Source: Samira K. Mehta
On September 24, 2014, Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky was born, and Chelsea Clinton (former President Bill Clinton and Presidential hopeful Hillary’s daughter) and Marc Mezvinsky became parents. They became something else as well: interfaith parents. The couple has not made any announcement about their plans for Charlotte’s religious upbringing, and, because she is a girl, no bris (or lack thereof) has given the media a hint about their plans.
Regardless of whatever the parents choose for Charlotte (and whatever Charlotte ultimately choses for herself), just as the Clinton/Mezvinsky wedding provided a moment to reflect on the status of interfaith marriage in the United States, Charlotte’s birth provides an opportunity to take the temperature of the country on the question at the heart of interfaith marriage: What about the children?
In some ways, the responses to Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky’s birth and prospective religious upbringing tell us nothing new. Orthodox Jewish newspapers such as The Jewish Press announced the birth with the explicit headline “Chelsea Clinton Gives Birth to a (Non-Jewish) Baby Girl.” This article takes the position of Jewish law, as understood by the Conservative and Orthodox movements, that Judaism is transmitted matrilineally: Chelsea Clinton is not Jewish and therefore neither is baby Charlotte, although either one would be free to convert.
The Reform and Reconstructionist movements do not require matrilineal decent for a child to be considered Jewish—rather, they require that the child have one Jewish parent and that the child be given a Jewish upbringing. While the particulars of what that might mean is open to interpretation, most agree that some formal Jewish education would need to be involved. In fact, even though the Conservative movement requires conversion in order for a child with a non-Jewish mother to become Jewish, many Conservative communities and rabbis welcome interfaith families and educate the children, whether or not their mothers are Jewish. To that end, they allow the children of these marriages to convert before a bar or bat mitzvah if they were not converted as infants. For many American Jewish children from interfaith marriages, it is the education of the child, and not the religion of the mother, that determines the child’s status in the community.
The newest voice on the interfaith marriage scene strongly advocates for people raising children in both of the parents’ traditions—a trend that I write about in my own work, including in this blog. If baby Charlotte’s birth tells us anything about the conversation on interfaith marriage and childrearing in the contemporary American moment, it is that the option of being raised Jewish and Christian is increasingly accepted. ABC News is betting that Clinton and Mezvinsky take the “both” option, noting that Chelsea Clinton is involved in a range of interfaith activities.
Clinton has been quoted as saying that the topic is of particular interest to her because her husband is Jewish, she is Christian, and they are both practicing their religions.
Certainly, their wedding, at which a rabbi and a minister co-officiated, suggests that the couple is comfortable with the “both/and” approach. In this way, the Clinton-Mezvinskys are no different from many other couples. Such families often operate on their own, sometimes joining two different religious communities, and sometimes joining one of the interfaith communities.
Rabbi Evan Moffic wrote that having no faith tradition will deny the children both of their rich heritages. Furthermore, he questioned the previously held dogma that doing both would leave the child psychologically confused. Not everyone agrees with Rabbi Moffic, but the fact that there is space for such an opinion represents a major shift in and of itself, from the conventional thinking of as recently as ten years ago.
For Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky, there will be no such privacy. Everyone will know that her mother is not Jewish, and so everyone will know that she will not automatically have that status with all other Jews. At the same time, if she is raised Christian, her father will be very publically contributing to what is referred to as the “problem of Jewish continuity.” And if she is both or neither, plenty of others with strong opinions will weigh in.
For the only grandchild of a former president and a likely presidential candidate, no decision is private. Ultimately, then, the extraordinary aspect of Charlotte’s upbringing may not be the choices that her parents make but the way that public commentary on those choices give us a window into the countless American approaches to interfaith marriage.
Also read: Hindu-Jew marriages, VIDEO: Interfaith Marriage with Equality, Hindu-Muslim Marriage-video, Hindus, Abrahamics and Intolerants, A Jealous and Angry God, One God, Allah?, Idol Worshippers: Who is and Who is Not, Circumcision: Science or Superstition? , Ten Points of Interfaith Dating , FAQ on Interfaith Marriage, 45% of Muslims Marry outside their faith, 38% of Hindus marry Abrahamics, Follow Jesus not the church.
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