In Kenwood, a nice day for a lavender wedding

By Jonah Raskin | Sun Contributor 

 With a name like Rebecca Rosenberg you’d expect she’d be Jewish. Think again. “Our family is Jewish, my husband and children are Jewish,” Rebecca told me recently. “I go along.” 

This summer, Rebecca and Gary’s Jewish daughter, Marissa, who is 33, is marrying another woman in an outdoor ceremony. “The girls are doing the seven Jewish wedding blessings for their service.” They include “may you be blessed with love,” and “blessed with a loving home.” A lesbian Jewish lavender wedding sounds very Sonoma, but perhaps the concept will migrate widely. Rebecca Rosenberg hopes so. If so, she’ll make her signature lavender dishes: lavender, peach, and feta salad, lavender crème brule, and lavender cocktails.

Parents of the bride: Gary and Rebecca Rosenberg

I never said any of the seven blessings when I married an 18-year-old Jewish woman from Brooklyn, New York in 1964. I was all of 22. Our ceremony was civil. A Jewish judge named Axelrod pronounced us husband and wife. Sorry, I don’t remember the judge’s first name. It was long ago. Maybe Eleanor’s and my failure to say the seven Jewish blessings was the problem. After about six years together we went our separate ways, and soon afterwards divorced. I suppose I could blame our bust up on the swinging 1960s.

The two “girls,” as Rebecca calls them, who are getting married in a lavender Jewish ceremony, are both NASA scientists in Houston. They aren’t taking any chances with their wedding ceremony, though they can literally be spacey, indeed.

Not the mother of the bride. She’s definitely down to earth and practical, too. She planned the wedding ceremony for months in advance, down to the very last details, which includes lavender salt. Rebecca built a bridge to cross the stream that runs through the property and leads, on a dirt path, to the site of the ceremony, under an old oak tree.

The couple will throw lavender not rice, carry lavender bouquets, enjoy lavender foods, and drink lavender vodka lemonade. Guests will go home with lavender sachets. Rebecca is ready to trademark her lavender wedding ceremony and host it for couples who are Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist.

For years, Rebecca delivered lectures about lavender as an analgesic and an antiseptic. She and her husband ran a global lavender business, importing tons of lavender from France. They couldn’t grow enough on their own property. They made lavender products for spas and hospitals and invited people to lavender festivals on their property that attracted thousands of tourists.

Rebecca is a lover of life, a lover of the land where she lives and a lover of literature, too. Her and Gary’s home, their barn, all their belongings, and all their lavender burned down in the 2017 fire that ravaged Sonoma County. They have rebuilt their house and replanted their lavender garden, which Rebecca calls, “Rêve de Lavande.” When she’s not in the garden planting, watering, and pulling weeds, she’s writing books. Rebecca Rosenberg is the author of two novels, including one about Jack London’s wife, Charmian, as well as a picture book titled Lavender Fields of America. To research and write it, she visited lavender farms from Hawaii to Oregon and Arizona. 

Once again, Rebecca is cultivating the herb, which she calls “the flower of love,” on her property in Kenwood. Along with grapes and marijiuana, lavender is a significant crop in Sonoma Valley and especially at wineries such as Matanzas Creek. That makes sense from an agricultural point of view. In terms of weather, Sonoma is similar to Provence in the South of France, which is famous the world over for its lavender. Both have “a Mediterranean climate.”

Lavender doesn’t discriminate on the basis of race, religion, creed, or culture. It’s an all-embracing herb, though the color lavender has often been associated with gays. In the 1950s, the persecution of gays was known as “the Lavender Scare.” That sad time is portrayed in a book by David Johnson subtitled The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government. Filmmaker Josh Howard made a documentary on the subject which was screened not long ago at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival. Woe to almost anyone who was Jewish and gay in the Cold War.

Rebecca doesn’t believe in red states and blue states, but rather “in the lavender states of the union.” She also believes in the lavender state of the union between her daughter and her daughter’s NASA co-worker who might take lavender into outer space. Though I’m Jewish and a lavender lover – I grow the herb in my backyard – I wasn’t invited to the wedding ceremony.

That’s okay. I’m not a member of the family. Still, I’ll make myself a lavender cocktail and a lavender crème brule, close my eyes and pretend I’m under the oak tree listening to the seven Jewish wedding blessings.