Two Jewish women will marry in the first Australian same-sex commitment ceremony by a Reform rabbi.
Nicky Glover and Michelle Sanders, who held a secular ceremony under a chuppah, will celebrate a religious commitment ceremony at Emanuel Synagogue in Sydney after the birth of Sanders’ child later this year.
“The kosher ceremony will be at Emanuel after our child is born,” Sanders, 40, who is pregnant, told the Australian Jewish News. “At that one there will be three of us.”
The child will be the first Australian Jew whose same-sex parents were united in a synagogue service.
The senior rabbi of the synagogue, Jeffrey Kamins, will officiate at the ceremony.
“We understand the prohibitions on same-sex relationships to be related to the cultural context of 2000 years ago, which included the practice of polygamy and man’s authority over woman,” Kamins told the newspaper of the biblical injunction in Leviticus.
The Union for Progressive Judaism approved same-sex commitment ceremonies last June.
