XXth century CE

Legal scholar

Doctor of Warsaw University (trained under historian Majer Bałaban), he was appointed in 1937 director of the archives of the Jewish community of Warsaw, a position he retained in the ghetto. There…

Rosh yeshiva

Rosh Yeshiva of Ofakim (Israel)

German illustrator

Antiques dealer from a Jewish family of Hamadan; son of Dr. Benjamin Abolghassem Mahboubian (born in Hamadan in 1868, physician and archaeologist). He founded in 1961 the Mahboubian Gallery in New…

Born in New York in 1951, Professor Emeritus at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, holder of the Miriam Martha Hubert Chair of Jewish Thought. Specialist in prophecy, ethics and medieval Jewish…

American composer and lyricist

American politician

American geneticist and virologist born in Philadelphia to Jewish parents, laureate of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1975 (shared with Renato Dulbecco and David Baltimore) for the…

American historian born in Brooklyn to a family of Jewish immigrants. Professor (Spelman College, Boston University), civil rights activist and pacifist, he is the author of over 20 books, including…

British rabbi

filmmaker, producer and film actor

Romanian engineer and historian (1922-2021)

Brazilian actress

Dutch writer

Israeli musician known for 'The Idan Raichel Project', a fusion of electronic music, traditional Hebrew texts and diverse musical influences. Born into an Ashkenazi Jewish family.

Austrian swimmer

Franco-Moroccan, kidnapped and killed by the gang of barbarians

(1901–1952) opera singer

Portuguese writer

Soviet writer and journalist, co-author of The Black Book on the extermination of the Jews of the USSR. He was a complex figure of Stalinist literary life.

Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1967 to 1991, having previously been Chief Rabbi of Ireland and rabbi of the Fifth Avenue Synagogue in New York. Knighted in…

Hungarian educationist (1903–1970)

(1944–2026) jazz drummer

Born in Saint Petersburg in 1904 in an assimilated Jewish family, son of journalist Boris Khariton. A physicist, he became chief designer and scientific director of the Soviet nuclear weapons project.

American film director

Yiddish poetess and yiddishist born in the Warsaw ghetto, writes in Yiddish and English.

French novelist of Russian Jewish origin, author of Suite Française, rediscovered and published decades after her death. She was deported and murdered at Auschwitz.

Russian actress born in Moscow, active since 2013, notably revealed by the film T-34 (TEFI award for best actress, Golden Eagle nomination). Wikipedia explicitly describes her as Jewish (category «…

American psychiatrist, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Stanford, pioneer of existential psychotherapy and group therapy. Author of reference works and novels. His Jewish parents emigrated from…

British political figure

Canadian businessman (1919–2001)

American Jewish businessman and philanthropist, known for funding real-estate and settlement projects in Jerusalem and for bingo-hall-fortune-funded charitable giving.

Inventor of the slow cooker

American electrical engineer and businessman.

Born in Petrovichi (RSFSR) to Russian Jewish parents, Anna Rachel (née Berman) and Judah Asimov, son of a miller; named Isaac after his maternal grandfather. The family emigrated to the United States…

Soviet writer from Odessa, author of Red Cavalry and the Odessa Tales. He was arrested and executed during the Stalinist purges.

Brazilian actor

Yiddish-language writer, Nobel Prize in Literature 1978, painter of the vanished Jewish world of Eastern Europe. An émigré to the United States, he pursued a prolific body of work there.

Syrian rabbi

British rabbi

Israeli statesman

Born into a Sephardic Jewish family of the Ottoman Empire, graduate of the University of Istanbul (classical letters), polyglot (French, German, Turkish, Ladino, Greek and classical Latin). Ordained…

American rabbi

Polish Yiddish and Hebrew writer, one of the three classic authors of Yiddish literature. His Hasidic and neo-Romantic tales deeply marked Jewish culture.

Polish politician

Director of Hebrew studies in Algiers then Chief Rabbi of Dijon. Author of a manual of religious studies (1944), an introduction to the Bible, and « Le Judaïsme : doctrine et principes » (1951).

