Rabbi Lawrence A. Forman

7. List the challenges you foresee, and the possibilities of the relationship. List your particular abilities and talents and how these might contribute to the well being and enhancement of the relationship with your family and with the community in which you live. What are your professional, educational and work goals? Have you discussed any major issues where you agree or disagree on the ethical and moral implications, such as family planning, giving Charity, affiliating with a Congregation? What are your life interests beyond your profession and work? How will your marriage support these values, hobbies and interests?

8. The rabbi will use this material to compose and create an elegant literary work that will inform the congregation as to why you as a couple are so well suited for each other and why this marriage will become a blessing for all the families and friends. Thus, also put into your letters to me, how you think I can help communicate to those in attendance your feelings and thoughts that will make everyone empathize with you in your desires to build a loving home of quality, where ethical regard and mutual respect become the foundation for your love to blossom, even as you reach into the community to heal it and to build it.

A. The Rabbi will provide the couple with a copy of the personalized wedding service and homily after the ceremony, usually by e-mail attachment.

9. The rabbi suggests that the couple select a Ketubah (marriage document) as part of the permanent record of the Wedding celebration. The couple may select an appropriate Ketubah from a Jewish bookstore, the Internet, or other Judaic resource. The Rabbi personally recommends the works of Micah Parker. Please mention that Rabbi Forman referred you and that you would like the appropriate discount. The Ketubah used to provide an insurance policy for the bride. Today, the Ketubah is an art form, and one’s choice of text for a proper, egalitarian Ketubah rests with the couple. The rabbi will be glad to assist with choices and recommendations. Once an artist-calligrapher is selected, (and Micah Parker’s team does some of the finest calligraphy and artistic work I’ve seen) the rabbi will work with the artist, providing Hebrew names, correct Hebrew dates, Hebrew insertions and required materials. THE RABBI WILL ASK YOU FOR YOUR HEBREW NAMES AND YOUR PARENTS HEBREW NAMES. IF YOU DO NOT REMEMBER OR HAVE OR KNOW YOUR HEBREW NAME THE RABBI WILL WORK ONE OUT WITH YOU. THE RABBI WILL ALSO GIVE YOUR SPOUSE A HEBREW NAME. If your parents do not have Hebrew names we can either give them a translation or transliteration of their English name into Hebrew or insert that you are a child of Abraham and Sarah, Biblical parents of us all, or a child of Yisrael, a name often used to describe one who has become part of our community family.