Blessing of the Challah at an interfaith wedding? Help please...

My FH is Jewish and I am Catholic. We will be getting married at the hall for several reasons, one being we want to please both sets of parents and that would be the easiest way (instead of a church or temple). We will be having both a priest and a rabbi.

My question is this. Once the ceremony is over, my FH feels we should have a blessing of the challah (during the reception) since this is part of the Jewish tradition. What exactly does the blessing of the challah symbolize? Do you feel for an interfaith marriage that this should be left out of the reception or should be included?

If we did have this blessing of the challah, is there any Catholic tradition that we may be able to do afterwards? We are always trying to keep things 'even' for lack of better words, so that none of our family feels uncomfortable and thinks it's more of a Jewish wedding, or Catholic wedding.
Being I am not Jewish and my FH isn't exactly sure the exact meaning of this tradition, we are a bit confused.

Opinions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Re: Blessing of the Challah at an interfaith wedding? Help please...

You should absolutely incorporate part of each others heritage...I'm not Jewish, but I think it is kind of like a prayer before dinner...I've seen it a few times and it is very nice.

I wanted to have a German toast sung after the BM toast...and we printed up the lyrics so everyone could sing...my mom was worried we would alienate DH's side of the family, but I felt like we were asking them to share in part of our traditions.

You can also put some of the traditions in your programs to explain the meaning and why you are including it in your wedding (even if it is not happening during the ceremony

Re: Blessing of the Challah at an interfaith wedding? Help please...

I had an interfaith wedding. My uncle did the blessing over the challah. It is a blessing over bread and thanking god for the bread. It is a tradition to have this done at jewish affairs. We incorporated a lot of traditions into the ceremony and reception. We did the hora and got up on the chairs. We also had bagpipes and played several irish songs during the reception.

Re: Blessing of the Challah at an interfaith wedding? Help please...

We are sort of in the same boat. I am Jewish and FH is Protestant. We are basically having a nondenominational ceremony rather than an interfaith one, being that neither of us are very religious people. But we are incorporating a few traditions in the ceremony (chuppah, breaking of the glass, unity candle). As for the reception, I really want to do the horah...not only for the Jewish aspect, but it's so much fun for everyone - not just Jewish people. I want to do something for Chris too, but I'm not sure what. He is such a combination of nationalities (Swedish, Dutch and Irish), so I'm not sure what....

We will not be doing the blessing of the challah, although it is a nice tradition. It's almost like saying grace before dinner. Perhaps you can have a member of your family say grace after the challah blessing...

Re: Blessing of the Challah at an interfaith wedding? Help please...

I recently went to an interfaith wedding. They said the blessing of the Challah, and then the priest also
Grace.