Head of Zionist activity in northern Tunisia and founder of the Zionist association of Cap Bon, he was delegate of Tunisia to the 1920 Zionist Congress. During the German occupation, he translated…

Israeli-American businessman

American rabbi

Born Sándor Schwartz in Sanislău. Settled in Palestine in 1933, professor at the Hebrew University, major specialist in the Zohar, Sabbatarianism and ethical and Kabbalistic literature. Bialik Prize…

Lithuanian cyclist

Turkish rabbi

French entrepreneur, founder of the Partouche group

American rabbi

Shoah survivor born in Płock (Poland), founder and president of the American Society for Yad Vashem, Greater Boston Holocaust Survivor Center, activist in Holocaust education until his death at age…

Rabbi, 20th century. Mentioned in 5690 of the Hebrew calendar (1930). Listed in Malkhei Rabbanan (Yosef Ben Naim, 1931), f. 79-3.

Israeli philosopher

One of the three members of the steering committee of Hashomer (with Israel Shochat and Mendel Portugali). Central figure in the defense of the first Jewish settlements in Galilee. At his death in…

Israeli Rabbi (1935-1997)

Yiddish novelist, elder brother of Isaac Bashevis Singer, author of The Brothers Ashkenazi and Yoshe Kalb. He was a major figure of the modern Yiddish novel.

Israeli Rebbe

Israeli poet born in Bulgaria, Israel Prize 2005.

Israeli rabbi

American philosopher

One of the founding fathers of modern documentary photography in Israel. He bequeathed his collection to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem; the archives 'Israel Zafrir Photographer' comprise…

British writer and publicist, author of Children of the Ghetto, who popularized the expression "melting pot." Leader of the Jewish territorialist movement.

Dramatist at the State Yiddish Theater of Romania, historian of Yiddish theater.

Founder-organizer of Israeli intelligence, he headed the Shin Bet and then the Mossad (including the operation to capture Eichmann). He left a written legacy, including an account of this operation…

Hungarian theologian, chief rabbi, university lecturer (1922–2015)

Hungarian classical scholar and historian (1913–1984)

Classical violinist (1903-1920)

Israeli football player

Yiddish editor, critic and essayist, editor of « Yidishe Kultur ».

Born Emerich Tobiás in Czechoslovakia in 1923, Jewish. Engineer and inventor (notably a steerable cardiac catheter), he is best known as the author of works on consciousness and cosmology, including…

Rabbi of the Naltchik community in the 1910s until his death in 1918. Minimal biographical information in the source; no written work is attributed to him.

Professor affiliated with the Department of Community Mental Health at the University of Haifa and member of the WHO expert panel on mental health. He directed and co-authored several reference works…

Born in Czernowitz (Bukovina, then Austria-Hungary), son of a tailor, he became one of the greatest popular poets in Yiddish. He published his first collection « Shtern afn dakh » (Stars on the Roof)…

Hungarian conductor and stage director

Canadian director

American writer

American investor and hedge fund manager, son of philanthropists Hermann and Ursula Merkin who endowed Yeshiva University chairs and Merkin Concert Hall. Note: his fund's exposure to the Madoff fraud…

Israeli-American Reconstructionist rabbi

songwriter

American comedian, actor, producer and screenwriter (1928-2021)

Rabbi, theologian (1911-1986)

Born in Łódź (Poland) in a Jewish family emigrated to England. Doctorate in mathematics from Cambridge, he worked for the National Coal Board then became resident fellow of the Salk Institute (San…

Israeli mathematician born in Kherson, immigrated to Palestine in 1912. Doctorate from Göttingen (1929) under the direction of Emmy Noether; professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.…

Born in Morocco, he practiced in Meknès where he directed the Ozar HaTorah school, then founded some forty years ago the consistorial community of Montrouge (Hauts-de-Seine) and made it prosper.…

American rabbi

Born in 1934 in Philadelphia in a Jewish family. Professor emeritus of philosophy at San Francisco State University (nearly 50 years of teaching). Author of about twenty books on philosophy, religion…

American scholar of Judaism and Rabbinic literature (1932–2016)

American rabbi

Dutch rabbi (1914-1976)

German sociologist

French filmmaker born in 1953 in a Jewish family from Constantine, who left for Marseille in 1962. Director of documentaries on Jewish memory and artistic life in Algeria, including « Reinette…

British-Czech textile designer (1903–1986)

Agrégée in classical letters and doctorate holder in letters, specialist in the drawings of Franz Kafka (thesis in semiology, 1998). She devoted part of her work to Judeo-Algerian heritage, notably…

Retired senior lecturer in classical literature, literary and music critic, jazz critic at Jazz Magazine and jazz historian at the University of Toulouse-Le Mirail. Author of several works on…

Born in Algiers on November 1, 1943 in a Jewish family, with his twin brother Bernard, he settled in Paris in 1956. Advisor to François Mitterrand and then first president of the EBRD, he is the…

French philosopher born in Algeria, founder of deconstruction, one of the most influential thinkers of his time. From a Jewish family of Algiers.

