The Rabbinate Should Not Decide What Doomed Marriage I Can Enter

By Daniel Goldberg

I’ve been married three times, each one ending in divorce. I’ve had multiple other relationships before, between, and since, each one repeating and compounding the failures of all that came before it. I don’t need the orthodox Rabbinate determining for me what kind of doomed marriage I’m allowed to have.

Looking back on several decades of matrimonial self-deception, strife, and disillusionment, I’ve come to the conclusion that all my failures in relationship have one thing in common: me. To have some religious bureaucrats sticking their noses in what is clearly my responsibility is a violation of my autonomy and of the separation of religion and state. Who are some bunch of rabbis to tell me what marriages I’m allowed to condemn to inevitable divorce by entering into them?

I should be able to have whomever I like standing under the wedding canopy, or none at all, intoning things about love, support, and all the things I’ve proved time and time again I can’t handle. It shouldn’t have to be someone approved by them. Once I’ve deceived myself and my bride about the prospects for a given relationship, I don’t need some bearded guy with a certificate on his wall to facilitate another big mistake. I’m a big boy. I can ruin my life – and my spouse’s life – all by myself, thank you very much.

The Rabbinate’s concerns might be noble – I acknowledge that. They want all Jews to follow Jewish marriage law so as not to mess things up for the next generation, and not challenge the orthodox community to keep its own records.. But let’s be honest: have they done a thing to keep me from messing up this generation and the next with my three (and counting!) perfectly halachic weddings? I’ve fathered two children, with two different wives, and repeatedly found someone to indulge my stunted emotional growth instead of helping me mature. The trauma I’ve caused is just as real as any of the things they’re trying to prevent, and they’re powerless to stop it!

So you know what? Keep insisting I get married only through the Rabbinate. I’ll show them. I’ll keep getting married through the Rabbinate, but specifically and vindictively finding women with blind spots for my faults, or self-esteem so damaged they’ll stoop to anything to regain some sense of empowerment, even entering into doomed long-term relationships out of spite, just to demonstrate who’s boss.