Bless Ivanka Trump for Her Spiritual Integrity!

Q: I read this week that Ivanka Trump, the daughter of Donald and Ivana Trump, is engaged and will be converting to Judaism for her husband. However, perhaps she was misquoted. I know a man who was raised Buddhist; he married a Jewish woman and they raised their two children in the Jewish faith. After the children passed their B'nei Mitzvot, the man decided that he really liked Judaism himself, attended classes, converted, and joined a congregation.

Perhaps Ivanka could learn an important first lesson from this story on the conversion process -- namely what is and what is not a valid reason to convert. By the way, you have many more readers and admirers than you'll ever know. -- R., via godsquadquestion@aol.com

A: My topics are usually drawn from the pages of the Bible, not the pages of the tabloids, but I must admit that the conversion of Ivanka Trump and her engagement to Jared Kushner did attract my attention. You seem to be opposing her conversion because it's for the sake of her marriage. I think you're being way too hard on her.

First off, you've wrongly assumed that conversion to Judaism for marriage is not acceptable. Conversion solely for the purpose of marriage is not encouraged in Judaism but is still valid. Ivanka Trump's motivations seem entirely laudable to me. Also, the rabbi tutoring her is one of the finest I know.

I've converted many people to Judaism, and Father Tom Hartman, my former partner on the God Squad column, has converted many people to Catholicism. What we admire about all of them is how they've accepted the importance of a single religious presence in the home.

Of course, children of interfaith marriages, like all of us, can decide to follow a different path up the mountain as they enter their adult years, but children deserve to have roots in some particular faith. They deserve to be able to enter a church or a synagogue or a temple or a mosque and in one of those places say with confidence, "I am home here." Giving your child that gift of religious roots is an enormous act of love, and for the parent in the "out" faith, an enormous act of sacrifice and courage.

When adult children do convert, I also try to explain that this does not constitute a rejection of their parents' love. I hope this celebrity conversion and wedding will inspire others in loving interfaith relationships to consider the possibility of a single religion in their home from the beginning. I agree with you that conversion at a later stage in a marriage has its virtues, but all in all, I would hope that religious issues could be worked out earlier rather than later.

One of the reasons early conversion makes sense to me is that it puts to the test the often superficial promises interfaith couples make to raise their kids in one faith. It's not that brides or grooms are insincere in their pledges, but rather that they don't really know what they're promising. If they haven't studied the faith of the person they love, they can't really know what it means to raise children in that faith.

When couples decide to raise their children in the faith of only one partner, I ask the person in the "out-faith" the following question: "Why would you want to raise your child as a Jew (or Christian or...) and not want to be a member of that faith yourself?" Frankly, I've never heard a satisfying answer to that question. I understand why a person would not want to raise his or her children in a faith they were not raised in, but I can't understand why they would agree to this and not want to convert.

I admire Ivanka Trump's spiritual integrity. I admire her sincere commitment to the faith and traditions of Judaism. I also deeply admire her parent's unconditional love and support in helping her move through this change of faith and change of life.

Donald and Ivana Trump are the objects of constant and usually trivial and invidious media scrutiny, but in their brave and loving support of their daughter's conversion, they've demonstrated the highest level of parental love. I praise and bless them, and urge other parents of children in interfaith relationships to learn from their fine example.

I wish the bride and groom a life of joy, health and service to others. May they be blessed to see the children of their children's children. If you're near a glass, crush it now and shout, "Mazal Tov!" That's about as close to this wedding as any of us are going to get.

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