Gloria Milner Finds Commonality for Interfaith Marriage Ceremonies

Gloria Milner, a long-time resident of the Springs and New York, recently became ordained as a rabbi and has dedicated herself to helping those from different religions and backgrounds have the marriage of their dreams.

In one of her most recent official duties, she married a Turkish Muslim woman and a Jewish man. “We used his bar mitzvah tallis as the chuppah. I read a poem from a famous Arab poet Rumi and performed the Jewish wedding service including the glass breaking,” she said.

Rabbi Gloria, a member of , who ran The Summer Institute, a series of lectures and performances, for several years, has met with many families who are open to celebrating the cultures of the bride and groom, and who embrace each other’s backgrounds wholeheartedly.

“To prepare for a service between an Irish-Catholic groom and an Israeli bride, the father of the groom cut down cedar trees for the poles of the chuppah, and the mother embroidered the cloth for it, even though, traditionally, the chuppah is for the Jewish, not the Catholic, ceremony,” Milner said.

In a ceremony held in Bermuda, overlooking volcanic rocks, she married a Filipino Catholic groom and a first generation Russian bride. “I was able to incorporate the Filipino cord ceremony into the Jewish wedding rituals,” she said.

Milner recently lost her husband of many years, Al Milner, and has immersed herself in the role of helping those from different cultures create a ceremony full of symbols and rituals from each. In a wedding held at The American Museum of Natural History, the bride was from El Salvador and the service was in Spanish, English, and Hebrew. “We tried to find the commonality between the Christian and Jewish religions to make all present feel comfortable and respected,” she said

Milner also writes services to celebrate the beauty of the natural surroundings. Last summer, she married two doctors in the picturesque St. Andrews by the Sea, in Southampton, a church known for six Tiffany windows. She wrote a service that paid tribute to the garden and the beauty of the setting.

Members of the Jewish Center suggested to Milner that she had the qualities to become a rabbi. She enrolled in Rabbinic Seminary International of New York City, under the guidance of founder Rabbi Joseph Gelberman, who became Milner’s mentor. She learned that he was a European Holocaust survivor who was one of the first to do interfaith work in New York City.  In 2009, she was ordained as rabbi and teacher.

Milner had been married for 36 when her husband Al Milner died last summer. They were weekend and summer residents in the Hamptons, and bought their house in the Springs in 1985. 

Milner met Al in the late 1970’s when her apartment on East 88th Street in New York had no water. “I was curious if it was only me who lost water.  I had just moved from Washington D.C. where I lived for seven years and was a trusting soul,” she recalled. “So I started knocking on my neighbors’ doors. No one answered except Al. I explained the situation and he said his water was fine. ‘I will leave the apartment so you can take a shower,’ he said. That was the beginning of knowing a warm and generous man who was fourteen years older than I, a relationship that led to love and marriage.”

A recent wedding planned with the rabbi's help was last month in Tribeca between a bride and groom who met at a Purim party, who were marrying at the same location where they met three years ago. “We are incorporating some aspects of the Purim story into the service, giving out groggers, the noisemakers, at the end to use when the glass is broken,” Milner said.