Politics - News Analysis

Jared Kushner Dumped Ivanka Once in the Past, Because His Parents Were ‘Horrified’ by the Match

Ivanka Trump serves as a senior adviser to Donald Trump on women’s issues while her husband Jared Kushner advises his father-in-law in strategic planning. Their respective appointments to the White House drew ire from Trump’s critics, many of whom accused the president of nepotism, since neither Ivanka or Jared have the experienced necessary to work in the White House.

And while the first daughter shares a strong bond with her husband, things were not so picture-perfect when they began seeing each other.

After a year of dating, the pair broke up in 2008. The split was allegedly due to Jared’s parents, Charlie and Seryl Kushner, who had a problem with the match.

The book “Kushner Inc” has claimed Jared’s parents did not approve of the fact that Ivanka was not Jewish. In fact, they were offended that their son was considering marrying outside the faith.

“The idea was particularly offensive to Seryl, who had raised the children,” wrote author Vicky Ward. “They were her world, and her world was the closed conservative Jewish culture she had grown up in.”

“Charlie and Seryl refused to even meet Ivanka, although a friend repeatedly talked to Charlie about it,” he added.

“You’re the closest people to your children of anybody that I know,” Charlie’s lawyer and friend Alan Hammer reportedly told him. “So what are you going to do Charlie? Are you going to go sit shiva for your favorite child?”

According to the Jewish faith, Shiva is a period of seven days of formal mourning for the departed. The Kushners followed a strict Modern Orthodox Jewish tradition, and Jared was expected to marry someone who was raised in a similar fashion.

“The Kushners hoped that Jared would marry a Jewish woman,” according to a New Yorker article published in 2016. “Donald Trump is Presbyterian, and Ivanka — who in the documentary “Born Rich” appears wearing a necklace with a silver cross — was not what they’d had in mind.”

However, Ivanka and Jared reunited after being apart for just three months. Interestingly, it was Rupert Murdoch’s then-wife Wendi Deng Murdoch who played a vital role in their reconciliation.

While heading up The New York Observer, Jared reportedly “hung out” a lot with the American media mogul. After hearing about their split, Wendi reportedly invited them both on a boating holiday – not telling either the other would be there.

The pair eventually reunited and Jared proposed to Ivanka with a 5-carat diamond ring. The latter converted to Judaism before tying the knot in 2009.

Donald Trump was “baffled by his daughter’s conversion” to Judaism before her wedding to Kushner.

“Why should my daughter convert to marry anyone?” Ward quoted Trump as saying to an associate. She noted that at the wedding itself, Trump was shocked by some of the religious content, including women given shawls to cover their shoulders and gender-separated dancing. Later in the book, Ward claims that Trump was “reluctant” to accept Ivanka’s conversion, but eventually did so.

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