Glenn Beck, the Fox commentator, held a big rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday and if you are not a Christian, you should be very, very afraid.

Of course, that is not the conventional wisdom in some Jewish circles. If a person supports tuition vouchers for private schools on the one hand and opposes any territorial concessions by Israel to the Palestinians on the other, that person is cheered, not feared. It is a dangerously myopic view.

How embarrassing.

On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times ran an article about extravagant Jewish Iranian weddings in California that exposes our community as a bunch of shallow, boastful, materialists who think the purpose of a marriage ceremony is to tell your friends how much money you have. Some of the details quoted in the article, confirmed to me by people who actually attended, included a bride placed in a glass coffin to be opened by her half-masked “Phantom of the Opera” bridegroom. The coffin did not open for an hour, and the wedding was nearly ruined by a shaken and tearful bride gasping for breath. But the coffin, on that occasion, was a telling symbol of the utter death of Jewish values that such ridiculous extravagances betray.

The future of California’s controversial Proposition 8 remains up in the air following a decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to consider its constitutionality. The proposition, actually a constitutional amendment passed by the state’s voters in 2008, bluntly states that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” The amendment was the voters’ reaction to a California State Supreme Court ruling that validated same-sex marriages. Last week, a federal judge ruled that the amendment was unconstitutional. On Monday, the Ninth Circuit agreed to hear a challenge to that ruling.

I agree with those who argue that government should not differentiate between same-sex couples and heterosexual ones. Yet I also believe that no government, at any level, should be involved in marriage in the first place. “Marriage” belongs in the religious realm, not the secular one. Getting government out of the marriage business is the easiest way to resolve the civil rights issue.

The state (i.e., government in general) has no interest in marriage, other than generating income by charging a fee for marriage licenses. Because civil marriage is a contract, albeit an oral or implied one, the state’s only concern is seeing to it that parties to that contract honor their commitments. That interest can be better served, however, through the use of a written contract with standardized terms (for which a fee would be involved, thus resulting in no loss of income to the state). The resulting union would be called a “domestic partnership.” Marriages would be the province of religious authorities, but would have no legal validity.

Such a solution allows the state to validate all unions, even as it allows religious authorities the freedom to decide whether to discriminate against some of them.

This is not just a California issue. Other states are wrestling with it and, sooner or later, New Jersey will have to confront it as well, because state law demands it. According to the state’s “Law Against Discrimination,” New Jersey must not permit an individual or institution — public or private — to discriminate for a variety of reasons, including “marital status, domestic partnership status, [and] affectional or sexual orientation....”

That “marriage” is religious in nature is established in Genesis 1 and 2. The Torah is making a profound statement regarding marriage. (The fact that this statement is made in Genesis 1 and 2 is important in itself, as will be explained.)

Translations and commonly accepted “fact” notwithstanding, there is no “Adam” to be found in Genesis. Rather, there is “the adam” (the article is either attached to “adam” or implied) and it is clear that adam is a word meaning human, not the name of a man.

The Torah underscores this in Genesis 5:1-2: “Male and female He created them,” it says. “And when they were created, He blessed them and called them adam.”

In Hebrew, man is not “adam,” but “ish,” and ish appears only after the creation of “ishah,” meaning woman. The word normally translated as rib, tzela, actually means side and so it is used throughout the Tanach (where a full side of something is always meant). Only in this one instance has anyone ever had the temerity to mistranslate it as rib, probably for such a misogynistic reason as offering proof of the inferior status of women. That is not what the Torah states. Woman is man’s equal.

Even the commentator Rashi, who translates tzela as “rib,” defines this “rib” as side. Said he, “the meaning is that of side [rather than the anatomical definition of rib], as in ‘the second side of the Tabernacle (Exodus 26)….He [God] divided him [the adam] into two, for he was male on one side and female on the other.’” (See Rashi’s comments, beginning at “hatzela,” in the Babylonian Talmud tractate Eiruvin 18a. In this way, Rashi seeks to resolve the conflict between those talmudic Sages who translated tzela as rib and those who translated it as side.)

In other words, according to Genesis 2:21, God separated His original androgynous creature into two halves, one male and one female. The text then tells us in Genesis 2:24, “Therefore shall a man [ish] leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife [ishah]; and they shall be one flesh.” By the union of a man and a woman, the perfect creature of Creation, the adam, is symbolically reproduced.

The Sages expanded the thought. Thus, states BT Yevamot 62b, “any man who has no wife lives without joy, without blessing, and without goodness.” On the very next page (63a), it adds, “Rabbi Eleazar said: Any man who has no wife is no proper man; for it is said, Male and female created He them and called their name Adam.”

