top Jews

The Forward has compiled a List of Fifty:

Membership in the 50 doesn’t mean that the Forward endorses what these individuals do or say. We’ve chosen them because they are doing and saying things that are making a difference in the way American Jews, for better or worse, view the world and themselves. Not all these people have put their energies into the traditional frameworks of Jewish community life, but they all have embodied the spirit of Jewish action as it is emerging in America, and all of them have left a mark.

Some samples:

Rahm Emanuel and Charles Schumer
No one raised an eyebrow when the Democratic Party decided, in its bid to recapture Congress this year, to name a pair of boychiks from the old neighborhood to mastermind the campaign: Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Northside Chicago, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Senator Chuck Schumer of Brooklyn, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Both are aggressive campaigners who managed to breathe some much-needed moxie into the party while avoiding the gaffes that sank fellow party leaders like Howard Dean and John Kerry.

Abraham Foxman
If a man can be known by the enemies he makes, then Abe Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, must be one of the toughest Jews in America. Now in his 20th year as ADL chief, Foxman, 66, has become a magnet for attacks by critics of Israel, opponents of the Israel lobby and just plain Jew-bashers who like to take him on in hopes of showing how tough they are. The latest of these slapdowns came last month in a public letter addressed to Foxman, signed by 114 prominent American intellectuals, upbraiding him for a phone call - which he never made - supposedly bullying the Polish consul in New York to cancel a lecture by historian Tony Judt. Why do they pick on Foxman? Mostly because they’ve heard of him.

Also:

“Jon is driven,” his friend and producer Ben Karlin told Rolling Stone recently, “by the forces of guilt and shame and fear of being on the outside that gives Jews their comic angst.”

And one more:

Sacha Baron Cohen
Baron Cohen bought a home in Los Angeles where he’s settling down with his fiancee, Australian beauty Isla Fisher, who is preparing to convert to Judaism. The first step ― buying a home here ― qualifies Baron Cohen for inclusion in the Forward 50, which is for members of the American Jewish community. The second, conversion, tells you a lot about why he intrigues us. His shtick, first aired on HBO’s “Da Ali G Show,” leaves half of us gasping and the other half outraged. It’s riddled with the basest antisemitism, racism, misogyny and anti-Kazakh stereotypes. We know he means it as a joke, a way of holding up a mirror to our flaws. But he’s only half kidding.

Also featured on the list: Scarlett Johansson (though she’s only half-Jewish), Philip Roth, Shawn Green, and Dennis Ross. And for the piece de resistance: the four gospels of Mel.

Check it out.