List of notable former Orthodox Jews

This is a list of notable people who left Orthodox Judaism/traditional rabbinic Judaism at some point in their lives.
Ancient
While Orthodox Judaism is a term applied to traditional Judaism in the modern era, some famous examples exist of those who left rabbinic Judaism in pre-modern times. Although Orthodox Judaism would probably be considered the mainstream expression of Judaism prior to the 19th century, for some Orthodox Judaism is a modern self-identification that distinguishes it from traditional pre-modern Judaism.
*Elisha Ben Avuya
*Jesus Christ
*Paul the Apostle
*Josephus Flavius
Modern
*Sholem Aleichem
*Gedaliah Alon
*Pessah Bar-Adon
*Menachem Begin
*Shmuel Ben-Artzi
*Eliezer Ben-Yehuda
*Micha Josef Berdyczewski
*Hayim Nahman Bialik
*Yosef Haim Brenner
*Ezriel Carlebach
*Haim Cohn
*Ben-Zion Dinur
*Jacob Freud
*Abraham Geiger
*Chaim Grade
*Heinrich Graetz
*Ahad Haam
*Abraham Harkavy
*
*Chaim Herzog
*Abraham Joshua Heschel
*Mordecai Kaplan
*Hillel Kook
*Saul Lieberman
*Yom Tov Lipman Lipkin
*Salomon Maimon
*Moses Mendelssohn
*Shimon Peres
*Chaim Potok
*Mayer Amschel Rothschild
*Solomon Schechter
*Mendele Mocher Sforim
*Gene Simmons
*Isaac Bashevis Singer
*Steven Spielberg
*Baruch Spinoza
*Barbara Streisand
*Chaim Weizmann
*Harry Austryn Wolfson
*Moshe Zilberg
 
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