Curated category
21st-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…
- Simon KinbergSimon David Kinberg arrived in Hammersmith, London, on the 2nd of August 1973. His parents were American citizens who moved him to Los Angeles when he was…
- 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…
- 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.
- 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.
- Bryan BurkBryan Burk was born on the 30th of December 1968 into a Jewish family. He grew up hearing stories that shaped his identity and later influenced his creative…
- 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.
- Mark ZuckerbergMark Elliot Zuckerberg was born on the 14th of May 1984, in White Plains, New York. He grew up in a Reform Jewish household with three sisters named Arielle…
- 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…
- Seymour DrescherSeymour Drescher was born in 1934 in the Bronx, New York. His parents were Polish Jewish immigrants who brought their history to American soil.
- 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…
- 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.
- Henry KissingerHeinz Alfred Kissinger was born on the 27th of May 1923 in Fürth, Bavaria. His family lived under Nazi rule when he was nine years old and Adolf Hitler…
- 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…
- Robert Downey Jr.Robert John Downey Jr. was born in Manhattan, New York City, on the 4th of April 1965. His father Robert Downey Sr. worked as a filmmaker while his mother…
- 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…
- 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.
- Sam Bankman-FriedSamuel Benjamin Bankman-Fried was born on the 5th of March 1992, in Stanford, California. His parents were Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman, both professors…
- 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…
- Jonathan KasdanJonathan Peter Kasdan was born on the 30th of September 1979 in Los Angeles. His father Lawrence Kasdan worked as a writer and director while his mother Meg…
- Gabor BorittGabor Boritt was born in 1940 to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary. The Nazis forced his family into a single room within a hospital on the edge of the…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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.
- David ChaumDavid Lee Chaum was born in 1955 to a Jewish family living in Los Angeles, California. He pursued his doctoral studies at the University of California…
- 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…
- Donald SterlingDonald T. Sterling was born Donald Samuel Tokowitz on the 26th of April 1934, in Chicago. His family moved to the Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles when he…
- D. B. WeissDaniel Brett Weiss was born on the 23rd of April 1971 in Chicago, Illinois. His family background traces back to Jewish roots with ancestral lines extending…
- David BenioffDavid Friedman entered the world on the 25th of September 1970, in New York City. He grew up as the youngest of three children in a Jewish family with…
- 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.
- 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.
- Sam AltmanSamuel Harris Altman was born on the 22nd of April 1985 in Chicago, Illinois. His family moved to Clayton, Missouri, in 1989 when he was four years old.
- 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.
- Bruce VilanchBruce Gerald Vilanch arrived in the world on the 23rd of November 1948. He spent his earliest days in New York City before moving to Paterson, New Jersey.
- Jonathan TropperJonathan Tropper was born on the 19th of February 1970 in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. He grew up in a liberal observant Jewish home that shaped his…
- Stephen GreenblattStephen Jay Greenblatt arrived in the world on the 7th of November 1943. He grew up in Newton, Massachusetts after his family moved from Boston.
- Gerald HoltonGerald James Holton was born on the 23rd of May 1922, in Berlin, Germany. He grew up in a Jewish family where his father worked as an attorney specializing…
- Chuck BlazerCharles Gordon Blazer grew up in a middle-class Jewish family in the borough of Queens. His father ran a stationery and newspaper shop on a busy street…
- Richard D. WolffRichard David Wolff was born on the 1st of April 1942 in New Rochelle, New York. His parents had fled Nazism to escape Germany during World War II.