In Spiritual Humanistic Judaism a wedding is a brit: a covenant of love. Two people stand beneath the ḥuppá, before their community, and freely take on obligations to one another. Nothing is transferred and no one is acquired. What is made holy is the relationship itself, through the promises spoken and the life that keeps them.

Today they do not cease to be two people. They choose to make something new between them: a brit, a covenant.

Seder Ḥuppá

Fully inclusive

Our wedding ceremony is for every couple who wishes to make this covenant — whoever you are and whoever you love. Same-sex and opposite-sex couples, trans and non-binary partners, couples where one partner is not Jewish, intercultural families and second marriages are all equally welcome.

The ceremony is written for two partners, [A] and [B], with identical roles. They process in together, both sign the ketubá, both light a candle and both give a ring, and the Hebrew forms are adjusted to the language each partner uses for themselves. Nothing in it assumes who is a bride and who is a groom, or that there must be one of each.

A covenant of responsibility

The traditional ketubá was a contract securing a wife’s maintenance. Ours keeps the form and changes the meaning: it is a written covenant that both partners enter equally and freely, naming what their love will ask of them — dignity, faithfulness, honesty, material responsibility, companionship, and the duty to protect one another’s flourishing.

It asks not only, “Do you love one another?” but, “What will your love require of you?”

Seder Ḥuppá

Kiddushin, the traditional word for the betrothal, comes from the language of holiness: of setting something apart. Partners do not become each other’s possessions; they set their relationship apart through the commitments they choose.

Two whole lives

Two candles are lit beneath the ḥuppá. Their flames do not merge into one: each remains itself, and together they give more light. Marriage, in this understanding, should enlarge each partner rather than diminish them — a relationship in which each can become more fully themselves because they are known, challenged, protected and loved.

Love will not always feel effortless. Some days it is expressed less as a feeling than as patience, humour, practical care, or the decision to stay for a difficult conversation. A covenant does not promise that nothing will change; it gives a couple a way to meet change together, and when they hurt each other, a way back through teshuvá.

Holiness that is made

Nothing descends on the couple from beyond the world. The holiness of a marriage is made and renewed in ordinary life: in affection and desire, in shared meals and ordinary days, in truth spoken with kindness, in burdens carried together, in forgiveness asked and offered.

An open ḥuppá

The ḥuppá is open on every side. It is not yet a house, only the outline of one — and a reminder never to make a marriage a closed world. A good home has doors: it receives friendship, community, learning and hospitality. That is why the community is not merely an audience. Those gathered take on obligations too: to remain present in the years that follow.

At the end of the ceremony a glass is broken. Jewish joy refuses to pretend the world is whole because we are happy. Joy and brokenness share the same world, and perhaps love’s answer is not that it repairs everything, but that through love we become less willing to leave what is broken unattended.

The ceremony

Seder Ḥuppá sets out the full ceremony in Hebrew, transliteration and English:

1. Opening, as the community turns from prayer to covenant
2. Signing of the ketubá by both partners and their witnesses
3. The joint procession, with family and chosen loved ones
4. Lighting two candles
5. The first cup: Birkot Erusin
6. The rings, given by each partner to the other
7. Reading of the ketubá and the address
8. Tallit and Sheheḥeyánu (optional)
9. The seven blessings, Sheva Berachot, over the second cup
10. Jerusalem, and the breaking of the glass
11. The blessing before the Hechal, or in a chosen place of blessing
12. Civil signing, where the law requires it
13. Mizmor 150, a psalm in praise of life
14. Birkat Hamazon for the wedding meal, and the Ladino song Bendigamos

Where the religious ceremony is not itself legally binding, the legal marriage can be registered separately, and the ceremony includes a place for the civil signing.

Download Seder Ḥuppá (PDF)

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