Forward 50 2013
Though ineligible for our main list because of her anonymity (hence no photograph), the bravery of one young ultra-Orthodox woman merits special note. Despite massive communal opposition and threats she stood up for Orthodox victims of sexual abuse. Prior to the 2012 trial of Nechemya Weberman, the Satmar community raised $500,000 for the accused and…
Spearheading the Jewish invasion of Sweden this year was Arieh Warshel, 72, the Israeli-American chemist who shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry with Michael Levitt and Martin Karplus for “the development of multi-scale models for complex chemical systems.” This translates roughly to creating computer programs that simulate complex chemical processes — mirroring real life, but…
Unless you are a professional foodie, there’s a good chance you aren’t familiar with Mitchell Davis. But you have surely tasted his impact. As executive vice president of the James Beard Foundation — America’s foremost culinary organization — Davis is one of the most influential individuals on the nation’s foodways. Davis is the weekly host…
The choice of Josh Block, 40, to head The Israel Project, one of the Jewish community’s fastest growing pro-Israel organizations, marked a clear shift for the group and in Block’s professional trajectory. A former media relations professional, Block was best known as the combative spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, where he served…
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,…
Eli Pariser has an aw-shucks wholesomeness born of his upbringing in small-town Maine. He also has a razor-sharp knowledge of the Internet that quickly won him an eight-figure injection of venture capital. He’s even faster at garnering a million online signatures to end an injustice in some far-flung corner of Kansas or Kazakhstan. At 32,…
Before “VB6” and “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” came “The Moosewood Cookbook.” And this year, Mollie Katzen, the author of that 1977 classic, is back in the kitchen and back in the limelight with her newest book, “The Heart of the Plate: Vegetarian Recipes for a New Generation.” Before Katzen, vegetarians were regarded as a marginal species…
It took a long and expensive campaign, one of the toughest the city has seen, but at its end Eric Garcetti emerged victorious as the first Jewish mayor of Los Angeles. With that, LA joined the two other largest cities in the nation, New York and Chicago, which also have Jewish mayors at their helms….
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…
Diagnosed at 33, Sue Friedman had already undergone treatment when she found out about the BRCA2 mutation that had given her a 9-in-10 chance of developing hereditary breast cancer. Three years later, in 1999, Friedman founded FORCE: Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered, an organization advocating for awareness of hereditary breast and ovarian cancers. And…
Julius Berman, 78, chairman of the organization that distributes millions of dollars in German reparation funds to Holocaust survivors, has long been seen as one of American Jewry’s most capable lay leaders. But that reputation was called into question this year. An internal probe by the Conference for Material Claims Against Germany found that he…
