Early Life
Jonathan Jay Pollard was born in Galveston, Texas in 1954 to a Jewish family, the youngest of three siblings. In 1961 his family moved to South Bend, Indiana, where his father, an award-winning microbiologist, taught at Notre Dame.
Pollard was an intelligent and sensitive child, who was frequently a victim of bullying. He grew up with what he describes as a "racial obligation" to Israel, and says of his troubled childhood, "I got beaten up, but at least I knew the Israelis would beat up a couple Arab countries and maybe I would feel better." Pollard made his first trip to Israel in 1970, as part of a science program visiting the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. While there, he was hospitalized after a fight with another student. One Weizmann scientist remembered Pollard as leaving behind "a reputation of being an unstable troublemaker, the worst case of this kind in the history of the summer camp."
After completing high school, Pollard attended Stanford University, where he completed a degree in political science in 1976. While there, he is remembered by several of his acquaintances as boasting that he was a dual citizen of the United States and Israel and claiming to work for the Mossad and to have attained the rank of colonel in the Israel Defense Forces. None of these claims were true. Later, Pollard enrolled in several graduate schools, but never completed a postgraduate degree. He met his future wife Anne Henderson in 1982, when both were living in Sacramento.
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