Introduction

"I am my Beloved's, and my Beloved is mine."

Happy families and the couples that form their nuclei have much in common. Being part of a couple and being part of an ethnic/religious group provide feelings of acceptance, validation and belonging --- whether the couple is rural or urban, able bodied or disabled, of modest or comfortable means, gay or straight, monogamous or polyamorous, previously married or not, parents or not, religiously orthodox or liberal or secular. When a couple belong to a group whose traditions and values support and foster marriage these feelings are strengthened. This is certainly true of Jews and Judaism.

Judaism, more than any other world religion, embraces marital union and the creation of a family as among the highest mitzvot a person can fulfill for both God and community. The Sabbath, the holiest day of the week, is the traditional time associated with lovemaking. Thus in Judaism the sexual and the sacred are intertwined. Marriage is not considered second best, but the highest expression of holiness. Jewish culture recognizes the fundamental human need for deep connection; for example, the belief in Beshert, or "destined one" --- the other human being in whom one can find the embodiment of one's soul. And in few quarters is the commandment to "be fruitful and multiply" given such weight.

A COMPLEX HISTORY

In the late 1960s and 1970s rabbinic responses to the sexual revolution in all three major streams of American Judaism presented Judaism as unambiguously sex-positive. Thus Jews supposedly had no sexually repressive traditions against which to rebel. In fact, Judaism has been far more ambivalent about sex. Jewish husbands are required to sexually service their wives, yet Talmudic scholars left home for years at a time to study with teachers in distant cities.

Indeed historical tensions have existed between the commandment to be sexually active and the emphasis on study, between the body and mind. Philosophers like Maimonides valued the spiritual over the material, the life of the mind over the needs of the flesh. Love of God led mystics to neglect their wives. A tradition of fulfilling the commandment to have sex only on the Sabbath was established by ascetics who took vows of abstinence the other 6 days of the week.

In traditional Jewish culture, as in most others up to the modern day, women were not allowed to choose a "love match" for marriage. Nor were young men given a choice of wife; appropriate mates were selected by the bride and groom's parents, or by a shadchan, or matchmaker. To find your soulmate through the decisions of others was, in fact, to trust God.

Anxiety has always been a component of marriage. In biblical times the great anxiety was infertility. In the Talmudic period the great anxiety was that young people from scholarly families might marry someone unlearned. In the early European Middle Ages, parents feared that children would not accept their arranged matches; legal records reveal cases of Jewish love matches, elopements, and contested broken betrothals. Widows, widowers and divorced people, though free to marry whomever they wished, often married out of financial necessity or, in the case of single fathers, the need for childcare. The persecutions of the high and late Middle Ages lead to stricter religious observance in all areas, including matrimony. Love matches were introduced with the Enlightenment, first in Germany in the late 18th century, and in Eastern Europe in the early to mid 19th century.

JEWISH MARRIAGE TODAY

Contemporary freedoms to marry whenever and whomever one wishes create hurdles unthinkable in arranged marriages. The question becomes not, "Will the person chosen for me be my Beshert?", but rather "Will I ever find my Beshert amongst all these choices?" And the questions of family are not "Will all my children live and be healthy?" but "Will I choose to have children, and if so, how many?"

Whether witnessed with exhilaration or dread, the nature of marriage, partnership, and family is evolving. US divorce rates are just under 50%, and the Jewish divorce rate is nearly as high. Remarriages and "blended families" are common. Couples often live together before they marry, and some may stay together without marrying at all. In an increasing number of states, same-sex unions entail legal rights and obligations previously reserved for heterosexual marriages; in several US states and in Canada, same-sex marriage is legal. Childless couples can become fertile; fertile women can choose not to bear children. A spouse's gender might change, or three adults might live together in a group marriage --- often without social ostracism.

This evolution is equally true for North American Jews --- and perhaps more so. Jewish emphasis on marriage and family, combined with the traditional Jewish-American bent for social progressivism, has led to diversity of marital and familial constructs amongst American Jews. But even if traditional concepts of marriage and family are being reinterpreted, the love of Judaism and the power and pride of Jewish identity is undiminished.

The couples you will meet in these pages reflect a range of religious observance, belief and non-belief, but all strongly identify as Jewish. In her UJA study of Jewish identity “Connections and Journeys” (2003) Bethamie Horowitz observes that Jewish identity is not merely a measure of external actions and rituals, but also of internal subjective feelings. She also finds that these feelings of Jewishness sometimes move to the foreground of our awareness and other times recede to the background. Some of the voices recorded in these pages reflect more consistent levels of Jewish awareness than others; sometimes differing levels coexist in the same couple. For all of them being Jewish shapes the lives they build together and the life stories they share here.