Famous Jews, Part 2 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Hepatitis B

Baruch Blumberg, born in 1925, helped create the vaccine for Hepatitis B. He shared the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with D. Carleton Gajdusek. He was doing research in Australia when he first stumbled on the hepatitis B surface antigen. This led to a complete honing of his scientific focus, and he led a long and illustrious career spearheading work to defeat hepatitis B, which in addition to being a form of infectious hepatitis is also a major trigger of liver cancer worldwide.

Dr. Blumberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish parents and attended an Orthodox yeshivah for elementary school. He became very active in the field of bioethics, triggered by his fears that chronic carriers of hepatitis B might experience ostracism, a fear that was unfortunately realized and then magnified during the early years of the AIDS epidemic.

Answer: Gene Simmons

Gene Simmons, he of the outrageous makeup, long tongue, and stage persona "The Demon," was born Chaim Witz in Haifa, Israel, in 1949. Paul Stanley (birth name Stanley Bert Eisen) was also born into a Jewish family, but in New York, not Israel. Simmons' mother was a survivor of the Holocaust who was liberated from a camp in Austria after removal from her ancestral home in Hungary. Simmons and his mother immigrated to New York when he was eight years old after his parents' divorce.

He has been active in film and television in addition to his musical career, and still considers himself an Israeli.

Answer: Albert Einstein

Einstein was offered Presidency of the State of Israel in 1952, but declined the offer. The post of President is mostly ceremonial, so the offer by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was made in recognition of Einstein's world stature. Einstein held citizenship in three countries during his life - Germany, Switzerland, and the US.

The emigration to the US was a reaction to the anti-Jewish decrees in Nazi Germany; he finished out his life working in Princeton, New Jersey, at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Answer: Gymnastics

Mitch Gaylord invented two skills on the high bar, lending his name to them - the Gaylord I and Gaylord II. He was also the first male US gymnast to score a perfect 10 with his performance on the rings at the 1984 summer Olympics. The US squad won the team gold at that Olympics - three of the athletes, Gaylord, Tim Daggett, and Peter Vidmar had all competed at the collegiate level at UCLA, which happened to be the host venue for the 1984 competition. The other members of the winning squad were Bart Conner, Scott Johnson, and Jim Hartung. The Chinese team was heavily favored, so the US domination was especially surprising and delighted the home audience.

Gaylord was born to Jewish parents in Van Nuys, California, in 1961; he has been active in television and film in his post-gymnastics career.

Answer: Judy Blume

Judy Blume was born in New Jersey in 1938 with the maiden name Sussman to a secular Jewish family. She started writing when her own children were young. Her first two marriages (including the one to Mr. Blume) ended in divorce, but she and her current husband have been together since 1987.

The book alluded to in the question, "Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret" involves a protagonist born to parents with different religions, Christian and Jewish. This and her recent relocation to New Jersey plus her late start on puberty leaves Margaret feeling like a bit of an outsider. Many of Blume's books have been the target of attempts at book banning for their unflinching treatment of adolescent sexuality.

Answer: Comic book art

Jack Kirby (nee Jacob Kurtzberg) created many of the most beloved comic book characters. Since many of the originators of the superhero comics were themselves Jewish, it is not surprising that many of their creations are either explicitly Jewish or draw on the Jewish experience. Ben Grimm, The Thing of the Fantastic Four, has an origin story modeled after that of his creator, Kirby . That he is Jewish was not immediately revealed, but he holds a special Bar Mitzvah-style event celebrating his 13th year as The Thing. Magneto (Marvel comics) is a Holocaust survivor; he was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Lee and Kirby had a fraught relationship despite their amazing output.

Kirby was born in Manhattan to Austrian immigrant parents; his father worked in the garment industry. Already successful, he was drafted during WWII and often put his drawing skills to work sketching recon maps. He was married to Rosalind Goldstein for over 50 years. At one point he moved the family from New York to California to be closer to opportunities in Hollywood. He died there in 1994 at the age of 76.

Answer: Edna Ferber

Ferber was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Both parents were Jewish; her father was born in Hungary and her mother was of German descent from Milwaukee. Ferber briefly flirted with a career in journalism, which helped with her narrative in "Cimarron" in which the main characters run a frontier newspaper in Oklahoma. That novel was made into a movie more than once - the 1931 version won the Academy Award for Best Picture. "Giant" was filmed in 1956, with a star-studded cast of Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean and Rock Hudson. Ferber also wrote "Show Boat," which became a much-revived musical in 1927.

Answer: Shelley Winters

Shelley Winters donated her Oscar statuette for "Diary" to the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam. Her birth name was Shirley Schrift; Winters was her mother's maiden name and Shelley was chosen for her love of the poet of that name. Both parents traced their ancestry to a village that is now part of the Ukraine; her father was born there while her mother was second generation.

Born in the St. Louis area, Shelley and her family moved to New York (Brooklyn) when she was nine - she was thus well positioned to begin modeling and dabbling in theater.

She relocated to Los Angeles at age 16 and began working in the movie industry. Her Oscar wins came in 1959 and 1965; she continued working well into the 1990s. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and is buried in Culver City, California.

Answer: Selma Blair

Of note, all of the actresses named are indeed Jewish. Blair converted to Judaism as a child - her father is Jewish, but her mother was Anglican. She was educated in part at a Hillel day school. Her initial career aspiration was to become a photographer, and she studied the craft at NYU and the University of Michigan.

Her breakthrough role was in the film "Cruel Intentions" in 1999. Her diagnosis with multiple sclerosis came in 2018, although she traces her earliest symptoms to childhood.

Answer: Sandy Koufax

Koufax was born in Brooklyn; his birth name was Sanford Braun but his parents divorced when he was very young and he later took on his stepfather's last name. He pitched for the Dodgers for 12 seasons, 1955-1966, starting in Brooklyn, but moving with the team to Los Angeles.

He was a left-hander, whereas teammate Drysdale was a right-handed pitcher. His refusal to pitch the first game of the '65 series against the Twins solidified his reputation as a Jewish icon and certainly didn't hurt the team's chances - the Dodgers won the series and Koufax won the series MVP award.

He retired early due to chronic elbow pain. Elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972, Koufax has served as a broadcaster and pitching coach post-retirement.