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Curated category

20th-century American Jews

  • Bob DylanOn the 24th of May 1941, Robert Allen Zimmerman entered the world at St. Mary's Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota. His parents ran a furniture and appliance…
  • Woody AllenAllan Stewart Konigsberg was born on the 30th of November 1935 at Mount Eden Hospital in Bronx, New York City. He grew up in Brooklyn's Midwood neighborhood…
  • Steven SpielbergSteven Allan Spielberg was born on the 18th of December 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio. His mother Leah Adler ran a kosher dairy restaurant and played concert…
  • Stanley KubrickStanley Kubrick was born on the 26th of July 1928 in New York City's Manhattan borough. He grew up in the Bronx with his parents, Jack and Sadie Kubrick, who…
  • Marilyn MonroeNorma Jeane Mortenson was born on the 1st of June 1926, at Los Angeles General Hospital in the Boyle Heights neighborhood.
  • Kirk DouglasKirk Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch on the 9th of December 1916, in Amsterdam, New York. He grew up as the fourth of seven children and the only son of…
  • Elizabeth TaylorElizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born on the 27th of February 1932 at Heathwood, her family's home at 8 Wildwood Road in Hampstead Garden Suburb.
  • J. Robert OppenheimerJulius Robert Oppenheimer was born on the 22nd of April 1904, in New York City to Ella Friedman and Julius Seligmann Oppenheimer.
  • Amy FinkelsteinAmy Nadya Finkelstein was born on the 2nd of November 1973 in New York City. Her parents were both biologists who earned doctorates at The Rockefeller…
  • Howard Marks (investor)Howard Stanley Marks was born in 1946 and raised in Queens, New York. His family was ethnically Jewish, yet he grew up as a Christian Scientist.
  • George GershwinJacob Gershwine entered the world on the 26th of September 1898, inside a second-floor apartment at 242 Snediker Avenue in Brooklyn.
  • Natalie PortmanNatalie Hershlag was born on the 9th of June 1981, in Mount Scopus, Jerusalem. Her birth took place at Hadassah Medical Center to Jewish parents.
  • William WylerWilli Wyler was born on the 1st of July, 1902, in Mulhouse, Alsace-Lorraine. His father Leopold ran a thriving haberdashery business there.
  • Ralph BakshiRalph Bakshi was born on the 29th of October 1938, in Haifa, Mandatory Palestine. His family moved to the United States in 1939 and settled in the…
  • Bob IgerRobert Alan Iger was born on the 10th of February 1951 to an Austrian-Jewish family in New York City. He grew up in Oceanside, where he attended Fulton…
  • Aaron CoplandAaron Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York, on the 14th of November 1900. He grew up above his family's store at 628 Washington Avenue.
  • Arthur MillerArthur Asher Miller was born on the 17th of October 1915 in Harlem, Manhattan. He grew up as the second child of Augusta and Isidore Miller.
  • Carl SaganCarl Edward Sagan was born on the 9th of November 1934 in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn. His father Samuel worked as a garment worker who had…
  • Adam SilverAdam Silver was born on the 25th of April 1962 into a Jewish-American family in Rye, New York. His father Edward Silver worked as a lawyer specializing in…
  • Larry LieberLawrence D. Lieber arrived in Manhattan on the 26th of October 1931 to parents Celia and Jack Lieber, Romanian-Jewish immigrants who had built a life in New…
  • Linda McCartneyLinda Louise Eastman entered the world on the 24th of September 1941 in Manhattan. Her father Lee Eastman practiced entertainment law and counted famous…
  • Carl LaemmleKarl Lämmle was born on the 17th of January 1867 in Laupheim, Germany. He grew up in a Jewish family living in poverty on Radstrasse street.
  • Nathan RosenNathan Rosen was born on the 22nd of March 1909 into a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York. The Great Depression shaped his early years as he attended…
  • Jack KirbyJacob Kurtzberg arrived at 147 Essex Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan on the 28th of August 1917. His parents Rose and Benjamin were…
  • John von NeumannBudapest, 1903. A boy named Neumann János Lajos sat at a table in an eighteen-room apartment on the top floor of a building above the Kann-Heller offices.
