Urgence de se réveiller...
et de se tenir debout.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
GEITHNER, PRÉSIDENT DE LA FED DE NY, SERA SECRÉTAIRE DU TRÉSOR
Le successeur de Henry Paulson est l'un des artisans du rachat de Bear Sterns par JP Morgan Chase.
Le marché boursier est tout excité déjà: "Dow ends up nearly 500 in surprise comeback after report Geithner will be new Treasury secretary"
En lien avec Geithner:
Qui sont les artisans du désastre financier?
BIS: La banque centrale des banques centrales
DOW up on Treasury pick - Tim Geithner
OBAMA PICKS THE JEWISH TIMOTHY GEITHNER FOR SECRETARY OF TREASURY
Timothy Geithner, selected by Barack Obama to be secretary of the treasury, is a Jew.
He Is linked to Obama by: Robert E. Rubin and Lawrence H., two former Clinton treasury secretaries who have been advising the Obama campaign. Mr. Geithner was an aide to both men.
Paul Volcker, the former Fed chairman who is also advising Mr. Obama, was on the committee that selected Mr. Geithner for his current job.
Geithner is now president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Peter F. Geithner of Larchmont, N.Y. He is married to Carole M. Sonnenfeld and has two children. The Rev. Thomas Keehn, a United Church of Christ minister, officiated at his wedding.
All three men, Geithner, Lawrence Summers and Paul Volcker who had been under consideration by President-Elect Barack Obama for the Secretary of the Treasury post in his administration, are Jews.
Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers is a Jew. in 2002 he wrote of himself, “I am Jewish, identified but hardly devout.”
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker is a Jew. He is a native son of Teaneck New Jersey and a graduate of Teaneck High School. His father was the township’s first Municipal manager.
Volcker was appointed Chairman of the Federal Reserve in August 1979 by President Jimmy Carter and reappointed in 1983 by President Ronald Reagan.
November 21, 2008
THE 5 CANDIDATES
 Mere coincidence you ask? One might be surprised that the media or Obama's handlers has not thrown in a non-Jewish candidate just so things wouldn't be so obvious. Many foolish people think Obama will bring meaningful change to the country. Well Henry Paulson, the current Treasury Secretary who just manipulated the bailout swindle a few weeks ago, is a Jew. Now let's look at the candidates that are in the running to be his successor under Obama. JEW #1 Jon Corzine - Is the Jewish Governor of New Jersey. Corzine, also a former Senator, formerly was chief of Jewish banking giant Goldman, Sachs & Co. Article linked below refers to Corzine as a prime candidate for the position of Treasury Secretary and also mentions several others that will be discussed here. Jew #2 Paul Volcker - Was Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1979 to 1987. Excuse us Negroid President Obama, but doesn't the word "change" mean to do things differently than from times in the past? Before his time as Federal Reserve Chairman Volcker was a leader within Jewish banking giant Chase Manhattan. In 1971 this Jew played an important role in the decision to suspend gold convertibility which lead to the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. We advise readers to click on the links to "gold convertibility" and "Bretton Woods system" that are linked on the Wikipedia biography of Volcker and you will see that this Jew was instrumental in fundementally changing the monetary system of this country and the world. Certainly Volcker is not one of the chosen that is hard to spot out, even for the untrained eye, viewing his picture on Wikipedia will make it clear to you that he is one of those Jews that you could identify in a dark room. Jew #3 Tim Geithner - This Jew is the current president of the Federal Reserve itself. Well known in Jewish banking circles, Geithner has worked within the International Monetary Fund as well as within the U.S. Treasury Department itself and has served under both Jews listed below. Jew #4 Robert Rubin - Rubin, if selected, would be another example of the fact that Obama has a very odd way of defining the word change. Rubin was the Jew who served as the Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton during both of his terms. Critics, most of whom would be too timid to point out that he is a Jew, have said that Rubin created the conditions that have resulted in the current financial crisis. This Jew has spent his lifetime working for several big Jewish banking giants such as Citigroup and Goldman-Sachs as well as spending time within various positions in the New York Stock Exchange, New York Futures Exchange, as well as the Harvard Corporation. Jew #5 Larry Summers - Summers is a familiar face, not a change here either Mr. Obama, as he served as U.S. Treasury Secretary under Clinton during the last half of his 2nd term and was preceded by Rubin. Summers was the first Jewish president of Harvard University. Summers was forced to resign after making comments that irked women's groups in the winter of 2005. Summers lead a campaign in 2002 at Harvard which focused on silencing critics of Israel among the faculty of Harvard and MIT who encouraged that those schools divest from companies with Israeli holdings. This Jew is a hardcore globalist who has also spent time as the Chief Economist for the World Bank. Earlier this year Summers was honored at the YIVO Institute for Jewish research in,where else, New York City, for, according to the article linked below, "his unique mastery of scholarship and public policy, and the interplay of economic policy and world events in both the micro and macro spheres." Wow, what a fancy schmancy way to basically say that the guy is a real Jew's Jew when it comes to fleecing the goy sheep for all they are worth. Information on the Jews listed above as well as articles used as reference for this short report are linked below. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/05/obama-under-pressure-to-p_n_141310.html http://www.thedeal.com/dealscape/2008/11/mr_corzine_goes_to_washington.php http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Volcker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Geithner http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Summers#Differences_between_the_sexes |
Friday, November 21, 2008
THE TRANSPARENT CABAL
Dr Stephen Sniegoski, auteur de The Transparent Cabal, invité à des émissions de radio et de télé-internet:
THE LIBERTY HOUR
Mark Glenn & USS Liberty survivor Phil Tourney with guest Dr Sniegoski
SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, 2008
MP3 Files: Hour 1, Hour 2
Playlist Files: PLS M3U
Interview with Dr Stephen Sniegoski, author of The Transparent Cabal
De www.currentissues.tv
Ligne ouverte: "James" (Neoconzionistthreat.com) attire notre attention sur le fait que Dennis Ross, qui conseille Obama sur le Moyen-Orient (Israel-Palestine), était dans l'équipe de campagne de John McCain et qu'il militait férocement en faveur d'une guerre contre l'Iran.
Dans ses nombreux appels à des lignes ouvertes, James recommande souvent la lecture de The Transparent Cabal.
The Transparent Cabal
De : NeoConZionistThreat
Don't Let the Neocon Agenda Get US into wider Middle East War: Talking with Stephen J. Sniegoski, author of the Transparent Cabal
De : NeoConZionistThreat
Une guerre contre l’Iran serait un désastre, même pour les USA
traduction de Mecanopolis.org
Extraits des chapitres « conclusions» et «Postscriptum» du livre de Stephen Sniegoski: «The Transparent Cabal»
Ce livre a défendu la thèse que les origines de la guerre américaine contre l’Irak tournent autour de l’agenda de guerre américaine, dont les bases furent esquissées en Israël pour favoriser les intérêts israéliens, et que des néoconservateurs américains, amis d’Israël à l’intérieur et à l’extérieur du gouvernement Bush, firent avancer avec passion. Pour documenter cette affirmation, des preuves étendues furent produites dont beaucoup d’entre elles proviennent d’un document néoconservateur détaillé et compromettant. (p. 351)
L’influence des néoconservateurs fut avant tout démontrée par le fait que leur agenda de guerre se différencia radicalement de la politique traditionnelle américaine au Moyen-Orient, qui se concentrait sur le maintien de la stabilité régionale. La politique des neocons a par conséquent provoqué l’opposition de membres de l’élite traditionnelle dans le domaine de la politique étrangère/sécurité nationale. (p. 352)
Une partie fondamentale et plutôt tabouisée du sujet de ce travail est la combinaison intégrale d’Israël avec l’agenda de guerre néoconservateur. Les contours essentiels de cet agenda de guerre pour le Proche-Orient – à l’aide duquel la sécurité d’Israël devait être renforcée par la déstabilisation des voisins d’Israël – se profilèrent en grande partie dans la pensée du Likoud des années 1980. Des leaders neocons – Richard Perle, David Wurmser, Douglas Feith ‑ soumirent en 1996 au Premier ministre israélien Netanyahou un plan comparable, selon lequel les Etats-Unis auraient remplacé Israël dans son rôle de parti agresseur. Cependant, il y avait également une liaison israélienne lorsque l’Amérique s’achemina vers une guerre avec l’Irak, lorsque le gouvernement Sharon insista pour une attaque et favorisa l’idée d’une menace immédiate par les armes de destruction massives de Saddam. Plus tard, Israël aurait joué un rôle semblable en appuyant une ligne dure contre l’Iran.
Comme révélé dans cette étude, les néoconservateurs entretenaient d’étroits liens avec Israël et avaient indiqué, à l’occasion d’une série de manifestations, la sécurité d’Israël comme but de leur agenda de guerre pour le Proche-Orient. Mais ils insistaient sur le fait que les intérêts américains et israéliens concordaient et que le but fondamental de leurs recettes politiques consistait en un renforcement de la sécurité américaine. Afin de tirer au clair la justesse de cette affirmation des neocons, il est instructif d’évaluer les fruits de leur politique.
Principalement: dans quelle mesure un renforcement de la sécurité américaine a-t-il effectivement résulté de leur politique de guerre? Pour l’Amérique, les conséquences négatives de la guerre en Irak sont assez évidentes. Jusqu’à fin mars 2008, plus de 4000 Américains ont perdu la vie, le nombre de blessés dépassa 29 000, et on avait dépensé près de 490 milliards de dollars pour cette guerre.
Le total des coûts économiques de la guerre, auxquels n’appartiennent pas que les dépenses de guerre directes, mais aussi les effets de la guerre sur l’économie en général, était de loin plus élevé. Joseph Stiglitz, l’ancien président du conseil national des experts économiques, prix Nobel et professeur d’économie à la Columbia University, et Linda Bilmes, experte financière de l’Université de Harvard calculèrent dans leur livre intitulé «The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict» [La guerre à trois billions de dollars: les coûts effectifs de la guerre], paru au début 2008, que le coût global de la guerre d’Irak se monterait à 3 mille milliards de dollars. (Cette estimation repose sur l’hypothèse que les Etats-Unis retireraient toutes leurs troupes d’ici 2012). Les coûts de la guerre ont déjà dépassé ceux de la guerre du Vietnam qui dura douze ans. Les auteurs font remarquer que la seule guerre des Etats-Unis qui coûta plus fut la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Ces coûts qui donnent le tournis ont déjà constitué un facteur important de la récession de l’économie américaine. (p. 352)
La guerre d’Irak n’a pas seulement aggravé le terrorisme, mais elle a aussi affaibli la puissance de l’Amérique dans le monde. Avant tout, cela a gravement nui à la position américaine au Proche-Orient. Richard Haass, le président du Conseil des relations étran gères, prétendit dans son essai «La fin d’une ère», paru fin 2006 dans Foreign Policy, que la guerre américaine contre l’Irak avait conduit à la fin du «primat américain» au Proche-Orient. (p. 354)
Les néoconservateurs voyaient la politique extérieure américaine à travers les lunettes des intérêts d’Israël, comme les Likoudniks ont défendu les intérêts d’Israël. Ils voyaient très probablement les intérêts d’Israël vraiment comme étant ceux de l’Amérique et ne se considéraient pas comme des gens qui sacrifiaient les intérêts des Etats-Unis en faveur d’Israël. Chez des individus orientés par une idéologie, l’automystification n’a rien d’extraordinaire.
Dire que les néoconservateurs tentaient de promouvoir les intérêts israéliens n’est cependant pas la même chose que de pré tendre que les néoconservateurs exécutaient les ordres du gouvernement d’Israël. Il n’y a pas d’indication qu’ils auraient reçu des instructions dans ce sens. Les positions des neocons et du gouvernement israélien se recoupaient dans bien des questions déci sives: concernant la guerre d’Irak; concernant la nécessité de liquider le pouvoir iranien; concernant la défense de l’Etat juif contre les Palestiniens. Dans les faits, la position des néoconservateurs concernant l’Iran – dans les années 1980 de façon bienveillante, ces dernières années de façon hostile – était totalement calquée sur celle d’Israël. Il semble cependant que quelques éléments importants en Israël affirmaient des opinions modérées et ne s’identifiaient pas à l’entier de l’agenda de guerre néoconservateur. C’est facile à comprendre. Avant 2001 déjà, il était patent que les neocons faisaient partie de l’aile dure des opinions israéli ennes, comme ils l’ont clairement affirmé dans leur papier «A Clean Break» publié en 1990, qui avait appelé le gouvernement likoud de Netanyahou de rompre avec le «processus de paix» du parti travailliste et d’adopter une attitude beaucoup plus agressive. Même le dur Netanyahou se distança de la mise en œuvre de leur ligne belliciste sans compromis. De même, le gouvernement Olmert s’abstint de suivre l’agenda néoconservateur lors de l’invasion du Liban en 2006. Apparemment la scène politique conflictuelle israélienne impose des limites à la marge de manœuvre d’un leader poli tique, de sorte que la mise en œuvre d’un programme politique devient très difficile. Malgré cela, il y a eu une relation évidente entre les neocons et des politiciens israéliens qui dépassait le simple échange d’idées. Des neocons n’étaient pas seulement proches de Netanyahou, mais encore de Sharansky, Dore Gold et dans une moindre mesure de Sharon. Ce qui est le plus significatif, et ça a été souligné dans tout le livre, c’est que l’agenda de guerre pour le Proche-Orient ne provenait pas du cerveau des neocons, mais qu’il reflétait la pensée des purs et durs du Likoud. Leurs idées fondamentales sur le nouvel ordre du Proche-Orient avaient été pensées pour l’essentiel en Israël pour faire avancer les intérêts israéliens. (p. 365 ss.)
Les preuves de la relation entre les néoconservateurs et les Israéliens avec la guerre des Etats-Unis au Proche-Orient sont renversantes et d’accès public. Il n’y eut pas de «conspiration» obscure et secrète, une expression moqueuse qui est souvent utilisée par des gens qui veulent railler la représentation d’une relation des neocons avec la guerre. Mais dans le domaine de la politique, comme le faisait remarquer George Orwell, « il faut un effort constant pour voir ce qui vous pend au nez ». On serait en droit d’espérer que les Américains, dans leur autoproclamé «pays des hommes libres», ne devraient pas craindre de discuter honnêtement des dessous et des motivations pour la guerre d’Irak et de la politique des Etats-Unis au Proche-Orient en général. Ce n’est qu’en comprenant la vérité que les Etats-Unis pourront peut-être prendre les mesures correctrices adéquates au Proche-Orient; à défaut d’une pareille compréhension, la catastrophe se rapproche de façon inquiétante.
Pour créer une politique moyen-orientale dans l’intérêt des Etats-Unis et de leur population, il est apparemment essentiel d’avoir une vue claire de la situation. Des individus qui dans leurs analyses se trompaient complètement, comme c’était le cas pour les néoconservateurs dans leurs prises de position publiques, ne devraient pas participer à l’élaboration de la politique dans ce domaine. Par ailleurs, l’axe principal de la détermination d’une pareille politique devrait être mis sur les intérêts des Etats-Unis, sans interférence des intérêts d’autres pays. Des individus, ayant des relations étroites avec des Etats étrangers, ne devraient pas participer à l’élaboration de la politique américaine dans des domaines qui concernent les intérêts de ces Etats. C’est un conflit d’intérêts évident. Aucune de ces affirmations ne signifie que les Etats-Unis ne doivent pas réfléchir à la moralité internationale – étant entendu que tous les pays doivent être mesurés à la même aulne – mais on ne peut pas attendre des Etats-Unis qu’ils poursuivent une politique qui renforcerait la sécurité de certains pays étrangers au détriment de leurs propres intérêts. Un pareil principe de base devrait être valable pour Israël comme pour tous les autres pays. Lorsqu’il devient évident que les intérêts des Etats-Unis sont sacrifiés au profit d’un autre pays, des Américains ne devraient pas se laisser dissuader de démontrer cela. La survie à proprement parler des Etats-Unis et de leur population pourrait en dépendre. (p. 372 ss.)
Rien ne garantit l’application d’une guerre contre l’Iran ni les aspects complémentaires de l’agenda de guerre des néoconservateurs. Cependant, au vu de la rhétorique qui s’exprima au printemps 2008, une pareille guerre parut être une possibilité indubi table du gouvernement Bush à son déclin. Vu la position de dur de McCain et de sa proximité des neocons, il apparaît que la probabilité d’une guerre contre l’Iran serait encore plus grande s’il était élu. Et un pareil engagement ne pourrait pas non plus être exclu sous Obama ou Clinton malgré leur critique de la guerre de l’Irak. On peut dire avec certitude que – bien que la politique moyen-orientale des neocons a une longue histoire – cette poli tique, et les neocons eux-mêmes, sont loin de devenir de l’histoire. (p. 382)
Source : Stephen J. Sniegoski. The Transparent Cabal. The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel. Norfolk Virginia 2008. ISBN 978-1-932528-17-6
Traduction : Horizons & Débats
Pour plus de détails...
Visiter le blog: NeoConZionistThreat.com
Lire:
The war on Iraq: Conceived in Israel, Stephen Sniegoski
Michael Collins Piper
James Petras
Thursday, November 20, 2008
LA CRISE: BUFFET, VOLCKER, RUBIN, REICH PRODIGUERONT LEURS JUDICIEUX CONSEILS À OBAMA
Warren Buffett Gets the Call As Barack Obama Gathers His Economic Advisers Today
(...)Buffett is one of the names Obama includes on that list of core advisers, along with former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, former Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, and former Labor Secretary Bob Reich. (source: Warren Buffet Watch)
SMALL TIME CROOKS
Cinar (animation) est constamment sali par de nouveaux scandales.
Cinar scandal March 20, 2000
Troublant témoignage sur Norshield et Cinar: faux documents créés en toute hâte, Weinberg au courant 11 mars 2006
Et ce n'est pas fini.
Le scénariste montréalais Claude Robinson, qui affirme s'être fait dépouiller de sa série pour enfants Robinson Curiosité, a entrepris de témoigner dans le procès pour plagiat qu'il intente contre Ronald Weinberg (filmographie), feu Micheline Charest, le scénariste français Christophe Izard, Cinar, France-Animation et neuf autres personnes et firmes.
