Celebrities you didn’t realize were Jewish

Nothing good will come of this.

Is he a (looks both ways and whispers) a Jew?

Alicia Silverstone, Cary Grant

R3 Alicia is a fake one: Her father was born to a Jewish family and her mother converted to Conservative Judaism before marriage.

Lens is Jew, wtf?!

Scarlett is also shocking to me. She doesn't... lean into it, does she? At least not outwardly, I'm sure she's cashed in a couple of favours at the synagogue back when she decided to sue Disney. Having all that firepower behind you must surely help when you go against The Mouse.

Dame Joan Collins, Bob Dylan

Natalie Portman

Winona Ryder

Scarlett Johansson's father is Danish and her mother is Jewish. Scarlett identifies as Jewish. I guess it helps with getting roles.

Y'all just making shit up.

Fred Astaire's father Fritz's parents converted from Judaism to Catholicism in Austria before they arrived at Ellis Island. His mother's parents were Lutheran German immigrants from Prussia.

So does he count?

Joan Blondell, sort of. Mother was not Jewish.

To technically be Jewish, the mother must be Jewish.

Cornel Wilde

James Caan

Hedy Lamarr

Sorry, I'm old and can't think of any more recent examples!

It's Hedley!

Robert Downey Jr.

Harvey Fierstein and that female who starred in the Jewess Jeans commercial

"Downey's father was of half Lithuanian Jewish, one-quarter Hungarian Jewish, and one-quarter Irish descent, while Downey's mother had Scottish, German, and Swiss ancestry."

Sorry, the "one-drop" rule doesn't apply to Jews unless it's the Third Reich.

I think people like Adam Goldberg are interesting in that he looks stereotypically Jewish, has the name but was brought up by his nonJewish mother and sent to Catholic schools. That has to be confusing. Hardly an isolated case nowadays. He directed a movie in which he played someone Jewish. I have no idea how he identifies.

R9 I believe that’s accurate though. Traditionally, you’re Jewish by your mother’s lineage.

I always thought Robin Williams was secretly Jewish. Everything about him screamed Jewish.

I take that back. Downey's father considered himself Jewish and Downey Jr acknowledges this part of his heritage.

DAME ELIZABETH TAYLOR

Wrong R22.

I am blocking the thread. R23.

Dinah Shore

Sammy Davis, Jr.

Ivanka Trump

What a hateful, hateful thread.

How I long for the days when all the DL cared about were Norwegian Catholics.

Woody Allen

R28 what’s hateful? You’re insane.

Cardinal Baby Doll Spellman......another Jew hidinhg......

Why R24? Because I don't agree with you that Elizabeth Taylor was Jewish? lol

R32, my biological mother was Jewish. I never met her. I couldn’t tell you one thing about the Jewish religion.

Only by your standards (and hitler’s) am I considered Jewish.

This thread isn’t an idle curiosity about religion (which can of course be changed by conversion).

You’re pretty much preparing for segregation or maybe a genocide by your (lack of) thinking.

I'm shocked, but John Forsythe was a Jew.

R33 needs to work out her mommy issues and then come back around to this.

Elizabeth Taylor WAS Jewish. She converted in 1959 at the age of 27.

Joan Collins wasn't really Jewish. Her father, a native of South Africa, was Jewish, and her British mother was Anglican.

Tiffany Hadish

Rashida Jones

Lenny and Zoe Kravitz

Tracee Ellis Ross

Michael Landon

Susan St. James

Doris Day

Does Jew-ish count?

Doris Day was not Jewish, R39.

What about Doris Duke?

Half Jewish is why so many have trouble with this topic. Total Jews are usually obvious. I love the Jews!

It's unusual for a Jew to convert to Christianity Josh Groban's dad became Episcopalian for his mom.

R32, Elizabeth Taylor was Jewish "by injection."

Charlie Chaplin

Paul Newman

Paulette Goddard

Lauren Bacall

Sylvia Sidney

Shelley Winters (duh!)

