Sacrificial Love

Saturday evening, March 11, 2023, Reverend Jerry Smith and I co-officiated Shayna and Harrison’s wedding ceremony at Pineland Place in Moncks Corner, South Carolina. Here are the remarks I shared with them and their guests:

Coming back to South Carolina is like coming home. I am named for my grandfather, the longest-serving rabbi of Congregation Tree of Life in Columbia and an important figure in Columbia’s civic life in his day. Fun fact: Reverend Jerry’s ministry in Charleston and my grandfather’s ministry in Columbia overlapped by four years.

Here’s what you won’t hear from most people when you say you are going to South Carolina, “Oh, you mean the state that is super prominent in American Jewish History?” And yet South Carolina is way more prominent in American Jewish history than most Jews or South Carolinians realize. 

This state holds the distinction of having been home to Francis Salvador, who was both the first Jewish legislator of the New World as well as the first Jew to die fighting for American Independence. 

This twenty-nine-year-old apparently had ice in his veins. After he was shot, he took the time to (a) inquire if they had won the battle, (b) shake hands with his commander, and (c) bid him farewell. Basically, he was a Jewish badass. 

Now, I’m not saying that the beginning of Shayna and Harrison’s relationship was akin to a firefight. It was way worse. 

Shayna describes it thus: “Harrison and I met in our junior year of high school in honors English, and it was definitely not love at first sight. I actually didn’t like him at all. I thought he was a rude southern boy that had no home training. When we first met, he asked me for a pen to do his classwork, and I told him I only had a pencil. He said that just wasn’t going to work and then proceeded to put his work on my desk and tell me I had to do it for him because I didn’t have a pen for him.” 

Not to make light of a martyr of the Revolution, but as Francis Salvador might have said, “Shots fired.”

Now, if you have figured out that Harrison managed to turn this around, congratulations, Sherlock. We are at their wedding, after all. What intrigued me was the turning point. What is it that began the journey from there to here?

Shayna tells us that it was one very specific thing Harrison did: “One day, he messaged me about another guy I was dating and made sure he was treating me right. That relationship didn’t work out, and Harrison and I started talking and hitting it off.”

He didn’t message her to ask how much she liked the guy she was dating. He didn’t message her to ask if maybe she wanted to look into dating someone else, maybe a guy that lacked writing implements, for instance. He messaged her to make sure that the other guy was treating her right. 

I don’t remember where I learned this; it definitely wasn’t scripture or rabbinic teachings. I think it was Mr. Rogers or Sesame Street. They asked how one could distinguish true love from what was obviously not. The answer? If you care about the other person’s happiness more than your own. That is true love. We might even call this, in a spiritual context, sacrificial love. 

This is true, not just between individuals. One could argue that what was special about Francis Salvador wasn’t that he was a Jewish badass but that what enabled his badassery was love for his country and a belief that it was worthy of his sacrificial love. 

Harrison showed the inkling of that in that interaction, and from there, there was no turning back. This is what exemplifies their relationship today; Shayna and Harrison continue to embody this very idea. They share a true love, a sacrificial love, in which they care about their partner’s happiness more than their own, and that is what marriage is all about.