Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Olympic Champ Rebecca Soni Has Jewish Roots

Move over Michael Phelps, we have Rebecca Soni batting for our team. And by batting, I mean swimming laps.

Rebecca Soni Image by getty images

American breast stroke champion Rebecca Soni, who just picked up three Olympics medals, including two golds, and two world records this past week, is Jewish.

Growing up in Freehold, N.J., Soni began swimming at an early age. Her parents immigrated to the United States from Hungary, after being deported there from Romania during World War II. Her grandparents survived Auschwitz.

The swimming star made her Olympic debut while still in college—competing in Beijing at the relatively young age of 21. She walked away with three medals and world recognition.

Known for her fierce swimming and super-human concentration, Soni was the first woman to swim the 200-meter breaststroke in under two and a half minutes. She is an important female role model for the Jewish community, as evidenced by her commitment to helping adolescent females around the world, through her work with United Nations Foundation’s Girl Up campaign.

And though her training schedule is tough, she still makes time to visit her family’s homeland of Hungary.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.