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Chelsea Clinton and Marc
Mezvinsky engagement
Her mother is a churchgoing Methodist.
Her father is a Southern Baptist. Yet could Chelsea
Clinton be planning one of the biggest Jewish weddings of the year?
The 30-year-old graduate
student and her Jewish fiancé, Marc Mezvinsky, 32, announced their engagement in
November and told friends they were looking to a possible summer ceremony.
The families have revealed no specifics about the wedding.
Representatives for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea
Clinton declined to answer questions about it, noting the family's wish for
privacy. In a Feb. 7 interview on CNN, Hillary Clinton would go no further than
to say her daughter hadn't yet found a dress.
That hasn't
stopped the speculation. The bride and groom have a range of choices, including
conversion or a melding their two traditions into one ceremony.
The talk has been strongest in the Jewish community. There has been more
rejoicing than lamenting about this interfaith union that brings a former first
daughter a step closer to the fold. Still, they wonder: Has Chelsea been
searching for a rabbi along with her gown?
"If they had a Jewish wedding officiated by a rabbi, I think that would be
something really positive," said Ed Case, president of InterfaithFamily.com,
which supports Jewish outreach to interfaith couples. "It's so important for the
Jewish community to have interfaith couples engaging in Jewish life."
Which route will Chelsea and Marc take?
Chelsea Clinton grew up attending Methodist church with her mother. Bill Clinton
has been close to his pastor in Arkansas, but the Southern Baptist Convention
rebuked him years ago over his support for gay relationships and abortion
rights.
Last year, Chelsea, a graduate student at Columbia University's School of Public
Health, was seen attending Yom Kippur services with Marc at the Jewish
Theological Seminary in New York, the flagship for Conservative Judaism,
according to news reports.
Mezvinsky is a son of former Pennsylvania Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky and
former Iowa Rep. Ed Mezvinsky, longtime friends of the Clintons. His parents,
who are divorced, had attended a Conservative Jewish synagogue in Pennsylvania.
Hillary Clinton has strong ties of her own to the Jewish community from serving
as a senator from New York.
"She has probably been in more temples by far than either you or I," said Rabbi
Jerome Davidson, rabbi emeritus at Temple Beth-El of Great Neck, which Hillary
Clinton has visited.
No one is saying, though, what route Marc and Chelsea will take.
Conversion was the choice in one recent high-society mixed-faith romance. Ivanka
Trump became Jewish to marry New York real estate executive Jared Kushner last
year. But Chelsea does have other options if she would like to embrace Jewish
traditions while remaining Christian.
Some rabbis will officiate at interfaith marriages even though major Jewish
movements bar or discourage them from presiding. Interfaithfamily.com links
interfaith couples with rabbis and cantors. Only a small number will
co-officiate with clergy of another faith.
One of those is Rabbi Harold White, senior Jewish chaplain at Georgetown
University, a Jesuit school, who performed the 2002 marriage of Ari Fleischer,
press secretary under President George W. Bush, and Fleischer's wife, Rebecca,
who is Catholic. The ceremony was co-led by a priest and included a chuppah, or
canopy, which is customary for Jewish weddings, a traditional glass-breaking,
and a marriage contract, or ketubah.
'She's marrying into the Jewish family'
A Methodist wedding would be far less complex.
The United Methodist Church allows local congregations and pastors to decide
whether they should allow weddings involving one partner who is not a baptized
Christian. The denomination's Book of Worship allows ministers to adapt the
wedding ceremony within limits, according to the Rev. Taylor Burton-Edwards of
the Methodist General Board of Discipleship.
The high rate of intermarriage has been an obsession in the Jewish community,
which has struggled with how welcoming it should be to mixed-faith couples.
Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben of Kehillath Israel, a Reconstructionist congregation
in Pacific Palasades, Calif., said even if Chelsea doesn't have a Jewish wedding
or convert, she should still be considered part of the community.
"There are Jews by birth and Jews by choice and Jews by association," said
Reuben, who has officiated at interfaith weddings for years and presided at the
2003 vow renewal of Ozzy Osbourne and his wife, Sharon, whose father is Jewish.
"She's marrying into the Jewish family."
Call Robert at
Incendia Diamonds for further advice on engagement rings and wedding bands or to
set an appointment for a jewelry fitting - 858.692.3939
