XXth century CE

American political activist (1901-1956)

Born in Berlin in 1923 to Jewish parents, he fled Nazi Germany in 1936. Professor of computer science at MIT, he created ELIZA in 1966, one of the first conversational agents. He later became a major…

American psychiatrist

historien juif allemand, survivant de la Shoah

Professor emeritus of Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, member of the Academy of the Hebrew Language. Specialist in medieval Hebrew poetry (piyyut) from Byzantine Palestine to…

governor of Hawaii

American-Israeli Talmudist (doctorate in Talmud from Bar-Ilan), co-founder of the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem. Known for his commentary on the Haggada and for the Mishnah Yomit / Daf Shevui…

Chief Minister of Gibraltar (1915-1997)

American rabbi

American congregational reform Rabbi and scholarly writer

French rabbi, religious programme producer

Hungarian rabbi

Rabbi and notary of Tangiers, long-time rabbinical teacher. After the establishment of the Tangiers Statute, he was appointed in 1924 as one of three judges on the city's rabbinical court, then…

American attorney and civic leader (1929-2026), former New York City Deputy Mayor, who as court-appointed Special Master designed the allocation of the $1.25 billion Swiss Banks Holocaust restitution…

American rabbi

Yiddish poet and essayist, later figure of the introspectivists In Zikh.

Israeli computer scientist

Physiologist, discovered cryoprecipitation, a key treatment for hemophilia.

Israeli novelist and short-story writer.

American fashion designer (1921-2018)

Archaeologist, led excavations of the Canaanite site of Ai (Et-Tell).

Israeli sociologist, professor of medical sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Louis and Pearl Rose chair, 1991). Doctorate from Radcliffe/Harvard (1955), immigrated to Israel in 1949.…

Born in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, from an Alsatian family settled in Morocco (family enterprise founded in Tangier in 1888 by his grandfather Benjamin Braunschvig). Vice-president of the Alliance…

American director

rabbi and liturgist; son of Henry and Lena Lipman Harlow

Painter born in 1903 in Monastir (Tunisia), trained at the Grande Chaumière Academy in Paris (1926), considered a leading figure of Tunisian painters of the School of Paris; landscapes of Tunisia…

Born in Béchar in 1907, journalist at Oran Matin from 1934 (political-social column under various pseudonyms). Poet, he published Tears and Smiles (1928), At the Rhythm of My Heart (1930) and Sloping…

Second woman ordained as rabbi in the United Kingdom and first to lead a synagogue (South London Liberal Synagogue, 1977-1989), she taught for twenty years at Leo Baeck College. Made a life peer in…

American economist

German-British rabbi (1922-2001)

Norwegian concentration camp survivor

American dancer

Born around 1937 in a Jewish family of Łódź, as a child he knew the Łódź ghetto and then the camps of Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen; his mother was murdered in the Holocaust, his father survived.…

German holocaust survivor

Professor of human geography at Tel-Aviv University, director of the Environmental Simulation Laboratory. Author of about a hundred articles and twenty scientific books on complexity, spatial…

Israeli politician

Director of a school for Mountain Jews in Naltchik in 1925. In 1923, he prepared and published in Naltchik a primer (alphabet book) in the language of the Mountain Jews (Judeo-Tat), in Hebrew…

American labor leader (1953-2021)

Chilean journalist

Austrian-American neuropsychologist and neurosurgeon known for holonomic brain theory research at Yale and Stanford; from the Pribram family of Bohemia/Prague documented as Jewish (relative Alfred…

American filmmaker

film set decorator

Rabbi of Djerba, author of Siftei Renanot, a commentary on the Psalms.

American singer, songwriter, novelist, columnist and politician

Dutch writer

Computer scientist, one of the first programmers; pioneer of numerical weather prediction.