No one is "Born With A Religion," your parents force it on you.

[quote] No one is "Born With A Religion," your parents force it on you.

And diapers, too. The bastards.

R28 you seem like a real shit-stirrer. I don’t see any of that on display here.

[quote]I was surprised to find out that Scarlett Johansson and Lens Dunham are Jewish.

Why?

Also, this thread is offensive. F&F.

What a fascinating thread!

R50 are you an undergrad?

The great Sophie Tucker

The Three Stooges!

(except Curly Joe DeRita)

No. The mother being Jewish enables her children to be Jewish. The father is just a nice to have.

Norman Jewison......wait..what????

Well....we have Jewish based upon religious convention (mother MUST be Jewish), Jewish by formal conversion (Elizabeth Taylor), significant genetic Jewish components (father is Jewish and therefore his children have "jewish haplotypes and haplogroups" identifiable in their DNA), or Jewish by wishful thinking (Madonna studying Kabbalah). I'm not Jewish, but judging by some of the responses we have seen above, I think for the purposes of identifying celebrities as Jewish, we probably ought to stick with the religious convention, since only those celebrities would be accepted by the entire Jewish world as being Jewish, even though there are so many mixed marriages in the US, where a Jewish man marries someone non-Jewish and has children with her. Otherwise, I think people making this identification have to be clear whether they are doing so by religious convention or using one of the other identifying methods above and risk being shot down.

What's clear looking at at many of these celebrities is that there is no one physical feature that could be used to identify someone positively as Jewish. Many have blue eyes, many have petite noses, skin color is all over the map, some having pale skin and red or blonde hair, others having olive skin and curly dark hair. It seems clear that many people have an image of what Jews ought to look like, (probably the more Mediterranean look, olive skin, dark hair, dark eyes, aquiline nose), and that lends itself to their being startled when they find out someone without those features is Jewish.

Susan St. James is not Jewish. She was raised as a Roman Catholic, left the church for a while, but has since returned to the faith.

I’m not Jewish, I was raised by an ex-catholic and an atheist. But I grew up my entire life being told that are family had Jewish roots but not in a long time and nobody knows when they stopped practicing. And then two family members did a 23andme test and we do have Ashkenazi heritage but it was NOT on the side of the family we thought it was which was a bit of a surprise. One cousin converted when she got married and is raising her two little ones and going to temple which was also a surprise because her Jewish husband is totally non-practicing and didn’t want to get married in a temple and doesn’t go with her. 🤷🏻

I was also told my entire life we were part Cherokee and I had serious doubts about that but everyone swore it. And the DNA tests came back and said we are 100% not Native American. Any tribe. And I wanted to tell everyone who ever claimed we were “I told you so” (but I didn’t).

I’m too atheist to claim any religion and too far removed from the last family member to claim any Jewish heritage and not famous at all and shouldn’t be posting it in this thread.

But I did. 😜

She is so fucking sexy.

Bradley Cooper’s Nose

I’m sure people on Datalounge are making lists for when the time comes.

Also

Old farts on DL care deeply about people’s religion because 60 years ago, communities were tight-knit and endlessly gossiped about anyone who didn’t go to church on Sundays…or anyone who remotely looked different. It was their alcoholic mothers’ favorite topic, and it’s all they heard in the house growing up; so it’s still viscerally important to them when evaluating a person.

Nowadays, money is the only god in most homes and most people ignore their neighbors, so it doesn’t matter in the slightest to younger people.

Hostility to Jews has never been about religion, it’s always been about race/ethnicity.

And young people do care who is and isn’t a Jew, with far right and far left working a pincer movement to restore centuries old stereotypes and myths.

People who are obsessed with who's a Jew or not and point it out make me suspicious.

[quote]Old farts on DL care deeply about people’s religion because 60 years ago, communities were tight-knit

Try racism.

