We all know by now that Rahm Emmanuel is an observant Modern Orthodox Jew. What I did not know is that he is married to a convert. Shmarya Rosenberg in FailedMessiah.com writes "Emmanuel's wife is a convert, converted by Rabbi Lopatin. As things now stand, the new Chief of Staff is married to a woman Israel's Chief Rabbinate won't recognize as Jewish, even though her conversion was done by an Orthodox rabbi."
According to the Wikipedia on Rahm Emmanuel, his wife, Amy Rule, converted shortly before their marriage, presumably in order to marry him. So, wereRahm Emmanuel's children to choose to marry in Israel (they are young now and presumably this is not going to be a problem during the Obama years), how would the Rabbinate find its way to avoid the embarrassment that would certainly arise?
The Israeli Rabbinate is painting itself into a corner. Eventually, whether it is the Emmanuel family or some other prominent family, the Rabbinate is going to find that it has to come to grips with the fact that the Jewish family is not to neatly defined as they might wish.
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