Double Ring Weddings

Editor’s note.  For further discussion on double-ring ceremonies, see this teshuvah of the UTJ’s Panel of Halakhic Inquiry.

Most Orthodox rabbis do not endorse, allow, or participate in double ring Wedding rituals. Four answers are given:

1. Double ring weddings embody a break with the past.
2. Double ring weddings express an egalitarian sentiment.
3. Double ring weddings represent the influence of non-Jewish culture on Jewish life.
4. Double ring weddings imply that the bride is rejecting her ring by returning it to her groom. This reason was offered by someone taken to be and considered to be a great rabbi.

Double ring weddings embody a break with the past

Jewish law is not Oedepal. God does not assign sanctity to the past, but to Jews by means of mitsvot.  What was done in the past need not be done in a different time horizon, climate, culture, or for that matter, community. Jewish red lines are defined by the letter of the Jewish law,  not the nostalgic taste or even the inspired intuitions of great rabbis. For an act to be forbidden according to Jewish law, it has to be forbidden by Jewish law by explicit  citation or by convincing demonstration.  Apodictic declarations or pious proclamations do  violate the hermeneutical principles of Jewish Law.

After the death of Rav Ashi [d. 427] , the authority to issue hora’ah, apodictic legal decrees that oblige all Israel, has lapsed.  This date is the end of “Tradition” or Masorah that was accepted as binding by all  Israel.

Although named Talmudic rabbis called Amora’im still taught Torah, but they did not do hora’ah, apodictic legislation. [bBavaMetsi’a 86a]. The Babylonian Talmud in our possession contains anonymous Aramaic materials that gloss, explain, clarify, preserve, and debate, but do not engage in hora’ah. Unless a statement, norm or decree forbidding double ring weddings is referenced in the Oral Torah canon which closed with Rav Ashi’s death,  that act is permitted according to Jewish law.  Legal norms either command or forbid; in the absence of a norm either commanding or forbidding that act,  that act is optional, permitted, licensed, and authorized by the Tradition that has evolved since Sinai. [Maimonides, Introduction to the Yad]

Double ring weddings express egalitarian sentiment.

This sentiment  is probably correct. It is also legally irrelevant.  Jewish law does not recognize an “egalitarian sentiment” to violate Jewish law.

It is true that Rabbi Moses Feinstein saw Feminism as a threat to Orthodox  Jewish life [OH 4:49].  When Feminism sits in judgment of the Oral Torah that is covenantal canon, the Orthodox Jew must reject it.   But when Feminism fights for changes in Jewish usage but not Oral Torah law, appeals  to principle must override appeals to patriarchy. If “important women” are required to recline on Seder  night, neither the Tosafist, R. Eliezer b. Joel [who abrogated and reformed requiring these women to recline at the Seder], Rabbi Moses Isserles [who sexistly rules that men must recline but women, “relying” upon R. Eliezer b. Joel, do not, nor R. Feinsein, who invokes R. Isserles to disallow women’s talleit but does not criticize R. Isserles or R. Eliezer b. Joel for overriding Jewish.  According to Maimonides, woman may shake the lulav bouquet and don the talleit, both acts are permitted without  the commandment blessing.  Here following R. Isserles, R. Feinstein permits women shaking  the taking and shaking of othe lulav bouquet with the blessing but disallows women’s donning thetalleit, even without the blessing. The Feminist sentiment is healthy within Orthodoxy when it inspires a recovery of Torah truth, which should be confused with mimetic usage, hierarchical habit, or nostalgic inertia. Therefore, even if the double ring wedding was and indeed is inspired by a Feminist sentiment, that is legally irrelevant and the double ring weddings are not forbidden according to normative Jewish law.

Double ring weddings represent the influence of non-Jewish culture on Jewish life.

Orthodox Jewish lay or folk culture has little access   to Torah law. Orthodox rabbinical students are harangued that in spite of what the semicha/ordination document seems to claim, that its holder has been vetted to be some one capable of deciding questions of Jewish law, that they must defer to their academic teachers even though the students and not their teachers hold the office, and hence the authority, of Jewish judicial power. The transfer of judicial power from the community rabbi to the Rosh Yeshiva, who assumes the authority to issue apodictic rulings, indeed represents and indeed mimics Roman Catholic patterns of hierarchical authority.

When assimilation weakens Jewish life, it is regrettable; when it challenges Jewish life to self-correct, it must be embraced. So if assimilation diminishes Jewish commandment observance, it must be resisted. But when Feminism reminds Orthodox women what their Jewish rights and obligations really are, like saying the zimmun [inviting three women to join in saying the after-meal blessing], the Oral Law requirement of washing the hands before the after-meal blessing, and the right—simply because the act is not legally wrong, of a bride to present  her husband with a gift of a ring, the Torah empowers to find  their  own way in Torah.