The print ads and commercials on radio and Internet sites direct readers and listeners to a website set up for the campaign. They are already generating results. In just three days, the Masorti movement office in Jerusalem reported more than 25,000 unique hits to the website and dozens of phone calls from interested couples.

At the same time, the campaign has raised the ire of Shas. The Chairman of Shas in the Knesset, Yaakov Margi, petitioned the Israel Broadcasting Authority to ban the Masorti campaign from the airwaves. In a letter to Mordechai Sklar, IBA’s general director, MK Yaakov Margi charged that the Masorti movement “knowingly misleads and perpetrates a campaign of fraud.” He further claimed to be writing on behalf of “those who are spiritually lost and would not want to find themselves ending up in unseemly places.” 

MK Ophir Pines-Paz (Labor) responded in his own letter to the IBA that Masorti “faithfully combines tradition and progress” and suggested the Shas letter should be buried as “a foolish attempt at censorship.”

“Our young people are being driven away from traditional marriage ceremonies by the difficulty of dealing with the Office of the Chief Rabbinate,” observed Masorti Executive Director Yizhar Hess, outlining the goals of the campaign.  “Under the guidelines of the ‘Masorti chuppah,’ couples may customize their ceremonies to meet their personal needs without sacrificing halakhic requirements and the connection to Jewish tradition. It is important to make all Israelis aware that this religious alternative exists.”

Visitors to the Wedding Game website are led through a series of choices (venue, invitations to special guests, food, etc.) that concludes with an option to select a Masorti chuppah. The Jewish legal requirements are explained in detail before couples are urged to contact the Masorti movement for more information (couples are advised, for example, to have a civil ceremony performed outside of Israel to supplement the Masorti chuppah, so that their marriages will be legally recognized by the State).  They are informed that if they want to divorce, they will need a get. They are also encouraged to sign a pre-nuptial agreement which sets forth monthly financial penalties for any party refusing to free the other in the event of a divorce. This pre-nuptial agreement would be subject to the authority of the civil courts.” 

Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum, director of Masorti’s Wedding Initiative, is delighted with the campaign thus far. She described the movement’s collaboration with the Israeli marketing agency, Loop Interactive, as “an  innovative creative strategy, brilliantly executed, to reach today’s young Israeli couples who are seeking to renew ties to their Jewish tradition and heritage in accordance with their personal values, which are open to the realities of modern life.”