Is Rodney Dangerfield Jewish?

Yes, Rodney Dangerfield was a Jew. Dangerfield was born Jacob Rodney Cohen in Deer Park within the Town of Babylon, New York, in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. Both of his parents were Jewish with ancestry in Hungary. His father was the vaudevillian performer Phil Roy (Philip Cohen) and his mother was Dotty Teitelbaum. His ancestors came to the United States from Hungary.

Rodney Dangerfield was known as a famous comedian and actor. His most famous one-liner was"I don't get no respect!" He had several funny movie credits in the 1980s including Easy Money, Caddyshack, and Back to School.

Is Jan Koum Jewish?

Yes, Jan Koum is Jewish. Jan Koum is the founder of WhatsApp, the mobile application that was purchased in February 2014 by Facebook.

According to Wikipedia, Jan Koum grew up in a village outside Kiev in Ukraine. He moved with his mother and grandmother to Mountain View, California in 1992,where a social support program helped the family to get a small two-bedroom apartment, at the age of 16. His father had intended to join the family later, but finally remained in Ukraine. At first Koum's mother worked as a babysitter, while he himself worked as a cleaner at a grocery. By the age of 18 he became interested in programming. He enrolled at San Jose State University and simultaneously worked at Ernst & Young as a security tester.

In 1997, Jan Koum was hired by Yahoo as an infrastructure engineer, shortly after he met Brian Acton while working at Ernst & Young as a security tester. Over the next nine years, they worked at Yahoo. In September 2007 Koum and Acton left Yahoo and took a year off, traveling around South America and playing ultimate frisbee. Both applied, and failed, to work at Facebook. In January 2009, he bought an iPhone and realized that the then seven-month old App Store was about to spawn a whole new industry of apps. He visited his friend Alex Fishman and the two talked for hours about Koum’s idea for an app over tea at Fishman’s kitchen counter. Koum almost immediately chose the name WhatsApp because it sounded like “what’s up,” and a week later on his birthday, Feb. 24, 2009, he incorporated WhatsApp Inc. in California.

Is Joel Kinnaman Jewish?

Yes, Joel Kinnaman is Jewish. The actor from Sweden is the star of the remake of the 1987 classic "RoboCop".

In a recent interview with the Jewish Daily Forward, Joel Kinnaman explained:


“When I’m in Sweden I feel like I have something that is not Swedish.  And when I’m here I feel I have something that’s not American. I’d say I feel still more Swedish then American because I grew up there, but at the same time when I grew up I went to a public school that had English speaking classes, and when we played football in the breaks it was us against the Swedes.”

Joel’s father, Steve Kinnaman, is an American who left the United States in the 1950s. He immigrated to Sweden, where he met Joel’s mom, who is Jewish.

“The Jewish community in Sweden is an old community,” Joel Kinnaman said. “My family came from Ukraine in 1850. They’re very integrated, so it’s a silent presence. We have a fascist party in our government, they’re very anti-Muslim, I don’t think that the Jewish community is affected by that. They wanna kick out all the immigrants. That is something that we’re dealing with in Sweden right now.”

Is Harold Ramis Jewish?

Yes, Harold Ramis was Jewish. The actor Harold Ramis was born November 21, 1944, in Chicago, Illinois. His parents were Ruth and Nathan Ramis, shopkeepers who owned the store Ace Food & Liquor Mart on the city's far North Side.

Harold Ramis had a Jewish upbringing, although in his adult life he did not practice any organized religion. He graduated from Stephen K. Hayt Elementary School and Nicholas Senn High School in Chicago, and, in 1966, from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri where he was a member of the Alpha Xi chapter of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity (ZBT).

Harold Ramis

Ramis was an acclaimed actor, director, and writer, specializing in comedy. His best-known film acting roles are as Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters (1984) and Russell Ziskey in Stripes (1981), both of which he co-wrote. As a writer/director, his films include the comedies Caddyshack (1980), National Lampoon's Vacation (1983), Groundhog Day (1993), and Analyze This (1999). Ramis was the original head writer of the television series SCTV (in which he also performed), and one of three screenwriters for the film National Lampoon's Animal House (1978).

Is Michael Sheen Jewish?

Michael Sheen is not a Jew. The actor has been linked with several Hollywood actresses and US Magazine recently reported that he is dating Sarah Silverman.

Michael Sheen was born in Newport, Wales, the son of Irene (née Thomas), a secretary, and Meyrick, a British Steel personnel manager. He has one younger sister, Joanne. When he was five, the family moved to Liverpool, England, but settled in his parents' hometown of Baglan in Port Talbot, Wales three years later.

Sheen was raised in a theatrical family—his parents were both involved in local amateur operatics and musicals and, later in life, his father worked as a part-time professional Jack Nicholson look-alike.

Is Ruth Bader Ginsburg Jewish?

Yes, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a Jew. The Supreme Court Justice was born in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, Ruth Joan Bader was the second daughter of Nathan and Celia (née Amster) Bader. The family nicknamed her "Kiki"

The family belonged to the East Midwood Jewish Center, where she took her religious confirmation seriously. At age thirteen, Ruth acted as the "camp rabbi" at a Jewish summer program at Camp Che-Na-Wah in Minerva, New York. (Photo below)

Her Wikipedia entry says, "She graduated from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in government on June 23, 1954. In fall 1956, she enrolled at Harvard Law School, where she was one of nine women in a class of about 500. When her husband took a job in New York City, she transferred to Columbia Law School and became the first woman to be on two major law reviews, the Harvard Law Review and the Columbia Law Review. In 1959, she earned her Bachelor of Laws at Columbia and tied for first in her class."

