Beyond Breaking the Glass: A Spiritual Guide to Your Jewish Wedding

This book was purchased for my fiancee to read in order to gain a deeper understanding of the additional spiritual, social, and familial commitments to marrying a Jew. Or in our case becoming the Domestic Partner of a Jew. This book gave him a great deal of clarity. Even though we decided to have a non-tradition commitment ceremony, he gained a deep understanding that he otherwise would not have had without this book. I would recommend it to anyone.

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.