The short flight from Tel Aviv to the Cypriot port of Larnaca is regularly packed with an assortment of loved-up couples, often partners from different religious traditions, for whom there is no provision to marry back home. “There are 45 countries in the world that impose severe restrictions on the rights to marry of their citizens,” explains Rabbi Uri Regev. “Israel is the only democracy in the world that falls into that category.” For not only does Israel not allow for Jews to marry non-Jews within the country, but neither is there provision for Jews to marry in any way other than that determined by the orthodox rabbinate – all-powerful in matters of Jewish matrimony and divorce. They don’t just prohibit inter-marriage, but also marriage between Jews whose lineage is considered uncertain.

Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that “Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family.” And in a recent survey conducted for Valentine’s Day, 84% of the Israeli public agreed. But the religious/political establishment of Israel does not. Those who come to settle in Israel are always Israeli enough to be conscripted into the army, but when it comes to matrimony there have been cases where people are asked for photographs of their grandparents so that the religious authorities can ascertain from their facial expressions if they are Jewish enough.

It all goes back to the Hebrew scriptures and the anxiety that foreigners presented an existential threat to the Jewish people. “They have mingled a holy race with the peoples around them,” complained Ezra, returning from exile in Babylon. “When I heard this, I tore my tunic and cloak, pulled hair from my head and beard, and sat down appalled.” This was over 2,500 years ago, but the same thinking was alive and well in Israel in December when the ministry of education banned Dorit Rabinyan’s novel Borderlife from the school curriculum because, apparently, it encouraged intermarriage. “Adolescents lack a systematic view that includes considerations of maintaining the national-ethnic identity,” said the man from the ministry, echoing Ezra. And crossing the line into overt racism, there are now extreme Jewish nationalists who picket weddings between Jews and Arabs.

Thankfully, no one was doing that at my wonderful wedding in Tel Aviv earlier this week, despite the fact that I – a foreigner and a Christian priest to boot – was marrying a daughter of Israel. Those who came to the ceremony couldn’t have been more generous and welcoming, as I stamped on the glass and seven blessings were pronounced on us both. OK, the legal bit had been done back in London, but the heavens did not issue any thunderbolts or display any demonstrative signs of disapproval. The only tears were those of joy.

Well, Moses married an African woman. Yes, there was some gossip about that – “Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had married a Cushite.” (Numbers 12:1) – but God didn’t join in. And Abraham married a non-Jew, Keturah. And Judah married a Canaanite. And Joseph married the daughter of an Egyptian priest. And the kings of Israel took all sorts of foreign brides. And most moving of all is Ruth, a Moabite who married into Judaism: “Your people will be my people and your God, my God.” Many scholars take this to be a not-so-subtle up-yours to the theology of Ezra.

Not that any democratic state should lift its polity from the books of religion. Yet in Israel love is often seen as more of a challenge to Jewish identity than persecution itself – for whereas persecution generally forces people together for support and security, love knows no boundaries. Which is why the real marriage problem for Israeli politics is that Jews in the diaspora, especially in the philosemitic US, frequently “marry out”, thus creating just the sort of hybridity that the orthodox rabbinate finds impossible to compute, which, in turn, drives an increasing wedge between Israel and its US supporters.

It’s traditional in Jewish marriage for the husband and wife to sign a sort of prenuptial agreement called a ketubah. Notwithstanding the hybridity of our relationship, in ours we promised to “respect each other’s religious traditions”. Unless Israel allows for such traditions to come together in marriage, it will drift ever further from the values of its friends in the west.

@giles_fraser