Ronald Weinberg s'esquive encore | LaPresseAffaires.com 14 fev 2008
Documents détruits à Cinar? 6 mars 2008
Weinberg serait parti en France avec des dessins de Robinson-4 nov 2008
De possibles accusations19 nov 2008
Mise à jour 2011:
Ronald Weinberg se livre aux autorités
Le cofondateur de Cinar, Ronald Weinberg, se rend à la justice
Dernière heure: l'escroc juif Ronald Weinberg, fondateur de Cinar (dessins animés, etc.), en cavale depuis des années, vient de prendre un avion pour Montréal où il est attendu par les policiers. Il doit être jugé pour fraude et usage de faux. Une escroquerie de plus de 120 millions de dollars, l'un des plus grosses fraudes fiscales au Canada. C'est grâce à la petite enquête de Claude Robinson, dont le dessin animé a été honteusement plagié par Cinar (c'est toute une autre affaire en soi...), que nous savons aujourd'hui l'ampleur des fraudes de Weinberg. Le congrès juif volera-t-il à son secours? "Chasse aux sorcières! antisémitisme!"
Affaire Cinar: quatre dirigeants visés par des mandats d'arrestation
Quebec police want to arrest Cinar's Weinberg
Sûreté du Québec raids Cinar offices
Affaire Cinar: les accusés
Ex-Cinar CEO Hasanain Panju Arrested
Primeur : des anciens patrons de Cinar et Norshield arrêtés
Deux accusés de Cinar comparaissent
Affaire Cinar: l'histoire d'une immense fraude
La bande à Lino Matteo, bien connue des policiers
Fraude et usage de faux
Police allege $120M fraud involving Cinar founder
Prosecutors look to Florida for missing Weinberg
Affaire Cinar: Weinberg toujours en cavale
Weinberg ou les lenteurs de la justice (éditorial)
Cinar scandal March 20, 2000
Troublant témoignage sur Norshield et Cinar: faux documents créés en toute hâte, Weinberg au courant 11 mars 2006
Les deux transactions sophistiquées visaient apparemment à protéger Cinar contre les fluctuations du dollar canadien, mais en réalité, elles profitaient au couple et à M. Panju, a expliqué M. Daviault.ARGENT - Ronald Weinberg ne se présente pas en cour 28 nov 2006
«Il se moque du système judiciaire», dit le procureur d'Ernst & YoungCinar intente une nouvelle poursuite contre Weinberg 19 juil 2007
Et ce n'est pas fini.
Le scénariste montréalais Claude Robinson, qui affirme s'être fait dépouiller de sa série pour enfants Robinson Curiosité, a entrepris de témoigner dans le procès pour plagiat qu'il intente contre Ronald Weinberg (filmographie), feu Micheline Charest, le scénariste français Christophe Izard, Cinar, France-Animation et neuf autres personnes et firmes.
Ronald Weinberg s'esquive encore | LaPresseAffaires.com 14 fev 2008
Documents détruits à Cinar? 6 mars 2008
Weinberg serait parti en France avec des dessins de Robinson-
De possibles accusations
Radio-Canada a appris que c'est à coup de 10 millions de dollars que Ronald Weinberg et Hasanain Panju transféraient l'argent de CINAR d'une succursale de la Banque Royale, rue Sainte-Catherine à Montréal, vers un compte à Nassau, aux Bahamas, en passant par la Chase Manhattan Bank, à New York.
Mise à jour 2011:
 |
| John Xanthoudakis, PDG de Norshield, Ronald Weinberg, cofondateur de Cinar, et Lino Pasquale Matteo, ex-PDG de Mount Real. |
Ronald Weinberg se livre aux autorités
Le cofondateur de Cinar, Ronald Weinberg, se rend à la justice
Dernière heure: l'escroc juif Ronald Weinberg, fondateur de Cinar (dessins animés, etc.), en cavale depuis des années, vient de prendre un avion pour Montréal où il est attendu par les policiers. Il doit être jugé pour fraude et usage de faux. Une escroquerie de plus de 120 millions de dollars, l'un des plus grosses fraudes fiscales au Canada. C'est grâce à la petite enquête de Claude Robinson, dont le dessin animé a été honteusement plagié par Cinar (c'est toute une autre affaire en soi...), que nous savons aujourd'hui l'ampleur des fraudes de Weinberg. Le congrès juif volera-t-il à son secours? "Chasse aux sorcières! antisémitisme!"
Affaire Cinar: quatre dirigeants visés par des mandats d'arrestation
Quebec police want to arrest Cinar's Weinberg
Sûreté du Québec raids Cinar offices
Affaire Cinar: les accusés
Ex-Cinar CEO Hasanain Panju Arrested
Primeur : des anciens patrons de Cinar et Norshield arrêtés
Deux accusés de Cinar comparaissent
Affaire Cinar: l'histoire d'une immense fraude
La bande à Lino Matteo, bien connue des policiers
Fraude et usage de faux
Police allege $120M fraud involving Cinar founder
Prosecutors look to Florida for missing Weinberg
Affaire Cinar: Weinberg toujours en cavale
Weinberg ou les lenteurs de la justice (éditorial)
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
L'IDOLE TERRORISTE D'ISRAEL ASPER
National Post: Izzy and the Holy Land
Posted By Patrick, mtl911truth.org
This article appeared in monday’s National Post. I copied 2 paragraphs but you have the link to the article itself. The second paragraph refers to the King David Hotel bombing. I also included a video where, at the 6 minute mark, one of the conspirators states that they were dressed up as Arabs, just like Arafat.
Much of Izzy Asper’s life was spent defending the ‘Jewish Nation’
Peter C. Newman, National PostPublished: Monday, November 17, 2008
Izzy’s profound empathy for Israel was forged when he and Babs first visited the country not long after the end of the Six Day War, in 1967. “Our first trip was very moving,” remembered Babs. “I don’t think either of us realized how deeply we actually cared. Izzy was fascinated by the battle stories, and the small size of the territories involved.” They ventured north into the Golan Heights, the area that the Israeli army had months earlier taken from the Syrians. One day, Asper picked up a shell casing. “I think it was still live,” Babs recalled, “but Izzy always did stuff like that.”
….
“The true story of Zionism hasn’t been told,” Asper maintained, “because the Labour Zionists got control of the educational institutions, and of the government. I utterly supported Begin from the time I was 12 or 13. Without him and his guerrilla revolt against the British, there would be no Israel.” Begin spoke often to Asper about the tortured journey he had taken from Warsaw, where he grew up, to the day he became Israel’s prime minister in 1977. The lesson Izzy drew from Begin’s life and career was that defiance was often the only response to an intolerable wrong. His idol’s most audacious act was the July 22, 1946, bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, in which 91 people died, though civilians had been warned to stay away. In one surreal moment, years later, Asper sat with Begin at the coffee shop in the King David. “I said to Menachem — we were colleagues by then — how can you sit in this bloody coffee shop 150 feet from where you blew this place up? And his response was, ‘If I hadn’t blown up this hotel, you and I wouldn’t be sitting here having coffee.’ And of course I agreed with him.”
http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=965936
18/11/2008
7:32 PM
PLUS DE DÉTAILS:
David Duke (Jewish Supremacism) :
Izzy Asper : Jewish Extremist Control Over Canadian Media
Friday, November 14, 2008
LE PREMIER LIVRE À EXPOSER LES RESPONSABLES SIONISTES DU 11 SEPTEMBRE
PDF ici.
Cliquez ici, ici, ici et ici pour connaître les vrais coupables du 11 septembre.
VIDEO - "Made In Israel: 9/11... " Get Victor Thorn's latest book.
Compte-rendu trouvé sur l'excellent blog 800poundgorilla.100webspace.net :
“9/11 Evil” by Victor Thorn -- Israel’s Central Role in the Sept. 11 Attacks
Wednesday, February 11 2009 @ 02:13 AM GMT
Finally,
a 9/11 book that addresses the attacks’ most important element: the
direct involvement of Israel. Along with details of Israel’s lead role
in the events of 9/11, author Victor Thorn reveals how the so-called
“9/11 Truth Movement” has been co-opted by Zionist interests with the
aim of steering suspicion away from Israel and her many agents in the US
government.
“A majority of 9/11 researchers, and especially those who have become
known as 'gatekeepers,’ have avoided this subject like the plague,”
Thorn writes. “Why? Because the direct implications to Israeli
involvement in 9/11 are so overt, and so obvious, that no one could ever
investigate this case again without considering the Mossad as one of
the primary suspects.”
“9/11 Evil” by Victor Thorn -- Download it HERE or HERE, read it, and email it to every thinking person you know.
Much of “9/11 Evil” is devoted to what Thorn does best: exposing the
multifarious disinformation agents in the so-called “truth movement.” As
the author intelligently explains it:
“There has been established within the CONTROLLED alternative media and
9/11 ‘truth movement’ a framework which parallels precisely that of the
mainstream media. Stated differently, those who lord over the
Jewish-dominated corporate press established the same rigid type of
operation when they created their phony 9/11 ‘truth’ network. The logic
behind such a maneuver is obvious. To prevent unwanted information from
leaking out to the public and to instead keep it contained, they
hand-picked a group of operatives before 9/11 even occurred to
eventually bamboozle truth-seekers after the attacks took place.”
“A large percentage of the alternative media and 9/11 ‘truth movement’
(many of them Jewish) aren't differentiated in the least from their
counterparts in the Zionist-run corporate media. This point is vital to
understand, because information control is essential in the cover-up
process of any crime.”
“The exact same forces controlling the mainstream media information
Matrix are also the same ones who control a majority of the alternative
media. The best way of viewing this situation is as such: powerful
Jewish forces have spent decades consolidating and monopolizing this
country's TV networks, newspapers, radio stations, and magazines. Do you
think it's possible that they would simply ignore those who are trying
hardest to expose one of their greatest crimes ever? Of course not.”
“From the very moment this plot was first conceived, the cabal behind it
was also planning the cover-up. One of the most integral aspects of
this cover-up was a massive infiltration of the 9/11 truth movement. In
fact, many of the most prominent deceivers are either Jewish, Jewish
apologists, or part of a complex Zionist protection racket. We can no
longer ignore this fact or keep our heads in the sand about it.”
Thorn then goes on to enumerate some of the “techniques that those
who are bought and sold by the Israeli Lobby use to divert researchers
in an arrav of convoluted directions.” These include:
1) A constant droning of vague, non-specific entities such as the "New
World Order," "globalists," "Illuminati," "internationalists," and even
"neo-cons" to intentionally deflect people's attention away from those
who actually masterminded 9/11 (therefore never using the world
"Israel").
2) Encourage the cult of personality where a popular radio show host
will expose a variety of clandestine conspiracies, but never point his
finger at the true culprit.
3) Bring in a religious figure who lays out (for all to see) the entire
truth about the mechanics of 9/11, including the all-important World
Trade Center controlled demolitions and the Whitewash Committee's many
lies, omissions, and distortions. The only problem is, this individual
will refuse to pound a final nail in the coffin by shining a light on
Israel's role in these attacks.
4) Use paid back-room moles to infiltrate every possible 9/11 chat room,
message board, and forum to create as much din, disruption, "noise,"
and chaos as possible which constantly litters and pollutes the soup;
effectively preventing most people from focusing on Israel's central
role in 9/11.
5) A seeming obsession with minutiae where researchers spend an
inordinate amount of time endlessly fixating on the tiniest of details
without stepping back and exposing the bigger picture and its subsequent
ramifications. Or else they'll engage in rhetorical debates for
debate's sake; all of which is sterile, self-contained, and circular in
nature.
Unlike the legions of paid shills in the bogus “truth movement,”
however, Thorn isn’t afraid to hang the blame squarely on the shoulders
of the true perpetrators of the attacks:
“These shadowy figures were also the descendents of a long-line of behind-the-scenes manipulators who murdered JFK in cold-blood on a bright sunny day in Dallas. They too were a part of the cabal which created the Holohoax lies, staged the Lavon Affair, attempted to sink the USS Liberty, tried to cover-up the Dimona nuclear reactor, finagled us into two successive wars with Iraq, ran arms during the Iran-Contra affair, lurked in the shadows of the notorious BCCI banking scandal, clandestinely facilitated key players at Elohim City before the OKC Bombing, murdered Rachel Corrie in all her innocence, masterminded numerous spy operations (including Jonathon Pollard), and had their fingers all over the 9-11 terror attacks.”
“Yes. these are the same hidden forces which leverage $10 billion in
‘foreign aid’ each year from the United States and who are building a
high-tech, militant apartheid wall around their borders during a time
when every other nation is supposed to be 'beyond' such notions. And
even though we're all brainwashed into believing that our goal in the
Middle East is freedom, peace, and democracy, Israel is an oppressive
Bolshevik dictatorship which teems with such brazen racism that it
hinges on being outright genocide. Worst of all, their slithering
multi-tentacled Lobby is so powerful that its economic blackmail extends
not only through the halls of congress, but all the way to our
executive branch.”
Along with the better-known incidents of the “dancing Israelis,” the
Israeli “art student” spies and the Israeli-owned Urban Moving company,
Thorn goes into particular detail about the conspiracy’s biggest
players, such as WTC owner (and zionist Jew) Larry Silverstein and
Pentagon comptroller (and zionist Jew) Dov Zakheim. Here’s what Thorn --
brilliantly connecting the dots -- has to say about the former:
“Less than two months prior to the twin towers being struck by kamikaze
airliners (July 24, 2001), the former president of New York's United
Jewish Appeal -- Larry Silverstein -- purchased the WTC complex from the
Port Authority. This 99-year lease was the final coup de grace which
allowed the conspirators to cement the last remaining piece to their
puzzle.”
“Christopher Bollyn of the American Free Press has also pointed out in
great detail the Jewish connection of those who took control of the WTC
towers. As stated, Larry Silverstein was former president of the UJA, a
highly influential Zionist charity organization. Plus, the man who
negotiated this deal -- Saul Eisenberg -- was on the planning board of
not only the UJA, but also the United Jewish Federation. In addition, he
also served as vice president of AIPAC, which is now ensnared in a huge
Israeli spy scandal.”
“On top of that, Silverstein has been closely tied to two Likud
mainstays -- Ariel ‘the Butcher’ Sharon and former Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In fact, prior to 9/11, Netanyahu and
Silverstein would speak on the telephone every Sunday afternoon. Bibi
[Netenyahu] becomes a key player in this scenario because he was the man
who actually coined the term ‘war on terrorism,’ which is now the
official buzzword for our never-ending, Israeli-induced perpetual war.”
Here’s what Thorn writes about the Israeli-owned ICTS airport security firm and its probable role in 9/11:
“This situation becomes even eerier when we realize that a private
security firm -- ICTS -- was contracted to cover each of the terminals
from which the 9/11 ‘hijackings’ took place. It should also be noted
that ICTS is an Israeli company (its two chairmen are Ezra Harel and
Menachem Atzmon), and many of its employees were formerly in the IDF
(Israeli Defense Force). Thus, only one entity had inside access to all
of the vital airports on the morning of September 11 -- an Israeli owned
company.”
On WTC 7 and mortgage holder Stephen A. Schwartzman, Thorn writes:
”The mortgage holder for WTC 7 was the Blackstone Group, whose President
and CEO was a Jewish man named Stephen A. Schwartzman. The chairman for
this company was Peter G. Peterson (Jewish) who also served as chairman
of New York's Federal Reserve Bank. Peterson is also on the board of
directors for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), while his partner
(Mr. Schwartzman) is also a CFR member.”
”In addition, Peterson acted as chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers from
1973-77 (Jewish), then became chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers Kuhn,
Loeb Inc (Jewish). Lastly, Peterson is founding chairman of the
globalist-oriented Institution for International Economics and a
recipient of the American Jewish Congress's Stephen Wise Award.”
”And, just for good measure, it should be noted that the man who
negotiated and authorized the transaction for Larry Silverstein (Jewish)
was Port Authority Chairman Lewis M. Eisenberg (Jewish). Thus, what
we've seen is that every pivotal player involved in the deal to move the
WTC Complex from New York's Port Authority to Larry Silverstein was
Jewish. Every single one.”
On the infamous Defense Policy Board, which runs the US military machine, Thorn writes:
“Our nation's War Machine takes its marching orders from an entity
called the Defense Policy Board, which most certainly wields more power
than the current Defense Secretary on 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld. The most
important question now is: who runs the Defense Policy Board? The
answer, not surprisingly, is Zionists such as long-time Bilderberg
member Henry Kissinger (Jewish), James Schlessinger (Jewish), Eliot A.
Cohen (Jewish), Paul Wolfowitz, now President of the World Bank
(Jewish), Douglas Feith (Jewish), and the Prince of Darkness himself,
Richard Perle (Jewish).”
On the so-called Neo-conservatives, Thorn writes:
”Who, though, are these oft-referred to neo-cons? Are they hard-core
conservatives that want smaller government and limited US involvement in
foreign armed conflicts? Not a chance. In actuality, the neo-cons are
ex-Trotskyites who followed the lead of their Jewish mentor, Leo
Strauss, who unequivocally advocated the ‘noble lie’ to further one's
agenda. Biographer Shadia Drury even described Strauss as a ‘new
Machiavelli’ and said that he was ‘a great believer in the efficacy and
usefulness of lies in politics.’ Does this sound eerily familiar to 9/11
-- promoting the ‘big lie’ to further Israel's Grand Cause?”
”Thus, when we view the neo-cons in this light, they're not even
conservatives or Republicans; but instead disaffected Leftists and
Marxists loyal to Israel.”
[For more on the Neo-conservatives and their influence in Washington,
watch this excellent BBC documentary -- “The War Party” -- HERE
And on the sinister Office of Special Plans -- the driving force
behind Washington’s illegal war on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq -- the author
writes:
”Another branch of this Zionist octopus is the Office of Special Plans,
which nicknamed itself ‘The Cabal.’ Its dark-visionary driving force was
Paul Wolfowitz, while being directed by Leo Strauss' protege Abram
Shulsky (Jewish). Shulsky was Donald Rumsfeld's chief disinformation
agent who had spent his Cold War years mastering Soviet disinformation
techniques. He also reported directly to Paul Wolfowitz, and co-authored
a research paper entitled ‘Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence,’
which promoted the idea that ‘a certain amount of deception is essential
in government.’"
“The neo-con-led Office of Special Plans was so powerful that it even
took precedence over the Pentagon's DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency),
and was one of the primary contributors to the eventual war with Iraq.
Deception about WMD's was their forte.”
Finally, Thorn lists the names of “the primary players” inside the
Pentagon/White House in positions to pull off 9/11. They include:
Richard Perle -- JewishPaul Wolfowitz -- Jewish
Kenneth Adelman -- Jewish
Lewis "Scooter" Libby -- Jewish
Douglas Feith -- Jewish
Dov Zakheim -- Jewish
David Wurmser -- Jewish
Elliot Abrams -- Jewish
Eliot Cohen -- Jewish
Daniel Pipes -- Jewish
Stephen Bryen -- Jewish (suspected by the DIA of turning over classified
Pentagon records to Israel in the late 1970's; he later founded JINSA)
“So,” Thorn concludes, “what we have here is the Zionist-aligned Defense
Policy Board (the real power behind the War Machine's throne)
controlling every top spot at the Pentagon; with PNAC-signatories Donald
Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney following in fully compliant lockstep.
