Rabbi Brent Chaim Spodek

At first, I was pretty lukewarm on the process of holding a wedding. Me and my now wife had already gotten a marriage certificate during the pandemic two years prior, and the thought of going through the entire process and expense of putting on such a production seemed to be overkill to celebrate something that had already "happened.''

Now, however, thanks primarily to Rabbi Brent, I look back at the lead-up to our wedding and our ceremony as a truly wonderful experience that I believe will pay dividends decades into the future. Alongside helping lead a beautiful wedding, we're convinced the process materially improved the chances of us having a healthy marriage that lasts in the long run.

As we began our introductory session, very quickly my wife and I realized that we were about to undergo the furthest thing from an assembly-line process a few of my friends have been disappointed in in their experiences with religious officiants.

Rabbi Brent began by quickly leading us into conversations in and out of session with him about the shape and tenor of our lives. These sorts of discussions we had occasionally engaged with but were too polite and non-confrontational to address directly. Rabbi Brent got us talking about what matters, like the shape and tenor of the lives we hoped to live with each other, what marriage meant to both of us, the expectations we had for each other in our relationship, and what role we wanted Judaism to play in our lives.

While leading into these conversations, he also gave us the tools to address them more constructively and from a more loving posture. We would check in every few weeks, check in on what serious life topics we discussed and what fights we had. Rabbi Brent is openminded and a world-class listener who did a masterful job of taking us into and beyond our disagreements and transforming them into learning opportunities on how we should best engage with each other. While he has a rough schema for the types of topics he wants to get into, he is flexible and skilled enough to use the "material" our relationship raises each week to bring us to where the discussions grow most useful.

The principles and tools he introduced and demonstrated on our disagreements helped us look at problems thematically and not settle for one-off solutions. For instance, the framework he kept coming back to, the need to recall the occasionally wide distance between impact and intention, is a really helpful way of looking at relationships I expect to come back to for decades to come. These discussions culminated in an exercise to write a ketubah which was deeply meaningful to both of us.

Our relationship was between a Jew and a gentile, and Rabbi Brent handled the discussions with sensitivity and grace. He led a beautiful ceremony us three developed together that was a life highlight.

I could not give a stronger recommendation for choosing Rabbi Brent to accompany you and your future spouse through your marriage process. If you have questions feel free to get in touch with me via linkedin or twitter https://www.linkedin.com/in/jorschneider https://twitter.com/jordanschnyc?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor.