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He has performed worldwide and throughout the United States , in venues that have included a state dinner for Elizabeth II at the White House in , and at the inauguration of Barack Obama. In , he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Perlman was born in in Tel Aviv. His parents, Chaim and Shoshana Perlman, were Jewish natives of Poland and had independently emigrated to Mandatory Palestine in the mids before they met and later married.

Perlman contracted polio at age four and has walked using leg braces and crutches since then and plays the violin while seated. As of [update] , he uses crutches or an electric scooter for mobility. When Perlman was three years old, he sat and listened attentively to a violin recital on the radio, which inspired him to become a violinist.

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His mother soon bought him a toy violin, and he quickly taught himself to play melodies. His parents tried to enroll him at the Shulamit Conservatory, but he was denied admission for being too small to hold a violin. Despite his handicap, he began learning the violin a year later. At age five, Perlman was admitted to the Academy of Music in Tel Aviv now the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music , where he studied for eight years with Rivka Goldgart, a violin teacher of Russian origin, and gave his first recital at age ten.

Perlman gained national attention when he appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show twice in , and again in , on the same show with the Rolling Stones. His performances on the show included pieces such as Rimsky-Korsakov 's "Flight of the Bumblebee", Wieniawski 's "Polonaise Brillante", and Mendelssohn 's violin concerto. Perlman returned twice to the Ed Sullivan Show in He debuted with the Los Angeles Philharmonic with the same concerto on February 17, Starting in the late s, Perlman began to tour Europe.