Madame de Staël

Born Anne Louise Germaine Necker, the future Madame de Staël was the daughter of Jacques Necker, Louis XVI's finance minister, and Suzanne Curchod. While her father was a prominent Swiss Protestant and her mother a well-regarded salonnière, there isn't a whisper of anything Jewish in her lineage. She was firmly entrenched in the Protestant intellectual circles of her time, which, while offering a rich tapestry of thought, did not include any menorah-lighting.

Her "Jew or Not Jew" score for Identity (I) and Origin (O) thus hovers around a firm zero. She was about as Jewish as a Swiss cuckoo clock, which is to say, not at all, despite her undeniable intellect and the kind of sharp wit that could easily be mistaken for a kvetch.

However, her Kvell-worthiness (K) is another matter entirely. This woman not only ran one of Europe's most influential salons but also penned groundbreaking works like "De l'Allemagne," introducing German Romanticism to France. She stood up to Napoleon Bonaparte, who famously exiled her for her independent spirit and political opposition. That kind of chutzpah and impact? Definitely brings a certain kind of nachas, even if it's of the thoroughly gentile variety.