German-Jewish architect born in Frankfurt an der Oder. He designed the country house of Albert Einstein in Caputh. Emigrated to the United States in 1941 to flee the Nazis (his mother, a brother and…

Israeli golfer

Born in Marosvásárhely (Târgu Mureș) in 1929 in a Jewish family of Transylvania, he was deported in 1944 (his mother and sister perished at Auschwitz) and survived. Becoming a photojournalist, he…

Italian writer and teacher (1907–2000)

Brazilian musician

philosopher and writer

American financial executive

American journalist, radio and television host and actor (1933–2021)

Hungarian local politician, teacher and historian (1981-2025)

Hungarian mathematician of Jewish descent, professor at Szeged. Regarded as the founder of mathematical logic and theoretical computer science in Hungary; he notably established the decidability of…

Hungarian politician

British rabbi, former chief rabbi of the Movement for Reform Judaism in the United Kingdom

American social worker (1903-1997)

American political figure

Colombian historian and transgender rights activist

Former student of the École Normale Supérieure, Harvard graduate, attorney at the bars of Paris and New York. Influential essayist on major contemporary political and economic issues; his work Law…

Born in Paris to a Jewish family of Alsatian origin with a strong scientific culture (his great-uncle was mathematician Jacques Hadamard, his father-in-law Paul Lévy, his uncle the pediatrician…

French writer born in Nice in 1962, of Jewish origin; first a radiologist physician, he became a novelist. Author of successful historical novels about European Jewish figures (Stefan Zweig, Eduard…

American author of literary non-fiction, staff writer at The New Yorker from 1981 to 2002, winner of two George Polk Awards and the Lannan Literary Award. His book Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder was…

Born in 1918 in Slavuta (Ukraine) in a Jewish family (his father worked for the railroad); he moved to Moscow in 1932 and became foreman at the First Watch Factory. He enlisted as a volunteer on June…

Hebrew poetess, translator, and scholar, a central figure of Israeli literature. She founded the department of comparative literature at the Hebrew University.

American rabbi

British rabbi

Polish rabbi

Egyptian actor and singer (1918–1995)

American actor

German rabbi

German rabbi

Rabbi and thinker born in Oran, trained in kabbalah, major intellectual figure of French Judaism.

Physician born in Tangiers, first Moroccan admitted to the residency of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris. First Moroccan of Jewish faith appointed minister after independence: minister of Posts and…

French socialist statesman, the first Jewish president of the Council, leader of the Popular Front in 1936. Deported by the Nazis, he survived Buchenwald.

British political figure

American advocate of interfaith dialogue (1930–2009)

American physicist born in New York to Jewish parents who emigrated from Ukraine (Kiev, Odessa). Nobel Prize in Physics 1988 (with Schwartz and Steinberger) for the discovery of the muon neutrino…

Born in Chicago in 1939 in a Yiddish-speaking Jewish household. Physician and biochemist by training, emeritus professor at the University of Chicago, he chaired the President's Council on Bioethics…

American rabbi

American conductor and composer, director of the New York Philharmonic, author of West Side Story. He was a world-renowned music educator.

Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet, novelist, and painter

American Jewish writer and political scientist (1934-2014), founder of Moment Magazine and of the Jewish anti-hunger organization MAZON, an influential voice in American Jewish public life.

American businessman

American academic, holder of the Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick Chair of Judaic Civilization at Creighton, longtime contributor to Biblical Archaeology Review. Major figure in Septuagint studies…

American military officer

American actor and filmmaker

American economist of Polish Jewish origin (family fleeing Poland during the First World War). Law degree from the University of Warsaw (1938), he emigrated to the United States. Pioneer of mechanism…

Russian politician

Ukrainian-American businessman

Soviet Jewish filmmaker and screenwriter, co-founder with Grigori Kozintsev of the "Factory of the Eccentric Actor" (FEKS) collective and co-director of the "Maxim" trilogy; violently attacked by…

Austrian priest (1912–1992)

British rabbi

American politician

Scholar and writer of Iraqi Jewish origin (Baghdad), professor of Hebrew literature at UCLA. He has notably studied the contribution of Iraqi Jews to Hebrew literature in Israel.

