The Forward 50 (2005)
This was, for many of us, the year that the world shrank. It was a year framed by disasters, beginning with a horrifying tsunami that swept South Asia and ending with a string of storms that destroyed New Orleans and ravaged south Florida. Perhaps the disasters were getting bigger, or perhaps the global village was simply getting smaller, but most of us felt vulnerable this year. Capping it all was a devastating earthquake in Pakistan that killed nearly 90,000 people last month, but most of us were too dazed by then to notice.
Amid the storms, we noticed a growing trend within the Jewish community of grass-roots humanitarian activism. People young and old, but especially young, were reaching out to the community and beyond it, looking for some way to help heal the fractured world — and in surprising numbers, finding it.
This year’s Forward 50 list of the most influential members of the American Jewish community reflects that very real trend. In addition to individuals who displayed heroism in the face of disaster, it includes pioneering activists who have been bringing a uniquely Jewish perspective to international relief work and fighting poverty at home. It also includes rabbis who have built thriving young congregations by emphasizing Judaism’s message of justice.
Sadly, disaster did nothing to ease the festering Middle East crisis. America continued to wage a war against terrorism while debating its wisdom, and Jews were part of the debate. For Israelis, it was the year of Gaza disengagement, and that dominated the agenda of pro-Israel activists in this country, whether of the left, right or center.
Readers might notice another trend in our listing this year: major Ameican artists and entertainers who are publicly embracing their Jewishness and letting it inform their work — in film, television, comedy, popular music and the new field of Internet blogging.
The Forward 50 is not based on a scientific survey or a democratic election. Names have been suggested by readers and by our own staff. Each year’s compilation is a journalistic effort to record some of the trends and events in American Jewish life in the year just ended and to illuminate some of the individuals likely to be in the news in the year ahead.
Membership in the 50 doesn’t mean the Forward endorses what these individuals do or say. We’ve chosen them because they are doing and saying things that are making a difference in the way American Jews, for better or worse, view the world and themselves. Not all of them have put their energies into the traditional framework of Jewish community life, but all of them have consciously pursued Jewish activism as they understand it, and all of them have left a mark.
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