Ivanka Trump: Reason Ivanka’s marriage to Jared Kushner shocked the family

It was apparently surprising that Jared’s parents Charlie and Seryl Kushner allowed him to marry a Jewish convert, rather than someone born into the faith. Ivanka, who was brought up Presbyterian, converted to Judaism in 2009. In her 2019 book ‘Kushner Inc’, author Vicky Ward quoted a Kushner family member who said if she had not been rich and famous, the match would not have been allowed.

They said: “It is shocking that they let Jared marry a convert.
“If she hadn’t been rich and famous, that wouldn’t have been allowed.”
At first, Charlie and Seryl were apparently “horrified” that their son was dating someone outside the faith.
The idea was particularly “offensive” to his mother who had raised the children.

Ms Ward wrote: “[Her children] were her world and her world was the closed conservative Jewish culture she had grown up in."
They even refused to meet Ivanka at first, despite otherwise being very close to Jared.
This conflict was reportedly part of the reason the couple broke up for three months in 2008.
They only reunited after they were each invited to a boating holiday by Rupert Murdoch’s then-wife Wendi Deng Murdoch, who was playing cupid and brought the couple together again.

Not long after, Ivanka converted to Judaism under the instruction of Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, then the rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on New York’s Upper East Side.
He was a member of the Rabbinical Council of America, which had considerable influence over whether a conversion is deemed to be legitimate.
According to family friend Bob Sommer, Charlie made the conversion process “as challenging as possible” for Ivanka to test her devotion.
Mr Sommer told Ms Ward: “That wasn’t like, ‘Talk to a rabbi, read a couple of paragraphs.'

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