News Brief

The son of French President Nicolas Sarkozy married a Jewish heiress.

Jean Sarkozy, 22, on Wednesday wed Jessica Sebaoun-Darty, whose family name is known throughout France for founding the Darty national chain of electronic stores.

The French press this summer often commented on the Jewish faith of Jean Sarkozy’s fiance. Jean Sarkozy, who sports chin-length blond hair, has become a regular on French magazine covers following his election as councilor and local head of the center-right UMP party group in the wealthy suburb of Neuilly, where his father launched his career as mayor.

Jean Sarkozy’s political ambitions also began drawing attention when Neuilly residents rewarded him for turning his back on the then-presidential spokesman he initially supported in a bid for town mayor. Rumors that Jean Sarkozy would convert to Judaism before the wedding were never confirmed, though they led to the July firing and ongoing trial of a satirical cartoonist who wrote that the ambitious young Sarkozy would “go far in life” if he swapped religions. Both the Sarkozy and Darty families were outraged at what they saw as anti-Semitic undertones to the cartoon. The incident sparked a heated debate in the French media and Internet blogs over the legitimacy of accusing the cartoonist, known as Sinי, of anti-Jewish motives.

Nicolas Sarkozy has Jewishness in his ancestry: His maternal grandfather was a Greek Jew.