What the Wedding Might Look Like

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I wrote a feature for the Huffington Post that was published today: What Chelsea Clinton’s Ceremony Might Look Like. It’s written to explain, to people who might not be familiar with Jewish wedding ceremony customs, what they might be seeing if the couple decides to have a Jewish wedding or incorporate elements of a Jewish wedding in their own.

I’ve been getting a lot of calls from the media about upcoming wedding. It occurred to me that the decisions Chelsea and Marc make could have a big impact on the decisions of other interfaith couples. For better or worse, what celebrities do has a lot of influence. Think how many people got interested in kabbalah because of Madonna.

If Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky were to make Jewish choices either for their wedding or after, a lot of other young interfaith couples might want to think twice and more favorably about doing the same for themselves.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

Hillary Clinton on the Upcoming Wedding

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Thanks to Phillip Weiss for putting this story out – Hillary Clinton was interviewed by NBC Nightly News on July 18 and starting at about 14 minutes and 54 seconds into the interview, she was asked how she felt about Chelsea marrying “in an interfaith context:”

I think it says a lot about not only the two young people involved and their strong love but also their deep faith, both of them. But it says a lot about the United States, it says a lot about this wonderful experiment known as America, where we recognize the right that every single person has to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And over the years so many of the barriers that prevented people from getting married, crossing lines of faith, or color or ethnicity, have just disappeared. Because what’s important is, Are you making a responsible decision, have you thought it through, do you understand the consequences? And I think that in the world we’re living in today, we need more of that…

Other than pretty much confirming that Bill Clinton will not be officiating, Secretary Clinton didn’t disclose any more details about the wedding. When she said both Chelsea and Marc have “deep faith,” maybe that suggests a co-officiated ceremony. It remains a mystery.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

Will Chelsea Clinton Have a Jewish Wedding… Part 3

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The media is abuzz again about Chelsea Clinton’s upcoming wedding to Marc Mezvinsky. It’s now been reported that the nuptials will take place on July 31 at Astor Courts in Rhinebeck, New York. But apparently no one in the press knows who will be officiating at the wedding.

The overall fascination with celebrities in our culture is another subject, but there certainly is incredible fascination with this wedding in the Jewish community. Back in November we had an early blog post as soon as the engagement was announced, followed by a longer post on the subject of rabbinic officiation, under the title “Chelsea Clinton may not need help finding a rabbi for her wedding, but…” The traffic to our website was the highest we’ve had in our recent history, with more than twice as many visits as our usual highest days.

Then in March, we were featured in a widely-republished Associated Press story by Rachel Zoll,  Is a Jewish Wedding Ahead for Chelsea Clinton, that was also picked up by the JTA. We decided to start a discussion board: Should Chelsea Clinton have a Jewish wedding? What kind? Who should officiate?

All of this is prelude to the latest – a long post on Sunday July 11 on Politics Daily by religion reporter David Gibson:  Will Chelsea Clinton Convert? Jews Wonder — and Ponder the Implications. The post is interesting, not because it highlights the “lively discussion” on our site, but  because Gibson, himself a Catholic, takes the occasion to provide a short review of the Jewish community’s overall response to intermarriage. He starts by saying that the usual level of interest in the issue is magnified: “Yet this being the Clintons, and the religion in question being Judaism, the interfaith angst is taking on a significance far beyond that of the usual family tsuris over such matters.” After reviewing a number of different issues, Gibson concludes that “’official Judaism’ is taking steps to adapt” and refers to “a growing body of research that indicates welcoming a non-Jewish spouse can benefit Judaism in the long run.” He quotes Rabbi Lester Frazin’s comment on our discussion board about why he changed his position and started officiating at weddings of interfaith couples: “I have found in my career that you attract more people through compassionate acceptance than obstinate refusal.” Gibson’s take on the issues is well worth reading.

There’s an interesting discussion of Gibson’s post from Rabbi Jason Miller, a Conservative rabbi I recently “met” when we were featured on a web chat hosted by the Detroit Free Press. Rabbi Miller lists a range of issues that the wedding brings up, including whether observant Conservative and Orthodox Jews won’t be able to attend a wedding on July 31, a Saturday (although we don’t know the time of the wedding, as far as I know). He also quotes Rabbi Irwin Kula for a trenchant as usual observation that “This is great article for studying just about every pathology in American Jewish life… an entire article on intermarriage and Jewish weddings all about its threat and not one sentence on the possible meaning of the ritual that might actually create meaning and value. It’s chuppah/Jewish wedding as tribal marker and intermarriage as either threat to the tribe or grudging opportunity to increase numbers. Why should Chelsea convert? To make sure we don’t lose her kids to our tribe so worried about our size!”

The title of Gibson’s post doesn’t exactly fit because there’s not much in the post about whether Chelsea Clinton will convert – a subject that we never raised. There’s more emphasis on “the idea of Jewish pride at one of the tribe finding a catch such as Chelsea Clinton” that he attributes to our friend Julie Wiener.  He quotes Samuel Heilman as saying “most American Jews will be looking for some nod to Judaism not being second class at the wedding – a chuppah, the crushing of a glass under the groom’s heel, maybe a yarmulke here or there.” But we’re still wondering – and hoping – that the couple will have decided that they want to have a Jewish wedding, with a rabbi officiating.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

Ending the Year with Another Celebrity Intermarriage

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News broke today that actress Natalie Portman, just nominated for a Golden Globes Best Actress award for her starring role in Black Swan, is pregnant and engaged to Benjamin Millipied. We found out in a blog post from our friend Rabbi Jason Miller, who asks, Is Benjamin Millipied Jewish? I haven’t seen a definitive answer to that question; if Rabbi Jason is correct that Mr. Millipied is not Jewish, then this could be the next celebrity intermarriage to get a lot of attention.

