PETER S. KNOBEL

social obligations or, through self-isolating privatism, to endeavor escape from the ills of the world. The text of the blessings also evokes the messianic hope....As the couple begins to create their own world, they know that together they must bring something to the perfection of God ’s Creation, so that the time may soon come when God , as it were, will rejoice with His bride, the people of

Israel .

I have quoted this essay at great length because it sets the stage for a Reform understanding of marriage. It is the spiritualiza­tion of kedusha, which affects our halakhic concept of marriage.” Reform Judaism takes theology seriously, and when its liturgical formulae and ritual actions do not accurately reflect its ethicotheo­logical underpinnings the formulae and ritual actions are changed or reinterpreted.”

The primary metaphor for marriage, which dominates Jew­ ish theology, is brit. The marriage metaphor is used to describe the covenant between God and the Jewish people. The wedding took place at Sinai with the Torah as the ketubah. It is this theme of covenant that dominates the thinking of Eugene Borowitz as Reform Judaism’s leading contemporary thinker. He has described marriage as the most appropriate ethical context for sexual relations because it is the best vehicle for expressing intimacy and perpetuating the Jewish people and because every Jewish marriage is a reflection of the covenantal marriage between God and the Jewish people.”

The Jewish community has found no more central and significant form for the individual Jew to live in...than the personal covenant of marriage. In its exclusiveness and fidelity it has been the chief analogy to the oneness of the relationship with God as the source of personal worth and development. In marriage’s intermixture of love and obligation the Jew has seen the model of faith in God permeating the heart and thence all one’s actions. Through

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