fbpx

Ivanka Trump’s ‘Big Fat Jewish Wedding’

[additional-authors]
October 26, 2009

After converting for her storybook wedding, billionaire heiress Ivanka Trump, 27, married New York Observer publisher Jared Kushner, 28, in an Orthodox ceremony at Trump National Golf Course in New Jersey.

The couple was married by prominent New York rabbi, Haskel Lookstein, who also coached Trump through her yearlong conversion.

Things weren’t always smooth sailing for the couple of moguls, though. According to a profile of Kushner in New York Magazine:

Dating Ivanka was fraught with family peril. Though she is converting to Judaism, studying with Rabbi Haskel Lookstein at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on East 85th Street, it has not always been easy. Jared’s mother, in particular, has struggled with their relationship. Last summer, Seryl told Jared to cool it. They broke up for a time but soon got back together.

Ivanka told me she and Jared plan to marry, but they aren’t officially engaged. “I am studying,” she said of her conversion, “and it’s been an amazing and fulfilling experience for me … One of the jokes I first started making when Jared and I first started dating is, I’m a New Yorker, I’m in real estate. I’m as close to Jewish, with an ‘i-s-h’ naturally as anyone can start off.”

According to the New York Post, the 500 guests at the wedding included Andrew Cuomo, Barbara Walters, Anna Wintour, Rudy Giuliani, Joel Klein and Sheldon Silver, as well as Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and ex-New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey. From Hollywood, Russell Crowe, Natalie Portman and actress Emmy Rossum attended.

The Huffington Post notes that Barbara Walters discussed the “absolutely gorgeous but not ‘glitzy’ wedding” (yeah right) on The View earlier today and gave the audience a peak at the invitation, which was in English on one side and Hebrew on the other.

Next up, the couple announces the birth of Moses.

 

Did you enjoy this article?
You'll love our roundtable.

Editor's Picks

Latest Articles

Three Dates to Dataland

I took three different dates, ages 6, 72 and 35, to see Dataland, the unusual digital art experience in downtown Los Angeles.

Hakol Shalom, All Is Shalom

This is the transcript of the speech Rabbi Dr. Bradley Shavit Artson gave at the 2026 AJU Gala on May 19, 2026.

A Slice of Aussie Heaven for the Jewish Day of Love

A classic Australian dessert chocolate coconut slice features a rich, dense, fudgy chocolate base packed with dried coconut, finished with a thick cocoa frosting and generously dusted with even more coconut.

The Empty Plaza and the Eternal Bond

This Tisha b’Av, as we mourn over the Temple once more, it is an occasion to consider what resonance the remnants of the Temple structure hold for us today.

Rosner’s Domain | A Leftist (Not) by Choice?

Coalition supporters want to define Eisenkot as a leftist because leftist is a title most Israelis do not want their Prime Minister to hold. But this definition has inherent limitations.

Life, Love and Tisha b’Av

As if life needed one more complication, my anniversary with life, my birthday, usually falls somewhere inside the Three Weeks, that narrow corridor of Jewish time when celebration starts to feel suspicious.

Echoes of Oct. 7 in ‘The Odyssey’

The film reminded me that an ancient poet could write about massacres but also about moral courage, while terrorists who dream of killing Jews can only think of going right to the massacre.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.