Meet Joe Biden’s whole big Jewish mishpocha

KVELLER (via JTA) — By now, you likely know all about Kamala Harris’s husband, Jewish dad and future Second Gentleman (Second Dude?) Doug “Dougie” Emhoff. Not only is he the spouse of the first-ever woman to serve as Vice President of the United States, he’s also the first Jewish person to fill this role. Such naches!

But as a publication that celebrates Jewish families, we’d be remiss to overlook President-elect Joe Biden’s Jewish relatives — of which there are many. In fact, all three of his kids married into Jewish families — which means Biden is the grandfather of some pretty adorable Jewish kids.

Now, as far as we know, Biden’s extended family isn’t going to be an active part of his administration. But we’re still going to see them on stage at events and such. And so, in order to help you point and kvell, here are the Jewish members of the President-elect’s family.

First up, let’s talk about Hallie Olivere, now Hallie Biden, who was the wife of Joe’s oldest son, Beau, the former Delaware AG who died of cancer in 2015. Joe Biden has known Olivere’s Jewish mother, Joan, since they were kids — he once joked that he had a crush on her as a kid: “I was the Catholic kid. She was the Jewish girl. I still tried. I didn’t get anywhere,” Biden said at a Jewish event in Delaware in 2015.

Hallie, 45, and Beau married in 2002 and had two children, Natalie, 16, and Hunter, 14. Hallie and Hunter Biden — Beau’s younger brother — dated between 2015 and 2019, with the support of the Bidens and Hallie’s parents.

Then there’s a nice Jewish doctor Howard Krein, who married Joe’s youngest daughter, Ashley Biden, in 2012. Ashley, 39, is a social worker, the former executive director of the Delaware Center for Justice, and a fashion designer. Krein, 54, is the chief medical officer at StartUp Health, an associate professor at Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals, and the senior director of health policy and innovation at Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson — so yes, a pretty accomplished couple. They do not have any children.

my father also doubling down on his incorrect belief that Jill Biden is jewish "I am sure I heard that somewhere!"

— Leslie Grossman (@MissLeslieG) November 8, 2020

Krein and Ashley were introduced by Beau, and dated from late 2010. They got married in an interfaith ceremony held at the Delaware church where Ashley was baptized. It was officiated by a Roman Catholic priest and a Reform rabbi, Joseph M. Forman.

“A ketubah [marriage contract] was signed. The couple got married under a beautiful chuppah [canopy], made of natural branches with a cloth covering,” Forman, the rabbi at Or Chadash, a congregation in Flemington, New Jersey, told The Forward. “The wedding ceremony started with the traditional baruch haba [welcoming] and included the priestly blessing and the sheva brachot [seven blessings]. The groom stepped on a glass at the end.”

The reception included a precursory hora dance, in which VP Biden happily participated…