It was shortly before the 2006 wedding of our oldest daughter, Leigh, that my husband, Jay, and I had a startling revelation. When the time came to do the blessings over the wine and bread, there would be no “older generation” to perform the honors — and we were going to be the ones to wield the Gensler family knife.
This silver-plated implement — engraved with “Morris Gensler, The Great Challah Cutter” — formerly belonged to my husband’s maternal grandfather, who used it to cut the challah at 10 of his grandchildren’s weddings.
After Morris’ passing, his children took over, and Jay’s father, a Gensler by marriage, proudly wielded “the knife” at each of our daughters’ bat mitzvahs.
Throughout its 40-plus years of service, the Gensler family knife bonded the generations to a rich history of tradition.
And in 2008, it opened a new chapter in family life.
At 56 years old, my husband’s brother, Rick, was a lifelong bachelor. An accountant by profession, he had moved to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in the 1990s to care for his aging parents. After his father died in 2001, Rick became his mother’s main companion, escorting her to restaurants, shopping and relatives’ homes whenever he was asked. His Florida condominium was close enough for emergencies, yet far enough to keep the details of his private life to himself.
Although we’d known for years that Rick was gay, we, too, were kept at arm’s distance. He never mentioned a romantic interest, nor did he introduce us to a single friend.
Then Rick met Ron and everything changed.
Tall, Stanford-educated and a respected California political activist, Ron was confident and extroverted. He drew Rick out of his everyday existence and renewed his zest for life.
Suddenly, Rick was jetting off to San Francisco to spend weekends with Ron, and they were traveling together to Australia and the Mediter-ranean. When Rick decided to sell his Florida home and relocate to the West Coast, the pain of leaving his mother was outweighed by the joy of being close to Ron at last.
Shortly after the California Supreme Court struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage in May 2008, Rick phoned to announce that he and Ron were getting married. A Reform rabbi and a judge would co-officiate, and a black-tie celebration for 135 guests would follow.
Ron’s expertise as a California political consultant undoubtedly played a role in the timing of their wedding day. That Sunday in October preceded by just two weeks the vote on Proposition 8. Believing that same-sex marriages performed before the election would stand regardless of the outcome, Rick and Ron made sure their wedding ceremony took place before election day.
As the details of the wedding
weekend emerged, the plans grew more elaborate. Our family was invited to attend a Castro District musical, two pre-wedding dinners and a celebratory brunch in the days leading up to the big event. Jay was asked to be his brother’s best man. I volunteered to bake a special challah in the grooms’ honor.
And Rick reminded me more than once to be sure to bring “the knife.”
On the morning before the ceremony, Ron drove me to his townhouse to prepare the wedding challah. As I measured and mixed the ingredients and kneaded and rolled the sweet-smelling dough, a simple, haunting melody ran through my head. The familiar Hebrew words, pitchu li shaarey (open the gates), seemed to express the yearning for acceptance my brother-in-law so desired.
If you’ve never attended a Jewish-Presbyterian gay men’s wedding, you’re probably wondering what it was like. To me, it felt like lifting my eyes to the morning sun. The happy couple glowed with excitement as Rabbi Jonathan Jaffe from Congregation Emanu-El wrapped them in a tallit and recited the sheva berakhot. When they broke the glass together, they blushed with pleasure as the guests rose to their feet and shouted “mazel tov!”
With their union now legal, just one step remained to make it official.
Wearing a white satin kippah, Rick faced his guests and recited a brief introduction to the ancient family custom that would now be performed.
“This knife belonged to my grandfather, Morris Gensler,” he explained, tears welling in his eyes. “It was used to cut the challah at my brother’s wedding and the weddings of nine of my cousins. I never thought it would be used at mine.”
With that, the blessing over the challah was recited and the Gensler family knife made the first cut into a new family tradition.
Melody Howard Ritt of Sharon, Mass., owns a public relations and marketing firm. Proud to live in Massachusetts, the birthplace of marriage equality, she is delighted by the growing momentum toward the legalization of same-sex marriage.