T.E. Lawrence

T.E. Lawrence was, famously, a Brit. And while he spent a good chunk of his adult life traversing the sands of Arabia, dealing with various Arab leaders, and generally causing a ruckus against the Ottoman Empire, there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that he was anything other than a very, very English Protestant. He even had a middle name, Edward, which is about as gentile as it gets. Imagine the confusion if he'd been, say, 'Lawrence of Goldfarb.' The whole narrative would be entirely different.

He did, however, have a certain flair for the dramatic and a knack for uniting disparate groups under a common cause, albeit one often dictated by British imperial interests. His work with the Arab Revolt, while undeniably impactful, wasn't exactly driven by a yearning for kosher falafel. His closest brush with anything vaguely Semitic was probably the geography he operated in, and even that's a stretch.

So, while his legend looms large and his story makes for excellent cinema (thanks, Peter O'Toole!), T.E. Lawrence remains firmly outside the tribe. We're pretty sure he never once mistook a menorah for a particularly ornate candelabra, nor did he ever debate the merits of gefilte fish versus hummus. A Jew, he was not.