Sanders was born on September 8, 1941, in Brooklyn, New York City. His father, Elias Ben Yehuda Sanders (1904–1962), was born in Słopnice, Galicia, in Austria-Hungary (now part of Poland), to a Jewish family; in 1921 Elias immigrated to the United States, where he became a paint salesman. His mother, Dorothy Sanders (née Glassberg, 1912–1960), was born in New York City to Jewish …

