1ly od in

ih, ch ell the are kes ind en,

LOVE AND MARRIAGE

The rewriting of the ceremony in such a dramatic way would, in fact, make it clear that in Reform Judaism we have reformulated our concept of marriage. It would have implications for the dissolution of marriage as well.

Many Reform rabbis have rejected the necessity of the get because, just as only the man has power to execute a marriage, only the man can initiate divorce. Adler raises the question of whether this nontraditional form of marriage would require a ger. Whereas for the sake of consistency we would insist on a ceremony that indicates that the partnership has been dissolved, that ceremony would obviously be different from a get. The Seder Predah ceremony created by the Central Conference of American Rabbis might suffice. At least in North America , acceptable gittin are issued only by the Orthodox, and although some of us suggest a ge? to preserve the marriageability of the divorced and to protect unborn children against the accusation of mamzerut, we in Reform have eliminated the category of mamzerut, will marry a kohen and a divorcee,” and have our own standards for conversion, all of which are unacceptable to the Orthodox. It is clear to me that we should evolve our halakhah according to our theological and ethical standards. We should stand on solid ground, but we must reject Orthodoxy as the standard by which we determine what is halakhic.

If ethical categories are determinative for our halakhic conceptualization and effectuation of marriage, we should expect that in the future, as society’s understanding of intimate rela­tionships and sexual identity continue to undergo transformation, we will make other changes.

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