Therefore, when we look at the military's ‘stand-down’ on the morning of
9/11, if anybody says that Israel didn't control it, they're absolutely
incorrect, for the entire Pentagon think-tank was an insanely obsessed
cabal of Jewish murderers who were calling all the shots.”
The book contains much more extremely relevant material on several
other elements of the 9/11 crime, including the Israeli
telecommunications firms -- Amdocs, Comverse, Odigo and Checkpoint --
that allowed Israel to control America’s communications network; the
influence of the Israeli lobby and Zionist think-tanks on US foreign
policy; control of the mainstream media by Jewish interests; and the
leading role played by the Jewish Rothchild banking family in all the
major conflicts of the last century.
“9/11 Evil: Israel’s Central Role in the September 11, 2001 Terrorist
Attacks” by Victor Thorn -- Down load it here, read it, and email it to
every thinking person you know.
To download an excellent 2008 interview with Victor Thorn by Christian pastor and radio host Texe Marrs -- in which the two men discuss Thorn’s book -- click HERE or HERE
Also, Thorn’s WingTV broadcast archives -- in which he and wife
Lisa Giuliani skewer so-called “truth-tellers” in the “alternative”
media -- are well worth listening to. They can all be found at www.wingtv.net (although they currently appear to be having some server problems).
L'AVOCAT DE LA TORTURE ALAN DERSHOWITZ CONVAINC OBAMA D'EMPECHER UN DISCOURS DE JIMMY CARTER À LA CONVENTION DÉMOCRATE
Une victoire de plus contre l'antisémitisme!
"I pushed him very hard to make that decision," Dershowitz said in an interview with Shalom TV. "Barack Obama had to make a choice between his Jewish supporters and his anti-Israel supporters like Jimmy Carter, and he did not choose Jimmy Carter. And that was an embarrassment for Jimmy Carter and a show of disrespect."
"It was a good decision, a wise decision, a moral decision," the Harvard Law professor added.
Carter did appear in the convention hall, but he did not make any remarks from the podium. A video of the former president helping with Katrina relief was shown at the Denver gathering.
In the interview, Dershowitz also said he believes that Obama’s support in the pro-Palestinian community could make it easier to advance the peace process.
"The fact that there are some in the pro-Palestinian community who like him may be a positive thing—that he can reach out to both communities and be an honest broker who, without compromising Israel’s security, can facilitate a kind of peace that will be both in the best interests of Israel and the best interests of the Palestinian people," Dershowitz said. "I have a high level of confidence, not perfect confidence but a high level of confidence, that he will do the right thing."
Dershowitz also said he was not interested in working in an Obama administration because "I want to keep my own independent views independent."
Dershowitz notes role keeping Carter from DNC podium
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Alan Dershowitz says he helped convince Barack Obama to keep Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention."I pushed him very hard to make that decision," Dershowitz said in an interview with Shalom TV. "Barack Obama had to make a choice between his Jewish supporters and his anti-Israel supporters like Jimmy Carter, and he did not choose Jimmy Carter. And that was an embarrassment for Jimmy Carter and a show of disrespect."
"It was a good decision, a wise decision, a moral decision," the Harvard Law professor added.
Carter did appear in the convention hall, but he did not make any remarks from the podium. A video of the former president helping with Katrina relief was shown at the Denver gathering.
In the interview, Dershowitz also said he believes that Obama’s support in the pro-Palestinian community could make it easier to advance the peace process.
"The fact that there are some in the pro-Palestinian community who like him may be a positive thing—that he can reach out to both communities and be an honest broker who, without compromising Israel’s security, can facilitate a kind of peace that will be both in the best interests of Israel and the best interests of the Palestinian people," Dershowitz said. "I have a high level of confidence, not perfect confidence but a high level of confidence, that he will do the right thing."
Dershowitz also said he was not interested in working in an Obama administration because "I want to keep my own independent views independent."
DES LEADERS-NÉS !
Si la communauté juive est si présente dans les lieux de pouvoir, c'est très certainement parce qu'ils sont plus travaillant et professionnel que les autres. De vrais leaders-nés.
Ils sont de quoi être fier !
Cette liste des 50 Juifs les plus influents aux États-Unis montre jusqu'où la communauté a progressé depuis les dernières décennies, mais elle montre aussi tout le travail qu'il reste à faire pour réparer ce monde brisé et morcelé en une multitude de peuples divisés.
Forward 50, 2008
(...)
Two narratives dominated the Jewish story this year, and, naturally, are reflected in the Forward 50. Jews played an outsized role in the presidential election campaign and, by the looks of it, will continue to do so in the new Obama administration. Some of the most intriguing developments came from unexpected places: a young lobbying group that shook up the Washington establishment; a brash video that was viewed by more than 1 million on YouTube alone and introduced new words into the mainstream political lexicon.
This was also the year the kosher meat industry faced its greatest legal, consumer and ethical challenges. Led by the courageous reporting of our Nathaniel Popper, the saga of the now-bankrupt company that once was the country's largest producer of kosher beef and poultry exposed major lapses in the U.S. justice and immigration systems, and prompted rabbis of all denominations to examine the moral dimension of a central Jewish tenet.
The importance of this story is underscored by the inclusion — a rare one — of a non-Jew as the 51st name on this list. Father Paul Ouderkirk, the priest of the Catholic church in Postville, Iowa, displayed unusual leadership and compassion by helping displaced workers and their families to survive. Indeed, at times it has seemed as if Father Ouderkirk and the good members of St. Bridget's were among the few in this sad story willing to do the right thing.
The Forward 50 celebrates leadership, creativity, impact. It also reminds us how far we still have to go to truly repair the world.
Morris Allen
Rabbi Morris Allen was ready for his moment in the spotlight this year: leading a Jewish food revolution. Since 2006, Allen, who leads a Conservative congregation in suburban Minneapolis, has been the most vocal critic of Agriprocessors, the country's largest producer of kosher meat. After heading a committee that investigated and criticized working conditions at the plant, Allen, 53, helped devise a new system, known as Hekhsher Tzedek, or Justice Certification, to evaluate the conditions under which kosher food is produced. The Hekhsher Tzedek spoke to thousands of years of Jewish tradition about business ethics and played into a larger burgeoning American fascination with where our food comes from. It all came to seem like foresight when Agriprocessors' Iowa plant was the target of an immigration raid in May. The Hekhsher Tzedek became a national phenomenon and a rare galvanizing point for the struggling Conservative movement. While the Justice Certification at first generated intense opposition among large segments of the Orthodox community, now even some Orthodox rabbis are acquiescing to the logic of bringing some oft-forgotten Jewish ethics back into practice.
Jeremy Ben-Ami
Jeremy Ben-Ami gave the Jewish dialogue in Washington a very different feel this year thanks to his new organization. J Street, where Ben-Ami is executive director, is envisioned as a progressive pro-Israel advocacy lobby that will offer a counterweight to Aipac, which liberals like Ben-Ami perceive as too hawkish and unrepresentative of views held by most American Jews. Before Ben-Ami got J Street up and running, there were many doubters, but over the last year it has become a fund raising powerhouse. Ben-Ami has not just used that influence on the Middle East, he created a political action committee, JStreetPAC, to lend a liberal Jewish voice to domestic politics. Among the 41 candidates the PAC supported, 32 won their races. More significant was the presidential race, in which Barack Obama was buffeted by rumors about his faith and commitment to Israel. The 78% of Jewish voters that Obama won over offer support for Ben-Ami's vision of a liberal, open American Jewry. Ben-Ami, whose grandparents were among the founders of Tel Aviv, served as President Bill Clinton's deputy domestic policy adviser and served on Howard Dean's presidential campaign. But with a Democratic majority in Washington, Ben-Ami's biggest acts are likely yet to come.
Rahm Emanuel
When the new president takes office in January, the man at his side will be the son of an Israeli, Rahm Emanuel, or "Rahmbo" as he is known in Washington for his take-no-prisoners style. The Illinois congressman who will be Barack Obama's White House chief of staff, is described as one of the most talented political hands in Washington. After earlier stints as an adviser in Bill Clinton's White House and as chair of the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives, Emanuel, 48, is expected to help the new president achieve ambitious goals. Emanuel, who grew up going to Jewish day school and visiting Israel every summer, volunteered at an Israeli military base during the 1991 Gulf War. Emanuel's father, Benjamin, was a member of the right-wing underground during the British mandate, but Rahm is known as a centrist who supports the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Insiders credit Emanuel with orchestrating the 1993 historic handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat by advising Clinton to grab the two leaders by the arms and make the moment happen. With Emanuel's clout, who knows what similar moments are in store during the Obama presidency.
Penny Pritzker
As a member of one of Chicago's wealthiest families, Penny Pritzker comes from a line known for its business acumen. But perhaps nobody in the family has pulled off a financial feat that tops the vaunted fund-raising machine she helped build for Barack Obama as his national finance chair. Though Obama's troubles in winning over Jewish voters were a key story line in his presidential race, Jewish support helped him make the national scene. Pritzker is one of a cadre of prominent Chicago Jews — including the Crown family, Abner Mikva and Lee Rosenberg — who knew Obama as a state senator and helped form a key support for his 2004 Senate run. When Obama decided to make his long-shot presidential bid, he tapped Pritzker to help him raise the cash he needed. Pritzker, in turn, helped forge the most successful fund-raising campaign in American political history, merging a flood of small Internet donations with traditional Democratic big money. With the campaign over, Pritzker, 49, may return to helping run her family's Hyatt hotel chain. Or maybe not. Her name is being floated in Washington circles as a potential secretary of commerce.
Sarah Silverman
It would have been reasonable to assume that comedian Sarah Silverman had pushed the boundaries of Jewish humor as far as they could possibly go with a one-liner she delivered in her "Jesus is Magic" tour a couple of years back. "I was raped by a doctor," she says, her trademark shayna punim all wide-eyed innocence, "which is so bittersweet for a Jewish girl." This year, Silverman, 37, went further: Not only did she create a pro-Barack Obama monologue that gleefully skewered the polite discourse around the purported racism of some elderly Jewish voters, her video got into so many e-mail inboxes that comic Jackie Mason, a John McCain supporter, responded with an indignant monologue of his own. Silverman's election monologue may have been more popular than it was successful. The video was a promotion for "The Great Schlep," a Jewish organization's effort to get young Jews to fly to Florida and sweet-talk their grandparents into voting for Obama. Reportedly, only about 100 grandkids showed up. But Silverman is having a pretty good year: Her sitcom, "The Sarah Silverman Program," is in its second season on Comedy Central, and she won an Emmy for her anniversary present to her on-again, off-again boyfriend, comedian Jimmy Kimmel, a video in which she has a torrid affair with Matt Damon, starring herself and, well, Matt Damon. Bittersweet stuff.
Howard Berman
Filling the shoes of the late Tom Lantos is not an easy task. Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor in Congress, ran the House Foreign Affairs Committee with a passion for global human rights and a lively temper. When Rep.Howard Berman, a fellow California Democrat, took over as chair this year after Lantos's passing, he changed the style and tone dramatically, but committee members treated him with the same level of respect they had shown Lantos. Berman, 67, has won praise from both sides of the aisle for his deep knowledge of issues and his fairness, which stands out in the Capitol Hill scene. It was his Jewish faith that brought Berman to take an interest in foreign policy. "I was a Zionist before being a Democrat," he told the Forward in an interview earlier this year, adding that concern over the fate of Israel led him to focus on international affairs in Congress. In his congressional work, Berman is known to be a strong supporter of Israel, though he is also known for nuance. He used his chairmanship to block a resolution calling for tough measures against Iran. Anti-war groups had argued the resolution was a step toward military action.
Matthew Brooks
Few can claim a bigger hand in shaping the Jewish debate in this year's presidential contest than Matthew Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition since 1990. In that role, he and the RJC served as the de facto Jewish outreach arm of both the Republican National Committee and John McCain's presidential campaign. Brooks, 43, was a driving force behind the blitz of advertisements that filled Jewish newspapers and Web sites (including the Forward's) raising questions about Barack Obama's judgment and commitment to Israel. The ads didn't just spur debate, they poured fuel on a fire to cast doubt on Obama's fitness for the Oval Office. The messages were no doubt controversial, but there was no denying they were effective in causing many Jews with long histories of voting Democratic to at least reconsider that allegiance. Brooks began his political career as state chairman of the Massachusetts College Republicans while still an undergraduate at Brandeis University. In 1988 he managed Jack Kemp's presidential campaign in Massachusetts and later was the national field director for President George H.W. Bush's Jewish outreach effort. Brooks, an avid poker player, went to Las Vegas to unwind after this year's election. "I'm such a pariah this year," he said.
Eric Cantor
Although he may have lost the title of John McCain's lead Jewish voice to Joe Lieberman, Rep. Eric Cantor emerged from the 2008 elections as the No. 1 Jewish Republican. At 45, the Virginia conservative is viewed as a rising star among House Republicans. He made it to McCain's vice-presidential short list. In Republican circles, Cantor is frequently mentioned as a possible 2012 presidential contender. The four-term congressman, who represents the Richmond area, serves as the Republican chief deputy whip, a job that put him in the spotlight during September's fierce debate over the Wall Street bailout plan. Cantor stood up against Speaker Nancy Pelosi, accusing her of playing partisan politics, and later played an instrumental role in convincing fellow Republicans to reconsider the deal. Cantor is the only Jewish Republican in the House. While his Democratic colleagues enjoy monthly bagel meetings sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman, Cantor set up his own forum of Jewish Republicans, who meet periodically and invite guest speakers.
Steve Cohen
It was an extraordinary year for Rep. Steve Cohen, the freshman congressman from Tennessee. While his colleagues in the class of 2006 were trying to make their voices heard, Cohen was taking on the toughest issues for a politician: race and religion. Representing Tennessee's Ninth District, which is 60% African American, Cohen was well aware of the race issue early in his political career. In 1996, he lost a primary election to Harold Ford Jr. and said it was "impossible" for a white candidate to win in a black community. Ten years later he proved himself wrong, winning the House seat by a significant margin. When he arrived in Washington, Cohen was successful in passing a resolution apologizing for slavery, the first statement of its kind. But this was not enough for some. In the 2008 primary race, his rival Nikki Tinker, who is African American, ran ads juxtaposing images of Cohen with Klansmen and criticizing him for visiting "our churches" while opposing prayer in schools. He won the primary by a 4-to-1 margin. Cohen, 59, is a fourth-generation Tennessean with a distinct Southern accent and a lively sense of humor. Although he comes from a largely conservative state, he has liberal views on most social issues. He was also among the first politicians to be endorsed by the dovish JStreetPAC.
Barney Frank
This year's financial meltdown catapulted Democrat Barney Frank, the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, to center stage. During tense days in late September, as the American credit markets ground to a halt, Frank played a major role in shaping the Wall Street bailout plan and getting it approved. The outspoken, and at times short-tempered, congressman from Massachusetts shuttled between meetings with the Treasury secretary, House Republicans and his own party members in an effort to deliver the deal. After the vote, Frank stood proudly with congressional leaders in front of TV cameras to announce victory. In his 27-year career in Congress, Frank, 68, has made history before. He was the first leading politician to come out as gay in 1987, and has since carried the flag for civil liberties and gay rights in Congress. Growing up in a New Jersey family with a strong Jewish identity, Frank frequently draws upon the idea of tikkun olam as a driving force behind his work on civil rights and assisting the needy.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
The first Jewish woman to sit on the United States Supreme Court has occupied that seat now for 15 years. But, as longtime court watcher Linda Greenhouse noted, this year was the first time that Ruth Bader Ginsburg "found her voice, and used it." Twice during the court's 2008 spring session, Ginsburg offered forceful oral dissents from the bench, a rare move for any justice and one that Ginsburg — a quiet, polite, white-glove kind of woman — had never before taken. But the cases involved abortion and workplace discrimination, two issues that have long been at the forefront of Ginsburg's remarkable legal career. Observers say that Ginsburg, 75, has dropped some of her notable collegiality and become more vocal and passionate this year because of the growing conservatism of the court under Chief Justice John Roberts. As the only woman left among the nine justices, she is thought to be particularly concerned about upholding the liberal values that have been the cornerstone of a career that has taken her from Brooklyn to Harvard to the highest court in the land.
Joseph Lieberman
Only eight years have passed since Senator Joseph Lieberman was the Democratic nominee for vice president, an acclaimed moral voice and a historic figure as the first Jew to appear on a major-party ticket. Today he stands at the edge of the wilderness, a four-term lawmaker at home in neither party. Democrats are furious over Lieberman's sharp-tongued campaigning this year for John McCain. But the bad blood goes back further. The only Orthodox Jew on Capitol Hill, Lieberman was an enthusiastic booster of President Bush's Iraq War policy in 2003. Angry Democrats replied by virtually ignoring his primary bid for president in 2004 and sinking his Senate re-election bid in Connecticut's 2006 primary. He ran for Senate anyway as an independent and won. Returning to the Capitol, he sat with wary Democrats, providing their 51st vote to control the chamber. They rewarded him with the influential Homeland Security committee chairmanship. That was then. Today Lieberman, 66, is a conundrum. Liberals despise his hawkish defense views, but don't relish losing his vote — nor alienating Orthodox Jews. Republicans mistrust his liberal record on domestic affairs. He is threatened with loss of his powerful committee chairmanship. Few admit it, but he's become the embodiment of the centrist's lonely plight in a polarized Washington.
Mik Moore
One of the big stories of the presidential election was Barack Obama's Jewish problem, real or perceived: E-mails said Obama was a Muslim and wanted to destroy Israel. Some Jewish retirees declared that they wouldn't vote for a black man. Among Jewish voters, polls showed Obama at only 60%, which would have translated into the worst election result for any Democratic candidate since Jimmy Carter in 1980. Yet in the end, Obama pulled in an estimated 78% of the Jewish vote, a solid showing by any historical measure. And a healthy portion of the credit goes to Jewish activists like Mik Moore, 34, a community professional who organized grass-roots outreach to soothe Jewish fears and boost Jewish enthusiasm for Obama. Moore, the son of noted historian Deborah Dash Moore, co-founded the Jewish Council for Education and Research, one of a host of grass-roots groups that included rabbis, Israelis and Jewish studies scholars who backed Obama. JCER achieved its greatest prominence with The Great Schlep, an effort to convince Jewish youngsters to travel to Florida (or least at least call) to convince their grandparents to vote for Obama. The idea was a reprise of Moore's Operation Bubbe from four years ago, but this time a heartfelt and foul-mouthed video promotion by comedian Sarah Silverman spread like wildfire and gave the movement traction.