Is Sid Caesar Jewish?

Sid Caesar was a Jew. The comedian Sid Caesar was Jewish.  Born September 8, 1922, Sid Caesar was an American comic actor and writer best known for the television series Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour. He was also a saxophonist and author of several books, including two autobiographies. Sid Caesar died February 12, 2014.

Caesar was the youngest of three sons born to Jewish immigrants living in Yonkers, New York. His father, Max, had emigrated from Poland; his mother, Ida (née Raphael), from the Russian Empire. The surname "Caesar" was supposedly given to Max, as a child, by an immigration official at Ellis Island.

Max and Ida Caesar ran a restaurant, a 24-hour luncheonette. By waiting on tables, their son learned to mimic the patois, rhythm and accents of the diverse clientele, a technique he termed "double-talk," which he would famously use throughout his career. He first tried his "double-talk" with a group of Italians, his head barely reaching above the table. They enjoyed it so much that they sent him over to a group of Poles to repeat his native-sounding patter in Polish, and so on with Russians, Hungarians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Lithuanians and Bulgarians. Despite his apparent fluency in many languages, Caesar could actually speak only English and Yiddish. Sid's older brother, David, was his comic mentor and "one-man cheering section." They created their earliest family sketches from movies of the day like "Test Pilot" and the 1927 silent film "Wings".
At fourteen, Caesar went to the Catskills Mountains as a saxophonist in Mike Cifichello's Swingtime Six band, and occasionally performed in sketches in the Borscht Belt.

Is Shirley Temple Jewish?

Shirley Temple Black was not Jewish. Shirley Temple was born on April 23, 1928, in Santa Monica, California and died on February 11, 2014. She was the daughter of Gertrude Amelia Temple (née Krieger), a homemaker, and George Francis Temple, a bank employee. The family was of English, German, and Dutch ancestry.

Shirley Temple had two brothers, George Francis, Jr. and John Stanley.

In January 1932, Temple was signed by Educational Pictures following a talent search at the dance school. The famous child actor was a one-time U.S. ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia. She also served as Chief of Protocol of the United States, 1976–1977. Temple began her film career in 1932 at the age of three and, in 1934, found international fame in Bright Eyes, a feature film designed specifically for her talents. She received a special Juvenile Academy Award in February 1935 for her outstanding contribution as a juvenile performer to motion pictures during 1934, and film hits such as Curly Top and Heidi followed year after year during the mid-to-late 1930s. Licensed merchandise that capitalized on her wholesome image included dolls, dishes, and clothing.

Is Philip Seymour Hoffman Jewish?

Philip Seymour Hoffman was not Jewish. The actor died of a drug overdose on February 2, 2014 in his Greenwich apartment in New York City.

Hoffman was born in Fairport, New York. His mother, Marilyn O'Connor (née Loucks), who was born in Waterloo, New York, is a family court judge, lawyer, and civil rights activist. His father, Gordon Stowell Hoffman, is a former Xerox executive. He had two sisters, Jill and Emily, and a brother, Gordy Hoffman, who scripted the 2002 film Love Liza, in which Philip starred. He had German, English, Irish, Dutch, and remote Polish ancestry. His father was Protestant and his mother Catholic.

Hoffman attended the 1984 Theater School at the New York State Summer School of the Arts. After graduating from Fairport High School, Hoffman attended the Circle in the Square Theatre's summer program, continuing his acting training with the acting teacher Alan Langdon.

He received a BFA in drama in 1989 from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. At NYU, he was a founding member of the theater company the Bullstoi Ensemble with actor Steven Schub and director Bennett Miller. Soon after graduating, he went to rehab for drug and alcohol addiction and remained sober until May 2013, when he entered a detox facility after briefly relapsing.

Is Natalie Portman Jewish?

Natalie Portman is Jewish. She is married to Benjamin Millepied who announced in January 2014 that he plans to convert to Judaism. The couple has a son named Aleph.

The actress was born in Jerusalem, Israel. Natalie Portman is a dual citizen of the United States and Israel and has said that although she "really love[s] the States... my heart's in Jerusalem. That's where I feel at home.

She is the only child of Shelley (née Stevens), an American homemaker who works as Portman's agent, and Avner Hershlag, an Israeli citizen who is a fertility specialist and gynecologist.

Portman's maternal ancestors were Jewish immigrants to the United States (from Austria and Russia); her mother's family had changed their surname from "Edelstein" to "Stevens". Her paternal grandparents were Jews from Poland and Romania. Natalie's paternal grandfather, Zvi Yehuda Hershlag, was born in Poland, in 1914, and moved to then-Mandatory Palestine, where he was an economics professor, in 1938; Zvi's parents died at Auschwitz. Natalie's Romanian-born great-grandmother was a spy for British Intelligence during World War II.

Portman's parents met at a Jewish student center at Ohio State University, where her mother was selling tickets. They corresponded after her father returned to Israel and were married when her mother visited a few years later. In 1984, when Portman was three years old, the family moved to the United States, where her father received his medical training.