Unorthodox, Tablet’s weekly podcast, takes questions from its listeners about all aspects of Jewish life, from the religiously profound to the utterly inconsequential. Every week, we discuss one of these questions online in “Ask Unorthodox.” If you have a question, please send it to unorthodox@tabletmag.com.
This week, we got a question from a listener who’s preparing for her daughter’s wedding next month. She raised her daughter as a secular Jew, just as she was raised. Her daughter’s fiance is the son of Episcopal priests, and though he was raised in a religious household, he now lives a completely secular life. Their wedding ceremony will be a non-religious one, performed by a friend, with no mention of God. In a concession to his family, his father will be giving a blessing—to be vetted in advance—and our listener’s daughter has asked her to give a blessing as well, “to kind of represent the Jewish side.”