Another Hollywood star has discovered and converted to Judaism, but it is not clear if the change was carried out according to Jewish law.
Zooey Deschanel revealed she converted, shortly before giving birth to a baby girl, at the request of her husband, Jacob Pechenik in June, while she was pregnant. Pechenik is producing an upcoming movie in which his new wife stars.
A wild guess is that it was not an Orthodox conversion, which means that their child is not recognized as Jewish by traditional Jewish law.
Her mother is a Catholic, and her father is a Quaker, but she said they did not object to her conversion.
The star of the New Girl sitcom was quoted by US Weekly as having said:
I don’t attach myself to any one religion. My family is liberal. I was raised in the ‘you can be whatever you want’ kind of way. And in the end, I was like, ‘Eh.’
Zooey, 35, and her husband named their daughter “Elsie Otter,” which sounds as Jewish as “Zooey.”
She said on the Today Show:
We just really liked the name Elsie and then we both love otters, they’re very sweet and they’re also smart. They use tools…they hold hands while they sleep…They’re wonderful animals.
Zooey previously was married to a non-Jew and divorced after two years.