[quote] To technically be Jewish, the mother must be Jewish.

Not in all traditions.

Scene: Stanford University. 1979

A Harvard student is visiting a high school classmate. They are both Jewish.

She looks around.

“Are there any Jews here?” she asks.

“Quiet! They’ll hear you!” he replies.

Not according to the Hitlerites…to them if you have one Jewish grandparent or any Jewish blood for that matter, your Jewish

I like to know who a fellow celebrity tribe member is…for some strange reason I take some comfort in it. Growing up there were very few Jewish families around…….

I guess you need to be Jewish to understand what I mean.

Tom Bosely

It was the 1977 Winter term at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. It was the second semester of my sophomore year. As I had taken the first semester off to work on a political campaign, I had to scramble to find housing. I ended up rooming with a freshman from the Upper Peninsula. One weekend when my roommate was gone, I picked up his senior yearbook, which he had left in plain view. One of his classmates signed his yearbook with, "Show those Jews at Michigan ..." I don't remember the rest, but it wasn't along the lines of, "that we Yoopers respect them." Needless to say, my old roommate & I have not kept in touch over the ensuing years.

Bosley, R71.

[quote]Scarlett Johansson's father is Danish and her mother is Jewish. Scarlett identifies as Jewish. I guess it helps with getting roles.

The rule is that if the mother is Jewish, you're Jewish; if only the father is Jewish, you're not.

[quote] I like to know who a fellow celebrity tribe member is…for some strange reason I take some comfort in it. Growing up there were very few Jewish families around…….

A much younger Catholic friend couldn't understand how/why I knew who in sports was Jewish.

[quote] “Quiet! They’ll hear you!” he replies.

I have another much younger Catholic friend - I, a Jew, do seem to collect them - who always whispers when talking about gays & Black people. I always ask, "Why are we whispering?"

R32 I believe Elizabeth Taylor’s parents were Christian Scientists but I agree she could be Jewish. She has that rare creamy skin/ raven hair/light-eyed beauty similar to Hedy Lamarr.

Elizabeth Taylor converted to Judaism when she married Eddie Fisher.

^not exactly

Wikipedia: Taylor was raised as a Christian Scientist, and converted to Judaism in 1959.Although two of her husbands – Mike Todd and Eddie Fisher – were Jewish, Taylor stated that she did not convert because of them, and had wanted to do so "for a long time", and that there was "comfort and dignity and hope for me in this ancient religion that [has] survived for four thousand years... I feel as if I have been a Jew all my life." Walker believed that Taylor was influenced in her decision by her godfather, Victor Cazalet, and her mother, who were active supporters of Zionism during her childhood.

Ezra Miller

Jonah Hill.

Pretty much everyone in Hollywood. Brando was right.

R74 yep similar to how they designated African-Americans during slavery.

Tovah Feldshuh

Even with that name, r84, you didn't realize?

Prior to revealing it in her autobiography, Lauren Bacall.

Yaphet Kotto

R84 would also be clueless about the name Leilani Lipschitz.

Why doesn’t Roseanne Barr seem remotely Jewish. She just seems so trashy and hillbillyish.

William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.

jackie Mason

Jackie Mason?!? I was certain he was Muslim.

Charlie Sheen

His original name is Chuck Lieboschwitz

That’s a fkin lie.

I was surprised to find Nancy Walker wasn't Jewish. She was a short woman with attitude and Italian-American, not Jewish.

Fran Lebowitz

Nancy Walker, R95, was the Joy Behar of her generation. People assumed both were Jewish. I like the story Behar would tell of getting a telephone call on a Friday wishing her a good Shabbos. “Ma,” she exclaims, “how many times do I have to tell you I’m not Jewish?!”

[quote] The rule is that if the mother is Jewish, you're Jewish; if only the father is Jewish, you're not.

That's a very old-fashioned idea of Jewish bloodlines, and one to which the Orthodox still subscribe.

