Ivanka Trump Didn’t Take the Kushner Name, but She Did Take on Judaism

There isn’t much we don’t know about President Donald Trump and his family, given their high-profile roles in real estate, business, and politics. Some details grab global attention, while others get overlooked, only to resurface later and seem like a bigger deal than they really are.

Case in point is when Trump addressed the Knesset in Israel on Oct. 13, 2025, following a ceasefire announcement between Israel and Hamas.

At the time, he revealed that his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, loves Israel so much that his wife, and Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, converted to Judaism. Trump joked he “didn’t know this was going to happen” and that it “was not in the cards for me.”

For context, Trump previously identified as Presbyterian but is now widely believed to be a nondenominational Christian. And his comment sparked curiosity about if and when Ivanka converted. Here are all the details.

Ivanka Trump doesn’t often speak publicly about her conversion to Judaism, which took place before she married Jared Kushner in 2009. That said, it’s not exactly a well-kept secret, as the information was available for anyone looking. Many people may not have known she observed Judaism, perhaps because her father wasn’t yet President of the United States, and so not everyone was invested in knowing every detail about the Trump family.

So, why did she convert? Well, Kushner was raised Orthodox Jewish, and so her decision to convert was influenced by her relationship with him. He and his family lived in Livingston, N.J., and they were very involved in the Orthodox Jewish community, according to Business Insider.

And if you’re wondering whether Ivanka is heavily involved in Jewish practices, she is. In a 2015 interview with Vogue, she said her family is “pretty observant” of the religion. “We keep kosher,” she revealed, adding, “We’re pretty observant, more than some, less than others. I just feel like it’s such an intimate thing for us.”

Jared Kushner’s roots in Judaism go even deeper than his family simply practicing the religion. His paternal grandparents, Reichel “Rae” and Joseph Kushner, the parents of his father Charles Kushner, were Holocaust survivors.

In a past interview with a Holocaust research center, per ProPublica, Rae recalled that the day after she and Joseph married in Hungary, they “smuggled [themselves] over the border into Italy,” joking that “this was our honeymoon.” The couple then spent the next three and a half years in a displaced persons camp, which Rae compared to a “ghetto,” until they were granted permission to enter the United States.

In 1949, Rae and Joseph were finally issued visas and able to start a new life in the U.S., one that their son and grandson would later carry into the global spotlight. Joseph passed away in 1985, while Rae lived until 2004. Naturally, Rae was very critical of U.S. immigration policies, which has led many to wonder how Jared’s family history aligns with Trump’s immigration reforms during his presidency.