Barbra Streisand — singer with roots in the Russian Empire
Barbara Joan Streisand was born in Brooklyn on 24 April 1942, the daughter of Emanuel Streisand, a high-school teacher, and Diana Streisand, born Ida Rosen, a former soprano who worked as a school secretary. In August 1943, when Barbara was fifteen months old, her father died at thirty-four from complications of an epileptic seizure, and the family fell into near-poverty.
Her ancestry is divided between two empires. Her father's parents, Isaac and Anna Streisand, came from Galicia, then part of Austria-Hungary: Isaac was born in Buchach and later lived in Berezhany, both in the Ternopil region of today's Ukraine. Her mother's parents came from the Russian Empire, where her grandfather Louis Rosen had been a cantor, the singer who leads synagogue prayer. The connection with the Russian Empire runs through her mother's side.
She graduated early from Erasmus Hall High School, sang in Greenwich Village clubs, and in 1962 took a supporting role in the Broadway musical I Can Get It for You Wholesale. The Barbra Streisand Album (1963) won the Grammy for Album of the Year, and in 1964 she opened on Broadway as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl. Her performance in the 1968 film version won the Academy Award for Best Actress, shared that year with Katharine Hepburn.
Her second Oscar came for writing the music of "Evergreen" from A Star Is Born (1976). In 1983 she directed, produced, co-wrote and starred in Yentl, adapted from a story by Isaac Bashevis Singer about a girl in a Jewish town of Russian-ruled Poland who disguises herself as a boy to study the Talmud; it made her the first woman to win the Golden Globe for Best Director. She went on to direct The Prince of Tides (1991) and The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996).
She is one of the few performers to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony, and the only recording artist to have had number-one albums in six consecutive decades. In 2015 she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1984 she endowed the Emanuel Streisand Building for Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in memory of her father. Her memoir, My Name Is Barbra, appeared in 2023.
"Her maternal grandparents emigrated from the Russian Empire to the United States; her grandfather had been a cantor there."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Russian Empire (town not documented)
Her maternal grandparents came from the Russian Empire, where her grandfather had been a cantor; their town is not named. Her paternal grandparents came from Galicia, then part of Austria-Hungary.
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Russian Empire (town not documented). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.