Joe Biden attended a Zoom shiva for his childhood crush as Russia’s Ukraine invasion loomed
President Joe Biden makes an address on the Russian invasion of Ukraine in Washington, D.C., Feb. 24, 2022. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
(JTA) — Every week is busy for a U.S. president, but last week was unusually turbulent for Joe Biden. He finalized his choice of Ketanji Brown Jackson to replace Jewish Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, began preparing for his first State of the Union address and received news that the Centers for Disease Control would ease its COVID-19 mask guidelines — all while focusing on the White House’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine that he was sure was coming.
In the midst of it all, he took some time out to attend a Zoom shiva, and to comfort some of his Jewish family members, The New York Times reported on Sunday.
Joan Olivere, née Berger, died on Sunday, Feb. 20, “suddenly but peacefully,” an obituary read. She was the mother of Hallie Olivere, Joe Biden’s former daughter-in-law, through his late son Beau. She was also Joe Biden’s childhood crush.
“I was the Catholic kid. She was the Jewish girl. I still tried. I didn’t get anywhere,” he has joked.
After Beau Biden died in 2015, Hallie Olivere began dating his brother Hunter in 2016, saying that they bonded while supporting each other in the wake of Beau’s death. Hallie and Hunter broke up by 2019, and Hunter is now married to South African Jewish filmmaker Melissa Cohen.
Hours after Joe Biden watched Russian President Vladimir Putin give a heated speech on Monday, Feb. 21 that raised the specter of war worldwide, he attended the Zoom shiva in the evening.
But he didn’t stop there — officials told the Times that Biden took calls from grieving family members throughout the week, “sometimes between national security debates and meetings with world leaders.”
Biden is a proud Catholic, but all of his children have or had Jewish spouses.
—
The post Joe Biden attended a Zoom shiva for his childhood crush as Russia’s Ukraine invasion loomed appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