Soviet physicist

Russian theatre director (1950-2021)

Born in 1919 in Bogushevsk (Belarus). Squadron leader of night bombers during the German-Soviet War; in 1943, he made 24 propaganda flights from his plane over Paulus's encircled troops at…

Soviet psychologist, founder of cultural-historical psychology, whose theory of development left a lasting mark on pedagogy. He died young of tuberculosis.

Rabbi of Salé, 20th century. Died in 5661 of the Hebrew era (1901). Son of Shlomo. Listed in Malkhei Rabbanan (Yosef Ben Naim, 1931), f. 80-3.

Israeli statesman, the third Prime Minister of Israel, in office during the Six-Day War. He worked to develop the country's water resources and agriculture.

American rabbi

Dutch rabbi

Yiddish poet from Vilno, member of the Yung Vilne group, died in Soviet exile.

American-Mexican singer

Romanian Israeli Jewish actress

Israeli author and journalist

Israeli political figure

Australian judge and Governor of Victoria

Canadian actress

American photographer

British Reform rabbi, journalist and broadcaster (1930–2016)

Cofounder of the Research Centre on Jews in English-Speaking Countries (University Paris-X) and author of several works on the history of ideas in 17th-century England, including 'Zion and Albion:…

American academic

Austrian physicist, co-discoverer of nuclear fission, which she interpreted theoretically. A refugee from Nazism, she refused to take part in the making of the bomb.

American actor

fashion designer (1910-1997)

Venezuelan politician

Born in France to American parents of Ukrainian Jewish origin. Child prodigy, he conducted major orchestras (Cleveland, Orchestre National de France, Pittsburgh, Bavarian Radio, Munich, New York…

American philanthropist

Talmudist and folklorist, author of The Legends of the Jews, a vast compilation of aggadot. He was a major figure of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

British historian and rabbi

British Jewish scholar (1920-2006)

Estonian-born American architect, one of the most influential architects of the 20th century (Kimbell Art Museum, Salk Institute), born to a Jewish family; his family adopted the surname Kahn after…

Eldest son of a Jewish musical family (Jacques Tas and Frieda Herzberg), he was one of the first professional psychoanalysts in the Netherlands. Deported to Westerbork then Bergen-Belsen, he kept a…

Tunisian singer

American poet, Nobel laureate in Literature

Born in Tunis in 1936, director of studies at EHESS, historian of premodern the Maghreb and Mediterranean Islam, as well as of Jewish memory in Tunisia. Her work renewed social and anthropological…

British painter and engraver (1922-2011)

Of Sephardic roots from the Middle East and Manchester, trained at Balliol College (Oxford). Author of works of historical popularization, including « Sunlight and Shadow: The Jewish Experience of…

Born on April 5, 1921 in Bucharest (Romania), merchant. Took refuge in the Italian occupation zone in 1943; his family was threatened after the German invasion of September 1943. A young resister,…

Son of Léon Halévy (brother of Fromental), thus nephew of the composer. Librettist of numerous French operas, including Bizet's Carmen and Jacques Offenbach's Orphée aux enfers.

Austrian philosopher, one of the most influential of the 20th century, author of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Of Jewish ancestry, he taught at Cambridge.

American journalist

American rapper

Hungarian sculptor

Author, politician and Moroccan real estate consultant, born into a Jewish family of Casablanca. First Jewish woman candidate in legislative elections in Morocco (2007, heading the Social Center…

Counted among the great sages of Djerba, he later settled as a rabbi in Tiberias, where he died at age 65 and was buried in the old cemetery. He is the author of the work « Ner Tamid », a commentary…

Belgian translator

American entrepreneur (1928-2014)

American rabbi and writer

Yiddish poetess born in Galicia, widely read in America.

One of the four roshei yeshiva of Beth Medrash Govoha (Lakewood); grandson of Aharon Kotler.

