Jon Stewart

Stewart was born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz at Doctors Hospital in the Upper East Side of New York City. His father, Donald Leibowitz (1931–2013), was an energy coordinator for the New Jersey Department of the Treasury, and his mother, Marian Leibowitz (née Laskin), was a teacher and later an educational consultant. Stewart's family is Ashkenazi Jewish (Polish-Jewish, Ukrainian-Jewish, Belarusian-Jewish, and possibly Lithuanian-Jewish); his parents had immigrated to the United States from Europe. One of his grandfathers was born in Manzhouli, present-day China. He is the second of four sons, with older brother Lawrence and younger brothers Dan and Matthew.

Stewart's parents divorced when he was eleven years old, and he became largely estranged from his father. Due to their strained relationship, Stewart dropped his surname and began using his middle name alone, stating: "There was a thought of using my mother's maiden name, but I thought that would be just too big [of] a 'fuck you' to my dad.... Did I have some problems with my father? Yes. Yet people always view [changing my surname] through the prism of ethnic identity." He had his surname legally changed to "Stewart" in 2001. In 2015, he described his relationship with his father as "still complicated" after his father's death two years earlier. Stewart and his older brother, Lawrence, who was previously the chief operating officer of NYSE Euronext (the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange), grew up in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Stewart has stated that he experienced much antisemitism as a child, having been bullied frequently due to his Jewish identity. He describes himself in high school as "very into Eugene Debs and a bit of a leftist." Stewart grew up in the era of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, which inspired in him "a healthy skepticism towards official reports." His first job was working with his brother at a Woolworth's store, and he has jokingly said that being fired by Lawrence himself was one of the "scarring events" of his youth. He has also credited renowned television producer Norman Lear as someone who "raised me."

After graduating from Lawrence High School in 1980, Stewart attended the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he initially majored in chemistry before switching to psychology. While at William & Mary, Stewart became a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, but eventually began disassociating himself from other members, leaving the fraternity altogether after six months. "My college career was waking up late, memorizing someone else's notes, doing bong hits, and going to soccer practice", he later said. He was a three-year starter in 1981, 1982 and 1983 with the Tribe men's soccer team. He had 10 goals and 12 assists on a squad that went 40–15–9 (.695) in his three seasons with the program. He is listed as Jon Leibowitz in official William & Mary Athletics records. The former head coach of the Tribe men's soccer team from 1971 to 2003, Al Albert, describes Jon as "athletic and feisty and quick" and added that he "wasn't the most technical or clinical player, but he could make things happen." He graduated from William & Mary in 1984 with a Bachelor of Arts. Twenty years later, the college awarded him an honorary Master of Arts degree.

After college, Stewart held numerous jobs: contingency planner for the New Jersey Department of Human Services, contract administrator for the City University of New York, puppeteer for children with disabilities, soccer coach at Gloucester High School in Virginia, caterer, busboy, shelf stocker at Woolworth's, bartender at the Franklin Corner Tavern (a blue-collar bar in Lawrence), and bartender at the City Gardens nightclub in Trenton, New Jersey. He has said that working at City Gardens was a pivotal moment for him: "Finding this place City Gardens was like, 'Oh, maybe I'm not a giant weirdo. Maybe there are other people who have a similar sense of yearning for something other than what they have now.' I think it inspired a lot of people, man. It was a very creative environment. It was a place of great possibility."