XXth century CE

Hungarian-American nuclear physicist

American politician

recipient of the Purple Heart medal (1919-2008)

Israeli musicologist of Uruguayan origin, winner of the 2018 Israel Prize in musicology and member (2024) of the Israeli Academy of Sciences. Professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,…

Peruvian politician

physicist (1902-1989)

Cofounder in 1946 of the Ford Models agency; born Eileen Ottensoser in a family of Jewish descent (the father, Nathaniel Ottensoser, anglicized the name for a time to « Otte » in the face of…

Born in Jerusalem in 1944 (his father was born in Khorramshahr, Iran, and immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1922). Fighter pilot, he shot down enemy aircraft during the Yom Kippur War (1973) and…

Demographer, author of a thesis at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1972) on the social and professional trends of Italian Jews (1870-1970) and works on the economic and social transformations of…

Professor at Bar-Ilan University, recognized specialist in the peshat school in Northern France and notably in the commentary of Rashbam (Samuel ben Meïr). His book renewed the reading of Rashbam in…

Orthodox Sefardi rabbi and kabbalist (1948–2011)

Israeli rabbi

Czechoslovakian-born English rabbi

American actress

Israeli politician (female)

Holocaust survivor and second wife to Otto Frank (1905–1998)

Israeli rabbi

Born in Fez (Morocco) in 1945, emigrated to Israel in 1967. Director for two decades of the Rashi Foundation, he chairs the "Alaluf Commission" for the fight against poverty. Recipient of the Israel…

Representative of the 3rd generation of the Gindi family, founding associate of Gindi Capital (commercial and residential real estate in New York). His family co-founded the Century 21 chain in 1961.

American rabbi

American businessman, Director of the United Bands Company

Born in Israel in 1937, mathematician known for his popular works on the history of mathematics. He taught at Loyola University Chicago and was editor of the « trigonometry » article in Encyclopædia…

Israeli songwriter and columnist (1948-2006)

Israeli politician

Son of rabbi Fradji Damri, he succeeded him as spiritual guide in El Hamma. Author of « Pérah Halebanon » (Djerba, 1941) and « Pérah Haguefen » (Jerusalem, 1968).

Rabbi and scholar from the community of Debdou (northeast Morocco), settled in Israel, author of several works on the history of Moroccan Jews: 'Ir ha-Cohanim / Debdou city of Cohanim' (2000), 'Bné…

Rabbi of Tafilalet, 20th century. Died in 5689 of the Hebrew era (1929). Recorded in Malkhei Rabbanan (Yosef Ben Naim, 1931), f. 22-1.

Israeli diplomat

Born in Roussé on the Danube in a Sephardic Ladino-speaking family (whose ancestors, expelled from Spain in 1492, are believed to have come from Cañete), he grew up between Ladino, Bulgarian,…

Israeli rabbi

Elias Suraqui (1893-1977) était un architecte réputé qui exerça à Casablanca avec son frère Joseph de 1923 à 1950. En 1947, il réalisa pour le Préventorium israélite de Casablanca un album de 78…

Editor-in-chief (with Henri Maarek) of the Réveil juif, a revisionist Zionist French-language weekly founded in Sfax in 1924, one of the most important Zionist newspapers in North Africa, close to…

Soviet physicist

Survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, Nobel Peace laureate (1986). His account Night became the emblematic testimony of the Shoah. Through his writings and his engagement, he made memory a universal…

Orthodox rabbi

rabbi

Israeli rabbi

Head of the Lithuanian yeshiva world in Israel, director of the Ponevezh yeshiva and founder of the Degel ha-Torah party. A dominant figure of non-Hasidic Orthodox Judaism.

Latvian rabbi

Fighter pilot, he commanded the Israeli air force from 2004 to 2008, then served as CEO of El Al (2010–2014). Son of a Hungarian Shoah survivor and a Jewish immigrant from Egypt.

