Monday, April 27, 2009

40 PEOPLE YOU PROBABLY DIDN'T KNOW WERE JEWISH

In scanning through the Wikipedia online encyclopedia, I have encountered lists of almost every imaginable thing. One that I found intriguing was a list of famous people who are Jewish. While most on the list are people everybody knows are Jewish like Sammy Davis Jr. (but not Sammy Davis Sr.) or Golda Meir or Sen. Joe Lieberman. My focus is on people who are not so obvious. Many of the following are converts and others have one Jewish parent, and many may be non-observant, and some are deceased, but all are documented with footnotes on their Wikipedia sites.

This list is not intended to further the pernicious aims of anti-Semites who assert that Jews are attempting to control the world, but rather to illustrate that the Jews, a small minority, have pretty much assimilated in American society.

Campbell Brown, CNN anchor, Converted when she married Republican consultant, Daniel Senor.

Kate Capshaw, actress. Converted when she married moviemaker Steven Spielberg.

Nell Carter, singer, actress. Converted.

Connie Chung, news anchor. Converted when she married Maury Povich.

Jim Croce, singer, songwriter. Converted.

Soleil Moon Frye, actress (Punky Brewster).

Mary Hart, TV personality (Entertainment Tonight). Converted, married to producer Bert Sugarman.

Carolyn Jones, actress. (Addams Family). Converted.

Marilyn Monroe, actress. Converted when she married playwright Arthur Miller.

Elizabeth Taylor, actress. Converted when she married producer Michael Todd.

Ivanka Trump, TV personality and daughter of non-Jewish Donald Trump. Converting.

Ike Turner, singer and alleged former husband of Tina Turner. (He always asserted that they were not legally married.) Converted.

Jackie Wilson, R & B Singer. Converted.

Dara Torres, Olympic swimmer. Converted although father Edward Torres was Jewish.

Bob Dylan, singer, songwriter.

Diane von Furstenberg, fashion designer.

Camille Pissarro, French Impressionist painter.

Saatchi & Saatchi, British advertising agency.

Vidal Sassoon, hair stylist.

Diego Velasquez, Spanish painter. Family was Jewish conversos during Inquisition.

Jamie Lee Curtis, actress. Daughter of Tony Curtis, f/k/a Bernard Schwartz.

Kate Hudson, actress. Daughter of actress Goldie Hawn.

Leonard Nimoy, actor. (Star Trek).

River Phoenix and Joaquin Phoenix, actors. Mother is Jewish.

Ayn Rand, f/k/a Alisa Rosenbaum, author.

Scarlett Johansson, actress. Mother is Jewish.

Jennifer Connelly, actress. Mother is Jewish and attended the Yeshiva.

Gwyneth Paltrow, actress. Father, Bruce Paltrow is Jewish.

Paula Abdul, actress and singer. Father, Harry Abdul is a Syrian Jew, raised in Brazil. Mother is also Jewish.

Patricia Arquette, actress. Mother is Jewish, Father is a convert to Islam.

Robert Downey Jr., actor. Father, Robert Sr., is half Jewish.

Daryl Hannah, actress.

Sean Penn, actor. An agnostic, although his father Leo Penn is Jewish.

Katie Couric, TV anchor. Mother is Jewish, but she was raised Presbyterian.

Harrison Ford, actor. Mother is Jewish.

Whoopi Goldberg, f/k/a Caryn Johnson, actress, comedian. Mother is Jewish.

Arlo Guthrie, folk singer and son of legendary Woody Guthrie. His Bar Mitzvah tutor was activist Rabbi Meir Kahane who founded the Jewish Defense League, moved to Israel, served in the Knesset there, and was later assassinated.

You may be dismayed to learn that Mel Gibson is not on the list, and I'm fairly certain that he is not Jewish. Nor is Sen. John Kerry, whose paternal grandparents from Austria, the Kohns, converted to Catholicism in 1901. Sen. Kerry's brother, Cameron, however, is Jewish.

Madonna is not Jewish although she is a serious student of Jewish Kabbalah and has donated large sums of money to build a Kabbalah school for children.

On the sports front, 3 players in last year's Baseball All-Star Game are Jewish. The American League featured Red Sox first baseman, Kevin Youkilis and Rangers second baseman, Ian Kinsler. The National League had Brewers' outfielder Ryan Braun. In football, the Chicago Bears have at least two, new quarterback Jay Cutler and kicker Robbie Gould.

That's enough information overload for today!

KENNETH SUSKIN P.S. I apologize--I confused Jay Cutler with another quarterback, Jay Fiedler who is Jewish. Also, despite her periodic remarks that she is half Jewish and half Catholic, Whoopi Goldberg is NOT Jewish. She took the name Goldberg, claiming that her mother was Jewish--her grandmother's name was Rachel Freedman, which sounds like a Jewish name, but in fact is not.

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17 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

i had no idea some of these people were Jewish. learn something new each day

March 13, 2010 at 8:23 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

ITS NOTHIN WRONG OF BEING JEWISH IS IT.IS THE HUMAN BEING INSIDE U WHO DETERMINES WHO U REALY ARE.THEN
YOU SHOULD DECIDE FOR YOURSELF.
AUTHOR UNKNOWN

January 10, 2011 at 12:40 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thomas Jefferson is Jewish via DNA.
Kenneth Vivian Thimann is part Jewish due to his Jewish father Israel Felix Thimann (Israel became a Christian before Kenneth was born.)
Frederick Madison Roberts is Jewish by Jefferson's DNA.

