In Celebration of a Marriage
June 27, 2004
I would first like to honor, at this festive occasion, the memory of my mother, who loved Mara dearly – it is less than one year ago that she died, and I so wish she could have been here to share in the joy. She was a person overflowing with love and tenderness to all.
This is a very special event for all of us fortunate enough to be gathered here to celebrate and honor the bonds of a loving relationship between Mara and Miryam. It is special because the love between two people who want to commit to each other over an extended time is always special in a world fraught with hate, war, and disruption.
But of course, it is also special because it is not just like any other marriage – not yet at this time in the evolution of ideas about people and how they should or may relate to each other.
As Mara's father, and as a gay man myself in a long-term loving relationship, I am awed, thrilled, and humbled, all at the same time, by the straightforwardness and utter confidence with which Miryam and Mara have embarked on their journey. Their complete and total assurance has brought many of the rest of us along – straight and gay – believing in them, because they believe so entirely in themselves.
They have brought creativity into this, their day of shared celebration with the rest of us, through their thoughtful planning for this day. They have invested the idea of a wedding, of marriage, of commitment, of Jewish tradition with richness through exploring the depth and breath of what each of these means. They have not simply followed a tradition by rote – by the very fact of reinterpreting a traditional idea as one that works for any two people in love – they had an opportunity to re-interpret, anew and freshly, every aspect of this celebration – of how to intertwine its many elements, so as to both preserve its classic meaning but in an entirely reinvigorating way. Old wine in a very, very new bottle.
I guess I would expect no less of the daughter I have, fortunately, gotten to know, if belatedly, nevertheless, in a way that has given me confidence she would never do anything without complete seriousness, without carefully considering the significance of what she was doing. And it goes without saying that I cannot imagine any partner for her who would not bring a similar sense of values to the relationship. In getting to know Miryam over the past several years, I have not been wrong in that assessment.
For me, personally, Miryam and Mara are path breakers. I am of the preceding generation, the one during which openly acknowledging one's intrinsic nature was new and radical, scary and liberating. Just to be able to do that seemed more than enough, more than one could ever have imagined. I never dreamed I could demand of society that my relationship with the man I deeply loved should be honored in the same way as the relationship between a man and woman. How far we have come! That Mara and Miryam take it as a given that this is their due is thrilling to me. So this celebration has many, many reverberations, for me, and I suspect for all of us assembled here.
But wherever we fit in this whole, complicated picture, I think we can all join together in wishing the very best, for many, many years to come, to Mara and MIryam. They will, I have little doubt, be creative contributors to a better world.