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Ask ten different Jews how they feel about their religious and ethnic identity, and you’ll get ten different answers. It was this variety of experience that led journalist Abigail Pogrebin to wonder about public figures who happen to be Jewish: Is their Jewish identity crucial to them, or incidental to their lives? In their careers, have they benefited from being Jewish, or been penalized by it? Do they all experience Jewish guilt?
With topics ranging from childhood rituals to their favorite Jewish jokes, Stars of David reveals the private lives of some of the most public Americans. In intimate conversations with sixty-one well-known Jews, Pogrebin discovered that:

• Natalie Portman gets much more Jewish when she visits her birthplace, Israel.
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg abandoned Jewish ritual because she felt it left women out.
• William Kristol recalls wearing a top hat for his bar mitzvah.
• Kenneth Cole struggles with his agreement to raise his children in the Catholic faith of his wife, Maria Cuomo Cole.
• Richard Dreyfuss still believes Jews are the Chosen People.
• Leonard Nimoy started crying at a Star Trek convention in Germany.

These news-making interviewees include Steven Spielberg, Sarah Jessica Parker, Congressman Barney Frank, Leon Wieseltier, Mike Wallace, Beverly Sills, Ronald O. Perelman, Mike Nichols, and dozens more. A mix of entertaining stories and universal–sometimes emotionally charged–topics makes Stars of David thought-provoking as well as highly entertaining.

"Consistently engaging....Pogrebin says this book grew out of her efforts to clarify her own Jewish identity. But you don't need to be on such a quest to enjoy the wide range of experiences and feelings recorded here."

Publishers Weekly, 08/01/2005

Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish: Search Results