Dennis Ross
Until this year, Dennis Ross was the ultimate diplomat. Ross, the longtime lead negotiator in the Middle East for the first President Bush and for President Bill Clinton, spent more than a decade trying to hammer out deals between Israel and its Arab neighbors. After leaving government in 2000, he reflected upon the failure of the peace process and offered advice on the topic from his perch at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He also moonlighted as a Fox News foreign policy commentator and as chairman of the board of a think tank set up by the Jewish Agency to focus on the future of the Jewish people. This year, the 59-year-old Ross ventured into the brave new world of politics, advising Barack Obama on the Mideast and campaigning for him in Jewish strongholds such as Florida to bolster Obama's pro-Israel credentials. Ross has lamented the Bush administration's belated and lackluster peacemaking efforts in the region and is hopeful that an Obama administration will rededicate Washington to a genuine peace agenda while dealing more efficiently with Iran's nuclear ambitions. He will undoubtedly provide wisdom to the president-elect's policymakers to help them achieve a comprehensive peace agreement, a goal that has eluded the presidents he served and those he observed.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz
It's sometimes hard to believe that it's been only four years since Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz became the first Jewish woman from Florida to be elected to Congress. That's because she's wasted little time moving up the ranks on Capitol Hill. She not only won a coveted seat on the Appropriations Committee, but also joined the "college of cardinals" as one of its powerful subcommittee chairs — overseeing Congress's own budget. Smart, quick, ambitious and tenacious are some of the adjectives used to describe this 42-year-old mother of three, who represents parts of Dade and Broward counties in a district that has the third-largest concentration of Jews in America. Her House Democratic colleagues tapped her to help chair their "Red to Blue" program, which directs funding and support to races where Republicans may be vulnerable. Wasserman Schultz, a staunch supporter of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the presidential primaries, later enthusiastically backed Barack Obama's general election campaign. Her support was welcomed by Obama's campaign, which was quick to utilize Wasserman Schultz to reach out to Jewish and female voters.
Robert Wexler
At a time when many Democrats in Congress backed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rep. Robert Wexler took a risk. As co-chair of Barack Obama's Florida campaign, Wexler often reminded audiences that he was one of the first Jews to support Obama for president long before it was fashionable, and long before many of his older Jewish constituents in the Sunshine State warmed up to Obama. Such loyalty earned Wexler, 47, a prime spot speaking about Israel and the Middle East during the Democratic convention. As a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee since his election in 1997, Wexler will likely continue to have Obama's ear and be a sounding board on Jewish and Middle East matters in Congress. Known for a prosecutorial style, this lawyer will probably have his hand in a number of pressing domestic and foreign policy issues. Within the Foreign Affairs Committee, he is chairman of the Europe subcommittee and a member of the Middle East subcommittee. He also serves on the House Financial Services and Judiciary committees. Wexler voted to give the Bush administration authority to invade Iraq, but he has been a frequent administration critic and called for hearings on whether to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney.
David Borowich
Organizers of New York’s annual Salute to Israel parade had a problem this year. It was Israel’s 60th birthday, and they were concerned that, as in years past, not many Israelis would show up. So they called David Borowich. Borowich is the founder and honorary chairman of Dor Chadash, a four-year-old organization that brings together Israelis living in New York and their American Jewish peers. The group’s events range from huge nightclub parties with an Israeli dance music soundtrack to concerts and films featuring Israel’s biggest artists and filmmakers, to an open-mic discussion with Elie Wiesel. Young Jews, both American and Israeli, show up in droves. For Israel’s 60th, Dor Chadash organized a celebration at Radio City Music Hall that was billed as the largest Yom Ha’atzmaut celebration outside of Israel. Borowich, 38, has a biography that suits the bridge-building nature of his job: After growing up in Kentucky and New York, but before becoming a Wall Street executive, he made aliyah and served in the Israeli army. Today, he spends his spare time serving on the boards of Jewish and philanthropic organizations.
William Daroff
Eyebrows were raised in the Jewish community when William Daroff was appointed three years ago to head the Washington operation of United Jewish Communities. Daroff came to the job after a long career in the Republican establishment and had served as deputy executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. His background did not seem in line with the purpose of UJC’s Washington office: advancing funding for social services. But Daroff, 41, quickly turned his assumed disadvantage into a benefit. Upon stepping into his new post, Daroff shed his partisan colors and worked with both parties to advance social legislation and funding. UJC is an umbrella organization of Jewish federations, which administer more than $7 billion in government funds that provide services for Jewish elderly, sick and needy. Through its Washington office, the group is a significant stakeholder in government decisions dealing with Medicare, Medicaid, housing and aid to families. Daroff has been successful in pushing forward these issues. Yet his work exceeded the realm of Jewish interests. He became a significant player in advancing the revised Americans with Disabilities Act and lobbying for a bill providing equal care for the mentally ill. His positions have at times put Daroff at odds with the Bush White House, but his earlier affiliation did not stop him from criticizing the Republican administration.
Esther Safran Foer
If the novels of Jonathan Safran Foer are refreshingly free of cartoonish matriarchs, perhaps some credit is due to the author’s very un-cartoonish mother. Esther Safran Foer may not be as famous as the best-known of her three writer sons, but she has been a macher in Washington, D.C., since before he was born. The founder and president of a public relations firm called FM Strategic Communications — and the onetime press secretary to 1972 Democratic presidential hopeful George McGovern — Foer, 62, now works full time in the Jewish community as the executive director of 6th & I, a D.C. cultural hub winning rave reviews for its eclectic programming and ability to draw a crowd. Sixth and I is housed in a 100-year-old synagogue building at the corner of the two streets that give it its name. In the last few months alone, 6th & I, under Foer’s direction, has hosted programs that range from talks by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and author Salman Rushdie to performances by indie rock star Jenny Lewis and reggae sensation Matisyahu. And it does hold religious services. When it opened its High Holy Days services free to the public this year, the waiting list for tickets nearly reached the four-digit mark.
Abraham Foxman
Emerging from a nasty dispute over his opposition to a congressional resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide, Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, turned to his bread-and-butter issue: antisemitism. For more than 20 years as head of the ADL, Foxman has thrown his weight around to denounce bigotry in Europe, in Muslim countries and in the United States. He has warned that the current financial meltdown has revived old canards about Jewish money and power. This year, Foxman took aim at what he sees as a more subtle form of antisemitism: the argument laid out by two mainstream scholars, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, who claimed that the "Israel lobby" is skewing American foreign policy in favor of Israel and to the detriment of the national interests of the United States. In response, Foxman penned a book, "The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control," blitzed the media and hit the circuit to rebuke what he perceives as a dangerous rehashing of dual-loyalty suspicions regarding American Jews. While some critics bemoan his excessive zeal, Foxman remains, at 68, a fixture of the Jewish communal world here and abroad, one whose voice will continue to be heard.
Howard Kohr
On the morning after she lost her final primary race to Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton showed up at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s policy conference, where she shook hands behind the scenes with the victorious Illinois senator. John McCain was there, too. Once again this year, Aipac has demonstrated its central role in America’s political scene, and Howard Kohr, the group’s executive director for the last 12 years, was there to make sure that doesn’t change. At 52, Kohr is known as one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington. He is well connected with leaders and policymakers of both parties. The crowd at the Aipac policy conference might have seemed enthusiastic for McCain, but Kohr and the lobby’s leadership cultivated close relations with Obama and his top advisers, ensuring Aipac would remain a key player even as administrations change. Kohr has succeeded in keeping Aipac above the fray of the internal disputes of the Jewish community. For the first time, this year Aipac faced a competitor in J Street, a true challenger in the field of pro-Israel lobbying. Yet Aipac did not seem to take a hit. Aipac continued to flourish, increasing its funds and membership, moving to a new headquarters in Washington and maintaining its political clout.
David Saperstein
Since the advent of the modern political convention, no rabbi had given the invocation on the night of the presidential nominee’s acceptance speech. That is, until this year, when Rabbi David Saperstein, 61, stood in front of a massive outdoor audience in Denver and offered a blessing before Barack Obama’s historic nomination. As director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism for more than 30 years, Saperstein is no stranger to politics. His official biography boasts that he has been called the "quintessential religious lobbyist on Capitol Hill." But in a town filled with advocates for particular causes, the soft-spoken Saperstein has distinguished himself by gaining wide respect from members of all faiths, thanks to years of activity in building advocacy coalitions on social issues and foreign policy. He has been a leading force in the Save Darfur Coalition and currently co-chairs the Coalition to Preserve Religious Liberty, comprising more than 50 national religious denominations and educational organizations. An attorney, writer and speaker, Saperstein has positioned the Reform movement, the nation’s largest Jewish denomination, in the forefront of progressive politics. "We pray for America, that it may ever be an or l’goyim, a light unto the nations," he intoned on that starry night in Denver, "a beacon of freedom, human rights and economic opportunity."
Daniel Sokatch
When Daniel Sokatch — head of the California-based Progressive Jewish Alliance and a poster boy for Jewish social justice activism — was tapped this spring to be CEO of San Francisco’s Jewish Community Federation, many in the Jewish communal world were surprised. Could a charismatic liberal known for galvanizing young activists translate his brand of leadership to a consensus-oriented federation? While he has been on the job for only a few months, expectations run high. Sokatch, 40, made a name for himself as PJA’s first executive director. In eight years at its helm, he helped shape the fledgling group into an innovative and influential Jewish presence on Los Angeles’s multi-ethnic activist scene. Today, PJA boasts some 4,000 members, with offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco. If Sokatch can do for San Francisco’s federation — which has floundered in recent years — what he did for PJA, he could end up providing a new model for North America’s ailing federation system.
Hadar Susskind
Although almost everyone who’s anyone on Capitol Hill and in Jewish federations knows Hadar Susskind, few understand his job title: Washington director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. He is the person in charge of translating Washington politics for Jewish communal leaders and bringing their concerns and priorities to the ears of politicians. For the past two years, Susskind, 35, has been part of a drive to take Jewish advocacy to the field of social justice. His work made the Jewish community a player in this year’s effort to pass the new farm bill in Congress. Jewish farmers are scarce, but Susskind focused on a little-known part of the bill dealing with food stamps, and became a driving force in bringing about passage of the bill and increases in assistance for thousands of families in need. A former infantry soldier in an Israeli combat unit and a former kibbutznik, Susskind views himself as both American and Israeli. His work has taken Jewish lobbying away from its foreign policy focus and has made the Jewish community a partner in the political debate on poverty, hunger and social assistance.
Susie Fishbein
The author of six cookbooks in five years, Susie Fishbein has achieved an international following and a deeply devoted fan base. Her wildly popular Kosher by Design series, published by ArtScroll, has sold more than 300,000 copies. The latest in the collection, "Kosher by Design Lightens Up," had about 25,000 pre-orders three weeks before it went on sale November 17. And it’s no wonder. At first glance the books might seem too sleek and trendy for real-kitchen use, but Fishbein, 40, has fine-tuned the art of producing stylish, well-organized tomes that are approachable and, on page after page, practical. Most of the ingredients are simple and can be found in supermarkets. Perhaps most important, the Oceanside, N.Y., native has achieved a delicate culinary balance that is often lacking in the world of modern cookbooks and strictly kosher cuisine. The recipes, which are reviewed by an Orthodox rabbi, don’t exactly resemble the traditional fare that bubbe used to make (no leaden matzo balls or bland chicken here), but they’re not overly exotic or intimidating, either. Rack of lamb with fig-marsala sauce, sweet-and-sour brisket, zucchini-leek soup with ginger cream and, of course, Fishbein’s tri-colored matzo balls are among the hundreds of dishes that have earned the kosher diva her nickname.
Menachem Genack
As the kosher meat industry nearly fell apart over the last year, it was Rabbi Menachem Genack who was trusted to hold things together. As the CEO of the country’s largest kosher supervisor, O.U. Kosher, Genack, 60, was sought out by people inside and outside the industry after America’s largest kosher meat producer, Agriprocessors, was hit with an immigration raid, criminal charges and eventually bankruptcy. The sequence of events had the potential to cripple the supply of meat to observant Jews across the country, but Genack avoided showing any signs of panic. At the beginning, his slow and steady leadership disappointed many liberal voices in the Jewish community, who wanted him to take more forceful action against Agriprocessors. Later on, when the weight of evidence piled up against the company, Genack was willing to disappoint many in the Orthodox community by demanding that Agriprocessors change its leadership. This approach has not been enough to stop the implosion of Agriprocessors — and the human and animal suffering that came along with it — but Genack has supplied a modicum of sanity to an industry in crisis.
Aaron Rubashkin
It is safe to say that Aaron Rubashkin did not want to become famous this year. Rubashkin was happy to labor behind the scenes for the last few decades, turning his family business, Agriprocessors, into the largest producer of kosher meat in the country. His children have run the operations on the ground, but the octogenarian Rubashkin has been back in Brooklyn making the big decisions. Those decisions helped the company grow, but they also led it down the path to trouble. Agriprocessors’ hiring and pay policies resulted in a federal immigration raid on its plant in Postville, Iowa, earlier this year. Since then, Rubashkin and his family have faced a number of criminal charges that eventually led the company to declare bankruptcy. The company’s problems have sparked a protest movement and, in turn, changed the way people think about kosher food. None of this would have happened without Rubashkin. While the final judgment about him will be rendered in the courts, his trial in the media has already changed minds.
Nigel Savage
Remember the summer blackout of 2003 in the Northeast? Lots of people used it as an excuse not to leave home, but about 100 hardy souls schlepped their bicycles to Long Island to kick off a four-day bike ride at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, thanks to Nigel Savage. Savage, who hails from Manchester, England, is the environmentalist impresario behind Hazon, a Jewish outdoor education group formed in 2000. Not only does Hazon hold annual bike rides to raise money for Jewish environmental projects, it runs community-supported agriculture programs (support for small farmers = fresh produce for urban Jews!) throughout the United States, Canada and Israel. Recent entries on the organization’s food-politics blog, "The Jew and the Carrot," run the gamut from a warning about pesticide-covered etrogim to a recipe for warm barley salad to an advice column by "The Shmethicist." Hazon threw itself into the debate over ethical kashrut last December when it publicly slaughtered a goat at its annual food conference to raise consciousness about meat production. Savage helped found the New York chapter of the British-based Jewish educational group Limmud, and even had a previous life as a Wall Street-type in England. According to his Web site, one of his proudest accomplishments is that he may be "the first English Jew to have cycled across South Dakota on a recumbent bike."
Denise Eger
When anti-gay marriage activists put forth Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative seeking to ban gay marriage, Rabbi Denise Eger wasted no time in organizing Jewish opposition to the measure. While the ballot initiative ultimately prevailed on November 4, Eger nevertheless demonstrated her ability to raise the profile of gay rights issues within the Jewish community and spur people to action. The founding rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami, West Hollywood’s gay and lesbian Reform synagogue, Eger shepherded efforts to pass a resolution by the Board of Rabbis of Southern California opposing Proposition 8. In a huge turnout by the board’s 290 members, 93% voted in favor of the resolution. Eger, 48, also helped organize the L.A.-based group Jews for Marriage Equality and was a founding president of L.A.’s Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual Clergy Association. A vice president of the Board of Rabbis for the past six years, Eger is next in line to assume its presidency. If she, indeed, becomes president — which could happen as early as next May — Eger would be not only the first woman to lead the Southern California board, but also the first gay or lesbian.
Dayle Friedman
The Jewish community in America is aging, and few have responded to this demographic challenge with the passion and creativity of Rabbi Dayle Friedman. As a Jewish nursing home chaplain for many years, Friedman pioneered spiritual work with the elderly. Now as director of Hiddur: The Center for Aging and Judaism at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, Pa., she is playing a prophetic role in awakening communal attention to the needs of this graying population. Hiddur’s mission is to enable the elderly to engage in their own spiritual connections and contribute to the broader spiritual community. Friedman, 52, trains rabbis and other Jewish professionals to develop the skills needed to deal with the ever-growing number of bubbes and zaydes in synagogues, care facilities, hospitals and in their own homes. In 2008, she reached a broader audience with a new book, "Jewish Visions for Aging: A Professional Guide for Fostering Wholeness." With her ever-present smile and engaging manner, Friedman has also become a champion of pushing past the stereotypes that narrowly define the elderly. "My experience is that elders are often more open-minded than younger people," she wrote recently. Just as her older congregants were able to embrace her when she started out as a young female rabbi, Friedman, in her work, encourages all of us to respect the wisdom and potential of age.
Jill Jacobs
When Rabbi Jill Jacobs first introduced a living-wage measure in 2006 to the Conservative movement’s top legal body, she encountered heavy opposition. But the 33-year-old Jacobs, the rabbi-in-residence at Jewish Funds for Justice in New York, didn’t give up. Two years later, in May of this year, her teshuvah, or halachic opinion, arguing that Jewish employers should pay their employees a living wage and strive to hire union workers, was finally adopted by the Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards. A 2003 graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Jacobs has been a champion of social justice issues — including equality for women, gays and lesbians — since her student days. Later, as education director at the Chicago-based Jewish Council for Urban Affairs, she initiated a program that trained student rabbis to incorporate social justice work into their rabbinate. Jacobs’s spirited activism bodes well for the Conservative movement.
Yosef Kanefsky
Yosef Kanefsky, 45, shattered a long-standing Orthodox taboo when he suggested last year that Jewish leaders ought to at least consider the idea of a divided Jerusalem. The senior rabbi of B’nai David-Judea Congregation, a growing Los Angeles Modern Orthodox synagogue, Kanefsky has come to represent the left wing of Modern Orthodoxy on the West Coast. But Kanefsky’s October 2007 opinion piece, "An Orthodox Rabbi’s Plea: Consider a Divided Jerusalem," published in L.A.’s local Jewish weekly, the Jewish Journal, thrust him into the spotlight well beyond the confines of the Jewish world. The Los Angeles Times published a story on the waves of controversy his piece generated. A former associate rabbi at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, a New York congregation led by maverick Orthodox Rabbi Avi Weiss, Kanefsky has long taken positions at odds with the Orthodox establishment. He has allowed women to read from the Torah in their own single-sex services. As a past president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, he is far more engaged with the non-Orthodox Jewish world than most of his peers. But his nontraditional approach seems to be helping his cause: Over the past year, Kanefsky’s congregation of 300 families has grown by more than 10%.
