Barbra Streisand Gets Presidential Medal — 4 Jews on List
Image by Getty Images
Singer and actress Barbra Streisand, filmmaker Steven Spielberg, Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim and award-winning conductor Itzhak Perlman are among 17 Americans who this year will receive the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the White House said on Monday.
President Barack Obama will award the medals to a star-studded list of Americans to honor their accomplishments in public service, entertainment and sports during a Nov. 24 ceremony, the White House said.
Gloria Estefan, Grammy Award-winning Cuban-American singer, and her husband Emilio Estefan, a producer and songwriter, will each receive the medal, along with baseball great Willie Mays and singer James Taylor, the White House said.
Bonnie Carroll, known for her work with veterans, also will be honored, as will long-serving Democratic Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski, former Indiana Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton, NASA mathematician Katherine G. Johnson, and former Environmental Protection Agency head William Ruckelshaus.
Posthumous honors will be given to New York Yankee catcher Yogi Berra, African American trail-blazing Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, Indian treaty rights advocate Billy Frank, Jr., and Japanese-American civil rights activist Minoru Yasui, the White House said.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