Jewish film producer and art collector born in Russia in 1909 who emigrated to Mexico, later dying in 1986; co-founder with his wife Natasha of the internationally renowned Gelman art collection now…

Born in Alexandria into a Jewish family, settled in France in 1954. Psychiatrist then psychoanalyst (Freudian School, noticed by Lacan), co-founder of the Freudian Circle. President of the…

Belgian film scholar

French rabbi

French rabbi

Jadwiga Zak était une marchande d'art juive parisienne dont l'œuvre « Jeune femme au puits » (1886) de Renoir fut spoliée pendant l'Occupation par l'organisation d'achat du marché noir « Otto »,…

Brazilian architect, urban planner and politician (1937-2021)

American actress and singer

American rabbi and theologian (1925-1991)

Lecturer in Iranian Studies at the University of California at Berkeley (1970–2020), PhD in Middle Eastern Studies and Persian Literature (Berkeley, 1984). She has published on the history and…

Major American actor (role of Sonny Corleone in The Godfather). Son of German Jewish immigrants; his father Arthur Caan (1909–1986), a butcher, notably sold kosher meat.

president of the World Bank

American actor

Czech statesman

Historian born in Warsaw to a Jewish father who survived the Shoah (from Krakow). Professor at the University of Ottawa, specialist in the Shoah in Poland and Judeo-Polish relations under the…

American writer

South African actress

Psychoanalyst, president of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society; reformulation of the ego ideal.

Dutch Holocaust survivor (1916–2003)

Polish pediatrician, writer, and educator, director of a Jewish orphanage in Warsaw. He refused to be separated from his children and was deported with them to Treblinka.

American violinist of Lithuanian origin, considered one of the greatest of all time. A child prodigy, he left a lasting mark on the art of the violin.

British actor

Austrian writer

Born Jean Daniel Bensaïd in Blida, son of Jules Bensaïd. Resistant wounded during the Bizerte campaign. Editor-in-chief of L'Express (1955-1963) then founder and director of Nouvel Observateur (from…

heroic French Air Force pilot during the Second World War, and a key subject in the non-fiction literary work Flight to Arras (Pilote de guerre) written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

French rabbi

Historian, HDR at the Group Societies, Religions, Secularities (GSRL, CNRS-EPHE-PSL). Specialist in the history of Jews in metropolitan France and Algeria from the interwar years to the 1950s. Author…

French rabbi

French rabbi

Swiss writer and literary theorist

Born in Oran in a Jewish family, he studied medicine in Paris then converted to Catholicism in 1958, entered the Benedictines (1961), was ordained priest (1967), and participated in the…

French journalist, essayist and press magnate

Born in the casbah of Constantine in a Berber Jewish family, he came to Paris in 1930 to study philosophy. He began painting in 1941; from 1945 he developed lyrical abstraction influenced by the…

Born in Strasbourg on May 27, 1925, died in Paris on August 20, 1988, related to Raymond Aron. Agrégé in philosophy (1953), director of studies at EHESS, he founded the cultural history of food in…

Born in Oran, alumnus of the École Normale, doctoral thesis under the direction of Henri Cartan. He created correspondence analysis and founded the French school of data analysis, with applications…

Born in Castiglione (Algeria) into a Jewish family from Algeria that came to France in 1962. Actor and screenwriter, he formed with Agnès Jaoui a writing duo rewarded with several César Awards for…

Born in Alexandria on December 24, 1902, into the aristocracy of the Jewish community of Egypt (son of Baron Félix de Menasce, head of the Jewish community of Alexandria). A polyglot, he became a…

French Resistance fighter, Companion of the Liberation

Israeli rabbi

Historian of modern Judaism, long-serving president of Brandeis University. He completed his secondary education in Essen (Germany). Author, coauthor, or editor of more than 30 books, including The…

United States admiral (1939–1996)

Co-founder of Schottenstein Stores Corp., son of a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant. Major donor to Jewish institutions (Columbus Torah Academy, Aish HaTorah). He committed to financing the entire…

American actor

Born Józef Nikodem Lewinkopf in 1933 in Poland, in a Jewish family. He survived the Shoah hidden by Polish villagers and emigrated to the United States in 1957. Author of the novels The Painted Bird…

Dutch singer

American actress

American rabbi

Israeli rabbi

American rabbi

American television host, comedian, author and actress (1933-2014)