Elie Kaunfer
No one has been more central to the admittedly decentralized world of independent minyanim than Elie Kaunfer. The son of a rabbi, Kaunfer, 35, co-founded the influential Kehilat Hadar minyan on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, then was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Since ordination, he and two fellow rabbis — Shai Held and Ethan Tucker — have set up Mechon Hadar, an organization dedicated to drawing the minyanim into a national network and an egalitarian summer yeshiva. Kaunfer has become a link between the small, low-budget minyanim and the big-dollar Jewish donors who are itching to support them. (What could be more promising than young Jews who already like Judaism?) Kaunfer co-authored a study that brought national attention to the minyanim, and he and his comrades have proved to be masters at tapping federations and large foundations. This year, Tucker received a two-year, $200,000 fellowship from the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, and Kaunfer got another $225,000 over three years from the Avi Chai Foundation. They intend to pour the money into taking Yeshivat Hadar full-time, making it the country’s first full-time, egalitarian yeshiva. Kaunfer and his fellow minyan boosters say they have no interest in denominational politics. But with a national network of prayer groups and their own school for teaching Jewish texts, Kaunfer and friends may find that they have a movement on their hands.
Moshe Kotlarsky
As vice chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the education arm of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky oversees what amounts to a fourth main wing of Judaism, with some 5,000 Hasidic rabbis ministering to a vast, loosely affiliated flock of mostly nonobservant Jews. His network includes about 4,000 institutions in 70 countries — synagogues, community centers, parochial schools and preschools from Albuquerque to Zaire, plus prison chaplaincies and a few drug rehab clinics. It’s estimated that a Chabad facility opens up somewhere every week. Kotlarsky, 59, runs the empire with a firm but affable hand, approving new locations, selecting field rabbis (shluchim) and, most important, doling out millions to the field from a donor-funded foundation he controls. He also heads the fast-growing Chabad on Campus Foundation, operating at more than 100 colleges. One of Chabad’s most visible public faces, he travels tirelessly to address gatherings worldwide and presides genially over the massive annual shluchim convention in New York. Outsiders sometimes question Chabad’s aggressive way of moving into small communities, especially in Eastern Europe, and some fret about the free liquor that often seems to help boost attendance. In 2008, Chabad traditionalists attacked Kotlarsky over the movement’s visible presence at the Beijing Olympics. Chabad’s late leader, Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, considered the Olympics idolatrous because they originated as a religious tribute to pagan Greek gods. Still, few argue with success.
Julie Schonfeld
A generation ago, the battle over women’s rights in the Conservative movement was at least as heated and divisive as the movement’s more recent squabbles over gay rights. But the ease with which movement leaders welcomed Julie Schonfeld’s recent appointment as the first female executive director of the Rabbinical Assembly, the association for Conservative rabbis, is a welcome reminder of how the radical can, over time, become the commonplace. That said, Schonfeld, 43, will face a tough task. The Conservative movement has struggled for years with declining membership and an aimless sense of mission, and many observers have attributed the malaise to organizational leadership that was out of step with the times. The first step in that turnover came in 2006, when Arnold Eisen replaced Ismar Schorsch as chancellor of the movement’s flagship Jewish Theological Seminary, a move that gave Conservative Judaism a welcome shot in the arm. But anxieties, and expectations, remain high. If anybody can see the task through, it may be Schonfeld. She has experience in the pulpit. She has spent the last seven years working at the R.A., so she knows the plumbing. And she is deeply involved with the liberal social causes that many see as essential to the Conservative movement’s future. If Schonfeld can revitalize the R.A., then her gender may be the least for which she is remembered.
Sheldon Adelson
For the past few years, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson seemed to be running the tables. Once a newsboy from Boston, Adelson, 75, catapulted into the ranks of the world’s wealthiest when his casino resort company, Las Vegas Sands, went public in 2004. By 2007, he was the third-richest man in America, according to Forbes, and the world’s richest Jew. His money brought Adelson influence. He became a big donor to Jewish causes, including Aipac and Birthright Israel. Rumors flew that he would give away $200 million per year to Jewish causes. When word emerged that he would bankroll a conservative advocacy group, Freedom’s Watch, Republicans hailed him as the conservative answer to George Soros, a believer with bottomless pockets. Now this gambler’s luck may be running out. Over the past year, Sands stock has plummeted more than 90%, costing Adelson tens of billions of dollars on paper, and his spot as the richest Jew. Freedom’s Watch hasn’t taken off. And Adelson appears to be scaling back his Jewish giving, leaving organizations like Birthright scrambling to make up the difference. Just as damaging for the reclusive Adelson, The New Yorker published a damning profile that pulled back the curtains on his brass-knuckles approach to both business and politics. But as the profile made clear, Adelson’s a fighter. Don’t count him out yet.
Morris Squire
While the under-40 set is generally perceived as the force behind creative, cutting-edge Jewish philanthropy, Morris Squire is turning that perception on its head. The man behind Moishe Houses — one of the most thinking-out-of-the-box Jewish philanthropic endeavors of the last decade — is an 85-year-old philanthropist, former psychologist and painter who has funneled millions of dollars into his Jewish communal living houses. In 2006, while other donors were funding trips to Israel, Squire — who made his money as the owner of health-care facilities — came up with an idea: Subsidize the rent on a house for a bunch of 20-something Jews, give them a monthly program budget and let them do the rest. Squire’s vision of free-form Jewish community building, in which house members get up to 75% of their rent covered in return for organizing loosely defined Jewish events — even poker nights — is expanding. In the last two years, 26 Moishe Houses have cropped up around the globe from Oakland, Calif., where the first one was established, to Johannesburg, Beijing and Warsaw. Squire divides his time between Santa Barbara, Calif., and Cambodia. Sometimes it takes an octogenarian to generate some of the Jewish world’s most innovative philanthropy.
Michael Steinhardt
Michael Steinhardt seems to think he has found the next big idea for building Jewish identity, and now he is putting his money where his mouth is: Hebrew-language charter schools. In May, Steinhardt’s foundation announced that it was backing an application for a new Hebrew-language charter school in Steinhardt’s childhood home of Brooklyn. It’s an idea that suits the legendary former hedge fund manager — bold, controversial, Jewish, but not religious. Steinhardt, 68, has already talked about building a national network of charter schools, so this could be the first of many. While one Steinhardt venture may soon be coming to New York, another recently disappeared when the Steinhardt-backed New York Sun closed its doors. Though technically neither Jewish nor a philanthropy, the Sun was essentially both. Editor-in-chief Seth Lipsky (who founded the English Forward, with backing from Steinhardt) had hoped to found an old-fashioned New York broadsheet with a neoconservative slant, a paper that would challenge The New York Times. The Sun was hawkish on Israel and passionately pro-business. It was not, however, much of a business itself, losing millions of dollars a month. Steinhardt and his fellow backers offered to put up more money if new investors (one might say donors) could be found, but with financial markets in shambles and print newspapers in freefall, the additional millions were lacking, and the Sun set.
Morris Talansky
Israel was riveted by stories that emerged in May from a Jerusalem courtroom: a Long Island businessman who was an ordained rabbi plying the prime minister with expensive gifts, including cigars, wine and an Italian vacation. Oh, and about $150,000 in cash. The businessman, Morris Talansky, 75, said he "loved" Ehud Olmert, and that the embattled prime minister loved him back. Though Olmert disputes the allegations and the level of affection, the testimony led to his proffered resignation and to Talansky’s own disgrace. The Brooklyn-born Talansky had left the pulpit to work in his family business, then became a prolific fundraiser for Israeli causes, including Shaare Tzedek hospital and the New Jerusalem Fund, which he jointly founded with Olmert to raise money for projects in the capital. When Olmert decided to run for mayor of Jerusalem, Talansky was a strong backer. And when Olmert rose to become prime minister, Talansky thought his political time had come. Now the prime minister is a lame duck and his erstwhile friend is back on Long Island, no longer the man to call to get to the leader of Israel.
Jeffrey Goldberg
Not every blogger lands exclusive interviews with the two leading presidential contenders. But Jeffrey Goldberg isn't just any blogger. Goldberg, 43, is known for his in-depth reports on politics and foreign affairs for publications like The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker and The Atlantic — not infrequently filed from scary spots like Taliban madrassas. Lately, Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, has established himself as the elite media's leading Judaic scribe — from an Atlantic cover story exploring Israel's existential challenges to a much-discussed New York Times op-ed scolding American Jewish leaders for having "allowed the partisans of settlement to conflate support for the colonization of the West Bank with support for Israel itself." A former staffer for the Forward, the Long Island-reared writer made aliyah as a young man and served in the Israeli army, before returning to the United States. His 2006 book, "Prisoners: A Muslim & a Jew Across the Middle East Divide," recounted his complicated relationship with a Palestinian prisoner he once guarded. Goldberg's two presidential candidate interviews, posted on his Atlantic blog, focused on topics such as Israel, Iran, Hamas and the presidential hopefuls' favorite Jewish writers. John McCain, we learned, likes Herman Wouk; Barack Obama enjoys Philip Roth; both have a soft spot for Leon Uris. And Goldberg, we discovered, isn't shy about posing a question containing a Yiddish word like "kishke" to a future president.
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
After years of being one of the keenest analysts and supporters of Jewish art, New York University professor Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett edited the definitive book on what "Jewish" has meant across the gamut of modern art. With essays tracing a plethora of different types of art she interrogates the concept of Jewishness without falling into essentialism. She co-edited the "Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times" with Jonathan Karp. Previously, she wrote a book with her father, Mayer Kirshenblatt, titled "They Called Me Mayer July," which was a finalist for the 2007 National Jewish Book Award. Her interviews with her father provided the framework for his retrospective paintings of Jewish life in Poland before World War II. In 2006, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett won the National Jewish Book Award for her book "Writing a Modern Jewish History: Essays in Honor of Salo W. Baron." These three books have cemented her place as a producer of and writer about Jewish art — a fact recognized by the Foundation for Jewish Culture, which honored her this year. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is a cultural driving force. She co-convened the Working Group on Jews, Religion, and Media at NYU's Center for Religion and Media, and the Jews and Performance colloquium, jointly sponsored by the Jewish Theological Seminary and NYU.
William Kristol
William Kristol wears many hats: magazine editor, newspaper columnist, television pundit and neocon scion. This year, he added another hat: that of shadchan, or matchmaker. Kristol — The New York Times op-ed columnist, Weekly Standard editor, Fox News Channel commentator and son of neoconservative pioneers Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb — was perhaps the most prominent public voice urging John McCain to tap Sarah Palin as his running mate. As early as June, Kristol — a longtime McCainiac who strongly supported the Arizona senator's unsuccessful 2000 presidential bid — was confidently predicting that Palin would be picked for the No. 2 spot on the GOP ticket. "She's fantastic," he gushed on Fox. Kristol, of course, got his wish. With a Democrat in the White House, neoconservatives on the defensive and a backlash brewing over Kristol's aggressive pro-Palin advocacy, Kristol, 55, is likely to find his influence diminished. Still, he occupies some prominent pulpits and is sure to be a vigorous participant in debates over the Republican Party's future. A foreign-policy hawk and ally of the Israeli right, Kristol and his Weekly Standard may also find new purpose as critics of an Obama administration's approach to the Middle East.
Shmarya Rosenberg
It's hard to believe now, but when Shmarya Rosenberg started his blog, FailedMessiah.com, he was an observant, Orthodox Jew. When the blog got him into hot water with the local Orthodox Jewish community, Rosenberg chose his blog and left his observance behind. In his blog, Rosenberg turns an obsessive and hostile eye on the Orthodox world. Day after day and night after night, Rosenberg, 50, trolls the Internet, digging up new stories of pedophilia, financial chicanery, political extremism and more in the Orthodox world. He has been a particularly harsh — and thorough — chronicler of the many failings of kosher meat giant Agriprocessors. One of Rosenberg's biggest moments came in July, when he nailed public relations firm 5W PR for posting comments on blogs under other people's names as part of its defense of client Agriprocessors. 5W furiously denied the charges — then confessed. As the dozens of comments that appear after each posting on his blog show, Rosenberg has provided an unusual online gathering place for a whole community.
Adam Sandler
Adam Sandler's movie,"You Don't Mess With the Zohan," raked in an impressive $100 million at the domestic box office this year. Not since Paul Newman's 1960 epic "Exodus" has Israel played so big on Main Street. Indeed, Sandler's "Zohan" grossed twice as much domestically as Steven Spielberg's 2005 Oscar-nominated drama "Munich," which likewise focused on a war-weary Israeli terrorist-hunter who finds refuge in New York City. But whereas Spielberg used Israel's experience fighting terror as an excuse to offer a high-minded, post-9/11 morality lesson, Sandler used it as an excuse to offer a spot-on spoof of Israelis' love of hummus, fondness for cheesy dance music and propensity for bluntness verging on rudeness. And compared with the tortured soul played by the goyish Eric Bana in "Munich," Sandler's hilariously impulsive commando-turned-hairdresser seemed — awful accent aside — like a genuine sabra. "I know a few guys like Zohan," one young Israeli movie-goer told the Associated Press. Sandler's brand of humor may owe more to frat row than it does to the Borscht Belt, but the 42-year-old funnyman has never been shy about loudly announcing his Jewishness — whether he's abruptly donning a yarmulke and tallit in his 2004 womanizer-falls-for-amnesiac flick "50 First Dates" or crooning about "people who are Jewish, just like you and me" for his instant holiday radio standard, "The Hanukkah Song."
Lipa Schmeltzer
In the cloistered world of ultra-Orthodox Jewry, Hasidic singer Lipa Schmeltzer is a superstar. Mixing Hasidic musical traditions and contemporary pop sounds, the 30-year-old Skverer Hasid has become something of a sensation — though not an uncontroversial one. In March, Schmeltzer was set to headline a charity benefit at Madison Square Garden's WaMu Theater. A little more than two weeks before the concert, some of American ultra-Orthodoxy's leading rabbinic authorities issued an edict banning attendance. They warned that the event would cause "ribaldry and lightheadedness." Out of respect for rabbinic authority, Schmeltzer deferred to the decree and the concert was canceled. But the ban generated a fierce backlash. Some people suggested that fanatics had misled the rabbis about the nature of the concert, which, consistent with communal norms, was to have separate seating for men and women. Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who represents the Hasidic stronghold of Boro Park, told The New York Times: "In all my 26 years of representing this community, I can't remember anything that has so shaken the people." Schmeltzer, for his part, has continued making music — and drawing appreciative crowds at public appearances. The title of his latest album can be seen as a rejoinder to critics who regard his pop-inflected songs and burgeoning popularity as threats to traditional Jewish values. It is called "A Poshiter Yid" — Yiddish for "A Simple Jew."
Ilan Stavans
Scholars want to be judged by the quality, not the quantity, of their work, but in the case of Mexican-born literary critic Ilan Stavans, the numbers are inescapable. Simply put, the range and volume of his writing and expertise — and influence — are astonishing. A tenured professor of Latin American and Latino literature at Amherst College, Stavans has areas of interest that range from Latin American Jewry to Spanish and Yiddish literature, the immigrant experience, the evolution of language and the cultural role of dictionaries. At 47, he has written no fewer than 20 books of fiction and nonfiction, three of them in 2008, and edited 14 more, including definitive anthologies of Pablo Neruda's poetry and Isaac Bashevis Singer's stories. Three more of his books are due out by the summer of 2009, notably a groundbreaking, 2,000-page anthology of Latino literature. For all that, he's not simply a collector of dry facts. His theories of language are hotly debated around the world. He hosted his own PBS talk show for five years and helped stage-manage the 2004 I.B. Singer centenary celebrations (including a special section in the Forward). But nothing captures his complexity better than his latest books: a study of the modern rebirth of Hebrew and a graphic novel titled "Mr. Spic Goes to Washington." Yes, one man can move worlds.
Jon Stewart
Comedian Jon Stewart may or may not be "the citizens' surrogate" inside politics, as Tom Brokaw grandly called him, much less "the most trusted man in America," as The New York Times wrote last August. But he's certainly high on the list. "The Daily Show," Stewart's wildly popular mock-news cable television show, is said to be the main source of news for the under-30 set. No one else in television matches Stewart, 46, at exposing politicians' hypocrisy. There's no disputing Stewart's stature as the public face of a supposedly lost generation of American Jews: politically liberal, thoroughly American and proudly if ambivalently Jewish. No one on air is more casually, openly Jewish, and never more so than in this presidential year. In June, he skewered the candidates for pandering to the pro-Israel vote. (On John McCain visiting Israel with Senator Joseph Lieberman in tow: "You know, when you go to Israel you don't have to bring your own Jew — there's a wide variety of Jews there.") In October, he lampooned Congress for delaying the financial bailout plan to adjourn for Rosh Hashanah ("I mean, seriously, Utah, you're not coming in for Rosh Hashanah?"). But always with affection: Last fall he mentioned to Tony Blair that his wife was Catholic and he was Jewish. When Blair asked how it was working out, Stewart replied: "We're raising our children to be sad."
Dara Torres
Jews have a tradition of breaking records in swimming events at the Olympics. Lenny Krayzelburg won all three U.S. swimming gold medals at the 2000 Games. Mark Spitz won seven gold medals in 1972, setting the record for the most golds won at a single Olympics — a record that lasted until this year, when Michael Phelps topped him with eight golds. And then there's Dara Torres of Parkland, Fla. Though only Torres's father was Jewish, she converted to Judaism before her second marriage and it became part of her incredible story line. This year, the 41-year-old became the first swimmer from the United States to compete in five Olympics. In Beijing, Torres was the oldest swimmer at the Games and became the oldest swimming medalist in Olympics history. Torres, who has won 12 Olympic medals since her first Games in 1984, returned to the pool after a six-year break from competition and the birth of her daughter, Tessa Torres-Hoffman, in 2006.
Ilana Trachtman
Ilana Trachtman, 37, hadn't planned to enter the risky business of independent documentary filmmaking, but when she encountered Lior Liebling, a pre-bar mitzvah boy with Down Syndrome, she set aside a successful career as a television documentary producer and took the plunge. The result is Trachtman's groundbreaking "Praying With Lior," a feature-length documentary that explores the life of Lior (also known as "the little rebbe"), his family and the question of whether someone with Down Syndrome can be considered a "spiritual genius." The film, which culminates with Lior's bar mitzvah, has garnered at least five audience awards at Jewish film festivals since it began screening in 2007. But more impressive than the awards and critical acclaim won by "Praying With Lior" has been its far-reaching impact on the Jewish community. Trachtman's documentary has broken the silence on special-needs children and adults in the Jewish community, forcing a long-overdue dialogue on a topic that touches many thousands of Jewish lives.
Matthew Weiner
Matthew Weiner is ruthless. His critically acclaimed TV series on AMC, "Mad Men," is mercilessly raw and brutally honest. Weiner, 43, the show's executive producer and creator, gets to the core of the American story — and the Jewish American story — through nuanced portraits of outsiders, loners and underdogs. The backdrop is a WASP-y Manhattan advertising agency in the 1960s. The show's Jewish characters — Rachel Menken, the head of a Jewish department store, and Jimmy Barrett, a loud-mouthed comedian and TV personality — are complex, subtle and layered, and avoid easy, one-dimensional stereotypes. "Mad Men" won six Emmy awards this year, including one for best drama, but its greater accomplishment was in shaping perceptions of who Jews are and where we came from.