But I don't know that most Reform Jews today would agree with you.

Is Drake the most popular Jew alive today? Or Natalie Portman?

Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice.

Franklin D. Rosenfelt.

Kirk Douglas, Jerry Lewis.

David Beckham

Aldo Ray.

Sara Paxton - her mamaleh was Jewish AND Latinx. Her WASP-ish looks must come from her father.

Hedy Lamarr grew up Jewish in Austria, and was Jewish until she had to run for her life during the late 1930s, fleeing both an abusive husband and the Nazis. She got her mother out of Austria in time, as well.

And as a naturalized American citizen, she became... retroactively Christian, in the words of one biographer. She never mentioned her Jewish heritage to anyone, not just nobody at MGM but not even her own children, as grownups they were astonished to find out their mother was a Jew. I can't find it in my heart to condemn her, I've never had to flee my country of origin, or narrowly escaped being the victim of genocide, I have no idea what I'd be capable of under those circumstances, or what the trauma would do to me later.

R90, Leonard Nimoy based the Vulcan salute of “live long and prosper” on an Orthodox Jewish synagogue service in Boston when he was a child:

I forget the details, but didn't Nimoy and Shatner hate each other for a long time - refusing to speak, but then made up when Leonard was dying?

[quote]to them if you have one Jewish grandparent or any Jewish blood for that matter, your Jewish.

Your Jewish what?

[quote]Tom Bosely

Tom Bosley is no longer Jewish. He's dead.

He played Italian in the musical "Fiorello!" It's a tradition that continued with Bea Arthur and Estelle Getty in "The Golden Girls."

R110, and with Peter Falk in "Columbo".

Joy-oy-oy Behar

Bishop Fulton Sheen.

R113 owns this thread!

Michael Lucas

Mel Gibson

^ Not a Jew.

Samuel L. Jackson

Gabourey Sidibe

R117 YES he is.

He's not, but let's spread the rumor that Mel Gibson is secretly Jewish.

Nothing would piss him off more, or his followers.

[quote]He's not, but let's spread the rumor that Mel Gibson is secretly Jewish.

A stupid lie, easy to expose. Mel Gibson is. famously, a rabid Catholic.

Tovah McQueen

Howard Stern

Howard’s mother is not Jewish.

Howards mother is absolutely Jewish. The whole half-a-Jew thing was a bit.

But she is alive, R125.

Chrissy Metz

Jesus, nobody knew he was Jewish.

Carly Simon. Barbra Streisand Carole King Mama Cass Elliott Barbara Walters

R68 nothings has changed at Stanfurd…

You didn’t know Barbra Streisand was Jewish, R130?!

Doris Day wasn't Jewish. She had a German surname, and she was a Christian Scientist. One of her husbands was Jewish (the one who was the father of Doris'son) became a Christian Scientist when they married.

Ann B Davis

^ Not a Jew.

R75 Haaa I was just looking that up yesterday. Unfortunately we have more Jewish owners than players of any sport..

Lucille Ballstein

Fyvush Finkel

R113...that would be so fitting...what a piece of shit he was

R57- Not just Jews. I was in Barcelona Spain and I was talking to someone who spoke very good English and I assumed he was maybe French or Eastern European but he told me he was from Spain. He had dirty blond hair and blue eyes.I was so surprised to find out he was a Spaniard.

R72- Was his last name Thorndyke?

R64- At times in history and even now it has definitely been about the religion .

Nomi from Showgirls (1995)

Elizabeth Berkley

Hunky Peter Alexander of NBC News

[quote] I was surprised to find out that Scarlett Johansson and Lens Dunham are Jewish.

You must be trolling.

R144, raise your standards.

Jake Gyllenhaal, so I guess he's cut.

r147 most white American men are cut, regardless of ethnicity/religion.

r140 many Spaniards from Northern Spain are fair and blue eyed.

