Emily Stern, the 32-year-old daughter of radio shock jock Howard Stern, has taken a different path than her famous father, eschewing the raunch for modest dress and study of the Torah, the New York Post reports.
Her move toward Orthodox Judaism began about nine years ago after growing up in a home where her parents weren’t particularly religious, though she did fast for Yom Kippur and held Passover seders.
Stern once joked on the air that he hated wearing yarmulkes and that the theme of Emily’s bat mitzvah should be “I hate Jews.”
Emily said that though her father urged her and her two sisters to be aware that everyone was watching them, it was more out of his narcissism and than their protection, and she was never given any direction on what to pursue in life.
She ended up graduating from the theater program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and currently writes and produces art for a living.
She starred in the off-off-Broadway play “Kabbalah” as Madonna, dying her dark hair blonde and appearing nude.
After bad reviews, Stern said the director used her daughter-of-a-celebrity status to have her promote the play with an unauthorized video in which she was scantily clad.
She used her dad’s lawyers to get out of having to continue in the part.
Now, she practices her faith, and keeps her own kosher dishware at the home of her mother, Alison. Her parents, now divorced, are supportive of her religious expression, she said.
“It took a lot of bravery [to become religious],” she said. “I was trying to figure out what to be in the world. I’d say, ‘God help me.'”
