Personalizing Your Wedding Canopy

Photo by Shulamit Seidler-Feller (Shulamit Photo&Video)

As a queer, polyamorous, liberal, freelance Rabbi, I work with folks on the margins of the normative Jewish community. They’re the kind of people who dig a social justice seder, but shun a stiff, formal synagogue. They find my by searching terms like “queer rabbi” or “polyamorous rabbi,” or by searching through excellent organiations like 18Doors, dedicated to “unlocking Jewish” for interfaith folks with a Jew-ish connection. They often know very little about so-called “traditional” Jewish marriage, and may never have heard the term halakhah (Jewish law, literally, “walking” or “going”). But there’s at least one thing they do know: they want to be married under a chuppah.

An aspect of custom (in Hebrew, minhag) rather than law, the chuppah can be made of any fabric one chooses. Often, people use a tallit, a prayer shawl, that belonged to a relative. Often, it’s a “traditional” tallit, white with blue stripes, the blessing woven in metallic thread on the border worn at the neck. The tallit itself can invoke memories of focused prayer, important lifecycle moments, or even, for some, gender dysphoria, since in Orthodox tradition only men are obligated (and, in some communities, even permitted) to wear it.

For some of my clients, the tallit-as-chuppah gives them an opportunity to honor an ancestor, a grandparent, a parent, or their own past. They can dig through…