Paul Ouderkirk
The May immigration raid that hit Agriprocessors, the nation's largest kosher slaughterhouse, was an unusual Jewish story: The people arrested in the raid had worked in the Postville, Iowa, plant so that Jewish consumers could have affordable kosher meat. Yet the job of cleaning up the humanitarian mess that followed that raid was taken up not by the local Jewish community but by Postville's Catholic church and its leader, Father Paul Ouderkirk. Ouderkirk, who has spent most of his life running Hispanic ministries at Midwestern churches, is part of a long Catholic tradition of ministering to the underprivileged of Latin America, no matter where they live. Before the raid, Ouderkirk was practically the only local voice to speak out about indignities endured by Agriprocessors workers. Now 75, he acted despite having retired from St. Bridget's Catholic Church. After the raid, Ouderkirk gave up what leisure time he had to take on the full-time job of helping the hundreds of immigrants affected. He led the church's efforts to raise money for the workers, soldiering alongside Paul Real, the church's lay pastor, and Violeta Iseman, an Agriprocessors employee turned social worker. The church has been the only source of food and shelter for dozens of workers who were arrested and released. Ouderkirk and his team showed that in the face of disaster, religion can provide the surest relief..
Ils sont de quoi être fier !
Cette liste des 50 Juifs les plus influents aux États-Unis montre jusqu'où la communauté a progressé depuis les dernières décennies, mais elle montre aussi tout le travail qu'il reste à faire pour réparer ce monde brisé et morcelé en une multitude de peuples divisés.
Forward 50, 2008
(...)
Two narratives dominated the Jewish story this year, and, naturally, are reflected in the Forward 50. Jews played an outsized role in the presidential election campaign and, by the looks of it, will continue to do so in the new Obama administration. Some of the most intriguing developments came from unexpected places: a young lobbying group that shook up the Washington establishment; a brash video that was viewed by more than 1 million on YouTube alone and introduced new words into the mainstream political lexicon.
This was also the year the kosher meat industry faced its greatest legal, consumer and ethical challenges. Led by the courageous reporting of our Nathaniel Popper, the saga of the now-bankrupt company that once was the country's largest producer of kosher beef and poultry exposed major lapses in the U.S. justice and immigration systems, and prompted rabbis of all denominations to examine the moral dimension of a central Jewish tenet.
The importance of this story is underscored by the inclusion — a rare one — of a non-Jew as the 51st name on this list. Father Paul Ouderkirk, the priest of the Catholic church in Postville, Iowa, displayed unusual leadership and compassion by helping displaced workers and their families to survive. Indeed, at times it has seemed as if Father Ouderkirk and the good members of St. Bridget's were among the few in this sad story willing to do the right thing.
The Forward 50 celebrates leadership, creativity, impact. It also reminds us how far we still have to go to truly repair the world.
TOP PICKS
Morris AllenRabbi Morris Allen was ready for his moment in the spotlight this year: leading a Jewish food revolution. Since 2006, Allen, who leads a Conservative congregation in suburban Minneapolis, has been the most vocal critic of Agriprocessors, the country's largest producer of kosher meat. After heading a committee that investigated and criticized working conditions at the plant, Allen, 53, helped devise a new system, known as Hekhsher Tzedek, or Justice Certification, to evaluate the conditions under which kosher food is produced. The Hekhsher Tzedek spoke to thousands of years of Jewish tradition about business ethics and played into a larger burgeoning American fascination with where our food comes from. It all came to seem like foresight when Agriprocessors' Iowa plant was the target of an immigration raid in May. The Hekhsher Tzedek became a national phenomenon and a rare galvanizing point for the struggling Conservative movement. While the Justice Certification at first generated intense opposition among large segments of the Orthodox community, now even some Orthodox rabbis are acquiescing to the logic of bringing some oft-forgotten Jewish ethics back into practice.
Jeremy Ben-AmiJeremy Ben-Ami gave the Jewish dialogue in Washington a very different feel this year thanks to his new organization. J Street, where Ben-Ami is executive director, is envisioned as a progressive pro-Israel advocacy lobby that will offer a counterweight to Aipac, which liberals like Ben-Ami perceive as too hawkish and unrepresentative of views held by most American Jews. Before Ben-Ami got J Street up and running, there were many doubters, but over the last year it has become a fund raising powerhouse. Ben-Ami has not just used that influence on the Middle East, he created a political action committee, JStreetPAC, to lend a liberal Jewish voice to domestic politics. Among the 41 candidates the PAC supported, 32 won their races. More significant was the presidential race, in which Barack Obama was buffeted by rumors about his faith and commitment to Israel. The 78% of Jewish voters that Obama won over offer support for Ben-Ami's vision of a liberal, open American Jewry. Ben-Ami, whose grandparents were among the founders of Tel Aviv, served as President Bill Clinton's deputy domestic policy adviser and served on Howard Dean's presidential campaign. But with a Democratic majority in Washington, Ben-Ami's biggest acts are likely yet to come.
Rahm EmanuelWhen the new president takes office in January, the man at his side will be the son of an Israeli, Rahm Emanuel, or "Rahmbo" as he is known in Washington for his take-no-prisoners style. The Illinois congressman who will be Barack Obama's White House chief of staff, is described as one of the most talented political hands in Washington. After earlier stints as an adviser in Bill Clinton's White House and as chair of the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives, Emanuel, 48, is expected to help the new president achieve ambitious goals. Emanuel, who grew up going to Jewish day school and visiting Israel every summer, volunteered at an Israeli military base during the 1991 Gulf War. Emanuel's father, Benjamin, was a member of the right-wing underground during the British mandate, but Rahm is known as a centrist who supports the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Insiders credit Emanuel with orchestrating the 1993 historic handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat by advising Clinton to grab the two leaders by the arms and make the moment happen. With Emanuel's clout, who knows what similar moments are in store during the Obama presidency.
Penny PritzkerAs a member of one of Chicago's wealthiest families, Penny Pritzker comes from a line known for its business acumen. But perhaps nobody in the family has pulled off a financial feat that tops the vaunted fund-raising machine she helped build for Barack Obama as his national finance chair. Though Obama's troubles in winning over Jewish voters were a key story line in his presidential race, Jewish support helped him make the national scene. Pritzker is one of a cadre of prominent Chicago Jews — including the Crown family, Abner Mikva and Lee Rosenberg — who knew Obama as a state senator and helped form a key support for his 2004 Senate run. When Obama decided to make his long-shot presidential bid, he tapped Pritzker to help him raise the cash he needed. Pritzker, in turn, helped forge the most successful fund-raising campaign in American political history, merging a flood of small Internet donations with traditional Democratic big money. With the campaign over, Pritzker, 49, may return to helping run her family's Hyatt hotel chain. Or maybe not. Her name is being floated in Washington circles as a potential secretary of commerce.
Sarah SilvermanIt would have been reasonable to assume that comedian Sarah Silverman had pushed the boundaries of Jewish humor as far as they could possibly go with a one-liner she delivered in her "Jesus is Magic" tour a couple of years back. "I was raped by a doctor," she says, her trademark shayna punim all wide-eyed innocence, "which is so bittersweet for a Jewish girl." This year, Silverman, 37, went further: Not only did she create a pro-Barack Obama monologue that gleefully skewered the polite discourse around the purported racism of some elderly Jewish voters, her video got into so many e-mail inboxes that comic Jackie Mason, a John McCain supporter, responded with an indignant monologue of his own. Silverman's election monologue may have been more popular than it was successful. The video was a promotion for "The Great Schlep," a Jewish organization's effort to get young Jews to fly to Florida and sweet-talk their grandparents into voting for Obama. Reportedly, only about 100 grandkids showed up. But Silverman is having a pretty good year: Her sitcom, "The Sarah Silverman Program," is in its second season on Comedy Central, and she won an Emmy for her anniversary present to her on-again, off-again boyfriend, comedian Jimmy Kimmel, a video in which she has a torrid affair with Matt Damon, starring herself and, well, Matt Damon. Bittersweet stuff.
POLITICS
Howard Berman
Filling the shoes of the late Tom Lantos is not an easy task. Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor in Congress, ran the House Foreign Affairs Committee with a passion for global human rights and a lively temper. When Rep.Howard Berman, a fellow California Democrat, took over as chair this year after Lantos's passing, he changed the style and tone dramatically, but committee members treated him with the same level of respect they had shown Lantos. Berman, 67, has won praise from both sides of the aisle for his deep knowledge of issues and his fairness, which stands out in the Capitol Hill scene. It was his Jewish faith that brought Berman to take an interest in foreign policy. "I was a Zionist before being a Democrat," he told the Forward in an interview earlier this year, adding that concern over the fate of Israel led him to focus on international affairs in Congress. In his congressional work, Berman is known to be a strong supporter of Israel, though he is also known for nuance. He used his chairmanship to block a resolution calling for tough measures against Iran. Anti-war groups had argued the resolution was a step toward military action.
Matthew Brooks
Few can claim a bigger hand in shaping the Jewish debate in this year's presidential contest than Matthew Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition since 1990. In that role, he and the RJC served as the de facto Jewish outreach arm of both the Republican National Committee and John McCain's presidential campaign. Brooks, 43, was a driving force behind the blitz of advertisements that filled Jewish newspapers and Web sites (including the Forward's) raising questions about Barack Obama's judgment and commitment to Israel. The ads didn't just spur debate, they poured fuel on a fire to cast doubt on Obama's fitness for the Oval Office. The messages were no doubt controversial, but there was no denying they were effective in causing many Jews with long histories of voting Democratic to at least reconsider that allegiance. Brooks began his political career as state chairman of the Massachusetts College Republicans while still an undergraduate at Brandeis University. In 1988 he managed Jack Kemp's presidential campaign in Massachusetts and later was the national field director for President George H.W. Bush's Jewish outreach effort. Brooks, an avid poker player, went to Las Vegas to unwind after this year's election. "I'm such a pariah this year," he said.
Eric Cantor
Although he may have lost the title of John McCain's lead Jewish voice to Joe Lieberman, Rep. Eric Cantor emerged from the 2008 elections as the No. 1 Jewish Republican. At 45, the Virginia conservative is viewed as a rising star among House Republicans. He made it to McCain's vice-presidential short list. In Republican circles, Cantor is frequently mentioned as a possible 2012 presidential contender. The four-term congressman, who represents the Richmond area, serves as the Republican chief deputy whip, a job that put him in the spotlight during September's fierce debate over the Wall Street bailout plan. Cantor stood up against Speaker Nancy Pelosi, accusing her of playing partisan politics, and later played an instrumental role in convincing fellow Republicans to reconsider the deal. Cantor is the only Jewish Republican in the House. While his Democratic colleagues enjoy monthly bagel meetings sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman, Cantor set up his own forum of Jewish Republicans, who meet periodically and invite guest speakers.
Steve Cohen
It was an extraordinary year for Rep. Steve Cohen, the freshman congressman from Tennessee. While his colleagues in the class of 2006 were trying to make their voices heard, Cohen was taking on the toughest issues for a politician: race and religion. Representing Tennessee's Ninth District, which is 60% African American, Cohen was well aware of the race issue early in his political career. In 1996, he lost a primary election to Harold Ford Jr. and said it was "impossible" for a white candidate to win in a black community. Ten years later he proved himself wrong, winning the House seat by a significant margin. When he arrived in Washington, Cohen was successful in passing a resolution apologizing for slavery, the first statement of its kind. But this was not enough for some. In the 2008 primary race, his rival Nikki Tinker, who is African American, ran ads juxtaposing images of Cohen with Klansmen and criticizing him for visiting "our churches" while opposing prayer in schools. He won the primary by a 4-to-1 margin. Cohen, 59, is a fourth-generation Tennessean with a distinct Southern accent and a lively sense of humor. Although he comes from a largely conservative state, he has liberal views on most social issues. He was also among the first politicians to be endorsed by the dovish JStreetPAC.
Barney Frank
This year's financial meltdown catapulted Democrat Barney Frank, the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, to center stage. During tense days in late September, as the American credit markets ground to a halt, Frank played a major role in shaping the Wall Street bailout plan and getting it approved. The outspoken, and at times short-tempered, congressman from Massachusetts shuttled between meetings with the Treasury secretary, House Republicans and his own party members in an effort to deliver the deal. After the vote, Frank stood proudly with congressional leaders in front of TV cameras to announce victory. In his 27-year career in Congress, Frank, 68, has made history before. He was the first leading politician to come out as gay in 1987, and has since carried the flag for civil liberties and gay rights in Congress. Growing up in a New Jersey family with a strong Jewish identity, Frank frequently draws upon the idea of tikkun olam as a driving force behind his work on civil rights and assisting the needy.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
The first Jewish woman to sit on the United States Supreme Court has occupied that seat now for 15 years. But, as longtime court watcher Linda Greenhouse noted, this year was the first time that Ruth Bader Ginsburg "found her voice, and used it." Twice during the court's 2008 spring session, Ginsburg offered forceful oral dissents from the bench, a rare move for any justice and one that Ginsburg — a quiet, polite, white-glove kind of woman — had never before taken. But the cases involved abortion and workplace discrimination, two issues that have long been at the forefront of Ginsburg's remarkable legal career. Observers say that Ginsburg, 75, has dropped some of her notable collegiality and become more vocal and passionate this year because of the growing conservatism of the court under Chief Justice John Roberts. As the only woman left among the nine justices, she is thought to be particularly concerned about upholding the liberal values that have been the cornerstone of a career that has taken her from Brooklyn to Harvard to the highest court in the land.
Joseph Lieberman
Only eight years have passed since Senator Joseph Lieberman was the Democratic nominee for vice president, an acclaimed moral voice and a historic figure as the first Jew to appear on a major-party ticket. Today he stands at the edge of the wilderness, a four-term lawmaker at home in neither party. Democrats are furious over Lieberman's sharp-tongued campaigning this year for John McCain. But the bad blood goes back further. The only Orthodox Jew on Capitol Hill, Lieberman was an enthusiastic booster of President Bush's Iraq War policy in 2003. Angry Democrats replied by virtually ignoring his primary bid for president in 2004 and sinking his Senate re-election bid in Connecticut's 2006 primary. He ran for Senate anyway as an independent and won. Returning to the Capitol, he sat with wary Democrats, providing their 51st vote to control the chamber. They rewarded him with the influential Homeland Security committee chairmanship. That was then. Today Lieberman, 66, is a conundrum. Liberals despise his hawkish defense views, but don't relish losing his vote — nor alienating Orthodox Jews. Republicans mistrust his liberal record on domestic affairs. He is threatened with loss of his powerful committee chairmanship. Few admit it, but he's become the embodiment of the centrist's lonely plight in a polarized Washington.
Mik Moore
One of the big stories of the presidential election was Barack Obama's Jewish problem, real or perceived: E-mails said Obama was a Muslim and wanted to destroy Israel. Some Jewish retirees declared that they wouldn't vote for a black man. Among Jewish voters, polls showed Obama at only 60%, which would have translated into the worst election result for any Democratic candidate since Jimmy Carter in 1980. Yet in the end, Obama pulled in an estimated 78% of the Jewish vote, a solid showing by any historical measure. And a healthy portion of the credit goes to Jewish activists like Mik Moore, 34, a community professional who organized grass-roots outreach to soothe Jewish fears and boost Jewish enthusiasm for Obama. Moore, the son of noted historian Deborah Dash Moore, co-founded the Jewish Council for Education and Research, one of a host of grass-roots groups that included rabbis, Israelis and Jewish studies scholars who backed Obama. JCER achieved its greatest prominence with The Great Schlep, an effort to convince Jewish youngsters to travel to Florida (or least at least call) to convince their grandparents to vote for Obama. The idea was a reprise of Moore's Operation Bubbe from four years ago, but this time a heartfelt and foul-mouthed video promotion by comedian Sarah Silverman spread like wildfire and gave the movement traction.
Dennis Ross
Until this year, Dennis Ross was the ultimate diplomat. Ross, the longtime lead negotiator in the Middle East for the first President Bush and for President Bill Clinton, spent more than a decade trying to hammer out deals between Israel and its Arab neighbors. After leaving government in 2000, he reflected upon the failure of the peace process and offered advice on the topic from his perch at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He also moonlighted as a Fox News foreign policy commentator and as chairman of the board of a think tank set up by the Jewish Agency to focus on the future of the Jewish people. This year, the 59-year-old Ross ventured into the brave new world of politics, advising Barack Obama on the Mideast and campaigning for him in Jewish strongholds such as Florida to bolster Obama's pro-Israel credentials. Ross has lamented the Bush administration's belated and lackluster peacemaking efforts in the region and is hopeful that an Obama administration will rededicate Washington to a genuine peace agenda while dealing more efficiently with Iran's nuclear ambitions. He will undoubtedly provide wisdom to the president-elect's policymakers to help them achieve a comprehensive peace agreement, a goal that has eluded the presidents he served and those he observed.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz
It's sometimes hard to believe that it's been only four years since Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz became the first Jewish woman from Florida to be elected to Congress. That's because she's wasted little time moving up the ranks on Capitol Hill. She not only won a coveted seat on the Appropriations Committee, but also joined the "college of cardinals" as one of its powerful subcommittee chairs — overseeing Congress's own budget. Smart, quick, ambitious and tenacious are some of the adjectives used to describe this 42-year-old mother of three, who represents parts of Dade and Broward counties in a district that has the third-largest concentration of Jews in America. Her House Democratic colleagues tapped her to help chair their "Red to Blue" program, which directs funding and support to races where Republicans may be vulnerable. Wasserman Schultz, a staunch supporter of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the presidential primaries, later enthusiastically backed Barack Obama's general election campaign. Her support was welcomed by Obama's campaign, which was quick to utilize Wasserman Schultz to reach out to Jewish and female voters.
Robert Wexler
At a time when many Democrats in Congress backed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rep. Robert Wexler took a risk. As co-chair of Barack Obama's Florida campaign, Wexler often reminded audiences that he was one of the first Jews to support Obama for president long before it was fashionable, and long before many of his older Jewish constituents in the Sunshine State warmed up to Obama. Such loyalty earned Wexler, 47, a prime spot speaking about Israel and the Middle East during the Democratic convention. As a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee since his election in 1997, Wexler will likely continue to have Obama's ear and be a sounding board on Jewish and Middle East matters in Congress. Known for a prosecutorial style, this lawyer will probably have his hand in a number of pressing domestic and foreign policy issues. Within the Foreign Affairs Committee, he is chairman of the Europe subcommittee and a member of the Middle East subcommittee. He also serves on the House Financial Services and Judiciary committees. Wexler voted to give the Bush administration authority to invade Iraq, but he has been a frequent administration critic and called for hearings on whether to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney.