It’s an interesting way to end a year that saw perhaps the most popular interest in any intermarriage ever, that of Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky, and intimations that another intermarriage that will attract tremendous public interest may be coming, for Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan.

For me the importance of these weddings and relationships is that if the couple makes Jewish choices, that may influence many of the non-celebrity, regular folks couples to think about doing that themselves. So I was glad to read an ABC News report on an earlier interview where Portman said “A priority for me is definitely that I’d like to raise my kids Jewish.” I’ve been a fan of Israeli-born Portman for a long time, and recall other interviews where she has discussed her Jewish involvement. Whether it turns out this is or isn’t an intermarriage, we’ll send her and her fiancé an early Mazel Tov!

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

Breaking New Ground with Jewish Leaders

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Last week the United Jewish Communities (UJC) held its annual convention, called the General Assembly (GA). Something different and potentially very significant happened: there was talk about intermarriage, in a positive way.

Since I got involved in the professional Jewish world nine years ago, I think I’ve been to every GA except for two that were held in Israel, including last week’s. There are probably more Jewish leaders gathered at the annual GA than at any other time or place.

For many years I have lobbied the UJC, usually  unsuccessfully, to devote  convention sessions to the subject of outreach to the intermarried. (Like most conventions, there are big “plenary” sessions where most participants attend, and then there are multiple competing sessions over many time slots that attract smaller groups.)

I’ve actually spoken on panels at at least two GA’s, but the sessions were always about inclusivity generally, not outreach to interfaith families in particular. At last year’s GA in Nashville, there was nothing about intermarriage on the program. A GA visitor who didn’t know better, based on the absence of discussion at GA’s, wouldn’t be aware that outreach to interfaith families was the biggest challenge and opportunity the Jewish community faces.

I’m sorry I couldn’t go to Jerusalem this year, because finally things changed. I urge you to watch a video blog posted by Jacob Berkman of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which is embedded below. Berkman reports that Edgar Bronfman and Adam Bronfman broke new ground by bringing the subject of welcoming interfaith families to the front stage of the Jewish world.

I blogged last month about an important new book by Edgar Bronfman, Hope, Not Fear, and we recently published an excerpt from the book that has attracted some interesting comments. But the Bronfmans’ speeches at the GA have taken the discussion to an entirely new level.

Edgar Bronfman spoke first, at a pre-GA gathering focused on the “Next Generation.” In his speech he said the Jewish community needs to stop regarding intermarriage as the “enemy.”. UJC leaders, including Kathy Manning, chair of the UJC executive committee, are quoted as responding sympathetically to viewing intermarriage as an opportunity.

adambronfman250Most remarkably, Adam Bronfman, Edgar’s son and managing director of the Samuel Bronfman Foundation (one of InterfaithFamily.com’s most generous supporters), spoke at a plenary session about the future of the Jewish people. Based on his own experience he urged the thousands of Jewish leaders in attendance to consider the potential for positive Jewish involvement by interfaith families if Jews and Jewish institutions welcome them.

Berkman’s video blog includes excerpts from the speech as well as a revealing interview in which Adam further explains his views: if an interfaith couple chooses to lead a Jewish life, institutions should be completely open to them; interfaith couples “on the ground” are living Jewishly and not focusing on status issues; more and more Jewish institutions are recognizing that the future for them lies in the Jewish world as it is composed, with 50% of young adults who identify as Jews having grown up with one Jewish parent. He concludes by saying that Judaism was never meant to exist in a “gated community” but was always meant to be open, that its central ideas will remain but be surrounded by evolving new ideas; and that if something is of value, people will be attracted to it and will not leave.

It is extremely gratifying to me to know that a positive response to intermarriage has finally made it to the front stage of Jewish leadership. I can only hope that those in attendance take the message to heart and that positive attitudes and concrete actions follow.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

Ron Klain, Rahm Emanuel, and the Christmas Madness

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A story in IsraelNationalNews.com commenting on the appointment of Rahm Emanuel as President-Elect Obama’s chief of staff, and of Ron Klain as Vice President-Elect Biden’s chief of staff, leads with:

“Both appointees are Jewish, but while Emanuel is an observant Jew, Klain intermarried more than 20 years ago and his family observes Christmas.”

ronklain200This is the kind of careless comment, typical of Israeli journalists, that buys into the mistaken notion that a Jew who intermarries and whose family participates in Christmas celebrations is lost to Jewish life.

The author, Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, could have said: “Both appointees are Jewish. Emanuel is a traditionally observant Jew. Klain intermarried more than 20 years ago and his family observes Christmas, but he and his wife raised their children as Jews.”

The author knows this, because buried at the end of the article, he cites a New York Times article which states: “He is married to a non-Jew with an agreement that they celebrate Christmas but raise their children as Jews.”

For all we know, Klain and his family belong to a synagogue and send their children to Hebrew school. Their children may already have become, or plan to become, bar or bat mitzvah.

There are thousands and thousands of intermarried parents like that — who participate in Christmas celebrations and who are raising their children as Jews. Many of them belong to synagogues, send their children to Hebrew school, and have bar and bat mitzvahs, at rates comparable to Reform in-married parents, as Boston’s most recent demographic study reports.

At InterfaithFamily.com we are completing our fifth annual December holidays survey. Thousands of respondents over the years have told us that their Christmas celebration has no religious meaning for them, that it is a way of respecting the tradition of the non-Jewish parent without compromising the Jewish identity of their children. Jewish people celebrate Christmas with Christian friends and relatives as a gesture of connection, not denial of Jewish identity.

The Jewish community ought to be just as proud of the appointment of Klain as it is of Emanuel, and not create artificial distance between Klain and the community because of his marriage.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.