Holidays are the parts of the year when you can enjoy spending quality moments with those who are closest to you, and luckily, in the Jewish calendar, we have a lot of them throughout the year. These deeply spiritual celebrations come on historical dates of significance and are often precious to family circles, so approaching them as a couple can require a bit of compromise.
While you obviously wish you could be everywhere at once, you’ll have to pick and choose who you get together with before each festivity rolls around, so planning ahead and showing mutual respect for one another’s preferences is crucial when splitting time between you and your respective families. Ultimately, this harmonious balance may even signify stability in your relationship.
From weekly Shabbat dinners to Hannukah and Tu B’Av, the Jewish Day of Love, this blog will discuss how to address the relationship challenge of navigating the various Hebrew holidays as written in the Holy Torah. We’ll also consider how these integral bonding moments can pave the way to a successful lifelong relationship built upon faith in Good going forward.
Navigating Jewish Holidays as a Couple
Before you even begin thinking of attending community holiday events at synagogue or showing up at each other’s family home for a festive feast, you’ll want to consider any traditional differences you may have, along with gauging how comfortable you both would be in this setting. You don’t want to force anything too early, and you also want to respect the other person’s Jewish experience. You’ll want to wait until you’ve been dating for a bit before moving to a family function, but there’s truly no better opportunity to get acquainted than during a festive occasion. And no Jewish family is going to say no to guests.
This will inevitably require planning, which means that you will want to warn both of your families ahead of time so that one side can prepare for an extra seat at the table while the opposing family must patiently wait for the next holiday to get together. It’s also not uncommon for couples to form their own traditions around certain holidays, especially in the more mature stages of a relationship. These annual occurrences can hold dear meaning and represent significant milestones that you’ve reached in past seasons of life, so it’s understandable that you’ll occasionally want to take time for yourselves. Specific holidays like Tu B’Av, which celebrates the Jewish Day of Love, focus on intimacy in both your faith and personal lives.
How to Blend Family Customs in Your Joint Holiday Celebrations
Once your relationship becomes more serious, you will either find that your respective beliefs and lifestyles align perfectly, or you will be plenty happy to make accommodations and compromises regarding each other’s traditional differences. The way you’re able to come to a mutual understanding over these things will be the same way you can work to balance similar spiritual backgrounds with totally separate customs. Even though each of your family’s celebrations might look different at first glance, they’re still rooted in the Torah and give all glory to God.
One of the most enriching aspects of integrating two families is learning about each side’s cherished and time-honored traditions. Some of the most meaningful connections you’re able to make in the later portions of your relationship are with the adjacent family members, and nothing shows your fellow Jews more solidarity than adopting their customs and making one another feel welcome in their homes. This can lead you to subsequently find shared elements that you can fuse into new practices altogether, encouraging a blend of both households. This proclamation of shared faith combined with your unique backgrounds and upbringings leads you to form a brand new identity as a couple.
Nurturing Spiritual Connection as a Couple
While basking in the celebratory spirit of the season with the fellowship of your peers is undeniably fun, holidays are ultimately a reflection of the pivotal stories first outlined by the Pentateuch, which God presented Moses at Mount Sinai. These profound doctrines are as crucial to devout Jews today as they were in Biblical times, and the messages at the heart of these scriptures are the blueprint for many Jewish cultural traditions and practices we still follow in society.
When you’re able to take time away from your daily lives to become more ingrained in this enlightening text, there are no limits to how deep of a personal and spiritual bond you can form together. Reading the appropriate passages that apply to the relevant holidays, educating yourself on the history, and reflecting on what these principles mean in the present social climate help to bring a sense of pride and hope to Jewish populations regardless of what’s going on in the outside world. When you intentionally attend services, recite blessings, and engage in other customary practices, it further strengthens your personal and spiritual bond substantially.
Balancing Spiritual Reflection and Joyful Celebrations
Holidays are almost always hectic, and with so many different occasions on the Jewish calendar, it’s important to plan ahead and set priorities as they approach. This will help you not only decide where and when any festivities will be taking place, but will also present you with the ability to set aside time to work on your own relationship with God. It can be easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of Passover or Hannukah, but you want to dedicate at least a few instances to focus on your individual faith during these festive seasons. This will help you evaluate where you are in relation to where you want to be, both in your personal and spiritual life.
It’s equally important to spend time meditating on these same religious principles with your partner to ensure you’re on the same page. This can also provide insight into how you can grow in the word of the Torah as a couple while applying its teachings to the other challenges you may be facing in your relationship or life in general. These moments provide compassion and reassurance for your significant other, and remembering the meaning of the season can help facilitate a needed change or transition in your life.
And in the midst of all of this craziness, you’ll want to make sure you have the chance to make the holidays your own. This not only involves things like decorating and setting aside time to socialize but also learning how to balance these things so that you don’t get burnt out. This means dividing personal, couple, and family time evenly but also delegating things like decorating or hosting duties so no one group feels overwhelmed. Always communicate with your partner to ensure they’re on the same page as you in regard to how much energy is being allocated to what, and make sure their spiritual and familial needs are being met.
Cherishing Jewish Holidays Throughout Your Relationship
If you’re lucky enough to form a deep connection with your Bashert, you’ll have many holidays to celebrate over the course of your relationship, from your era of courtship and eventually on to marriage. Over this period, you’ll have the opportunity to create precious memories, recognize growth annually, and reflect on what’s changed and how close you are to achieving the goals you’ve prayed to the Lord about. Not only will this strengthen the bond you’ve been constructing with your partner over all this time, but these festivities also allow you the opportunity to celebrate each other’s successes relevant to the occasion.
When you know you’ve found your soulmate and eventually get married, two families become one, and suddenly, the stressful aspect of holidays becomes coordination. This inevitably becomes even more challenging when you decide to have kids, but this development can also grant you a bit of freedom due to the new dynamics in your household. Life also may take you to different places, so if you don’t live near everyone in either of your families, you can probably expect to have to travel on some occasions while also welcoming these same members to your home on others. While this may seem stressful to think about if you haven’t even gotten married yet, don’t worry — you have plenty of time to navigate these situations as you progress through your relationship.
There’s a lot to appreciate and be thankful for on Jewish holidays, whether you’re single, in a long-term relationship, or happily married. All these celebrations take root in the Torah, God’s divine word, so remembering the cultural and traditional significance of these festivities is more important than worrying about whose house you’re going to or what you’ll be eating. While you’ll definitely have to make various compromises along the way, the bond you’ll form with your significant other and your respective families will be something you’ll cherish in the long run.
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