographical area!

Russians are people who have resided for many generations in the geographical areas of the Russian Federation, and French are people who have resided for many generations under French rule in the geographical region of Western Europe.

Thus, we discovered that what unites Russians or French does not unite Jews. Here’s an interesting mental experiment that proves this:

Put a Jew who recently immigrated from Europe into a room, a Jew who recently immigrated from Iraq, and a Jew who recently immigrated from Yemen. Will there be any common language among them?

Even if all three speak Hebrew, there won’t be any common language: one enjoys gefilte fish and the other *jahnun*, one enjoys clarinet music and the other *oud* music, one arrived with a hat and the other with a *tarboosh*, they probably won’t even laugh at the same jokes.

What could have caused people so different from each other to feel united in one identity and one fate, despite two thousand years of strong cultural distance?

There is no other answer but faith, the faith of Israel expressed in Jewish law throughout the ages: the Thirteen Principles of Faith, circumcision, bar mitzvah, tefillin, tzitzit, mezuzah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Passover seder, Tisha B'Av, kaddish, Jewish wedding, Jewish burial, and of course our holy scriptures - the Tanakh, Mishnah, Talmud, and Halacha. They define our identity as Jews, they unite us for thousands of years, and they gathered all the diasporas to unite under one umbrella in the Holy Land.

We find, therefore, that the factor uniting Gentiles is only external, whereas the factor uniting Jews is internal and essential: Judaism, the Torah, and its values.

It's no small matter to fight for our Jewish identity against our enemies, who seek to destroy us in every generation. Our ancestors did not give up and did not surrender to anti-Semitic terror; they were heroes who clung to their Judaism for thousands of years and did not assimilate despite the decrees and persecution. Those who assimilated disappeared.

Tell your friends, they know they are Jews today only because all their ancestors, for the last 3300 years, married in a Jewish wedding according to the laws of Moshe and Israel. This is a chain of generations stronger than any iron, but like any chain, every link is important: if just one of your ancestors had chosen not to marry in a Jewish wedding, they would have lost their Jewish identity and the connection of their descendants to the nation of Israel.

How sad it would be if after such a glorious chain of generations, a son or daughter suddenly chooses to marry in a "civil wedding", losing by their own hand the connection to the vast Jewish lineage behind them, a lineage for which their ancestors fought with their blood against the Christian and Muslim oppressors, the Romans and Greeks, the Babylonians, and the Persians...

Nothing pleases our anti-Semitic enemies more than the loss of our identity and unity as a people. This is another undisputed fact that every Jew acknowledges worldwide, that the non-Jews have tried and continue trying to erase our Jewish identity since we became a nation, and despite their wars, we have kept our Judaism.

We remain Jews only when we marry through kosher rabbis and witnesses "according to the laws of *Moshe and Israel*".

In the previous article, we mentioned the Reform community in the United States, which abandoned the Jewish wedding and has already lost half of its community among Gentiles, now facing extinction. Our eyes have seen that it is not possible to forego a Jewish wedding and remain Jewish.

Jewish law is what unites the people of Israel across generations. Great is the merit of kosher rabbis and witnesses who prevent the extinction of the people of Israel by filtering semi-half- or quarter-Gentiles who attempt to assimilate into the Jewish nation without genuine conversion.

The known obligation hardly needs reiteration to Jews faithful to Hashem, our God and the God of our ancestors who commanded us in His holy Torah: "Do not intermarry with them, do not give your daughter to his son, and do not take his daughter for your son, for they will turn your children away from following Me to serve other gods" (Deuteronomy 7:4). May we soon be blessed to receive our righteous redeemer as one united nation, with none lost from it.