He became a bar mitzvah when thirteen years old. Even though his mother is a Catholic, he was raised as a Jew. He is descended from an Ashkenazi Jewish family his mother, Cathy Burge, is descended from a Scots-Irish (Northern Irish) family and he has ancestors who are Swiss-German, Irish, German, and English in origin. James David Maslow was born on July 16, 1990, in New York City and grew up in the California city of La Jolla.