[Quote]my biological mother was Jewish. I never met her. I couldn’t tell you one thing about the Jewish religion.

[Quote]Only by your standards (and hitler’s) am I considered Jewish.

[Quote]This thread isn’t an idle curiosity about religion (which can of course be changed by conversion).

No, genetically and ethnically, you would be considered Jewish. Judaism is not just a religion--it's a matrilineal tribal ethnoreligion, like the Cherokee (and all other North American Indigenous tribes), as well as dozens of other African and Asian ethnoreligious tribes. If a Cherokee kid decides he doesn't want to practice any of the religious/spiritual traditions of his tribe, that doesn't mean he's not Cherokee anymore.

However, in Judaism, just like those aforementioned tribes, full conversion means you are just as much a part of the tribe as those born into it, just that you're not ethnically Jewish.

[Quote] To technically be Jewish, the mother must be Jewish.

NOW you tell us.

R130 You'd have to be a real dolt to not have realized Barbara Streisand was Jewish.

[Quote]Hostility to Jews has never been about religion, it’s always been about race/ethnicity.

That's not entirely true. Napoleonic antisemitism as well as Marxist/Soviet antisemitism (which was then appropriated in the 60s by many other far-left groups including Pan-Arabism, Nation of Islam, African Socialism, and other Western radical Marxist groups) was not racial, but religious.

r74 Mother's baby-- father's "maybe." Before DNA testing you never really knew who the father was.

Louis Farrakhan.

R154 Yes. Tribal lineage in Judaism was determined matrilineally in days of old simply because there was no way to confirm paternity before genetic testing existed, but there could only be one mother.

These days, whether you are Jewish only on your mother's side, or Jewish only on your father's side, genetic testing would equally determine your ethnicity as 50% Jewish.

[quote] Judaism is not just a religion--it's a matrilineal tribal ethnoreligion

Not with every sect it isn’t. There’s one that considers paternal and generally speaking in the 21st century, if only your father is Jewish, Jews consider you as being of Jewish descent. You can claim whatever you want through that.

This all goes back to Jews running wild in the Middle East and being afraid that married whores like Mary (the supposed mother of god, lol) would get knocked up by another tribe and then later come to collect on the kin’s inheritance. It’s a bunch of hocus pocus and mumbo jumbo. Circumcision is a blood rite ritual. Katy Tur’s idiot husband went into a gym bathroom and let a moyle slice him before he could convert. These are the same mouses that suck the blood off of infants after circumcision. The number of NYC infants with herpes was staggering. Somehow they had enough pull to not let city officials ban the practice. These Abrahamic religions are all batshit crazy and Ashkenazis are European converts. They have no actual connection to Israel. All this shit predates science. It’s amazing how much people still cling on to this shit but here we are.

As a Jew I just sit back and roll my eyes at all this stuff. My friends and I routinely receive 300 emails from our crazy religious relatives about how Israel must be saved. I really wish the West would stay the hell out of that region. Arabs know how to hold a grudge.

Why are some people so bothered by anyone who isn't Christian?

Why are some people so bothered by anyone who is Christian?

Fixed it for you, r158.

This is DL, after all.

Christians are the ones who apparently can't handle the North American separation between church and state. I wonder what judgmental church r159 goes to.

I go to the Datalounge Asshole Church. You’re still the pastor, right?

Olivia Newton-John

Pink

Paula Abdul

Jake Gyllenhaal

Peter Falk

Peggy Lipton

Katharine Hepburn

Mrs. Barbara Bush

Hepburn was not Jewish

Most of the names listed were obvious or is not true at all.

Are guns and bullets part of your communion r161?

Barbara Herzstein Seagull

[quote]R166 Hepburn was not Jewish

Katrin Hepbernawitz? Are you KIDDING??

BIG Jew. She was raised in a Brooklyn tenement and had one of the worst nose jobs in Hollywood history.

All that “Fenwick” crap was just churned out by the publicity department along with the name change.

