Curated category
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
- Woody AllenWoody Allen has made 50 feature films. That single fact sits at the center of a career so long and so productive it resists easy summary.
- Steven SpielbergSteven Spielberg was born on the 18th of December 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and by the time he was twelve years old, he had already staged and filmed a…
- Kirk DouglasKirk Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch on the 9th of December 1916, the only son among seven children in a Russian-Jewish immigrant family in Amsterdam…
- Louis B. MayerLouis B. Mayer was the son of a Yiddish-speaking scrap metal dealer from a Ukrainian village, and he died the highest-paid man in the United States for nine…
- George GershwinGeorge Gershwin's last words were "Fred Astaire." He spoke them on the night of the 9th of July 1937, as he collapsed in a borrowed house in Beverly Hills…
- Jack L. WarnerJack Leonard Warner ran Warner Bros. Studios for more than half a century, longer than any other pioneering Hollywood mogul.
- Leon FestingerLeon Festinger spent months living a lie among people who believed the world would end on the 21st of December 1954. A suburban housewife named Dorothy…
- Natalie PortmanNatalie Portman was born on the 9th of June 1981, in Jerusalem, at Hadassah Medical Center. She has spent most of her life navigating two worlds: the…
- Aaron CoplandAaron Copland grew up above a Brooklyn shop at 628 Washington Avenue, in a family of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants who had traveled through Scotland just to…
- Carl SaganCarl Sagan grew up in a modest Bensonhurst apartment with parents who, by his own account, "knew almost nothing about science." Yet it was precisely those…
- Joseph StiglitzJoseph Stiglitz grew up in Gary, Indiana, a steel town whose economic fortunes would later give shape to many of the questions he spent a career trying to…
- Phil SpectorPhil Spector's father chose three words for his own gravestone: "To Know Him Was To Love Him." His son Harvey, nine years old when Benjamin Spector died by…
- Carrie FisherCarrie Frances Fisher once wrote that no matter how she died, she wanted it reported that she had drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra.
- Joseph HellerJoseph Heller was born on the 1st of May, 1923, in Coney Island, Brooklyn, to poor Jewish immigrant parents from Russia.
- Bruria KaufmanBruria Kaufman spent five years working alongside Albert Einstein at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, co-authoring two articles with him and…
- Herb AlpertHerb Alpert is the only musician in history to reach number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 as both a vocalist and an instrumentalist.
- Joe ShusterJoe Shuster was born in Toronto in 1914, too poor to afford drawing paper, so he wandered from store to store collecting whatever scraps merchants threw out.
- Isaac AsimovIsaac Asimov wrote or edited more than 500 books, and on top of that he sent an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. He once said the only thing about…
- E. L. DoctorowEdgar Lawrence Doctorow was born on the 6th of January 1931 in the Bronx, named after Edgar Allan Poe by parents who ran a small music shop and dreamed in…
- Nicolas SlonimskyNicolas Slonimsky died on the 25th of December 1995 in Los Angeles, at the age of 101. He had spent the last decade of his life celebrating that improbable…
- 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 BenioffDavid Benioff was born David Friedman on the 25th of September, 1970, the youngest of three children in a Jewish family in New York City.
- Edward FredkinEdward Fredkin was born on the 2nd of October 1934 to Russian-Jewish immigrants in Los Angeles. His mother worked as a concert pianist but never performed…
- Irvin KershnerIrvin Kershner was born Isadore Kershner on the 29th of April 1923 in Philadelphia. His parents were Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants who filled his early years…
- Stanley WolpertStanley Albert Wolpert stepped onto the docks of Bombay on the 12th of February, 1948, as a young merchant marine engineer with little knowledge of India.
- Ossie SchectmanOssie Schectman scored the first basket in what would become the NBA, and he did it on the 1st of November, 1946, in Toronto.
- Jon FavreauJonathan Kolia Favreau was born in Flushing, Queens, New York, on the 19th of October 1966. He grew up as the only child of Madeleine, an elementary school…
- Robert EttingerRobert Chester Wilson Ettinger was shot in Germany during World War II, left for dead in the field, and spent several years recovering in a Michigan hospital.
- Armand HammerArmand Hammer died in Los Angeles in December 1990, aged 92, and was buried directly across the street from the headquarters of Occidental Petroleum - the…
- Eric FonerEric Foner, born on the 7th of February 1943 in New York City, is the historian that college professors reach for most often.
- Red AuerbachRed Auerbach lit a cigar on the bench while the game was still being played. It was his signal to the opposing team, to the crowd, to anyone watching: this…