Neil Diamond — singer with roots in the Russian Empire
Neil Leslie Diamond was born in Brooklyn on 24 January 1941, the son of Rose Rapoport and Akeeba "Kieve" Diamond, a dry-goods merchant. His connection to the Russian Empire runs through his mother's parents.
All four of his grandparents were Jewish immigrants. His mother's family, the Rapoports, were born in Kyiv, then in the Russian Empire; his father's family came from Poland. Neither the date of emigration nor any town on the Polish side is recorded. One biographical source describes his parents themselves as immigrants from Poland, but Wikipedia gives their birth years as 1917 and 1918 and describes the grandparents as the generation that emigrated.
His father served in the army from 1945 to 1949, and the family spent those years in Cheyenne, Wyoming, before returning to Brooklyn. At Erasmus Hall High School he sang in the Freshman Chorus alongside Barbra Streisand, though they were not friends at the time. He got his first guitar for his sixteenth birthday, recorded as one half of the duo Neil and Jack with his friend Jack Packer, and went to New York University on a fencing scholarship intending to study medicine.
He left to write songs for Sunbeam Music and then joined the songwriters of the Brill Building. In 1965 he signed with Bang Records, and the following year wrote I'm a Believer, which the Monkees took to number one; his own Solitary Man and Sweet Caroline (1969) followed. He went on to place ten singles at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts, sang You Don't Bring Me Flowers with Barbra Streisand in 1978, and won a Grammy for his soundtrack to Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1973). In 1980 he made his screen debut in The Jazz Singer, as the son of a cantor, opposite Laurence Olivier. He has sold more than 56.5 million records in the United States alone.
He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1984 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011, the year he was also a Kennedy Center honoree. In January 2018 he retired from touring after a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, and that year received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
"His mother's parents were born in Kyiv, then in the Russian Empire, and emigrated to the United States; his father's parents came from Poland."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Kyiv (maternal grandparents)
His mother's parents, the Rapoports, were born in Kyiv, then in the Russian Empire, and emigrated to the United States; his father's family came from Poland. He was born in Brooklyn in 1941.
All four grandparents were Jewish immigrants: the maternal Rapoports born in Kyiv, the paternal Diamonds from Poland. Parents Rose Rapoport (1918-2019) and Akeeba 'Kieve' Diamond (1917-1985), a dry-goods merchant.
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Kyiv (maternal grandparents). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.