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Forward 50 2011
Jared Cohen
For his first initiative as head of Google’s new think tank, Google Ideas, Jared Cohen convened a meeting of 80 one-time violent extremists to talk about what had drawn them to radicalism and what had made them leave it behind. The meeting was a bold venture that made some leading academics nervous, but Cohen, 29,…
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Forward 50 2011 David Graeber
As the Occupy Wall Street movement swept across the country in September, activist David Graeber became a public face for a resurgent leftism based on radical, direct-action protest. Graeber, 50, describes himself as a “small-a anarchist,” meaning that he is interested in promoting anarchist principles without binding himself to a specific school of anarchist thought….
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Forward 50 2011 Michael Solomonov
Until recently, if you craved sophisticated Israeli fare, there was no way to sate your appetite other than to board a plane to the Holy Land or cook it yourself. Michael Solomonov, the chef and co-owner of Zahav restaurant in Philadelphia, is changing that. In 2008, he opened the restaurant to much national acclaim, and…
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Forward 50 2011 Simon Greer
Simon Greer would like to be known as the man who took down the provocative political commentator Glenn Beck. As the president and CEO of Jewish Funds for Justice, Greer led a campaign to get Beck booted from his Fox News show over Beck’s allegedly anti-Semitic rhetoric and his invocations of the Holocaust. In a…
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Forward 50 2011 Jill Abramson
Jill Abramson, 57, became perhaps the most influential media professional in the world in September when she ascended to the executive editorship of The New York Times. That a Jewish person has been made top editor of the Times, an institution that once went to great lengths to play down its own Jewish ownership, is…
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Forward 50 2011 Jill Jacobs
Rabbi Jill Jacobs, who has long been active in social justice circles, was tapped this April to run Rabbis for Human Rights-North America, a multidenominational human rights group. Jacobs, 36, is a former Forward columnist and onetime rabbi-in-residence at Jewish Funds for Justice. Though the Israeli branch of Rabbis for Human Rights is known for…
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Forward 50 2011 Mark Bittman
For many people, Mark Bittman’s name is synonymous with “The Minimalist,” the food column he wrote in The New York Times for 13 years, and later, the accompanying video series in which he prepared simple recipes for the Times’ Dining section. Through his column and numerous cookbooks, including “How To Cook Everything,” Bittman has made…
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Forward 50 2011 John Zorn
John Zorn, one of the most interesting forces in Jewish music today, is something of a legend as a saxophonist and composer in New York City’s downtown avant-garde music scene. This year saw Zorn, 58, present his expansive “Masada” collection of compositions with 12 different ensembles at Carnegie Hall — a few steps removed from…
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Forward 50 2011 Alisa Weilerstein
Cellist Alisa Weilerstein was rehearsing at the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival in September when she learned that she’d been named a 2011 MacArthur Fellow. Noting her “technical precision” and “impassioned musicianship,” the MacArthur Foundation described her as “a consummate performer.” The $500,000 “genius grant” came during a year in which the 29-year-old hit her…
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Forward 50 2011 Dovid Katz
When the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City broached a plan to establish a “YIVO room” at the Lithuanian National Library in Vilna, passions were ignited among a small but significant group of scholars, historians and Holocaust survivors. Leading the charge was 55-year-old Dovid Katz, a former professor of Yiddish language, literature…
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Forward 50 2011 Art Spiegelman
Holocaust literature and comics aren’t genres that obviously fit together, but by combining the two, one artist has created a revolution in both. Twenty-five years ago, Art Spiegelman, then an important but obscure figure in the underground comix scene, published “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale,” a graphic novel about the World War II experiences of his…
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