[Avodah] Officiating at a Mixed Marriage

[Zev Sero]

Cantor Wolberg wrote:
>> "Vu shtait geshribben that a rabbi may not officiate at a mixed
>> wedding?"
> 
> That question is as illogical as asking "If Tisha b'Av falls on Rosh 
> Chodesh do we say Hallel?"
> 
> A mixed wedding is not a valid chasuna, so how could a rabbi officiate?
>  To ask where is the source would be lending credibility to a mixed
> marriage.

And yet it is a valid legal and social act - at least valid enough to
trigger the issur of "lo titchaten bam".

 
> (I'm aware that there are R. rabbis who would officiate but their
> status would be the same as a JP.

And the question is where it is written that one may not do so.
My answer is that it's written under the rubric of "mesayea` yedei
ovrei avera", and there's no reason to expect every conceivable
avera, and every conceivable way of assisting in one, to be listed
somewhere.   It's not written anywhere "don't eat ham, and don't
eat bacon, nor shall you eat pork chops"; "Ve'et hachazir" is enough
to cover all of them.


> There's certainly no validity to a mixed marriage anymore than
> 2 non Jews who marry (as far as the halachic definition of a Jewish
> marriage goes).

The marriage of two non-Jews certainly does have halachic validity;
the wife becomes an eshet ish.  And a rabbi is absolutely permitted
to perform or supervise at a ceremony to make it so: I even know one
non-Jewish couple who were married under a chupah by an Orthodox rabbi!
I couldn't make it, so I don't know exactly how different it was from
a standard chupah, but if I were to do it I'd probably just omit the
shem umalchus from the brachot, and replace "kedat moshe veyisrael"
with "keminhag kol ha'amim".  And translate it all to English.

-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
zev at sero.name                 eventually run out of other people’s money
                                                     - Margaret Thatcher