Watermelon sugar… chai?
At midnight, Harry Styles will do what he’s always done best: pull the world into his orbit. At midnight ET on March 5, his fourth studio album “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally” drops.
Since he went on the X Factor in 2010, Styles’ career has been defined by insane fanfiction (remember my mom sold me to One Direction? The “After” franchise?), bold fashion eras, and wild conspiracy theories.
However, there’s only one theory our moms care about: Is Harry Styles a nice Jewish boy?
In short, no.
His dad, Des Styles, confirmed this when he wrote on X back in the day: “Still lots of queries asking if H is some % Jewish? No idea where any rumours came from in but, categorically, he is 0 % Jewish. Not at all. X”
So he’s not Jewish. But over the years, he’s proven he’s pretty darn close. From wearing a custom kippah to speaking Yiddish to dating Jewish actress Zoë Kravitz, here are Harry Styles’ best Jewish moments.
But first, does Harry Styles follow a religion?
The 32-year-old wrote in 2010 that he’s not religious, despite being christened.
In 2016, he told Jewish comedian Chelsea Handler that he doesn’t consider himself religious, but that he believes in some kind of divine being.
“I feel like anyone who says, ‘I’m spiritual’ sounds a little wanky. But yeah, I definitely consider myself to be more spiritual than religious. I’m not super tied-in to certain rules but I think it’s naïve to say nothing exists and there’s nothing above us or more powerful than us. I think that’s a little narrow-minded,” he said.
“I definitely believe in karma. I think ‘everything happens for a reason’ is a difficult one because there’s a lot of shit happening in the world that’s so unfair right now. So it’s hard to look at that stuff and think, ‘Well, everything happens for a reason’. But I definitely think there’s something, that it’s not just us. It’s kind of crazy to think that it’s just us. I’m not saying I believe in aliens, but you know what I mean.”
Harry Styles’ relationship with Jewish director Ben Winston
In the early One Direction years, Harry Styles didn’t just fall into pop stardom. He also fell, quietly and unexpectedly, into a very Jewish household.
The connective tissue is Ben Winston, the director of the 2011 One Direction documentary “One Direction: A Year in the Making” and a producer raised in an observant Orthodox Jewish family in London. Winston spent months around the band during a period when everything was moving too fast, and he became, by his own description, a kind of older-brother presence for Styles.
That relationship didn’t stay professional for long. In 2012, Styles was preparing to buy a house in Hampstead Heath, but the place needed a couple of weeks of work. He asked Winston if he could stay with Ben and his wife, Meredith, temporarily. Two weeks became a hiccup, then a complication: the home purchase fell through. Styles asked if he could stay a bit longer, then a bit longer than that. This turned into a full-on living arrangement. According to Winston, the timeline stretched through Christmas, and then stretched into 20 months.
Rolling Stone later described the setup with the kind of incredulity it reserves for fame-era oddities: while fans camped outside a house Styles never actually moved into, he lived quietly with the Winstons instead. The magazine noted that “the Winstons’ Orthodox Jewish lifestyle, with a strong family emphasis, helped keep him sane.” Styles reportedly slept on a mattress in their attic.
Winston’s family, too, seems to have treated Styles like someone inside the circle. Winston’s mother, Lira Helen Feigenbaum, was honored with a lifetime achievement award for her work in Jewish education. In his message, he thanked her for educating him on Jewish warmth and kindness. “By being welcomed so many times into your home and feeling like family, I’ve learned what the Jewish community is like, what it stands for, and what a wonderful person you are,” he said. “Mazel Tov, and you really are my favorite balaboosta.”
Styles has been photographed wearing a kippah that Winston reportedly gifted him, including a custom knitted one with his name on it, made for Styles’ birthday. He’s shown up on red carpets wearing a Magen David necklace, sometimes alongside a cross.
Even the One Direction universe contains its own Jewish set dressing. The music video for “Best Song Ever,” directed by Winston, was filmed in an old synagogue in Miami. Years later, Winston looked back on the shoot warmly in an Instagram post, noting they filmed it in the synagogue and calling it “the best of times.”
Winston told Jewish News that Styles, in addition to his other 1D bandmates, was interested in Jewish culture and the Jewish community Winston was immersed in.
“As for Harry, he loves the Jewish community and wearing a Magen David. He always has it round his neck and had it on show at the recent Teen Choice Awards,” he said in 2013. “All the boys love Judaism. They are fascinated by it and they enjoy the family atmosphere. Over the years they have become part of our family really and are interested in what we do. I had to laugh because the other night on the red carpet, a reporter asked Harry why he was a bit late arriving that night. He said, ‘Yeah, because our manager is a nudnik!’ They’ve definitely embraced a Jewish way of life, that’s for sure.”
It was likely from Winston that Styles began learning Yiddish phrases and about Judaism, leading to a wild Twitter debate between the two friends and Winston’s business partner, Gabe Turner, who he met at Bnei Akiva, a religious Zionist youth movement.
In June 2023, Styles gave Ben and Meredith Winston a public shoutout during his Wembley Stadium show after they walked nearly six miles to attend without violating Shabbat restrictions. Styles is also the godfather to the couple’s daughter, Ruby, who voiced the line that starts his song “As It Was.”
He eats kosher food
Food is part of the story, too. Over the years, Styles has surfaced around a handful of unmistakably Jewish culinary markers.
During the One Direction era, he spoke in a promo interview for the boy band’s “This is Us” movie with bandmate Niall Horan about looking forward to eating kosher Chinese food for dinner that night. He was also reportedly seen dining at Met Su Yan, a kosher Chinese restaurant near the area where he was living with the Winston family.
Styles was later spotted at Le Marais, the well-known kosher steakhouse in Manhattan, wearing his blue birthday yarmulke, and in 2014 was photographed picking up challah from a London bakery.
Harry Styles has a Hebrew tattoo
In 2012, Styles got a tattoo of his sister Gemma’s name in Hebrew script — and it made every Jewish Directioner swoon.
He celebrated a fashionable Jewish dog
Styles was no stranger to hosting James Corden’s “The Late Late Show” when his friend was busy. In 2017, he filled in when the comedian’s wife was in labor, and two years later, he hosted again.
In a segment called “Dogs in Sunglasses,” Styles showed off a pint-sized pooch with Jewish pizazz.
“You only light the menorah for eight days, this guy gets lit for 10,” Styles said of the snazzy chihuahua in sunglasses, a tallis, and a fashionable Magen David kippah.
He’s tweeted Jewish — a lot
From 2011 to 2015, until his social media account became entirely professional, Styles gave his support to his Jewish fans through social media posts. Every holiday came a new Harry tweet,
Here are some of our favorites:
Same, Harry, same.
However, anyone could tell that Styles isn’t Jewish because of his next take. No Jew actually likes shmurah matzah.
