Scooter Braun
The man who discovered teenage megastar Justin Bieber is Scooter Braun, a 31-year-old talent manager from Greenwich, Conn. Braun is known for finding promising acts on YouTube, drumming up an early fan base with more YouTube videos and then releasing his talent to the broader public with big name endorsements (which in Bieber’s case came from R&B icon Usher).
Bieber, 18, was raised by his single mother, a Christian who initially bristled at the idea of her son being represented by a Jewish manager. “I prayed, ‘God, you don’t want this Jewish kid to be Justin’s man, do you?’” she recalled in a 2009 New York Times profile. But now the Bieber team likes to hype its multi-faith character. Bieber says a Christian prayer before each show and then joins Braun and musical director Dan Kanter in singing the Sh’ma. Braun’s Jewish identity goes beyond his preshow prayers.
Being born Scott Samuel Braun, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, he told the Forward, had an “incredible influence” on his life. He grew up in a kosher home, and as a child he loved Superman because he’s the “Jewish superhero.” He even attended Camp Ramah.
This year, Braun signed Carly Rae Jepsen, another precocious young Canadian musical singer, proving himself as perhaps the preeminent pop talent scout of our time.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO