Connubiality
Individuality L
The number of ways
to personalize your
wedding is only
limited by your
imagination. with
ast December, surrounded by relatives who held
up the bright blue family chupah, Amy and Mi-
cah Kagan were married under that symbolic
cloth — adding their own gold-embroidered leaf
to that of six other couples on the chupah’s family
tree. Twenty-fi ve people watched the traditional Jew-
ish ceremony, which Rabbi Eric Yanoff performed in
Philadelphia so that elderly grandparents could easily
attend. A month later, a crowd of 110 gathered near
the slopes at a mountaintop ski lodge in Park City,
Utah for a second Jewish wedding that refl ected the
couple’s passion for winter sports. But instead of hav-
ing the rabbi intone the seven traditional wedding
blessings, the Kagans assigned seven friends and fam-
ily members to recite their
own interpretations of the
prayers. “We wanted a modern
take on the Jewish wed-
ding ceremony,” Amy
Kagan explained of their
idiosyncratic nuptials.

“And both rabbis helped
us achieve that. Everyone
really hit it out of the park.

It was moving and mean-
ingful and heartfelt.”
Th e Kagans are part
of a generational trend
toward highly personal-
ized, distinctive wedding
ceremonies. As the focus
of matrimony has shifted
from cementing communal status to celebrating the
union of two individuals, Jewish weddings have be-
come more individualized as well, with quirky touch-
es that refl ect a couple’s passions and priorities.

So along with vows on mountaintops — “I al-
ways dreamed of skiing down the mountain in my
wedding dress,” confi ded Amy Kagan — brides and
grooms today might decorate a ketubah with pictures
from Camp Ramah; recite poems that refl ect a shared
love of the Spanish Golden Age; or incorporate senti-
mental artifacts into the ceremony, from a family ring
to a grandfather’s tallit.

“Many couples want to personalize the wed-
ding, to make it more meaningful, so that it speaks
to them,” observed Rabbi David Straus of Main Line
Reform Temple in Wynnewood. He views it as part of
a larger phenomenon — “the privatization of Jewish
life-cycle events,” as he described it. Witness the grow-
ing number of Bar Mitzvahs that take place at hotels
14 APRIL 9, 2015
By Hilary
Danailova It was snow problem for Amy and Micah Kagan to
hold a second wedding ceremony in Park City, Utah.

with hired clergy, or
in exotic destinations
abroad with only family present. “And weddings,
certainly in the liberal community, have become not
communal but private aff airs,” Straus noted.

Th at may refl ect both our highly individualistic
society and the evolution of marriage from social ob-
ligation to lifestyle choice. But when it comes to tying
the knot, most seem to agree with Straus: “I think
whatever you do to make it personal, more meaning-
ful and more intentional for you, the better,” he said.

When Spencer Hoff man and Adam Putzer, a
Manhattan couple, got married in Philadelphia last
October, they designed a printed program that —
along with explanations of the ceremony for non-
Jewish guests — included a picture of their family
tree. “Th at way every guest could see where we come
from,” Hoff man said, adding that an Irish branch of
her family converted from Catholicism. “Especially
for our parents’ friends or extended family who don’t
know us, they got a better sense of who we are.”
SIMCHAS During the ceremony, friends read
texts that the bride and groom had
secretly selected that made each think
of the other; Hoff man’s came from
the novel Th e Portrait of a Lady, while
Putzer’s was from the writings of a
physicist. Another special decision was the
reading of their ketubah out loud dur-
ing the ceremony — an increasingly
popular, and visible, inclusion for what
was traditionally a legal marriage con-
tract that was signed out of sight of the
guests. “We wanted to share it with ev-
erybody,” explained Hoff man.

Perhaps no single item symbolizes
the personalization trend more than
the ketubah, which has evolved into a
distinctive, artistic expression of a cou-
ple’s love. Chances are good that you’ve
never seen your grandparents’ ketubah
— but if you have Jewish friends who
were married in recent decades, you
will likely have noticed a colorfully il-
lustrated, Semitic-language parchment
on prominent display.

“Th ere was always the tradition
of the ketubah, but a generation ago,
it was just that legal document,” ex-
plained Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer, author of Th e Cre-
ative Jewish Wedding Book and an offi ciant with Jour-
neys of the Heart, a Philadelphia agency that provides
interfaith clergy. “In the Orthodox world, it still is.

But in the progressive Jewish world, it’s become more
of a spiritual document — the idea of having artwork
that you and your partner choose together.”
Writing their own ketubah was a profound bond-
ing experience for Kaplan-Mayer and her husband, a
Jewish Buddhist, who married in 2001. “It was the
heart of our ceremony,” Kaplan-Mayer recalled. “We
wrote our own commitment to each other, and my
husband used some language from the Buddhist tra-
dition in his part,” with each reading aloud during
the ceremony.

Over the years, Kaplan-Mayer has guided numer-
ous couples as they plan ceremonies that, like her
own, embrace the details that make each partnership
unique. She has stood by while grooms recited Bruce
Springsteen lyrics, coached brides through the Song
of Songs, and helped fi nd love poems from sources as
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