An Open Letter to Ivanka, from One Jewish Mother to Another<\/p>\n
February 1, 2017By Hadley Davis Rierson
\nIvanka Trump, Jewish mother.
\nGetty Images
\nIvanka Trump, Jewish mother.<\/p>\n
Dear Ivanka-Yael,<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been wanting to write. It\u2019s been almost two weeks since you became our first Jewish First Daughter, but as a fellow Jewish mother I thought I\u2019d wait until the kids and nanny were settled into your lovely, new DC home and Arabella was adjusted at Jewish Primary Day School. JPDS sounds like a no-brainer! What more could we want for our children \u2013 or the kids of America for that matter \u2013 than a school, which, according to its website, is intent on \u201cfostering a deep sense of mutual respect and pluralism\u201d in \u201ccompassionate\u201d students?<\/p>\n
I have to say, you remind me of one of my closest friends \u2013 another East Coast prep school blonde who converted to Judaism (after she fell in love with a fellow med student at Yale). I remember how intensely she studied the laws and traditions of the Torah \u2013 all of those stories and holidays and prayers \u2014 for her conversion. The only way in was to be all-in. By all accounts you were, too, picking the Hebrew name Yael (\u201cGod\u2019s strength\u201d) and impressing the tough, three rabbi panel known as a Beit Din, along with your devout Kushner in-laws.<\/p>\n
I, on the other hand, have non-practicing Presbyterian in-laws. Shabbat at my house is better known as \u201cpizza night\u201d and pepperoni is permitted. We don\u2019t shut off our phones or refrain from using transportation like you and Jared do \u2013 unless you\u2019ve got a special rabbinical pass for inaugural balls. Correct me if I\u2019m wrong but isn\u2019t the Pikuach Nefesh supposed to be invoked when one\u2019s life is in danger? For example, if you had to jump in a car von Trapp-style to escape the Nazis and it happened to be after sundown on a Friday?<\/p>\n
There I go. Observant or not, it never takes long for us Jews to reference the Shoah does it? As a kid I sometimes pretended to be Anne Frank in our attic crawl space. I\u2019d bring a composition notebook into a dim corner and scribble away as quietly as possible. I guess this kind of imaginary play is expected when your parents take you to visit gas chambers while you\u2019re still in elementary school. \u201cThe world stood by and let this happen,\u201d my father told me outside of a crematorium in France.<\/p>\n
Somehow, even my 10-year-old mind connected that afternoon at Struthof to Bounn Hong, a refugee who escaped through the jungles of Laos and cleaned our house while she learned English and saved up for cosmetology school. Hers was the shared story of my ancestors who fled pogroms in Poland and your husband\u2019s survivor grandparents. I haven\u2019t committed many biblical quotes to my mostly secular memory, but I do know this one: We were all strangers in Egypt.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m guessing you\u2019re pretty aware that the fact your dad\u2019s Muslim Ban was decreed on Holocaust Remembrance Day struck a ton of American Jews as egregious. Some said the timing was purposeful \u2013 kind of like the weird omission of the word \u201cJew\u201d and the number \u201csix million\u201d from the Remembrance Day statement.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve heard you\u2019re well aware the Internet scoffed when, after the sun fell last Saturday, you powered up Instagram and shared yourself in that shiny silver dress en route to the Alfalfa Club (an organization so frivolous it was named after a plant that \u201ccan\u2019t get enough to drink\u201d). The problem was, what with the detentions and protests unfolding, your image bore the image of indifference; the kind of indifference Elie Wiesel meant when he wrote: \u201cThe opposite of love is not hate, it\u2019s indifference.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ivanka, mom to mom, citizen to citizen, me (reform Jew) to you (modern-orthodox Jew), I am writing today to ask for a sign. Send me a sign that you are not, in fact, indifferent. That when you see a photo of a dead Syrian toddler washed up on a Greek beach you share my visceral understanding: he could be my child. That you subscribe to the Talmud\u2019s teaching \u201c(S)he who saves one life, saves the world\u201d along with Hillel\u2019s question you tweeted in September, \u201cif not me, who? If not now, when?\u201d<\/p>\n
Because I do want to believe \u2013 to paraphrase JPDS Head of School and Argentinian immigrant Naomi Reem\u2019s message \u2013 you\u2019ve moved to Washington intending to harness the creativity you\u2019ve shown in business, your Ivy League education and Jewish moral values for tikkun olam. Because, Ivanka-Yael-first-Jewish-First-Daughter, no Jewish American woman-who-works has ever been more powerfully positioned to help repair the present moment than you.<\/p>\n
Best wishes,<\/p>\n
Hadley<\/p>\n
Hadley Davis Rierson\u2019s television and feature film screenwriting credits include Dawson\u2019s Creek, Spin City, Scrubs and Disney\u2019s Ice Princess. Her articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Teen Vogue and the Los Angeles Review of Books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An Open Letter to Ivanka, from One Jewish Mother to Another February 1, 2017By Hadley Davis Rierson Ivanka Trump, Jewish mother. Getty Images Ivanka Trump, Jewish mother. Dear Ivanka-Yael, I\u2019ve been wanting to write. It\u2019s been almost two weeks since … Continue reading