Lia Koenig is now known as the “First Lady of Israeli Theatre” for her constant presence on the stage of Tel Aviv’s Habimah Theatre. But, before performing in Israel, in the 1950s she established herself as one of the most iconic actresses at Bucharest’s State Jewish Theatre.

Gymnast Ágnes Keleti celebrated her 100th birthday on January 9, 2021, becoming the world’s oldest living Olympic champion.

Fanny Fligelman Brin (1884-1961) was a Jewish activist best known for her charity work and public peace speeches. She had spent her entire life stating that violence could never be a solution to a conflict, and she did everything she could to avoid senseless sacrifices on the battlefield.

Before WWI, Bacău had 22 synagogues and prayer houses, only one of which remained standing, the Cereal Merchants’ Temple (in Yiddish, “Pepșoinekes Șil”).

Judit, Zsuzsa, and Zsófia Polgár are descendants of a Jewish family from Budapest. Their father, a pedagogue, believed that if a child receives a quality education from an early age, they can achieve excellent results in any field, and he wanted to demonstrate this with the example of his own daughters. As a result, Judit, Zsuzsa, and Zsófia learned foreign languages, each has several university degrees, and they have played chess since they were young girls.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, in Transylvania and the rest of the Kingdom of Hungary, a lot of associations, societies, groups and clubs were founded, especially in the big cities. In this context, women’s charities aimed above all to support vulnerable people, for example, orphans or poor children, to organise educational activities, contributing to the dissemination of modern ideas.

The pianist Clara Haskil became well-known for her renditions of classical and romantic composers. She was born into a Sephardic Jewish family in Bucharest on January 7, 1895. Her mother was the one who first introduced her to the piano, and the young girl possessed a natural gift, as evidenced by her admission to the Bucharest Conservatory at the age of six.

Computers are everywhere: we use them for shopping, reading the news, sending messages, medical research, economic planning, watching movies, and playing games. Did you know that János Neumann, also known as John von Neumann, who came from a Jewish family from Marghita, made significant contributions to the development of modern informatics systems?

Eduard Marcus, known under his pen name Ilarie Voronca, was born in Brăila 118 years ago. Voronca, a Jewish avant-garde poet and essayist, collaborated with some of Romania’s most famous modernist publications, including “Contimporanul,” “Integral,” and “Punct.”

Galați has been an important Jewish centre in Moldova since the late sixteenth century. With the progressive growth of the Jewish population in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, several prayer houses and synagogues were built in the city.