Israeli rabbi

Israeli rabbi

Israeli politician

Israeli politician

Graduate of composition from the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia, he devoted his work to the transcription and preservation of Jewish liturgical chants from oral tradition (Italian, Piedmontese, Spanish…

Italian rabbi

United States representative for the State of New York from 1989 to 2021

American political figure

Finnish actor and singer (1930–1992)

Geneticist, founder of genetics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

German lawyer

British actress

Israeli rabbi

Rabbi born in Algeria, rabbi of the Technion, founder of the yeshiva Or VeYeshoua in Haifa.

Maggid shiur, Mir yeshiva (1947–2008)

Israeli writer and rabbi

Israeli-Latvian mathematician

American political figure

Yiddish poet with pastoral lyricism, leading member of the Yung Vilne group.

American rabbi, environmentalist and founder of Shomrei Adamah

Wellesley and Yale Divinity School graduate and Ph.D. in Jewish Studies from Columbia (1981). Carl and Dorothy Bennett Professor of Judaic Studies and founder of the Bennett Center at Fairfield…

pop music composer

American composer

American singer, third-place finalist on American Idol season 5 (2006). Son of Shaul Yamin, an Israeli of Iraqi Jewish descent, and an Ashkenazi Jewish American mother; his 2007 self-titled debut…

American rabbi

Dutch Orthodox Jewish leader (1923–2023)

psychologue austro-américain

German Expressionist poetess, one of the great lyrical voices of her time. Persecuted by the Nazis, she ended her life in Jerusalem.

Neurologist, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, among the last trained in Vienna before 1938.

American rabbi

Israeli rabbi

Austrian rabbi naturalized British

Listed among the authors in the bibliography of the Moreshet Yehudei Teiman foundation. He wrote « Lema'an Asher Yetzaveh » (למען אשר יצוה), a biographical portrait of Rav Avraham Tzadok, and is…

Austrian musician

American rabbi

Italian politician

Born Imre József Pressburger in Miskolc (Hungary) in a Jewish family, Emeric Pressburger studied engineering in Prague and Stuttgart before working in Berlin, from which he was driven out in 1933…

Israeli philosopher

French sociologist, one of the founders of modern sociology, son of a rabbi. Author of Suicide and The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.

French historian

French philosopher

Born in Tivoli into an Italian Jewish family, Segrè discovers the elements technetium and astatine then the antiproton, a discovery for which he receives the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physics with Owen…

Italian physicist

Younger brother of Enzo Sereni. Historian of agriculture and leader of the Italian Communist Party, he is the author of the « Storia del paesaggio agrario italiano », a reference work tracing two…

Italian Jewish psychoanalyst, parapsychologist and journalist, born in Sestri Ponente to Jewish parents (father Cesare, a shipping executive from the Marches; mother Faustina Finzi, from a Florentine…

American activist

French rabbi

French-Lithuanian philosopher, one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century. His work (Totality and Infinity, Otherwise than Being) places ethics and responsibility toward the other at the…

French actress

German mathematician, founder of modern abstract algebra; her theorem linking symmetries and conservation laws is fundamental in physics. She emigrated to the United States fleeing Nazism.

(1914–1987) writer, journalist, cultural historian, literary translator

Austrian writer born in Vienna, died in Turin on November 30, 1902. A graduate of the University of Vienna and intimate friend of poet Friedrich Hebbel, he directed the monthly review « Der Salon »…

Born Gaston Ghrenassia (Ghenassia) in Constantine into a Sephardic Jewish family from Algeria of malouf musicians; his father Sylvain Ghrenassia (1914–2004) was a violinist. Forced to leave Algeria…

Mexican historian

Born in Rome into an assimilated Jewish family (his father was physician to the King of Italy). Doctor of philosophy from the University of Rome, he emigrated to Palestine in 1927 and co-founded the…

