Forward 50 2011
Jennifer Rubin, 49, came to journalism late in life, after two decades as a California labor lawyer, but she’s made up for lost time. In February 2007, after she and her family moved to northern Virginia, Rubin pitched a story to the conservative Weekly Standard on the abortion flip-flops of outgoing Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney….
Over the last 18 months, about two dozen state legislatures have taken up bills that would restrict judges from consulting Shariah, or traditional Islamic law, in their rulings. Three states have passed such laws. It is a wave that began five years ago in the Crown Heights office of lawyer David Yerushalmi, a 56-year-old Lubavitch-affiliated…
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,…
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….
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…
The key to longevity may have less to do with lifestyle than with the predetermined makeup of your genes. That’s what Dr. Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, has found in his Longevity Genes Project by studying Ashkenazi Jews who have lived…
At 71, after a lifetime of public service, Ruth Messinger is still pushing to awaken our collective conscious to the needs and challenges of the developing world. As president and chief executive officer of the American Jewish World Service, she has elevated the organization into a service and advocacy titan, with programs in 32 countries,…
First known as the bare-knuckled wunderkind of Bill Clinton’s presidential staff, Rahm Emanuel launched his own political career with a 2002 congressional run from his native Chicago. Though on a fast track to become the first Jewish Speaker of the House of Representatives, he reluctantly returned to a second-banana role in 2009 as President Obama’s…
New York Mets baseball fans are used to heartbreak, but nothing prepared them for the meltdown this year of the team’s principal owner, real-estate investor Fred Wilpon. Previously thought to be a major victim of Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff, Wilpon, 74, turned out to be one of the scam’s biggest beneficiaries. In December 2010, Wilpon…
For famed conductor James Levine, the wear and tear of 40 years of wielding the baton has taken its toll. In March, Levine announced he would resign in September as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a post he had held since 2004. During his tenure, Levine was plagued by a litany of health…
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