Customer Reviews

Beyond Breaking the Glass

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This is the best book we read on Jewish weddings. It is helping us a lot on the hard process of deciding how a meaningful-to-you Jewish wedding should look like. The author does not dictate any custom based on tradition or halakha. She gives you explanations to all the different aspects of the Jewish wedding, and it is up to you to decide.

I have to admit that I was asked by the author, via a mutual friend, to write this review. That said, I should add that in order to write this, I had to dig the book out of the pile I threw it into after copying out my vows in the frantic few days before my wedding.

Beyond Breaking the Glass is an excellent first source for information on planning and/or understanding your Jewish wedding ceremony. The simple language clearly explains the steps, history, and relevance of a Jewish wedding ceremony in a way that was understandable but not pandering both to me (a religious school teacher) and my husband (a Jewish-by-blood atheist.)

The only thing Wiener leaves out is the new movement in liberal Jewish weddings, Brit Ahuvim (see Rachel Adler's work for a complete explanation of this ceremony.) With sections on re-marriage, same-sex marriage, and a whole chapter on interfaith marriage, this book is a must-read for every liberal Jew preparing to approach the chuppah.

This book is not a great book to read with your beloved as you plan your wedding. The tone is so NEGATIVE--It's a jarring read. Planning a wedding is fun and exciting, despite the difficult choices and problems that arise (that's true of all weddings--reform to Orthodox, gay to straight). This book spends more time shooting down the opposition than providing ways to celebrate your loving relationship. Here's an example: midway through the book, the author digresses to expose Judaism's embrace of polygamy in some lands more recently than you probably knew. That's interesting stuff but it's not what I want to discuss with my fiancee while we're deciding on the wording of our Ketubah! I appreciate all the criticism of Judaism (or really the way it is practiced, although the author didn't make that distinction), but it's not a great read for wedding planning.

One exception: Without a doubt, there are few resources for same sex couples and this book does address those issues. If you're planning a same sex union and just cannot find anything to help your planning, this book would be helpful. Hopefully, someone will write a better book for the Gay/Lesbian community and the rest of us too!