Tag Archives: Russian Jews

Jew of the Week: Doris Roberts

Doris Roberts, R.I.P (Photo Credit: Kevin Mazur/WireImage.com)

Doris Roberts (Photo Credit: Kevin Mazur/WireImage.com)

Doris May Green (1925-2016) was born in St. Louis and raised in the Bronx by her single mother and grandparents, who were of Russian-Jewish heritage. After her mother remarried, Doris took on her new stepfather’s last name: Roberts. She began acting as a child, and after studying journalism for a short time, went to acting school. In 1952, Roberts appeared on a TV show for the first time. She would make appearances on another four television shows before starring in her first film in 1961. Roberts went on to play roles in over 30 movies (four of which will be released later this year), and over 60 television programs, including Full House, Grey’s Anatomy, The King of Queens, Lizzie McGuire, Law & Order, Desperate Housewives, and Walker, Texas Ranger. However, she is undoubtedly most famous for her role as Marie Barone, the mother of Ray Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond – a role which brought her four Emmy Awards. Roberts was chosen among 100 women who tried out for the part, and helped to make the show one of the greatest sitcoms in TV history. Roberts also had a successful Broadway career spanning nearly twenty years. She has won a Screen Actors Guild Award, the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Sadly, Roberts passed away in her sleep earlier this week.

Words of the Week

Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a Spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe – a Spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.
– Albert Einstein

Jew of the Week: Jan Koum

Jan Koum, creator of WhatsApp

Jan Koum (b. 1976) was born in Kiev, Ukraine. When he was 16 years old he moved to California with his mother, having experienced enough anti-Semitism and political turnovers. (His father intended to join them eventually, but passed away several years later before he could do so.) The two survived on food stamps and a subsidized two-bedroom apartment. Koum swept floors at a supermarket to make ends meet. At 18, he started learning programming by himself from a set of used books before enrolling at San Jose University. Soon, he got a job working with computers at Ernst & Young, one of the world’s Big Four auditing companies. By 21, Koum had dropped out of school and was hired by Yahoo to work in its infrastructure engineering. After nine years with the company, Koum quit to do some travelling with fellow employee Brian Acton. Upon returning from their trip, the two applied to work for Facebook, but were turned down. Instead, Koum started thinking about a new iPhone messaging app, inspired by how difficult and expensive it was for him to keep in touch with family in Russia and Ukraine (as well as memories of how his parents avoided using a phone in the Soviet Union for fear of being listened to). The following month, he incorporated WhatsApp Inc. Brian Acton later worked together with Koum to make his vision a reality, together with friend Alex Fishman. WhatsApp became hugely popular very quickly, and became the world’s most popular messaging app. In 2014, Koum’s friend Mark Zuckerberg bought out WhatsApp for $19 billion. This thrust Koum onto Forbes list of the world’s richest people. With his net worth now close to $9 billion, he is among the Top 10 richest US immigrants. Meanwhile, WhatsApp expanded to offer voice calls and document-sharing, became completely free (with no advertising), and now has over 1 billion users worldwide. Yesterday, they launched a new form of encryption, making WhatsApp among the most secure forms of communication available to the public. Koum continues to work on WhatsApp, and on the board of Facebook, and has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to charity. He is also a founding member of San Francisco’s JFE – Jews for Entrepreneurship – an organization that provides opportunities for young Jewish entrepreneurs in the high tech sector.

Words of the Week

From religion comes a man’s purpose; from science, his power to achieve it. Sometimes people ask if religion and science are not opposed to one another. They are: in the sense that the thumb and fingers of my hand are opposed to one another. It is an opposition by means of which anything can be grasped.
– Sir William Bragg, Nobel Prize-winning physicist

Jew of the Week: Emmanuel Lubezki

The Mexican Jew Who Set an Oscar Record

Emmanuel Lubezki, known to most people as "Chivo", ie. "Goat"

Emmanuel Lubezki, known to most people as Chivo, or “Goat” (Credit: Getty Images)

Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki Morgenstern (b. 1964) was born to a Russian-Jewish family in Mexico City. He initially studied history, then switched to film studies and became a cinematographer. He first worked on a film made with a group of 10 friends who pooled together $7000. It brought in enough money to make a second film, which found more success in Mexico, but no profit. His third film brought an invitation to the Toronto International Film Festival, following which Lubezki started getting calls from Hollywood (yet still barely spoke any English). Among his first major productions was a collaboration with his childhood friend and classmate Alfonso Cuaron. The two went on to make 6 films together, winning a handful of Oscars along the way. Lubezki’s work on the 2006 film Children of Men was critically acclaimed for its new cinematic techniques, and got him a fourth Oscar nomination. He finally won an Academy Award in 2013 for Gravity, another trailblazer in 3D cinematography which some have described as “the most technologically impressive film ever” and “the greatest visual achievement in the history of cinema”. (It took over four years of work for Lubezki’s team to make it happen.) He won yet again the following year for Birdman, and took a third Oscar in a row this year for The Revenant. This set a new record, making Lubezki the first cinematographer to win three Oscars in three consecutive years. Among Lubezki’s other highly-praised works are The Tree of Life (starring Brad Pitt) and Ali (starring Will Smith). Alfonso Cuaron has said of Lubezki: “You go to a concert and you are listening to the music… Chivo’s looking at the light. When you’re having dinner with Chivo, he starts moving everything around – he’ll move a candle over here or a light over there – until suddenly the light is just right.”

Words of the Week

The righteous promise little and do a lot; the wicked promise much and don’t do even a little.
– Talmud, Bava Metzia 87a