One impetus for this site was (is?) my personal effort to find honor for my marriage to a non-Jew; attitudes in the Jewish community are so weird about intermarriage, especially since the 1990 population survey found that most American Jews were doing what I was about to do, and this set off panic. Given that history, I have to celebrate what the New York Jewish Week describes as a potential social/political embarrassment: the marriage of Brooklyn congressman Anthony Weiner to a Muslim, Huma Abedin, who is a top adviser to Hillary Clinton– and presumably knows the Palestinian narrative, having grown up partly in Saudi Arabia.
This piece is filled with funny ha-ha’s about the marriage, though it also mentions that it is "religious treason" to intermarry and suggests that Weiner may suffer in his base for his choice. There’s also a hint of If-you-cant-beat-em-join-em in this piece. And given Jews social status, who can blame the non-Jews for wanting in.
Weiner, 44, a six-term Democrat with staunch pro-Israel leanings, is entering uncharted waters with his announcement that he’ll soon be married. To a Muslim.
“OY,” commented one reader on the blog Yeshiva World News in reaction to the news.
“Hashem Yeracham [May God have mercy],” wrote another.
“Never liked that bum,” wrote a third…
Shlomo Perl, an Orthodox Borough Park businessman who held a fundraiser in his home for Weiner’s re-election in 2000 and contributed to his mayoral campaign in 2005, said Weiner “has always been a friend of Israel and admirer. I’m sure now he’ll do the same things. I’ll support him if he runs for mayor again and also for his re-election to Congress. I’m not one who judges a person’s character on his personal choices.”…
Secular Jews may soon see marrying Christians as so 2008. And it may not be long before Anthony Weiner is visiting Muslim senior centers, with a ring on his finger, showing pictures of his dual-heritage children, as grandmothers invite him to sit down and eat something.