COMMUNITY
David Borowich
Organizers of New York’s annual Salute to Israel parade had a problem this year. It was Israel’s 60th birthday, and they were concerned that, as in years past, not many Israelis would show up. So they called David Borowich. Borowich is the founder and honorary chairman of Dor Chadash, a four-year-old organization that brings together Israelis living in New York and their American Jewish peers. The group’s events range from huge nightclub parties with an Israeli dance music soundtrack to concerts and films featuring Israel’s biggest artists and filmmakers, to an open-mic discussion with Elie Wiesel. Young Jews, both American and Israeli, show up in droves. For Israel’s 60th, Dor Chadash organized a celebration at Radio City Music Hall that was billed as the largest Yom Ha’atzmaut celebration outside of Israel. Borowich, 38, has a biography that suits the bridge-building nature of his job: After growing up in Kentucky and New York, but before becoming a Wall Street executive, he made aliyah and served in the Israeli army. Today, he spends his spare time serving on the boards of Jewish and philanthropic organizations.
William Daroff
Eyebrows were raised in the Jewish community when William Daroff was appointed three years ago to head the Washington operation of United Jewish Communities. Daroff came to the job after a long career in the Republican establishment and had served as deputy executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. His background did not seem in line with the purpose of UJC’s Washington office: advancing funding for social services. But Daroff, 41, quickly turned his assumed disadvantage into a benefit. Upon stepping into his new post, Daroff shed his partisan colors and worked with both parties to advance social legislation and funding. UJC is an umbrella organization of Jewish federations, which administer more than $7 billion in government funds that provide services for Jewish elderly, sick and needy. Through its Washington office, the group is a significant stakeholder in government decisions dealing with Medicare, Medicaid, housing and aid to families. Daroff has been successful in pushing forward these issues. Yet his work exceeded the realm of Jewish interests. He became a significant player in advancing the revised Americans with Disabilities Act and lobbying for a bill providing equal care for the mentally ill. His positions have at times put Daroff at odds with the Bush White House, but his earlier affiliation did not stop him from criticizing the Republican administration.
Esther Safran Foer
If the novels of Jonathan Safran Foer are refreshingly free of cartoonish matriarchs, perhaps some credit is due to the author’s very un-cartoonish mother. Esther Safran Foer may not be as famous as the best-known of her three writer sons, but she has been a macher in Washington, D.C., since before he was born. The founder and president of a public relations firm called FM Strategic Communications — and the onetime press secretary to 1972 Democratic presidential hopeful George McGovern — Foer, 62, now works full time in the Jewish community as the executive director of 6th & I, a D.C. cultural hub winning rave reviews for its eclectic programming and ability to draw a crowd. Sixth and I is housed in a 100-year-old synagogue building at the corner of the two streets that give it its name. In the last few months alone, 6th & I, under Foer’s direction, has hosted programs that range from talks by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and author Salman Rushdie to performances by indie rock star Jenny Lewis and reggae sensation Matisyahu. And it does hold religious services. When it opened its High Holy Days services free to the public this year, the waiting list for tickets nearly reached the four-digit mark.
Abraham Foxman
Emerging from a nasty dispute over his opposition to a congressional resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide, Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, turned to his bread-and-butter issue: antisemitism. For more than 20 years as head of the ADL, Foxman has thrown his weight around to denounce bigotry in Europe, in Muslim countries and in the United States. He has warned that the current financial meltdown has revived old canards about Jewish money and power. This year, Foxman took aim at what he sees as a more subtle form of antisemitism: the argument laid out by two mainstream scholars, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, who claimed that the "Israel lobby" is skewing American foreign policy in favor of Israel and to the detriment of the national interests of the United States. In response, Foxman penned a book, "The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control," blitzed the media and hit the circuit to rebuke what he perceives as a dangerous rehashing of dual-loyalty suspicions regarding American Jews. While some critics bemoan his excessive zeal, Foxman remains, at 68, a fixture of the Jewish communal world here and abroad, one whose voice will continue to be heard.
Howard Kohr
On the morning after she lost her final primary race to Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton showed up at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s policy conference, where she shook hands behind the scenes with the victorious Illinois senator. John McCain was there, too. Once again this year, Aipac has demonstrated its central role in America’s political scene, and Howard Kohr, the group’s executive director for the last 12 years, was there to make sure that doesn’t change. At 52, Kohr is known as one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington. He is well connected with leaders and policymakers of both parties. The crowd at the Aipac policy conference might have seemed enthusiastic for McCain, but Kohr and the lobby’s leadership cultivated close relations with Obama and his top advisers, ensuring Aipac would remain a key player even as administrations change. Kohr has succeeded in keeping Aipac above the fray of the internal disputes of the Jewish community. For the first time, this year Aipac faced a competitor in J Street, a true challenger in the field of pro-Israel lobbying. Yet Aipac did not seem to take a hit. Aipac continued to flourish, increasing its funds and membership, moving to a new headquarters in Washington and maintaining its political clout.
David Saperstein
Since the advent of the modern political convention, no rabbi had given the invocation on the night of the presidential nominee’s acceptance speech. That is, until this year, when Rabbi David Saperstein, 61, stood in front of a massive outdoor audience in Denver and offered a blessing before Barack Obama’s historic nomination. As director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism for more than 30 years, Saperstein is no stranger to politics. His official biography boasts that he has been called the "quintessential religious lobbyist on Capitol Hill." But in a town filled with advocates for particular causes, the soft-spoken Saperstein has distinguished himself by gaining wide respect from members of all faiths, thanks to years of activity in building advocacy coalitions on social issues and foreign policy. He has been a leading force in the Save Darfur Coalition and currently co-chairs the Coalition to Preserve Religious Liberty, comprising more than 50 national religious denominations and educational organizations. An attorney, writer and speaker, Saperstein has positioned the Reform movement, the nation’s largest Jewish denomination, in the forefront of progressive politics. "We pray for America, that it may ever be an or l’goyim, a light unto the nations," he intoned on that starry night in Denver, "a beacon of freedom, human rights and economic opportunity."
Daniel Sokatch
When Daniel Sokatch — head of the California-based Progressive Jewish Alliance and a poster boy for Jewish social justice activism — was tapped this spring to be CEO of San Francisco’s Jewish Community Federation, many in the Jewish communal world were surprised. Could a charismatic liberal known for galvanizing young activists translate his brand of leadership to a consensus-oriented federation? While he has been on the job for only a few months, expectations run high. Sokatch, 40, made a name for himself as PJA’s first executive director. In eight years at its helm, he helped shape the fledgling group into an innovative and influential Jewish presence on Los Angeles’s multi-ethnic activist scene. Today, PJA boasts some 4,000 members, with offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco. If Sokatch can do for San Francisco’s federation — which has floundered in recent years — what he did for PJA, he could end up providing a new model for North America’s ailing federation system.
Hadar Susskind
Although almost everyone who’s anyone on Capitol Hill and in Jewish federations knows Hadar Susskind, few understand his job title: Washington director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. He is the person in charge of translating Washington politics for Jewish communal leaders and bringing their concerns and priorities to the ears of politicians. For the past two years, Susskind, 35, has been part of a drive to take Jewish advocacy to the field of social justice. His work made the Jewish community a player in this year’s effort to pass the new farm bill in Congress. Jewish farmers are scarce, but Susskind focused on a little-known part of the bill dealing with food stamps, and became a driving force in bringing about passage of the bill and increases in assistance for thousands of families in need. A former infantry soldier in an Israeli combat unit and a former kibbutznik, Susskind views himself as both American and Israeli. His work has taken Jewish lobbying away from its foreign policy focus and has made the Jewish community a partner in the political debate on poverty, hunger and social assistance.
FOOD
Susie Fishbein
The author of six cookbooks in five years, Susie Fishbein has achieved an international following and a deeply devoted fan base. Her wildly popular Kosher by Design series, published by ArtScroll, has sold more than 300,000 copies. The latest in the collection, "Kosher by Design Lightens Up," had about 25,000 pre-orders three weeks before it went on sale November 17. And it’s no wonder. At first glance the books might seem too sleek and trendy for real-kitchen use, but Fishbein, 40, has fine-tuned the art of producing stylish, well-organized tomes that are approachable and, on page after page, practical. Most of the ingredients are simple and can be found in supermarkets. Perhaps most important, the Oceanside, N.Y., native has achieved a delicate culinary balance that is often lacking in the world of modern cookbooks and strictly kosher cuisine. The recipes, which are reviewed by an Orthodox rabbi, don’t exactly resemble the traditional fare that bubbe used to make (no leaden matzo balls or bland chicken here), but they’re not overly exotic or intimidating, either. Rack of lamb with fig-marsala sauce, sweet-and-sour brisket, zucchini-leek soup with ginger cream and, of course, Fishbein’s tri-colored matzo balls are among the hundreds of dishes that have earned the kosher diva her nickname.
Menachem Genack
As the kosher meat industry nearly fell apart over the last year, it was Rabbi Menachem Genack who was trusted to hold things together. As the CEO of the country’s largest kosher supervisor, O.U. Kosher, Genack, 60, was sought out by people inside and outside the industry after America’s largest kosher meat producer, Agriprocessors, was hit with an immigration raid, criminal charges and eventually bankruptcy. The sequence of events had the potential to cripple the supply of meat to observant Jews across the country, but Genack avoided showing any signs of panic. At the beginning, his slow and steady leadership disappointed many liberal voices in the Jewish community, who wanted him to take more forceful action against Agriprocessors. Later on, when the weight of evidence piled up against the company, Genack was willing to disappoint many in the Orthodox community by demanding that Agriprocessors change its leadership. This approach has not been enough to stop the implosion of Agriprocessors — and the human and animal suffering that came along with it — but Genack has supplied a modicum of sanity to an industry in crisis.
Aaron Rubashkin
It is safe to say that Aaron Rubashkin did not want to become famous this year. Rubashkin was happy to labor behind the scenes for the last few decades, turning his family business, Agriprocessors, into the largest producer of kosher meat in the country. His children have run the operations on the ground, but the octogenarian Rubashkin has been back in Brooklyn making the big decisions. Those decisions helped the company grow, but they also led it down the path to trouble. Agriprocessors’ hiring and pay policies resulted in a federal immigration raid on its plant in Postville, Iowa, earlier this year. Since then, Rubashkin and his family have faced a number of criminal charges that eventually led the company to declare bankruptcy. The company’s problems have sparked a protest movement and, in turn, changed the way people think about kosher food. None of this would have happened without Rubashkin. While the final judgment about him will be rendered in the courts, his trial in the media has already changed minds.
Nigel Savage
Remember the summer blackout of 2003 in the Northeast? Lots of people used it as an excuse not to leave home, but about 100 hardy souls schlepped their bicycles to Long Island to kick off a four-day bike ride at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, thanks to Nigel Savage. Savage, who hails from Manchester, England, is the environmentalist impresario behind Hazon, a Jewish outdoor education group formed in 2000. Not only does Hazon hold annual bike rides to raise money for Jewish environmental projects, it runs community-supported agriculture programs (support for small farmers = fresh produce for urban Jews!) throughout the United States, Canada and Israel. Recent entries on the organization’s food-politics blog, "The Jew and the Carrot," run the gamut from a warning about pesticide-covered etrogim to a recipe for warm barley salad to an advice column by "The Shmethicist." Hazon threw itself into the debate over ethical kashrut last December when it publicly slaughtered a goat at its annual food conference to raise consciousness about meat production. Savage helped found the New York chapter of the British-based Jewish educational group Limmud, and even had a previous life as a Wall Street-type in England. According to his Web site, one of his proudest accomplishments is that he may be "the first English Jew to have cycled across South Dakota on a recumbent bike."
RELIGION
Denise Eger
When anti-gay marriage activists put forth Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative seeking to ban gay marriage, Rabbi Denise Eger wasted no time in organizing Jewish opposition to the measure. While the ballot initiative ultimately prevailed on November 4, Eger nevertheless demonstrated her ability to raise the profile of gay rights issues within the Jewish community and spur people to action. The founding rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami, West Hollywood’s gay and lesbian Reform synagogue, Eger shepherded efforts to pass a resolution by the Board of Rabbis of Southern California opposing Proposition 8. In a huge turnout by the board’s 290 members, 93% voted in favor of the resolution. Eger, 48, also helped organize the L.A.-based group Jews for Marriage Equality and was a founding president of L.A.’s Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual Clergy Association. A vice president of the Board of Rabbis for the past six years, Eger is next in line to assume its presidency. If she, indeed, becomes president — which could happen as early as next May — Eger would be not only the first woman to lead the Southern California board, but also the first gay or lesbian.
Dayle Friedman
The Jewish community in America is aging, and few have responded to this demographic challenge with the passion and creativity of Rabbi Dayle Friedman. As a Jewish nursing home chaplain for many years, Friedman pioneered spiritual work with the elderly. Now as director of Hiddur: The Center for Aging and Judaism at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, Pa., she is playing a prophetic role in awakening communal attention to the needs of this graying population. Hiddur’s mission is to enable the elderly to engage in their own spiritual connections and contribute to the broader spiritual community. Friedman, 52, trains rabbis and other Jewish professionals to develop the skills needed to deal with the ever-growing number of bubbes and zaydes in synagogues, care facilities, hospitals and in their own homes. In 2008, she reached a broader audience with a new book, "Jewish Visions for Aging: A Professional Guide for Fostering Wholeness." With her ever-present smile and engaging manner, Friedman has also become a champion of pushing past the stereotypes that narrowly define the elderly. "My experience is that elders are often more open-minded than younger people," she wrote recently. Just as her older congregants were able to embrace her when she started out as a young female rabbi, Friedman, in her work, encourages all of us to respect the wisdom and potential of age.
Jill Jacobs
When Rabbi Jill Jacobs first introduced a living-wage measure in 2006 to the Conservative movement’s top legal body, she encountered heavy opposition. But the 33-year-old Jacobs, the rabbi-in-residence at Jewish Funds for Justice in New York, didn’t give up. Two years later, in May of this year, her teshuvah, or halachic opinion, arguing that Jewish employers should pay their employees a living wage and strive to hire union workers, was finally adopted by the Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards. A 2003 graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Jacobs has been a champion of social justice issues — including equality for women, gays and lesbians — since her student days. Later, as education director at the Chicago-based Jewish Council for Urban Affairs, she initiated a program that trained student rabbis to incorporate social justice work into their rabbinate. Jacobs’s spirited activism bodes well for the Conservative movement.
Yosef Kanefsky
Yosef Kanefsky, 45, shattered a long-standing Orthodox taboo when he suggested last year that Jewish leaders ought to at least consider the idea of a divided Jerusalem. The senior rabbi of B’nai David-Judea Congregation, a growing Los Angeles Modern Orthodox synagogue, Kanefsky has come to represent the left wing of Modern Orthodoxy on the West Coast. But Kanefsky’s October 2007 opinion piece, "An Orthodox Rabbi’s Plea: Consider a Divided Jerusalem," published in L.A.’s local Jewish weekly, the Jewish Journal, thrust him into the spotlight well beyond the confines of the Jewish world. The Los Angeles Times published a story on the waves of controversy his piece generated. A former associate rabbi at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, a New York congregation led by maverick Orthodox Rabbi Avi Weiss, Kanefsky has long taken positions at odds with the Orthodox establishment. He has allowed women to read from the Torah in their own single-sex services. As a past president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, he is far more engaged with the non-Orthodox Jewish world than most of his peers. But his nontraditional approach seems to be helping his cause: Over the past year, Kanefsky’s congregation of 300 families has grown by more than 10%.
Elie Kaunfer
No one has been more central to the admittedly decentralized world of independent minyanim than Elie Kaunfer. The son of a rabbi, Kaunfer, 35, co-founded the influential Kehilat Hadar minyan on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, then was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Since ordination, he and two fellow rabbis — Shai Held and Ethan Tucker — have set up Mechon Hadar, an organization dedicated to drawing the minyanim into a national network and an egalitarian summer yeshiva. Kaunfer has become a link between the small, low-budget minyanim and the big-dollar Jewish donors who are itching to support them. (What could be more promising than young Jews who already like Judaism?) Kaunfer co-authored a study that brought national attention to the minyanim, and he and his comrades have proved to be masters at tapping federations and large foundations. This year, Tucker received a two-year, $200,000 fellowship from the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, and Kaunfer got another $225,000 over three years from the Avi Chai Foundation. They intend to pour the money into taking Yeshivat Hadar full-time, making it the country’s first full-time, egalitarian yeshiva. Kaunfer and his fellow minyan boosters say they have no interest in denominational politics. But with a national network of prayer groups and their own school for teaching Jewish texts, Kaunfer and friends may find that they have a movement on their hands.
Moshe Kotlarsky
As vice chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the education arm of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky oversees what amounts to a fourth main wing of Judaism, with some 5,000 Hasidic rabbis ministering to a vast, loosely affiliated flock of mostly nonobservant Jews. His network includes about 4,000 institutions in 70 countries — synagogues, community centers, parochial schools and preschools from Albuquerque to Zaire, plus prison chaplaincies and a few drug rehab clinics. It’s estimated that a Chabad facility opens up somewhere every week. Kotlarsky, 59, runs the empire with a firm but affable hand, approving new locations, selecting field rabbis (shluchim) and, most important, doling out millions to the field from a donor-funded foundation he controls. He also heads the fast-growing Chabad on Campus Foundation, operating at more than 100 colleges. One of Chabad’s most visible public faces, he travels tirelessly to address gatherings worldwide and presides genially over the massive annual shluchim convention in New York. Outsiders sometimes question Chabad’s aggressive way of moving into small communities, especially in Eastern Europe, and some fret about the free liquor that often seems to help boost attendance. In 2008, Chabad traditionalists attacked Kotlarsky over the movement’s visible presence at the Beijing Olympics. Chabad’s late leader, Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, considered the Olympics idolatrous because they originated as a religious tribute to pagan Greek gods. Still, few argue with success.