French comic book author and filmmaker (creator of the « Rabbin's Cat »), whose father André Sfar was a Sephardic Jew from Algeria; Sfar is a documented spelling variant of Safar. Confirmed via…

Australian politician

American actor

American photographer (1911-2006)

Member of the Relief and Rescue Committee (Va'adat Ezra ve-Hatzala) of Budapest. In April 1944, he was entrusted by Adolf Eichmann with negotiating the « blood for goods » deal (Blut gegen Waren)…

American sports executive

punk-rock singer

American journalist

American computer scientist

British rabbi and theologian

Hungarian-American mathematician, one of the most universal minds of the twentieth century, pioneer of computer science, game theory and quantum mechanics. He took part in the Manhattan Project.

French singer

white South African musician and anti-apartheid icon

American actor

Swiss Jew who arrived in England as a child. De facto editor of the weekly Tribune (1942), for 15 years editor of the Jewish Observer and Middle East Review and Middle East correspondent of the…

American film producer

American television host, comedian and satirist

American virologist, inventor of the first effective vaccine against poliomyelitis. He refused to patent his discovery in order to make it accessible to all.

Born in 1959 in Tokyo in a German Jewish family that fled Nazism; great-great-grandson of Joseph Breuer and descendant of Samson Raphael Hirsch. Executive Director of the office of Chief Rabbi…

American writer and rabbi (1942-2012)

Chilean politician

Argentine politician

Argentine talmud researcher

Born in Fès and established in France, doctorate in Hebrew studies (Paris 8, 1987), he directed the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at INALCO. Specialist in Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic literature…

Lithuanian Jewish resistance leader (1913-1943), head of the Betar youth movement in Lithuania and deputy commander of the Vilna Ghetto's FPO underground partisan organization against the Germans.

British rabbi

Austrian rabbi (1901–1994)

From a Syrian Jewish family. With his brothers Stanley and Kenneth, he created music distribution in the 1970s (Caytronics), co-founded Salsoul Records then GoodTimes Entertainment, and developed New…

rabbi (1921–1990)

Notable of the Jewish community of Beirut, he supervised (with Ezra Benjamin) the construction in 1925 of the great synagogue Maghen Abraham, an emblematic building in the Jewish quarter of Wadi Abou…

Austrian archaeologist

A great figure of American modern Orthodoxy, philosopher and Talmudist, long a teacher at Yeshiva University. Author of Halakhic Man.

Researcher who worked on the life and work of Elissa Rhaïs; author of "Élissa or the Mystery of a Writing", devoted to the Algerian Jewish Boumendil family and the question of attribution of Elissa…

Russian-American poet, Nobel Prize in Literature 1987, exiled from the Soviet Union after a trial for "parasitism." He became Poet Laureate of the United States.

Scholar specializing in Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Berber languages and poetry from Morocco and North Africa. Author of numerous works on Judeo-Arabic poetry, Moroccan piyyutim, and Judeo-Moroccan…

Born in Marrakech in 1938, son of Yaacob. Lawyer at the Paris Court, former student of Yeshiva College Montefiore (Ramsgate). Founding President of the Association of Natives of Marrakech in France.…

Member of the Bene Israel community, prolific playwright and lyricist writing in Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi and Urdu (also knowing Hebrew and English). He signs the scenario, dialogue and songs of «…

Born in Tunis in 1944, from Sephardic Judaism, he served as Grand Rabbi of France for three consecutive terms (January 1988 – December 2008), spiritual guide of the largest Jewish community in Europe.

Decisor and head of the orthodox community of the old Yishuv in Jerusalem, opposed to secular Zionism. He led the Edah HaHaredit.

American businessman

Historian and literary critic, professor at the Hebrew University, author of studies on the Second Temple and on modern Hebrew literature. He was a candidate for the presidency of Israel in 1949.

American rabbi

Merchant, resistance fighter (partisan), then scholar, regarded as the principal Jewish intellectual of Greece after the Second World War. President of the Jewish Council of Ioannina (1945) and…

Professor in the department of ancient Semitic languages at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specialist in West-Semitic epigraphy and paleography (Aramaic, Phoenician, paleo-Hebrew). Elected to…

Emeritus professor of medieval and modern Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specialist in the social and intellectual history of Sephardic and Oriental Jews, particularly of the…

Austrian novelist and journalist, author of The Radetzky March, a nostalgic chronicler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He died in exile in Paris.

Polish partisan