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Forward 50 2013
John Ruskay
John Ruskay is leaving them wanting more. After 15 years heading the UJA-Federation of New York — one of the largest charities in the Jewish communal constellation — Ruskay, 67, has announced he will retire in mid-2014. The announcement comes with his standing still high in the eyes of New York Jews. That’s something of…
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Forward 50 2013 Bob Filner
Of the Three Horsemen of Jewish sexual misdoing of 2013, Bob Filner was by far the worst. Anthony Weiner’s sexting episode, which came repeatedly to attention during his botched New York City mayoral run, was weird and embarrassing. Eliot Spitzer’s dalliance with hookers, which came up again during his failed New York City comptroller campaign,…
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Forward 50 2013 David Ingber
Rabbi David Ingber talks about his relationship with Judaism as some might describe an acid trip. Born and raised in a Modern Orthodox family, the 44-year-old founder of Romemu was drawn to ultra-Orthodoxy while on a gap year program in Israel in the late 1980s. He describes the next five years of his life as…
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Forward 50 2013 Marc Maron
Marc Maron is living proof that American lives do have second acts. When Maron, 50, started doing a podcast in his garage in 2009, it was an act of desperation. His comedy career had ground to a halt, he had been through two divorces and he was starting to consider suicide. Fortunately, his “WTF” podcast…
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Forward 50 2013 Pope Francis
The puffs of white smoke had barely cleared from above the Sistine Chapel before we started learning about Pope Francis I. We learned that Francis, 76, is a profoundly humble man who insists on carrying his own bags and riding the bus home. We also learned that he plans to bring a breath of fresh…
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Forward 50 2013 William Rapfogel
William Rapfogel, 59, was accused in September of stealing $5 million from the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty over the course of his 20-year tenure leading the massive New York anti-poverty group. Rapfogel’s fall was as shocking as it was sudden. In June, he wrote in the Forward about growing rates of poverty among New…
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Forward 50 2013 Susan Silverman
Susan Silverman is the woman who managed to get the world’s tabloids interested in the feminist struggle at the Western Wall. Never in Women of the Wall’s 25-year struggle for women’s prayer rights at the Kotel has it enjoyed such a high profile as it did on the February morning when police detained Silverman, 50,…
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Forward 50 2013 Francesca Segal
This has been quite a year for debut novelist Francesca Segal, the 33-year-old author of “The Innocents.” Her book won the National Jewish Book Award for fiction, the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, the 2013 Harold U. Ribalow prize, and was longlisted for the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction. The novel reimagines Edith Wharton’s…
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Forward 50 2013 Mordechai Twersky
Hundreds of alumni from Yeshiva University High School for Boys knew that their former administrator, Rabbi George Finkelstein, behaved inappropriately with students during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s. But only one of those students, Mordechai Twersky, battled to ensure that the allegations saw the light of day. Ignored for decades by Yeshiva University’s presidents Rabbi…
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Forward 50 2013 Avi Weiss
Despite continued opposition from his right flank, in 2013 Avi Weiss witnessed the coming of age of two of the groundbreaking Orthodox institutions he created. This summer, Weiss presided over the first graduation ceremony of female clerics at Yeshivat Maharat, and smoothly passed the reins of his flagship rabbinic school, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, to a…
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Forward 50 2013 Ruth Wisse
Political scientist Wallace Stanley Sayre once said: “Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.” When it comes to Jewish studies professor Ruth Wisse, the politics have certainly been fierce, but the stakes have hardly been low. Wisse, 77, is the Martin Peretz professor of Yiddish…
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