ANGELA WEISS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES VIA JTA
JEWSINTHED NATIONAL
Historic Presidency All the ways Biden and Harris (and their families) made Jewish history on Inauguration Day.
President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris at an event to announce nominees for their science team in Wilmington, Del., Jan. 16, 2021.
URIEL HEILMAN JTA
W
hen Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office as U.S. president and vice president on Jan. 20, they made history in all sorts of ways — including Jewish history. Some of the historical firsts are obvious: Biden is the oldest person ever to occupy the White House, and Harris is the first woman or person of color or person of South Asian descent ever to serve as vice president. Their Jewish bona fides are also notable: Biden’s three children who survived into adulthood all married Jews, making him a grandfather to several Jewish grandchildren. (Biden’s first wife and infant daughter were killed in a car accident in 1972.) Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, is Jewish, and the couple celebrate Jewish holidays together. Their 2014 wedding featured the traditional Jewish breaking of the glass, and Emhoff ’s two children from his first marriage refer to Harris as “Momala” — a mashup of Kamala and the Yiddishism “mamaleh.”
“I love Chanukah because it really is about the light, and bringing light where there has been darkness,” Harris said, pronouncing Chanukah with the guttural “chet” sound — rather than the Americanized “hey.” “And it is a celebration of, always, tikkun olam, which is about fighting for justice and fighting for the dignity of all people, and it’s about rededication.” The blended Jewish families who will lead the new U.S. administration are not an anomaly — they are emblematic of the story of American Jewry. Most American Jews marry outside the faith — 58% according to the most recent national survey, conducted in 2013 by the Pew Research Center. However, rather than abandoning Judaism, these interfaith couples increasingly are raising their children as Jews or celebrating Jewish traditions alongside those of other faiths. Some 45% of intermarried Jews are raising their children in the Jewish religion, according to Pew, up from 28% in 1990. While half a century ago Jews
who intermarried were looked upon as a loss for the Jewish community, today interfaith families are part and parcel of the American Jewish community. In the Reform movement, the largest U.S. Jewish religious denomination, rabbis officiate at interfaith weddings, many synagogues have non-Jews as members, and certain ritual roles during synagogue services are open to non-Jews. The Reconstructionist movement, which is the smallest of America’s liberal Jewish denominations with about 100 affiliated synagogues, made history in 2015 when it dropped a ban against accepting intermarried
students to the movement’s rabbinical school. In the Conservative movement, more than one-quarter of all homes include a non-Jewish family member, according to the Pew survey. Even among many Orthodox Jews, it has become more common to take a welcoming approach toward interfaith couples in the hope that a non-Jewish spouse ultimately converts rather than to ostracize intermarried Jews. By the same token, the prevailing attitudes of Americans generally toward Jews have warmed over time. In the 1950s and ’60s, large swaths of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and husband Doug Emhoff send Chanukah greetings in a video, Dec. 10, 2020.
SCREEN SHOT FROM TWITTER VIA JTA
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JANUARY 28 • 2021
