Now that Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky have gotten married in Whitebeck, NY, some details of the wedding have been reported. The New York Times reports that the interfaith ceremony was co-officiated by Rabbi James Ponet and Reverend William Shillady. Jim Ponet, a Reform rabbi, is Yale University’s Jewish chaplain. His official title is director…
In the summer of 1998 I was a madrich (Hebrew for counselor) on the Michigan Teen Mission to Israel. This was the second teen Israel trip coordinated by the Metropolitan Detroit’s Jewish Federation. I helped lead a bus of Conservative Jewish teens from Congregation Shaarey Zedek and we traveled through Israel with a bus of teens…
I have it on good authority that Chelsea’s wedding this Saturday night at Astor Mansion in Rhinebeck, NY will be co-officiated by both a rabbi and a Methodist minister. But who’s officiating at their wedding should really matter a lot less than how they will be as a married couple. At the first meeting with…
I’m hesitant to write about Chelsea Clinton’s upcoming wedding to Marc Mezvinsky, who was raised in Conservative Judaism, because I want to respect the private lives of the bride and groom. However, when the bride is the daughter of the 40th President of the United States, I suppose she is classified as a celebrity and…
The first time I heard about a “virtual simcha” was in the late 1990s. Detroit was hit with a massive snowstorm and the 8-day old baby boy’s aunt who was to play the role of rabbi was stuck at the airport in New York. The rabbi improvised and she officiated at her nephew’s bris via…