Israel
Bálint, Lea
Balint spent part of World War II living under an assumed name in a Polish convent in Brwinow, near Warsaw. Her parents placed her there when she was five and she emerged at the end of the ... [more]
Ben Sira, Eva
Eva Ben Sira became the first Inuit member of the Israeli Defence Force in December 2003 when she joined up. The remarkable story of her and her twin brother, Jimmy began in Alaska, wher... [more]
Cardozo, Abraham
Cardozo was a member of a Portuguese Marrano family. (The Marranos are the Jews of Spain and Portugal who involuntarily converted to Christianity in the 14th century and later, many of whom... [more]
Cosmas Melodus
Cosmas was adopted by the father of St. John of Damascus, and educated by a monk also named Cosmas. Cosmas the younger became Bishop of Maïuma in 735. He is remembered for his poetry in hon... [more]
Ephraim and Manasseh
According to the Bible these two sons of the patriarch Joseph and his wife Asenath (daughter of the Egyptian priest Potiphera), were born during his period as governor of Egypt and before t... [more]
Esther
According to the Bible (Esther 2:7), she was orphaned and either adopted or fostered (scholars are unclear about how to interpret the text) by her uncle (or cousin), Mordecai. She is fam... [more]
Jehoash
Jehoash, King of Judah (not the same man as Jehoash, King of Israel, who lived at the same time) was the son of King Ahaziah. His uncles had been assassinated when he was a baby when Jehu, ... [more]
Jesus Christ
According to the Biblical accounts and orthodox Christian tradition, Jesus was not the biological son of Joseph the Carpenter , but literally the son of God. He was referred to by his cont... [more]
Joseph the Carpenter
The genealogies given for St. Joseph in the Biblical gospels of Luke (chapter 3) and Matthew (chapter 1) appear to contradict each other. According to Matthew his father was Jacob, while... [more]
Kindertransport
From November 1938 to 3 September 1939 a British organization, The World Movement for the Care of Children, helped 9,254 mostly Jewish children (but including 1,772 gentiles) escape from th... [more]
Mary the Virgin
According to tradition and the apocryphal Gospel of the Birth of Mary, she was placed in the Temple at Jerusalem by her parents at the age of three (see Oblates ) and stayed there until he... [more]
Moses
According to the Bible (Exodus 1-2) Moses was fostered or adopted after his mother, Jochebed, placed him in a basket on the Nile (compare Maui and Romulus and Remus ) to escape an edict ... [more]
Samuel
According to the Bible (1 Samuel 1-2) Samuel was the son of Elkanah and Hannah and was sent to live with the priest Eli in the Temple in Jerusalem when he was a toddler (see Oblates ). He ... [more]
Vanunu, Mordechai
Vanunu was born in Morocco to a religious Jewish family who emigrated to Israel in 1963. After service in the Israeli Defence Force he started working at a nuclear research station. In ... [more]
Westheimer, Ruth Siegel
Westheimer, known to millions as Dr. Ruth, is the most famous psychosexual therapist in the world. She was sent by her German parents to boarding school in Switzerland when she was 10, a... [more]
Zweig, Stefan Jerzy
Zweig was the son of a prosperous Polish Jewish lawyer. When he was only a toddler the Nazis sent him and his father to the Buchenwald concentration camp. There they were separated and his ... [more]
