PETER S. KNOBEL

Nothing clarifies the Jewish attitude toward marriage quite as well as the traditional name for the wedding ceremony, Kiddu­shin, derived from the Hebrew kadosh—holy. As we come to understand the deeper meaning of kadosh, we may begin to appreciate why Jewish tradition reserved the word Kiddushin for marriage.

In the outlook of Judaism , all existence is derived originally from God and is, therefore, potentially holy. Time and space, God­given, are sacred but can also be desecrated by idolatry— the worship of things or of self. In consequence, we set special times and places aside for respect, for reverence, so that they may be kept apart from the realm of the profane, from exploitation for material gain and utilitarian usage....

Humanity lives, however, not only in the dimensions of time and space, but also, from birth, in the dimension of relationship. And while all relationships, like all time and space, should be considered essentially sacred, certain relationships are especially exalted. In Judaism the Holy of Holies of all relationships, to which the poetic genius of the Hebraic spirit turned most often for the paradigm of the covenant between God and Israel , was and is the covenant between husband and wife(see, for example, Hosea 1 and 2). A sacred entity comes into being in Jewish marriage. As in the Kiddush of Shabbat we set apart a period of time as holy, in Kiddushin husband and wife set each other apart. Jewish tradition considered the woman who married as mekudeshet—“made holy,” set aside and apart for her husband, consecrated and thus inviolate. In the view of Reform, this is mutual; both husband and wife are consecrated to each other." They create a sacred entity in the act of Kiddushin consecration.

In the Jewish marriage service, in the very act of consecrating a particular relationship as holy, the potential sanctity of all relationships is asserted. Husband and wife represent the bond between God and humanity, the ideal toward which all human relationships should strive. Kiddushin is the rooting of the human

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