Julie Schonfeld
A generation ago, the battle over women’s rights in the Conservative movement was at least as heated and divisive as the movement’s more recent squabbles over gay rights. But the ease with which movement leaders welcomed Julie Schonfeld’s recent appointment as the first female executive director of the Rabbinical Assembly, the association for Conservative rabbis, is a welcome reminder of how the radical can, over time, become the commonplace. That said, Schonfeld, 43, will face a tough task. The Conservative movement has struggled for years with declining membership and an aimless sense of mission, and many observers have attributed the malaise to organizational leadership that was out of step with the times. The first step in that turnover came in 2006, when Arnold Eisen replaced Ismar Schorsch as chancellor of the movement’s flagship Jewish Theological Seminary, a move that gave Conservative Judaism a welcome shot in the arm. But anxieties, and expectations, remain high. If anybody can see the task through, it may be Schonfeld. She has experience in the pulpit. She has spent the last seven years working at the R.A., so she knows the plumbing. And she is deeply involved with the liberal social causes that many see as essential to the Conservative movement’s future. If Schonfeld can revitalize the R.A., then her gender may be the least for which she is remembered.
MONEY
Sheldon Adelson
For the past few years, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson seemed to be running the tables. Once a newsboy from Boston, Adelson, 75, catapulted into the ranks of the world’s wealthiest when his casino resort company, Las Vegas Sands, went public in 2004. By 2007, he was the third-richest man in America, according to Forbes, and the world’s richest Jew. His money brought Adelson influence. He became a big donor to Jewish causes, including Aipac and Birthright Israel. Rumors flew that he would give away $200 million per year to Jewish causes. When word emerged that he would bankroll a conservative advocacy group, Freedom’s Watch, Republicans hailed him as the conservative answer to George Soros, a believer with bottomless pockets. Now this gambler’s luck may be running out. Over the past year, Sands stock has plummeted more than 90%, costing Adelson tens of billions of dollars on paper, and his spot as the richest Jew. Freedom’s Watch hasn’t taken off. And Adelson appears to be scaling back his Jewish giving, leaving organizations like Birthright scrambling to make up the difference. Just as damaging for the reclusive Adelson, The New Yorker published a damning profile that pulled back the curtains on his brass-knuckles approach to both business and politics. But as the profile made clear, Adelson’s a fighter. Don’t count him out yet.
Morris Squire
While the under-40 set is generally perceived as the force behind creative, cutting-edge Jewish philanthropy, Morris Squire is turning that perception on its head. The man behind Moishe Houses — one of the most thinking-out-of-the-box Jewish philanthropic endeavors of the last decade — is an 85-year-old philanthropist, former psychologist and painter who has funneled millions of dollars into his Jewish communal living houses. In 2006, while other donors were funding trips to Israel, Squire — who made his money as the owner of health-care facilities — came up with an idea: Subsidize the rent on a house for a bunch of 20-something Jews, give them a monthly program budget and let them do the rest. Squire’s vision of free-form Jewish community building, in which house members get up to 75% of their rent covered in return for organizing loosely defined Jewish events — even poker nights — is expanding. In the last two years, 26 Moishe Houses have cropped up around the globe from Oakland, Calif., where the first one was established, to Johannesburg, Beijing and Warsaw. Squire divides his time between Santa Barbara, Calif., and Cambodia. Sometimes it takes an octogenarian to generate some of the Jewish world’s most innovative philanthropy.
Michael Steinhardt
Michael Steinhardt seems to think he has found the next big idea for building Jewish identity, and now he is putting his money where his mouth is: Hebrew-language charter schools. In May, Steinhardt’s foundation announced that it was backing an application for a new Hebrew-language charter school in Steinhardt’s childhood home of Brooklyn. It’s an idea that suits the legendary former hedge fund manager — bold, controversial, Jewish, but not religious. Steinhardt, 68, has already talked about building a national network of charter schools, so this could be the first of many. While one Steinhardt venture may soon be coming to New York, another recently disappeared when the Steinhardt-backed New York Sun closed its doors. Though technically neither Jewish nor a philanthropy, the Sun was essentially both. Editor-in-chief Seth Lipsky (who founded the English Forward, with backing from Steinhardt) had hoped to found an old-fashioned New York broadsheet with a neoconservative slant, a paper that would challenge The New York Times. The Sun was hawkish on Israel and passionately pro-business. It was not, however, much of a business itself, losing millions of dollars a month. Steinhardt and his fellow backers offered to put up more money if new investors (one might say donors) could be found, but with financial markets in shambles and print newspapers in freefall, the additional millions were lacking, and the Sun set.
Morris Talansky
Israel was riveted by stories that emerged in May from a Jerusalem courtroom: a Long Island businessman who was an ordained rabbi plying the prime minister with expensive gifts, including cigars, wine and an Italian vacation. Oh, and about $150,000 in cash. The businessman, Morris Talansky, 75, said he "loved" Ehud Olmert, and that the embattled prime minister loved him back. Though Olmert disputes the allegations and the level of affection, the testimony led to his proffered resignation and to Talansky’s own disgrace. The Brooklyn-born Talansky had left the pulpit to work in his family business, then became a prolific fundraiser for Israeli causes, including Shaare Tzedek hospital and the New Jerusalem Fund, which he jointly founded with Olmert to raise money for projects in the capital. When Olmert decided to run for mayor of Jerusalem, Talansky was a strong backer. And when Olmert rose to become prime minister, Talansky thought his political time had come. Now the prime minister is a lame duck and his erstwhile friend is back on Long Island, no longer the man to call to get to the leader of Israel.
CULTURE & MEDIA
Jeffrey Goldberg
Not every blogger lands exclusive interviews with the two leading presidential contenders. But Jeffrey Goldberg isn't just any blogger. Goldberg, 43, is known for his in-depth reports on politics and foreign affairs for publications like The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker and The Atlantic — not infrequently filed from scary spots like Taliban madrassas. Lately, Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, has established himself as the elite media's leading Judaic scribe — from an Atlantic cover story exploring Israel's existential challenges to a much-discussed New York Times op-ed scolding American Jewish leaders for having "allowed the partisans of settlement to conflate support for the colonization of the West Bank with support for Israel itself." A former staffer for the Forward, the Long Island-reared writer made aliyah as a young man and served in the Israeli army, before returning to the United States. His 2006 book, "Prisoners: A Muslim & a Jew Across the Middle East Divide," recounted his complicated relationship with a Palestinian prisoner he once guarded. Goldberg's two presidential candidate interviews, posted on his Atlantic blog, focused on topics such as Israel, Iran, Hamas and the presidential hopefuls' favorite Jewish writers. John McCain, we learned, likes Herman Wouk; Barack Obama enjoys Philip Roth; both have a soft spot for Leon Uris. And Goldberg, we discovered, isn't shy about posing a question containing a Yiddish word like "kishke" to a future president.
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
After years of being one of the keenest analysts and supporters of Jewish art, New York University professor Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett edited the definitive book on what "Jewish" has meant across the gamut of modern art. With essays tracing a plethora of different types of art she interrogates the concept of Jewishness without falling into essentialism. She co-edited the "Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times" with Jonathan Karp. Previously, she wrote a book with her father, Mayer Kirshenblatt, titled "They Called Me Mayer July," which was a finalist for the 2007 National Jewish Book Award. Her interviews with her father provided the framework for his retrospective paintings of Jewish life in Poland before World War II. In 2006, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett won the National Jewish Book Award for her book "Writing a Modern Jewish History: Essays in Honor of Salo W. Baron." These three books have cemented her place as a producer of and writer about Jewish art — a fact recognized by the Foundation for Jewish Culture, which honored her this year. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is a cultural driving force. She co-convened the Working Group on Jews, Religion, and Media at NYU's Center for Religion and Media, and the Jews and Performance colloquium, jointly sponsored by the Jewish Theological Seminary and NYU.
William Kristol
William Kristol wears many hats: magazine editor, newspaper columnist, television pundit and neocon scion. This year, he added another hat: that of shadchan, or matchmaker. Kristol — The New York Times op-ed columnist, Weekly Standard editor, Fox News Channel commentator and son of neoconservative pioneers Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb — was perhaps the most prominent public voice urging John McCain to tap Sarah Palin as his running mate. As early as June, Kristol — a longtime McCainiac who strongly supported the Arizona senator's unsuccessful 2000 presidential bid — was confidently predicting that Palin would be picked for the No. 2 spot on the GOP ticket. "She's fantastic," he gushed on Fox. Kristol, of course, got his wish. With a Democrat in the White House, neoconservatives on the defensive and a backlash brewing over Kristol's aggressive pro-Palin advocacy, Kristol, 55, is likely to find his influence diminished. Still, he occupies some prominent pulpits and is sure to be a vigorous participant in debates over the Republican Party's future. A foreign-policy hawk and ally of the Israeli right, Kristol and his Weekly Standard may also find new purpose as critics of an Obama administration's approach to the Middle East.
Shmarya Rosenberg
It's hard to believe now, but when Shmarya Rosenberg started his blog, FailedMessiah.com, he was an observant, Orthodox Jew. When the blog got him into hot water with the local Orthodox Jewish community, Rosenberg chose his blog and left his observance behind. In his blog, Rosenberg turns an obsessive and hostile eye on the Orthodox world. Day after day and night after night, Rosenberg, 50, trolls the Internet, digging up new stories of pedophilia, financial chicanery, political extremism and more in the Orthodox world. He has been a particularly harsh — and thorough — chronicler of the many failings of kosher meat giant Agriprocessors. One of Rosenberg's biggest moments came in July, when he nailed public relations firm 5W PR for posting comments on blogs under other people's names as part of its defense of client Agriprocessors. 5W furiously denied the charges — then confessed. As the dozens of comments that appear after each posting on his blog show, Rosenberg has provided an unusual online gathering place for a whole community.
Adam Sandler
Adam Sandler's movie,"You Don't Mess With the Zohan," raked in an impressive $100 million at the domestic box office this year. Not since Paul Newman's 1960 epic "Exodus" has Israel played so big on Main Street. Indeed, Sandler's "Zohan" grossed twice as much domestically as Steven Spielberg's 2005 Oscar-nominated drama "Munich," which likewise focused on a war-weary Israeli terrorist-hunter who finds refuge in New York City. But whereas Spielberg used Israel's experience fighting terror as an excuse to offer a high-minded, post-9/11 morality lesson, Sandler used it as an excuse to offer a spot-on spoof of Israelis' love of hummus, fondness for cheesy dance music and propensity for bluntness verging on rudeness. And compared with the tortured soul played by the goyish Eric Bana in "Munich," Sandler's hilariously impulsive commando-turned-hairdresser seemed — awful accent aside — like a genuine sabra. "I know a few guys like Zohan," one young Israeli movie-goer told the Associated Press. Sandler's brand of humor may owe more to frat row than it does to the Borscht Belt, but the 42-year-old funnyman has never been shy about loudly announcing his Jewishness — whether he's abruptly donning a yarmulke and tallit in his 2004 womanizer-falls-for-amnesiac flick "50 First Dates" or crooning about "people who are Jewish, just like you and me" for his instant holiday radio standard, "The Hanukkah Song."
Lipa Schmeltzer
In the cloistered world of ultra-Orthodox Jewry, Hasidic singer Lipa Schmeltzer is a superstar. Mixing Hasidic musical traditions and contemporary pop sounds, the 30-year-old Skverer Hasid has become something of a sensation — though not an uncontroversial one. In March, Schmeltzer was set to headline a charity benefit at Madison Square Garden's WaMu Theater. A little more than two weeks before the concert, some of American ultra-Orthodoxy's leading rabbinic authorities issued an edict banning attendance. They warned that the event would cause "ribaldry and lightheadedness." Out of respect for rabbinic authority, Schmeltzer deferred to the decree and the concert was canceled. But the ban generated a fierce backlash. Some people suggested that fanatics had misled the rabbis about the nature of the concert, which, consistent with communal norms, was to have separate seating for men and women. Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who represents the Hasidic stronghold of Boro Park, told The New York Times: "In all my 26 years of representing this community, I can't remember anything that has so shaken the people." Schmeltzer, for his part, has continued making music — and drawing appreciative crowds at public appearances. The title of his latest album can be seen as a rejoinder to critics who regard his pop-inflected songs and burgeoning popularity as threats to traditional Jewish values. It is called "A Poshiter Yid" — Yiddish for "A Simple Jew."
Ilan Stavans
Scholars want to be judged by the quality, not the quantity, of their work, but in the case of Mexican-born literary critic Ilan Stavans, the numbers are inescapable. Simply put, the range and volume of his writing and expertise — and influence — are astonishing. A tenured professor of Latin American and Latino literature at Amherst College, Stavans has areas of interest that range from Latin American Jewry to Spanish and Yiddish literature, the immigrant experience, the evolution of language and the cultural role of dictionaries. At 47, he has written no fewer than 20 books of fiction and nonfiction, three of them in 2008, and edited 14 more, including definitive anthologies of Pablo Neruda's poetry and Isaac Bashevis Singer's stories. Three more of his books are due out by the summer of 2009, notably a groundbreaking, 2,000-page anthology of Latino literature. For all that, he's not simply a collector of dry facts. His theories of language are hotly debated around the world. He hosted his own PBS talk show for five years and helped stage-manage the 2004 I.B. Singer centenary celebrations (including a special section in the Forward). But nothing captures his complexity better than his latest books: a study of the modern rebirth of Hebrew and a graphic novel titled "Mr. Spic Goes to Washington." Yes, one man can move worlds.
Jon Stewart
Comedian Jon Stewart may or may not be "the citizens' surrogate" inside politics, as Tom Brokaw grandly called him, much less "the most trusted man in America," as The New York Times wrote last August. But he's certainly high on the list. "The Daily Show," Stewart's wildly popular mock-news cable television show, is said to be the main source of news for the under-30 set. No one else in television matches Stewart, 46, at exposing politicians' hypocrisy. There's no disputing Stewart's stature as the public face of a supposedly lost generation of American Jews: politically liberal, thoroughly American and proudly if ambivalently Jewish. No one on air is more casually, openly Jewish, and never more so than in this presidential year. In June, he skewered the candidates for pandering to the pro-Israel vote. (On John McCain visiting Israel with Senator Joseph Lieberman in tow: "You know, when you go to Israel you don't have to bring your own Jew — there's a wide variety of Jews there.") In October, he lampooned Congress for delaying the financial bailout plan to adjourn for Rosh Hashanah ("I mean, seriously, Utah, you're not coming in for Rosh Hashanah?"). But always with affection: Last fall he mentioned to Tony Blair that his wife was Catholic and he was Jewish. When Blair asked how it was working out, Stewart replied: "We're raising our children to be sad."
Dara Torres
Jews have a tradition of breaking records in swimming events at the Olympics. Lenny Krayzelburg won all three U.S. swimming gold medals at the 2000 Games. Mark Spitz won seven gold medals in 1972, setting the record for the most golds won at a single Olympics — a record that lasted until this year, when Michael Phelps topped him with eight golds. And then there's Dara Torres of Parkland, Fla. Though only Torres's father was Jewish, she converted to Judaism before her second marriage and it became part of her incredible story line. This year, the 41-year-old became the first swimmer from the United States to compete in five Olympics. In Beijing, Torres was the oldest swimmer at the Games and became the oldest swimming medalist in Olympics history. Torres, who has won 12 Olympic medals since her first Games in 1984, returned to the pool after a six-year break from competition and the birth of her daughter, Tessa Torres-Hoffman, in 2006.
Ilana Trachtman
Ilana Trachtman, 37, hadn't planned to enter the risky business of independent documentary filmmaking, but when she encountered Lior Liebling, a pre-bar mitzvah boy with Down Syndrome, she set aside a successful career as a television documentary producer and took the plunge. The result is Trachtman's groundbreaking "Praying With Lior," a feature-length documentary that explores the life of Lior (also known as "the little rebbe"), his family and the question of whether someone with Down Syndrome can be considered a "spiritual genius." The film, which culminates with Lior's bar mitzvah, has garnered at least five audience awards at Jewish film festivals since it began screening in 2007. But more impressive than the awards and critical acclaim won by "Praying With Lior" has been its far-reaching impact on the Jewish community. Trachtman's documentary has broken the silence on special-needs children and adults in the Jewish community, forcing a long-overdue dialogue on a topic that touches many thousands of Jewish lives.
Matthew Weiner
Matthew Weiner is ruthless. His critically acclaimed TV series on AMC, "Mad Men," is mercilessly raw and brutally honest. Weiner, 43, the show's executive producer and creator, gets to the core of the American story — and the Jewish American story — through nuanced portraits of outsiders, loners and underdogs. The backdrop is a WASP-y Manhattan advertising agency in the 1960s. The show's Jewish characters — Rachel Menken, the head of a Jewish department store, and Jimmy Barrett, a loud-mouthed comedian and TV personality — are complex, subtle and layered, and avoid easy, one-dimensional stereotypes. "Mad Men" won six Emmy awards this year, including one for best drama, but its greater accomplishment was in shaping perceptions of who Jews are and where we came from.
PLUS ONE
Paul Ouderkirk
The May immigration raid that hit Agriprocessors, the nation's largest kosher slaughterhouse, was an unusual Jewish story: The people arrested in the raid had worked in the Postville, Iowa, plant so that Jewish consumers could have affordable kosher meat. Yet the job of cleaning up the humanitarian mess that followed that raid was taken up not by the local Jewish community but by Postville's Catholic church and its leader, Father Paul Ouderkirk. Ouderkirk, who has spent most of his life running Hispanic ministries at Midwestern churches, is part of a long Catholic tradition of ministering to the underprivileged of Latin America, no matter where they live. Before the raid, Ouderkirk was practically the only local voice to speak out about indignities endured by Agriprocessors workers. Now 75, he acted despite having retired from St. Bridget's Catholic Church. After the raid, Ouderkirk gave up what leisure time he had to take on the full-time job of helping the hundreds of immigrants affected. He led the church's efforts to raise money for the workers, soldiering alongside Paul Real, the church's lay pastor, and Violeta Iseman, an Agriprocessors employee turned social worker. The church has been the only source of food and shelter for dozens of workers who were arrested and released. Ouderkirk and his team showed that in the face of disaster, religion can provide the surest relief..
Mercredi 6 janvier 2010 | Mise en ligne à 16h48 | 
Commentaires (216)
Y en a marre des Israéliens et des Palestiniens!
Commentaires (216)Y en a marre des Israéliens et des Palestiniens!
Le directeur de cabinet de la Maison-Blanche, Rahm Emanuel, a
récemment confié au consul d’Israël à Los Angeles que l’administration
Obama «en a marre» des Israéliens et des Palestiniens. C’est du moins ce
qu’a affirmé aujourd’hui la radio de l’armée israélienne, selon cet article du quotidien Haaretz.
Emanuel aurait déclaré que les Américains sont excédés par la
propension des Israéliens à adopter des idées plusieurs mois après que
celles-ci eurent perdu leur utilité, et par l’habitude des Palestiniens
de ne jamais perdre une occasion de perdre une occasion.
Comme le souligne Jeffrey Goldberg dans ce billet, la Maison-Blanche nie qu’Emanuel a tenu les propos qu’on lui prête.
(Photo AP)
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