Love -- and loss
Not much love lost looking at the photo of an adoring Marc Mezvinsky staring deeply into the eyes of his radiant bride. Mezvinsky, rumpled white tallis over dark suit, and his bride, Chelsea Clinton, resplendent in Vera Wang silk, made the front page in newspapers across the country on the Sunday morning following their July 31 wedding.
The nuptials captivated wedding-watchers for weeks, not only guessing details of the where, what and who, meaning the guest list that went from Oprah to Streisand, not, and back again, but more to the point, who would officiate and which rituals would the Jewish groom and his Methodist bride choose to incorporate into their very personal, albeit, public (more on that later) ceremony.
So the photos released by the families with the tallis-wearing groom and after-the-wedding press reports ticking off the Jewish rituals -- chuppah, ketubah, sheva brachot--
gave at least one Jewish mother pause.
It was love, for sure, but also loss.
As the after wedding commentary spun into the blogosphere like so much puffed tulle, Jews and non-Jews sprinkled enough opinions to confound even the most astute co-officiant. Too Jewish, not Jewish enough? And what were the not-as-yet-made-public Christian elements? And what does the blended ceremony, with its now mum co-officiants, mean? Or not?
And yet, the very public nature of the match, Mezvinsky, the son of two former members of the U.S. Congress and Clinton, daughter of the current U.S. Secretary of State and a former U.S. President, begs for reflection, for this was not just any bride and groom nor any wedding. And the after-the-wedding byplay raised the ante on the issue of intermarriage, with its consideration of issues from Jewish clannishness to its marker as a sign that we’ve arrived (ugh, to Joseph Berger, New York Times) to the message of welcome and inclusiveness that the very ubiquity of intermarriage seems to infer.
Ah, this is one for the sages, or not. But it is surely emblematic of the conundrum of today’s Jewish world, where we struggle to preserve our numbers by creating meaningful Jewish life with the hopes that our children will choose partners who share their commitment to Torah, chuppah and gemulut hasidim, or, at the very least, choose partners who are supportive of their choice.
For some, there is still a line in the sand, a right and wrong to intermarriage. But for most of the rest of us, there is the tortuous landscape to navigate, trying to find the right way to respond, communally and personally. I still recall a program a year or two ago in Phoenix, sponsored by the Jewish Outreach Institute, when director Rabbi Kerry Olitzsky asked the audience who had an intermarried member of their family. Almost everyone raised a hand.
And yet, while pundits remark on how remarkable it was that Mezvinsky and Clinton chose to include so many patently Jewish symbols in their ceremony, it still comes down to how they will choose to lead their lives, and their children’s, as they walk out from under the chuppah.
As Rabbi Ruth Weinberg Dreyfus, president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis told The Jewish Week’s Julie Wiener, when it comes to a family’s religious connections, there is “no such thing as both.”
And no such thing as intermarried love without loss.
04 Aug, 2010 >
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Vicki, Who really cares? I am a Jewish young adult and I don't know one friend who cares or mentioned or even knew anything about a wedding between the Clintons and anybody else. I think it is women who are enamored with "pictures" of another person's wedding. In general men don't care and don't gossip about what she wore or what the ceremony looked like. Wedding pictures are not for men, they are for women to gossip about. Why are we gossiping or talking about another family's wedding? Thank you.
Barry Schneerson - 19 Aug, 2010 - 20:11:28
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