What Does the Rabbi Who Conducted Your Wedding Say About Your Religious and Political Views?

Very little.

I agree with everything Josh says about the inappropriateness of anyone attacking judicial nominee Rebecca Taibleson on the basis of religion, and specifically because the Reform rabbi who married Rebecca and her husband supports LGBT causes.

And while this is sort of religious attack is very inappropriate in general, I also want to point out that it's not just inappropriate but absurd in this particular context.

First, Reform Judaism openly supports allowing Jews to define Judaism in their own terms. So there is zero reason to think that because a Reform rabbi marries you, you agree with either that Rabbi or the official Reform position on any given issue, much less every issue.

For that matter, the fact that you got married by someone is a particularly poor indication of your political and religious values.

Why do people choose a particular rabbi to marry them?

"We just moved to the area, and this is the only rabbi we know."

"We have friends who referred us to this rabbi as doing beautiful ceremonies."

"It's the rabbi from my childhood who saw me grow up, and it would be particularly meaningful to have this rabbi do my marriage."

"The bride's parents live in X, where we are holding the wedding, and Rabbi Y is the only rabbi in town."

"The groom's family belongs to Temple Beth X, and as part of their membership dues the rabbi conducts weddings of congregants for free."

"This is the only rabbi in town willing to do intermarriages."

And so on. You know what I've never, ever heard any Jewish couple say?: "We chose this rabbi because we checked the rabbi's theological and political views, and they align 100% with ours."

Conflict of Interest Watch: Rebecca Taibleson's father is Michael Krauss, a retired law professor who was my colleague at Scalia Law for many years. I don't think I ever met Rebecca, though.

Random Trivia Watch: The vast majority of conservative Jewish judges since the Reagan era have been men. If Taibleson is confirmed, she will join Neomi Rao as one of two Trump-appointed Jewish women.

Comments

[Absaroka]

Heck, we were married by a ??Methodist?? minister, and we're not religious at all. I avoided the wedding details as much as I could, but I think he was chosen based on the criteria:

1)he had whatever legal imprimatur was needed and
2)he was available on the date in question

Outside of that, he could have been Zoroastrian or believed in lizard people for all we cared.

[Malika la Maize]

Sometimes in discussions here on racial preferences I’ve had people argue that organizations like the United Negro College Fund’s raising money for and giving scholarships for only black students is racial discrimination and wrong. How do those people feel about an organization that provides aid to people in a specific religion?

[David Bernstein]

I think you are missing the rhetorical point that such people make. If it's illegal to give to a whites-only charity, they would say, because it violates laws against racial discrimination, then applying the law equally would mean that it should be illegal to give to a blacks-only charity. One could argue if that symmetry makes sense, but that the argument.
So the relevant analogy would be, "if it's illegal (or wrong) to give to a Catholic charity that helps Catholics (the largest religious group in the US), it should be equally illegal (or wrong) to give to, say, a Zoroastrian charity that gives money only to Zoroastrians." But since no one, in fact, is arguing the former, the analogy doesn't work.

[Malika la Maize]

Several commenters here have said what the United Negro College fund did was immoral as it was discrimination based on race. I’m wondering if the same logic applies to giving only to a specific religious group as it may be discrimination based on religion (there’s also the added wrinkle that some religious groups are treated as ethnic groups in other contexts).

[David Bernstein]

You'd have to ask them, but I doubt anyone would have said that giving scholarships based on common membership in the AME church raised the same issues.

[Malika la Maize]

Scholarships based on race in common bad, scholarships on religion in common ok? Why? In many laws we equate racial and religious discrimination, don’t we?

And if the Jewish Federation gives aid to Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, isn’t it further from giving based on religion in common and closer to giving based on shared ethnicity?

[Ridgeway]

I'd argue that discrimination against blacks is sui generis in the US. The combination of slavery and then Jim Crow, with the subjugation enforced both by law and extremely violent extra-judicial means, makes discrimination against blacks qualitatively different than all other discriminations -- the only thing close is the history of the Native Americans.

Everyone else's (Hispanics, Catholics, Jews, Irish, Italians, Mormons, Muslims etc.) historical discrimination claims pale (ugh) in comparison.

So it is a foolish consistency to argue that the UNCF is somehow morally analogous to a hypothetical scholarship that intentionally excludes blacks.

[Malika la Maize]

That’s my view too, and given anti-Semitism historical and current a group that particularly helped Jews seems defensible.* But I know I’ve had people disagree about the first and wondered what they’d think about the latter.

*I looked it up and it seems the JF helps people whether they’re Jews or not (kind of like the YMCA I guess), so it seems the analogy is probably moot.

“While the Jewish Federation was created to primarily service Jewish communities, they also provide for other communities.” Wikipedia

[David Nieporent]

TIL that Neomi Rao is Jewish.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

I think this is fine as far as it goes, but there doesn't need to be a "100%" overlap for it to be a relevant data point.

Fwiw, the opposition cites various things.

https://afn.net/legal-courts/2025/09/15/conservative-groups-oppose-supposed-superb-trump-nominee/

Anyway, I think "openly supports allowing Jews to define Judaism in their own terms" is a good policy. Some groups? That might not be a net positive in their view.

[David Bernstein]

The only thing that adds to what Josh wrote is that she belongs to a Reform synagogue. Not only is that, again, and absurd criterion for judging someone's political ideology, it appears that there are only Reform synagogues in the general vicinity, assumedly near where she lives. So in practice it comes down to, "she shouldn't join a synagogue if the only nearby synagogues are reform." The response should be a big GFY.

[ikaritenshi]

I don't remember anyone coming to Obama's defense when was ripped for who his minister was.

[David Bernstein]

That's because he was a congregant for many years, Wright was a big political ally of his, and boasted of his close friendship with him, and this was especially relevant politically because Obama was running and the nadir and so forth in Jeremiah right was clearly extremely divisive especially with regard to race

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Thanks -- I wondered if someone would bring up Wright. Glad you answered more civilly than I would have.

[David Bernstein]

*running as a uniter," not "running and the nadir."

[Darwinnie]

How many liberal Jewish judges have been appointed vs conservative ones? Also I’m assuming you mean polítically conservative vs liberal.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

The NYT wedding announcement is sweet.

https://archive.ph/5J6OT

[Frank Drackman]

Try finding a Rabbi in Jacksonville NC 1992.
Actually former 2d Mar Div Chaplain was a Rabbi, did us a solid, was the Division Chaplain during Desert Storm, the Marines way of telling the Saudis to (Redacted)
Drew Mrs and my VDRLs at the BAS, RHIP
(And yes H8-ers, both were negative)
Cue for Dr Ed 2 to totally man-splain the VDRL wrong.

Frank