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26

August 12 • 2010

New Vows,
Old Debate

Clinton-Mezvinsky wedding raises
questions about intermarriage.

Jacob Berkman

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

New York

I

s it possible that the first iconic
Jewish picture of the decade is of
an interfaith marriage?
Photographs taken Saturday, July
31, show the Jewish groom wearing a
yarmulke and a crumpled tallit staring
into the eyes of his giddy bride under
a traditional Jewish wedding canopy
with a framed ketubah (Jewish wed-
ding contract) in the background.
The couple is Marc Mezvinsky, the
banker son of two Jewish ex-Congress
members, and Chelsea Clinton, the
daughter of the former U.S. president
and the current secretary of state.
The images and scant details of the
tightly guarded wedding — dubbed
by some the "wedding of the century"
— have raised a number of questions
about the significance of the union for
American Jews and what it says about
intermarriage in America.
We should "celebrate the full accep-
tance of Jews by the larger society that
this marriage represents:' said Hebrew
Union College sociologist Steven
Cohen from Jerusalem.
At the same time, he noted, the
fact that so few children of interfaith
unions, particularly those between
Jewish fathers and non-Jewish moth-
ers, are raised solely as Jews raises
the conundrum of our age: "How do
we Jewishly engage and educate the
intermarried, while at the same time
maintaining our time-honored com-
mitment to inmarriage?" Cohen asked.
"In short, we should celebrate the
particular marriage of these two fine
individuals, but we ought not celebrate
the type of marriage it constitutes and
represents:'
The wedding had more than just a
Jewish flair.
• It was officiated by a rabbi, James
Ponet, head of the Joseph Slifka Center
for Jewish Life at Yale University, along
with a Methodist minister.
•The marriage took place under a
chupah.
• Friends of the couple recited the

traditional sheva brachot, the seven
traditional Jewish blessings given to
the bride and groom.
• The groom broke a glass with his
foot, as is tradition.
• And according to several reports,
guests danced the hora and lifted the
former president and the secretary of
state, Bill and Hillary Clinton, in chairs
during the dance.
Yet some of the more liberal streams
of American Judaism, which accept
intermarriage if the couple's chil-
dren are raised as Jews, chafed at the
fact that the wedding took place on
Saturday, before the Jewish Sabbath
ended. The Reform movement frowns
upon its rabbis conducting weddings
on the Sabbath.
The president of the Union for
Reform Judaism, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, said
the Reform movement decided in 1973
that its rabbis would be allowed to
perform intermarriages, though they
would be discouraged from doing so, an
edict that still stands today.
"She has married in," Paul Golin,
the associate director of the Jewish
Outreach Institute, a nondenomina-
tional group that reaches out to unaf-
filiated and intermarried families, said
of Chelsea. "Some will say he married
out, but if he was marrying out, there
wouldn't have been anything Jewish.
"The fact that they went to the effort
to have a chupah and have a rabbi and
that he wore a talks says a lot about
their future direction. Otherwise, why
bother?"
The marriage has pushed the inter-
nal Jewish community debate about
intermarriage into the view of main-
stream America.
In the days before the wedding, the
Washington Post asked several rabbis
in its "On Faith" column, "Is interfaith
marriage good for American society?
Is it good for religion? What is lost —
and gained — when religious people
intermarry?"
Rabbi Steven Wernick, the CEO of
the United Synagogue of Conservative
Judaism, said intermarriage is certain-
ly "not ideal," but that the Conservative
movement in 2008 decided that it
must welcome interfaith families and