What is the point of this thread? Who the fuck cares if anyone is Jewish?

R169 my mom looks a lot like Barbara, and her grandfather was part-Jewish (although it always tracked given Barbara’s birth name)

R170 Oy, that reminded me of a female Borscht Belt comedian who as part of her act would imitate non-Jewish celebrities if they had been Jewish, and Hepburn was among them. She also sang the Yiddish song “Sheyn Vi Di Levone” as Bette Davis. I heard that comedian on a recording. She got gales of laughter.

It was a different time; thankfully long gone.

^^ I think it sounds hysterical!

[quote]Hepburn was not Jewish

It's a joke FFS. Katharine Hepburn was as WASP as it gets. It's ridiculous to think she was Jewish. Do you get it now?

Hedy Lamar

R162 Olivia Newton-John was only 3/8 Jewish. Her mother was 3/4 Jewish being the daughter of German Jewish physicist Max Born (Nobel Prize 1954) and his wife who had a Jewish father and German gentile mother. ONJ's father was Welsh.

Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé. (Liebowitz - Gormezano)

Steve was Polish Ashkenazi, Eydie was Spanish-Sicilian-Turkish Sephardic.

Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Wait! I'm Jewish? Link, please.

I'm white! White!! WHITE!!!

Scarlet is Jewish because her mother is Jewish. That's how it works. She's not "leaning into it to get roles".

I think the only reason people are surprised Scarlett is Jewish because she looks extremely Scandinavian and has the surname to match Looks-wise, she very much took after her father, who is Danish with Swedish roots. If you look at photos of her mom, Scarlett looks almost nothing like her. Still, as R181 said, she is halachically Jewish because her mother is.

Ultimately it's pointless (and reinforces negative stereotypes) to assume someone is Jewish based on looks. My brother and I have been told throughout our lives that we "look Jewish" when we're not—my brother has even been called Jewish slurs before. My mom's grandfather was part Ashkenazi Jewish which we found out through a DNA test that my uncle took, but we were not raised with the culture or religion whatsoever, and to suggest there's a uniform "look" to Jews is kind of stupid.

Barbara Bush? She looks like a guy.

r184, again, it's a joke.

Tom Bosley.

[quote] The rule is that if the mother is Jewish, you're Jewish; if only the father is Jewish, you're not.

Again, as someone else has already pointed out above (you must have had them blocked), that's only the rule in some Jewish traditions. In others, it is not the case.

Howard Stern

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

R183 Bette Midler is a Halekulani Jew.

to suggest there's a uniform "look" to Jews is kind of stupid.…

All Jews don’t look alike, but all people that look Jewish are Jews

Cardinal O’Connor

Andy Cohen

Sarah Silverman

Michael Rapaport

Amy Schumer

R149 they descend from Irish shipwreck survivors.

r194 that's an old myth.

R195 my joke went right over your head…I think?!

Everyone in the ROSEANNE family except Becky and Jackie.

Kyra Sedgewick's mother is Jewish. She appeared in a very fun and funny Indie film called Bad Shabbos this past winter, as a Jewish mother, and I was questioning why they cast her in that role, until I read her bio.

Sometimes a Waspy surname will throw you off.

Charlie Chaplin wasn't Jewish. That's a myth.

R193 What did you think they were, Italian?

Russian, just passing through the Pale of Settlement.

;)

r200 is a moron

Barbara Walters and Mike Wallace...at first

John Goodman isn't Jewish.

R199 Charlie Chaplin was actually part Gypsy.

[quote] Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

R189 The Queen? Is she here? Look for a woman with a scarf under her crown.

Kaye Ballard. Oh, wait, she was Italian. Like Peter Falk. No, wait, he was Jewish.

[quote]John Goodman isn't Jewish.

Anyone named Goodman is Jewish.

lol r208

Isn't Kirk Douglas one of those people? I believe I've heard that.

Thank you for this list!