Judaism Unbound Episode 439: Interfaith Weddings — Ari Saks
Ari Saks recently completed an 11-year career as a full-time pulpit rabbi, and is currently focused on reaching out to interfaith families, primarily through his podcast called Interfaithing. He joins Dan and Lex for a conversation about co-officiating interfaith weddings, how he thinks about presiding over meaningful marriage rituals, and the importance of celebrating interfaith families.
[1] Listen to Ari Saks’ Interfaithing Podcast with co-host Anna DeWeese.
[2] Dan, Lex, and Ari briefly discuss Amichai Lau-Lavie’s decision to officiate interfaith marriages as a rabbi ordained in the Conservative movement. Listen to an early episode of the Judaism Unbound podcast where Dan and Lex talked to Amichai shortly after the public announcement of his decision in 2017.
[3] Ari Saks describes his time working in Interfaith Community in New York City and the incredible impact of this work in his career. Learn more about this organization here.
[4] In this episode, Saks addresses one of the most salient and harmful myths of interfaith marriage: the prospect of children from interfaith households experiencing religious confusion. Listen to two important “mythbusting” episodes (Part 1 and Part 2) on this topic from the Interfaithing Podcast where Ari and Anna unpack this idea.
[5] Lex references a previous episode with friend of the pod Susan Katz Miller about interfaith families. Listen to that episode here.
[6] When talking about the importance of the role that children play in common anxieties about interfaith marriage, Saks mentions an idea from first-century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria. You can find the quote he references here, in section “V (29).”