Jewish historian born in Proszowice (Poland), Israeli citizen from 1957, died in Jerusalem. Specialist in the Middle Ages/early modern transition and cultural figures of Ashkenazi Jewry, he published…

rabbi

American rabbi

Israeli biologist and politician, 4th President of Israel

American rabbi

scholar of Israeli Judaism

Israeli actor

Born in Oran (Algeria) in 1942 in a Moroccan Jewish family, arrived in Israel in 1948. Blind and amputated of one hand at age 10 following a grenade explosion. His first collection, Minha Marokait…

officier militaire israélien

German sociologist

Born in London in a Jewish family from Odessa, trained at St Bartholomew's, he participated as a military physician in the D-Day landings then became a psychoanalyst (qualified in 1954, training…

American singer-songwriter (1949–2024)

television screenwriter, director and producer, American

French photographer, photojournalist

Born in 1958 in Montreuil to Jewish parents from Algeria who arrived in mainland France in 1952. A journalist and essayist, author of several bestselling essays on French history and identity, he…

Austrian-American cinematographer and photographer (1914-1976)

American writer

American scholar, Shoah survivor (Jewish ghetto of Czernowitz), professor at Harvard, specialist in the history of extermination. Father of Daniel Goldhagen.

Austrian photographer

American actress

German sculptor (1904-1996)

Swiss-born American composer, part of whose work draws on Jewish themes, such as Schelomo. He directed conservatories in the United States.

Ernest André Gellner, born in Paris to Jewish Austro-Czech parents from Bohemia, emigrated from Prague to England in 1939 to escape Nazism. Major thinker in the study of nationalism and the sociology…

French rabbi

Hungarian-born Jewish architect (1902-1987) who settled in Britain and became a leading figure of British Modernism, designer of Trellick Tower and Balfron Tower in London.

Romanian Rabbi (1917-2004)

German chemist

German actor and director

German philosopher

Greek actor

Canadian Rabbi

Professor in the department of Jewish philosophy and Talmud at Tel-Aviv University, specialist in the Qumran scrolls, Second Temple literature, ancient calendars and astronomy, and digital…

One of the most widely read contemporary Israeli novelists (translated into a dozen languages, over one million copies sold). Grandson of Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, whose name he bears. He…

Dutch artistic gymnast

American actress (1928-2022)

Daughter of Iranian Jews who fled Mashhad, born and raised in New York. Author of the memoir "Concealed" (2020) on the life of Mashhadi Jews, a crypto-Jewish community forced to conceal itself under…

South African politician

Born in Istanbul in 1950, descendant of a Jewish family expelled from Spain in 1492 and settled in the Ottoman Empire. Lecturer at EPHE (chair of the history of modern Judaism, 2000–2018), founder of…

Haganah member

American religious figure

Microbiologist, pioneer of bacterial genetics; discovered bacteriophage lambda.

Leading Israeli writer, born in Ramat Gan to parents who survived the Shoah and came from Poland. Master of the very short story, translated into more than 40 languages; laureate of the Sapir Prize…

Slovak economist of Jewish origin, vice-minister of Foreign Trade in Prague. Accused in the antisemitic Slánský trial (1952) and sentenced to life imprisonment; rehabilitated in 1963. Emigrated to…

American rabbi and philosopher (1924-2016)

Hungarian physicist

Israeli-French sociologist born in Fez in an Orthodox Sephardic Jewish family, professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and director of studies…

Holocaust survivor

Born Eva Malek on October 28, 1924 in Satu Mare (Northern Transylvania), she was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in May 1944, then transferred to Bergen-Belsen where she was liberated by British…

Brazilian actress and dancer

American journalist born to Jewish parents who emigrated from the USSR (Ella and Mikhail Gershkovich, who arrived in the United States in 1979). Wall Street Journal correspondent in Russia, arrested…

Austrian woman rabbi

American rabbi

Russian investigative journalist

Israeli football player

Born in Calcutta to a Baghdadi family tracing back to 17th-century Baghdad. Trained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York, he returned in 1952 as the first Western-trained rabbi of the…

Éducateur, traducteur, poète et journaliste de la communauté juive de Bagdad, né le 9 septembre 1903 et mort le 14 mai 1972, Ezra Haddad fut directeur de l'école juive « al-Wataniyya » à partir de…

