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photo by Rhonda Spivak

 
Joe Biden's very Jewish family-all of his three children married Jews

by Rhonda Spivak, March 1, 2021

 
 

Joe Biden is Roman Catholic but he has a very Jewish extended family since all three of his children married Jewish spouses, the Jewish Chronicle reports.

 

Hallie Olivere, the widow of Biden’s late son Beau, became Joe Biden’s first Jewish daughter-in-law when she married Beau  in 2002.She and Beau had children Natalie and Robert, who are halachically Jewish. It so happens that Joe Biden knew Olivere’s mother, Joan, since childhood and he once joked that as a child he would’ve liked to have married her. “I was the Catholic kid,” Biden said, according to the report in the Jewish Chronicle . “She was the Jewish girl. I still tried. I didn’t get anywhere.”

 

Hunter Biden married Kathleen (who is Jewish) and they had three daughters, Naomi, Finnegan and Maisy, all of whom are halachically Jewish. 

 

In 2015, Beau Biden died of brain cancer and Haillie Olivere, his widow, later began dating his brother, Hunter, who had been separated from his wife, Kathleen.

 

In 2015, Beau Biden died of brain cancer and Olivere later began dating his brother, Hunter, who had been separated from his wife, Kathleen. Joe and Jill Biden, both of whom are Roman Catholics, blessed the coupling, saying they had their “full and complete support.”

 

Hallie and Hunter Biden went their separate ways last year, partly because of the persistent  attention their relationship got from the press.

 

Hunter Biden then met a Jewish South African filmmaker named Melissa Cohen and the two of them got married within 10 days of meeting each other at her Los Angeles residence, the Jewish Chronicle reported. Hunter marked this happy occasion by getting a tattoo of the word “shalom” in Hebrew letters to match Cohen’s tatoo, according to the report. Hunter and Melissa, who attended a Jewish day school, had a baby named Beau, who was born in April, just less than a year after the couple first met and married.  

 

 

Ashley Biden is the only child from Joe Biden’s second marriage to Jill and Ashley also has a Jewish spouse named Howard Krein, who is an ear nose and throat specialist at a Philedelphia Hospital. They couple got married in 2012, in an interfaith Catholic-Jewish ceremony, which was followed by a reception during which the then Vice-President Biden danced the hora. “I’m the only Irish Catholic you know who had his dream met because his daughter married a Jewish surgeon,” Joe Biden said in 2016, according to the Jewish Chronicle.

 


Interestingly enough, much of the Jewish media only seems to have written about the Jewish members of Joe Biden's family after the November 3rd election, not beforehand. To the best of my knowledge,The New York Post appears to be the only media outlet in the  general community that has written about this, and it did so after the Nov 3rd election.

 

Biden’s third child from his first wife, Neilia  Biden, was killed in a car crash in 1972 along with her 30 year old mother. Naomi Christina Biden was only 13 months old at the time.

 

Finally, Kamala Harris's husband Doug Emhoff, an entertainment lawyer, is also Jewish. They married in an interfaith ceremony in 2014 and according to the report in the Jewish Chronicle,  Harris said, "In  keeping with our Indian and Jewish heritages, I put a flower garland around Doug's neck and he stomped on a glass."  The Jewish media wrote about him before the election.

 

 
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Rhonda Spivak, Editor

Publisher: Spivak's Jewish Review Ltd.


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