Faces & Places

Ashley Biden with her parents and her husband Howard Krein, second from left, as they depart St. Joseph on the Brandywine Roman Catholic Church after morning mass in Wilmington, Del. Dec. 18, 2020

Americans disdained Jews in one way or another: In 1958, only 62% of Americans said they’d be willing to vote for a well-qualified Jewish political candidate, compared to 91% in 2015, and a 1964 survey found that 43% of Americans held Jews responsible for the death of Jesus, compared to 26% in 2004.

While 2019 saw a 40-year high in antisemitic incidents in the United States, it’s common for non-Jews with Jews in their families to express pride about their Jewish relatives. Biden, a Catholic, is one example.

“I’m the only Irish Catholic you know who had his dream met because his daughter married a Jewish surgeon,” Biden quipped about his Jewish son-in-law, Howard Krein, at a political event in Ohio in 2016.

Krein, a doctor, married Biden’s youngest daughter, Ashley Biden, in an interfaith ceremony in 2012 officiated by a Roman Catholic priest and a Reform rabbi, Joseph M. Forman.

“A ketubah was signed. The couple got married under a beautiful chuppah, made of natural branches with a cloth covering,” Forman, rabbi at a New Jersey congregation, Or Chadash, told the Forward. “The wedding ceremony started with the traditional baruch haba and included the priestly blessing and the sheva brachot. The groom stepped on a glass at the end.”

At the reception, Biden danced the hora.

Biden’s son Beau, who died of cancer in 2015, also married a Jew: Hallie Olivere, whose Jewish mother Biden had known since his own childhood. At a 2015 event in Delaware, Biden joked that he had had a crush on Olivere’s mother as a kid.

“I was the Catholic kid. She was the Jewish girl. I still tried. I didn’t get anywhere,” Biden said.

Biden’s second son, Hunter, recently married for the second time — this time to Melissa Cohen, a Jewish documentary filmmaker from South Africa. Within days of their meeting, Hunter Biden got a “Shalom” tattoo to match one that Cohen had. The couple had their first child, a son born in Los Angeles, last March.

That brought the number of Biden grandchildren with a Jewish parent to three, adding to Beau and Hallie’s two children.

Lior Zaltzman contributed to this report.

NCJW Helps Kids Keep Warm

More than 300 low-income children in Metro Detroit, identified by 19 local agencies, nonprofit organizations and schools, received new winter coats, socks, mittens and PJ bottoms, in a drive-thru Jan. 13 event called ‘Wrapped in Warmth,’ arranged by the National Council of Jewish Women, Michigan (NCJW|MI).

“With the weather getting colder, and so many families impacted by job loss and hard times because of the pandemic, we just felt we needed to provide additional coats to children,” explained Amy Cutler, president of NCJW|MI. “Our volunteers went shopping for more supplies and the agencies we contacted were overwhelmingly appreciative. We decided that cozy PJ bottoms might be useful at this time because of so many kids doing their school on Zoom.”

Veronica Johnson, project coordinator for D.L.I.V.E and Alkebu-lan Village, two organizations who will be receiving the clothing, said she works with so many people who cannot buy their kids the necessary supplies to keep them warm. “Even if they are working, they might only have the income to cover light, gas, rent and food, but not the additional funds needed to buy things so many of us take for granted.”

NCJW

Volunteers Margo Stocker of Farmington Hills and Katie Stocker of Huntington Woods, Diana Richards and William Barretto of Hope of Detroit Academy, and volunteer Ruth Zerin of West Bloomfield.

NCJW volunteers Linda Bodzin of Farmington Hills, Margo Stocker of Farmington Hills, NCJW|MI President Amy Cutler of West Bloomfield, Katie Stocker of Huntington Woods and Sarah Gottlieb of Birmingham load up clothing for the S.A.Y. Detroit Play Center.

NCJW