What Ethnicity is Amy Schumer?

Amy Schumer is half Jewish (Ukrainian) from her father’s side but she grew up in Manhattan, New York City, U.S.

 

Originally from Ukraine, Schumer’s father is sprung from a long line of Jewish immigrants. Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader in the Senate, is his second cousin.

Prior to her marriage, her mother converted to Judaism from a Protestant upbringing with profound New England origins.

Schumer was born and raised a Jew and recalls encounters with antisemitism when she was a young girl.

Among her mother’s ancestors were Puritans from the English colony of Massachusetts in the 17th century.

It was revealed to Schumer on Finding Your Roots that in 1704, three children from her ancestor Thomas Tarbell’s family were kidnapped by the French and Abenaki and sent to Montreal.

The two boys were raised by Mohawk families in Kahnawake after being rescued by a French-Canadian family and eventually entering a French Catholic convent.

Schumer grew up in a comfortable Manhattan neighborhood thanks to the success of her father’s furniture business.

In either the year when she was nine her Dad was diagnosed with MS, his business failed and he went bankrupt.

Her parents split a few years afterward. Schumer moved to Rockville Centre, New York, with her mother and attended South Side High School in Rockville Centre.

When she graduated from high school in 1999, she was voted both the “Class Clown” and the “Teacher’s Worst Nightmare.”

Her mother was on the board of the Central Synagogue of Nassau County, where she attended Hebrew school.