April 12, 2011 at 1:23 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i always just assume everybody who is famous is jewish, and feign surprise when i find out they're not...

July 25, 2011 at 10:43 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thomas Jefferson isnt Jewish, his mothers maiden name was Randal, but fast forward in the family tree to the 1960's when his great great grand daughter or neice married a Jewish man, and converted...so yes, his off spring is Jewish.

March 31, 2012 at 6:50 AM  
Anonymous Addrienne Gusoff said...

Whoopi Goldberg is not Jewish. Not at all. No Jewish blood anywhere. (She sometimes says her mother is Jewish, but that's just wishful thinking on her part)

And these converts to Judaism...they may be PRACTICING Jews, but they are not culturally or genetically Jewish. It's not as if Marilyn Monroe or Liz Taylor grew up speaking Yiddish at home!

-Adrienne Gusoff
author of Dirty Yiddish Slang, which you should buy immediately because it's really funny!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1612430562

January 15, 2013 at 3:48 PM  
Blogger kensuskinreport said...

I couldn't verify that Jay Cutler is Jewish, and I apparently confused him with another quarterback Jay Fiedler who is Jewish.

Regarding Whoopi Goldberg, when she took the name "Goldberg" she claimed to be half Jewish and half Catholic. Her grandmother's name was Rachel Freedman; she was Black, but not Jewish. Apparently Wikipedia corrected its entry also.

January 21, 2013 at 9:36 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Addrienne! Judaism is a religion - nothing to do with race
(but to anonymous, there is not much evidence that most Ashkenazim came from the Khazars - the Khazars were a very small group, they joined the Ashkenazim but are not the whole of them)

September 12, 2013 at 11:43 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

There are no famost holywood actors who are not jewish!!! Few Exceptions are clint eastwood, arnold schwarzeneger and some others, who helped to earn the fortune for their empire. And that is the fact.

December 30, 2013 at 4:13 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Exactly anonymous (December 30, 2013) Everyone in Hollywood IS Jewish!!! There are too many Jews for my liking!!! In Hollywood and every other field for that matter!

June 30, 2014 at 11:25 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

According to Judaism, a person is Jewish if their mother is Jewish or if they convert. People with a Jewish father are not considered to be Jewish.

August 11, 2014 at 7:15 PM  
Anonymous Gary Anderson said...

Inner Kabbalah is satanic, and is involved in an eternal right of ISrael which goes past the Torah. The Torah prophets say that the New Zion would be established by Messiah, not by atheistic Zionists with the same general goal, world domination, according to Israel Shahak, that Kabbalah also seeks. Clearly, Ben-Gurion had that atheistic world vision, gnostic in scope.

September 15, 2014 at 1:45 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

The man's religion is his own business.

September 23, 2014 at 12:36 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

For future reference:
Actors of fully Jewish background: -Logan Lerman, Natalie Portman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Mila Kunis, Bar Refaeli, James Wolk, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Julian Morris, Adam Brody, Esti Ginzburg, Kat Dennings, Gabriel Macht, Erin Heatherton, Odeya Rush, Anton Yelchin, Paul Rudd, Scott Mechlowicz, Lisa Kudrow, Lizzy Caplan, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Gal Gadot, Debra Messing, Robert Kazinsky, Melanie Laurent, Shiri Appleby, Justin Bartha, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Margarita Levieva, Elizabeth Berkley, Halston Sage, Seth Gabel, Skylar Astin, Mia Kirshner, Alden Ehrenreich, Eric Balfour, Jason Isaacs, Jon Bernthal.

Actors with Jewish mothers and non-Jewish fathers -Jake Gyllenhaal, Dave Franco, James Franco, Scarlett Johansson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Daniel Radcliffe, Alison Brie, Eva Green, Emmy Rossum, Rashida Jones, Jennifer Connelly, Nora Arnezeder, Goldie Hawn, Ginnifer Goodwin, Amanda Peet, Eric Dane, Jeremy Jordan, Joel Kinnaman, Ben Barnes, Patricia Arquette, Kyra Sedgwick, Dave Annable.

Actors with Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers, who themselves were either raised as Jews and/or identify as Jews: -Andrew Garfield, Ezra Miller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Alexa Davalos, Nat Wolff, Nicola Peltz, James Maslow, Josh Bowman, Winona Ryder, Ben Foster, Nikki Reed, Zac Efron, Jonathan Keltz.

Oh, and Ansel Elgort’s father is Jewish, though I don’t know how Ansel was raised.

Actors with one Jewish-born parent and one parent who converted to Judaism -Dianna Agron, Sara Paxton (whose father converted, not her mother), Alicia Silverstone, Jamie-Lynn Sigler.

January 11, 2015 at 3:45 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Arlo Guthrie's mother was Jewish, but he converted to Catholicism and is now a practicing Christian.

February 19, 2015 at 4:23 AM  
Blogger iconoclast said...

"It is ridiculous to call all quarter or half Jewish person as Jewish."

Antisemites have always done exactly that just like racists have done with blacks. A quarter or less of Jewish blood was enough to make you a victim of a pogrom or a holocaust throughout history. Even though Obama is half-white, he'll forever remain exclusively black for coneheads.

February 25, 2016 at 4:26 PM  
Blogger king davif said...

Dna is forever Jewish if you convert Outside of Judaism you be come Christian your birthright is sold like selling your soul to hasatan

August 17, 2016 at 8:10 PM  

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