TEN JEWS FOR THE 21st CENTURY: SARAH JESSICA PARKER

She is the daughter of a Jewish father of Eastern European decent and her great-grandfather came to America via Ellis Island, where family lore has it that his name was mistakenly changed from Bar-Kahn to Parken to Parker. In the book “Stars of David”, Abigail Pogrebin’s inquiry into the Jewish identity of celebrities, Parker spoke about her Jewish connection, lineage, lack of religious education and her love for New York as “a Jewish city.” “If we [she and husband Matthew Broderick, whose mother is Jewish] went to this temple next door, where would we begin? We’re so behind.’ In temple, it seems like you have to know what you’re doing. And it intimidates people; it certainly intimidates me. And I keep saying, `I’m not a religious person,’ but I know that’s not true; I know that I believe that there’s somebody who watches over us and he or she takes care or not, or teaches us. I really do—strangely enough–kind of cling to that.” “I have, frankly, always just considered myself a Jew…I was always responding to things that were Jewish.”

-Los Angeles jewish journal
July 6 2011