American rabbi

Ezra and Khedouri Lawee, two brothers from a prosperous Jewish family of Baghdad, held the General Motors concession for part of the Middle East and had built in the 1930s a patrician residence…

American actor

Born in Baghdad, son of Khedouri Zilkha. American financier and philanthropist, he founded the Khedouri Zilkha Fund at Princeton University for the study of the history of Jewish civilization in the…

Talmudic scholar

Born in 1938 in Pressburg (Bratislava), son of Rav Aharon Tauber, a Belz Hasid from Galicia. Shoah survivor, he became a prolific lecturer and author of books on Jewish thought (hashkafa) published…

American Hasidic community leader (1912–2001)

Physicist, BSc (1970) and MSc (1973) from the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology), doctorate from MIT. Researcher at Brookhaven National Laboratory since 1986 and research professor…

Australian poet, academic

Tunisian journalist, founder and editor of the weekly Le Réveil Juif in Sfax. Appointed in 1932 as the first commissioner (netsiv) of Betar in Tunisia (Jabotinsky's movement), he was, from 1939…

British rabbi

Born in Osnabrück in 1904, Felix Nussbaum is a German Jewish painter. Refugee and then hidden in Belgium, he was deported and murdered at Auschwitz in 1944. His work, rediscovered after the war, is…

Spanish politician

Italian journalist

Born in Rome in 1945, raised in Trieste, from a Jewish family (father from Trieste, mother from Corfu; grandparents Adolf Aron Kostoris and Berta Goldstein, Jews from Brody). Graduated from Bocconi,…

Italian comedian, singer, and dramatist

American rabbi

Bene Israel educator, she served as director of the Sir Elly Kadoorie School from 1955 to 1964. Polyglot (Sanskrit, Marathi, English, Hebrew), she subsequently taught Sanskrit at the Hebrew…

French politician and resistance fighter

Italian physicist

Born in Paris into a family whose paternal ancestors were Lorraine Jews holding public office since the Revolution. Inspector of Finances, he joined the Resistance as early as 1940 and directed,…

Franco-Austrian physician

American politician

American politician

Franco-Swiss born in Fribourg on 2 July 1973, he was communications adviser to French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin then director of strategy for France's External Audiovisual Service (France…

American economist

Dutch director

anthropologist, polymath, poet (1909–1952)

German-American anthropologist, father of modern cultural anthropology, scourge of scientific racism. He trained an entire generation of American anthropologists.

German-language writer from Prague, author of The Trial and The Metamorphosis, a central figure of twentieth-century literature. His work was published largely posthumously.

German philosopher, author of The Star of Redemption, a major work of modern Jewish thought. He translated the Bible into German with Buber.

German actor

American rabbi

Alfred « Fred » Zinnemann was born in Rzeszów in 1907, son of Jewish parents, Oskar and Anna (née Feiwel) Zinnemann. Major Austrian-American filmmaker, he directed High Noon (1952), From Here to…

French photographer born in 1959, known for his work documenting the Jewish diaspora ('Diaspora: Homelands in Exile', 2003) and the project 'This Place'.

German chemist, Nobel Prize 1918 for the synthesis of ammonia, which revolutionized agriculture. His contribution to combat gases remains highly controversial.

Born in Turin in 1941, died in 1980. Independent scholar of myths, Egyptology, the history of Mediterranean religions and philology; in dialogue with Gershom Scholem, Martin Buber and the work of…

Cantor devoted to the preservation of Aleppo's liturgical tradition. Principal cantor of Magen David (67th Street) from 1945 to 1963, then of B'nai Yosef; instructor at the Cantorial Institute of…

Mexican author and activist

French fashion designer

Holocaust survivor, author (1923-2012)

Gad Elmaleh, born in 1971 in Casablanca into a Moroccan Jewish family, is a Franco-Moroccan comedian and actor. He established himself from the 1990s onwards as one of the most popular Francophone…

Israeli Army general and rabbi

Israeli footballer

Italian psychologist

Israeli actress, producer and model