The Sages went so far to describe how God feels when a man does not marry in a timely fashion. “Rava said, and the School of Rabbi Yishmael taught likewise, that until the age of 20, the Holy One, blessed be He, sits and waits [for a man to marry]. ‘When will he take a wife?’ [God wonders.] As soon as one reaches [the age of] 20 and has not married, He exclaims, ‘Blasted be his bones!’” (See BT Kiddushin 29b.)

This attitude is seen in the law codes as well. For example, the prayer leader for the High Holy Days, according to one source, “should also be married.” (See Rabbi Moses Isserles’ gloss to Shulchan Aruch Orech Chayim 581:1.) It is not an absolute requirement, but it does suggest that being married is the way to go.

At this point, a counterargument may be offered. As I often argue, Judaism is not a religion, but a nation with a religious component. It follows, then, that the Torah’s espousal of marriage is actually a “matter of state,” not “of church.” That is why the statement about marriage made by Genesis 1 and 2 is critical. It comes not only before there was an Israel, God’s “kingdom of priests and holy nation,” but before there existed a state in any sense. Genesis 1 and 2, therefore, offer a clear expression of how God views marriage — and that puts marriage in religion’s realm, not the state’s.

There is a great deal more to say — for example, that marriage is so important in the Torah’s eyes (and hence in halacha’s) that being engaged is sufficient reason for military deferment in wartime (Deuteronomy 20:7) —but the point is made. It would save everyone a lot of grief if the state saw it the same way.

Not sure whether Americans are becoming more materialistic and self-absorbed? Look no further than Time Magazine’s recent carnival of narcissism and celebration of selfishness.

In a bizarre cover story, “The Only Child: Debunking the Myths,” Lauren Sandler writes of her and her husband’s decision to have only one child. God bless them. It’s a free country. Have however many children you wish or don’t wish. But Sandler is an evangelist with thinly disguised contempt for parents silly enough to ruin their finances — not to mention their lives — by being burdened by more than one offspring. Her twisted argument is that the purpose of having children is not a love of kids, or an appreciation for the beauty of life, but parental happiness. Too many kids involves a life of drudgery and expense that extinguishes parental joy. Kids get in the way of their parents’ tennis lessons and weekends in Paris.

There may not be an Israel in 20 years and, by then, diaspora Jewry may not care. If that comes about, God forbid, blame it on the unchecked political clout of the haredim, the rigid fundamentalists.

That clout is artificial; it is the spawn of an electoral system in desperate need of overhaul. That clout has created a far more dangerous threat to diaspora Jewry’s continuing relationship to Israel than the temporarily dormant conversion bill. A rupture in that relationship would cost Israel whatever political clout diaspora Jews routinely muster on its behalf, as well as their donations and financial investments. Such losses alone are an existential threat to the state.

What are we to make of the outpouring of grief from highly credible Western news and diplomatic sources for the death — lamentably, of natural causes — of Sheik Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual head of Hezbollah, one of the world’s most deadly terrorist organizations and the murderous puppet of Iran?

Fadlallah was the spiritual authority who sanctioned and blessed the suicide truck bombings in Beirut in October 1983 that killed 300 American servicemen and embassy personnel and represented the deadliest single-day death toll for the Marines since the battle of Iwo Jima. He was also the cleric who in the 1980s ordered the kidnapping of the Western hostages that cost them years of their lives. Most recently, Fadlallah authorized the firing of thousands of rockets from southern Lebanon into Israeli civilian population centers, killing dozens and maiming scores more.

The story you are about to read is true. Distinguishing characteristics have been changed to make a point.

When Alexander visited Borough Park some years ago during the intermediate days of Sukkot, he was taken by the manner of dress of a certain chasidic sect, especially the fur hats and the silk ankle-length jackets. He wanted to dress that way, too, and went into clothing store after clothing store to buy the same clothes. No one would sell them to him because he was not Jewish, much less a member of that chasidic sect.

The image I will remember most from the 2010 World Cup is Netherlands coach Bert van Marwijk pulling off his silver medal in disgust as soon as he left the podium. Welcome to a brave new world where winning is everything and losing a soccer match is more serious than exposing yourself as a petulant child in front of two billion people.

When I was a boy I was intrigued by Archie Manning, one of the NFL’s greatest quarterbacks, who played for its worst team, the New Orleans Saints. Season after season good ole Archie would be pummeled by defensive ends and linebackers who came charging through his porous offensive line to maul him into the gridiron. Never one to complain, Manning took the beating and continued to clock up impressive stats year after year, even as his team continued to lose.