German-language actor, described by the German Wikipedia as « deutschsprachiger Schauspieler jüdischer Herkunft » (German-speaking actor of Jewish origin).

American actor and opera singer

Polish-Jewish jurist and diplomat who served as judge and later President of the International Court of Justice from 1967 to 1993; his family who remained in Poland were murdered in the Holocaust.

Israeli footballer

Uruguayan historian

French historian, co-founder of the Annales school, a resistance fighter shot by the Gestapo. Author of The Royal Touch and Strange Defeat.

pop-rock singer and guitarist (1947-1977)

French painter of Russian origin, one of the great masters of modern art, whose work is imbued with the imagery of the shtetl. Creator of famous stained glass windows and ceilings.

American rabbi

Rabbi of the Bonai Shalom congregation in Boulder (Colorado) since 2004, native of London. He writes Torah columns for My Jewish Learning and the American Jewish World Service, and was cited by the…

philosopher, writer and French rabbi

Marcel Bénabou, born in 1939 in Meknès, is a writer and historian, professor of Roman history specializing in ancient North Africa. Member of the Oulipo since 1969, he is its « permanently…

Franco-Tunisian guitarist born in Sousse, pioneer of picking in France, died in the crash of TWA Flight 800 in 1996 and buried in the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

French actor and mime

Brazilian musician

American rabbi, teacher and spiritual leader

Argentine Jewish jurist, law professor at the university, author of several legal works, founder and first president of an Argentine legal society, honorary president of the United Israel Appeal;…

Member of the ancient Zinati family, one of three priestly families (kohanim) present in Peki'in for millennia. For a long time the only Jewess in the village, she tended the ancient synagogue («…

Margarete Wedell, née Glogauer le 30 mars 1892 à Berlin, résidait au Hohenzollerndamm 111 dans le quartier de Wilmersdorf. Déportée le 25 janvier 1942 depuis la gare de marchandises de Berlin-Moabit…

Marģers Vestermanis, born on September 18, 1925 in Riga in a German-speaking Latvian Jewish family, died on July 30, 2026 in Riga at the age of one hundred. Survivor of the Riga ghetto, the camps of…

British actress

Psychoanalyst, theorist of the 'crypt' and the phantom with Nicolas Abraham.

Polish writer

German resistance fighter against Nazism

French Jewish historian and educator

Czech poet and literature historian (1936–2020)

American lyricist

Uruguayan mathematician

producteur de télévision américain (1915–1992)

Soviet Jewish mathematician, one of the great figures of the Soviet school of functional analysis. In the 1930s he created a functional analysis center at Odessa University. His career was hampered…

American painter of Latvian origin, a major figure of Abstract Expressionism and "color field painting." His large meditative canvases are world-renowned.

American rabbi, founder of the Jewish Broadcasting Service and the first Russian-language channel produced in the United States (RTN). He hosted the series of interviews L'Chayim and produced Jewish…

Canadian biologist, HIV specialist

American entrepreneur

Markovics Gyula, born January 22, 1926, in Sátoraljaújhely (northeast Hungary), died in early August 2026 in his one hundred first year; the regional press designated him as the last survivor of the…

German textile artist, Bauhaus student

American rabbi

American physicist born into a Jewish family, specialist in plasma physics and controlled thermonuclear fusion. He lent his name to the "Rosenbluth formula" (electron diffusion) and co-signed in 1953…

Canadian jurist

Hungarian pianist and music pedagogue

Hungarian writer

Austrian activist and zoologist

Philosopher of dialogue, author of I and Thou, and a great disseminator of Hasidic tales. He taught in Frankfurt and then at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

American lawyer

British playwright, theatre critic, scholar (1918-2002)

American businessman

American actor (1928–2017)

financial journalist

classical scholar

American lawyer, researcher, writer, and businessperson

American businessman (1934–2017)

American television news reporter (1921-2007)