  • Milton FriedmanMilton Friedman was born on the 31st of July 1912 in Brooklyn, New York City. His parents were Jewish working-class immigrants from Beregszász in Carpathian…
  • J. J. AbramsOn a day in 1982, Jeffrey Jacob Abrams composed the music for a horror movie called Nightbeast. He was only sixteen years old when he wrote that score.
  • Joseph HellerJoseph Heller was born on the 1st of May 1923, in Coney Island. His parents were poor Jewish immigrants from Russia named Lena and Isaac Donald Heller.
  • Marvin MinskyMarvin Lee Minsky was born on the 9th of August 1927 in New York City. His father Henry worked as an eye surgeon while his mother Fannie served as a Zionist…
  • Paul SamuelsonPaul Samuelson was born in Gary, Indiana, on the 15th of May 1915. His family consisted of upwardly mobile Jewish immigrants from Poland who had prospered…
  • Alan GreenspanAlan Greenspan was born on the 6th of March 1926 in the Washington Heights area of New York City. His father Herbert worked as a stockbroker while his mother…
  • Daniel YerginDaniel Howard Yergin arrived in the world on the 6th of February 1947. He grew up in Los Angeles, California. His father Irving worked at Warner Brothers and…
  • Al AronowitzAlfred Gilbert Aronowitz entered the world on the 20th of May 1928 in Bordentown, New Jersey. This small town sat south-east of Trenton and shaped his early…
  • Eugene WignerEugene Paul Wigner was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary on the 17th of November 1902. He grew up as the son of Elisabeth Elsa Einhorn and Antal Anton…
  • David SternDavid Joel Stern entered the world on the 22nd of September 1942 in Manhattan. His family lived in Teaneck, New Jersey where his father ran a Jewish…
  • Herb AlpertHerb Alpert was born on the 31st of March 1935, in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. He grew up as the youngest of three children to Tillie and…
  • Joe ShusterJoseph Shuster was born on the 10th of July 1914 in Toronto, Ontario. His father Julius ran a tailor shop in the city's garment district while his mother Ida…
  • Isaac AsimovIsaac Asimov arrived in the United States on the 3rd of February 1923, aboard the RMS Baltic at age three. His family traveled from Petrovichi, Russian SFSR…
  • Jerry FodorJerry Alan Fodor was born in New York City on the 22nd of April 1935. He grew up in a Jewish household and pursued his undergraduate studies at Columbia…
  • Terry WinogradTerry Allen Winograd was born on the 24th of February 1946. He grew up in the state of Colorado before attending college there.
  • E. L. DoctorowEdgar Lawrence Doctorow was born on the 6th of January 1931 in the Bronx. His parents were Rose and David Richard Doctorow, second-generation Americans of…
  • Lorne MichaelsLorne David Lipowitz entered the world on the 17th of November 1944 in Toronto, Ontario. His parents were Florence and Abraham Lipowitz, a man who worked as…
  • Dolph SchayesAdolph Schayes arrived in the world on the 19th of May 1928, within the Bronx borough of New York City. His parents were Romanian-Jewish immigrants who…
  • Maurice PodoloffMaurice Podoloff was born to a Russian Jewish family in the Russian Empire on or about the 18th of August 1890. Doubt remains about his exact birthplace and…
  • David X. CohenDavid Samuel Cohen was born on the 13th of July 1966 in New York City. Both of his parents were biologists, and he grew up planning to be a scientist himself.
  • Ernest BeckerErnest Becker was born on the 27th of September 1924 in Springfield, Massachusetts. His parents were Jewish immigrants who raised him before he joined the…
  • Walter Kaufmann (philosopher)Walter Arnold Kaufmann was born in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, on the 1st of July 1921. He grew up as a Lutheran child in a city that would soon become…
  • Hilary PutnamHilary Whitehall Putnam arrived in the world on the 31st of July 1926, within a hospital in Chicago, Illinois. His father Samuel worked as a scholar of…
  • Hubert DreyfusHubert Lederer Dreyfus entered the world on the 15th of October 1929 in Terre Haute, Indiana. His parents were Stanley S. and Irene (Lederer) Dreyfus.
  • Gary BeckerGary Stanley Becker was born on the 2nd of December 1930 in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. He grew up in a Jewish family within that small coal-mining town.