Forward 50 2012
The massive agency run by Gail Magaliff already had its hands full with the challenges of finding employment and providing other services to the needy and vulnerable in New York City and Long Island before Hurricane Sandy swept ashore. After the storm, the task became even more daunting, as FEGS Health and Human Services System…
Among the world leaders and luminaries at this year’s Davos Shabbat, the annual Friday night dinner held at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, was Saul Perlmutter, the American Jewish astrophysicist. It has been a banner year for Perlmutter, who, along with colleagues Adam Riess and Brian P. Schmidt, visited Stockholm in December 2011 to…
If you ask many a passionate home cook where the recipe for a particularly wonderful dish came from, you’ll often hear “Deb” uttered as though the name referred to a good friend. But the “Deb” these cooks cite is actually Deb Perelman, the author of the überpopular cooking blog Smitten Kitchen. Perelman has become one…
Philanthropist Harold Grinspoon is living proof of the Talmud’s dictum that one’s 80s are a time for renewed vigor. In May 2012, shortly before his 83rd birthday, he was in New Jersey to hand deliver his PJ Library’s three-millionth Jewish-themed children’s book. The program, founded in 2005 and funded jointly by Grinspoon and local communities,…
It’s not hard to be the least famous Emanuel brother. With one sibling who’s mayor of Chicago and another who has inspired an HBO series, Ezekiel Emanuel, 55, the eldest, could be forgiven if he suffered from an inferiority complex. But it’s hard to imagine he does. This Emanuel’s prominence in the field of bioethics…
It’s nearly impossible to separate the achievements of Evan Bloom and Leo Beckerman, the co-owners of Wise Sons deli in downtown San Francisco. But because we could only put one of these talented deli entrepreneurs on our list, we chose the marginally more vocal Bloom. The pair is responsible for bringing serious deli to a…
Brian Roberts was a toddler when his father, Ralph, founded Comcast in Tupelo, Miss., in 1963 — a time when cable television seemed as exotic as sushi at a bar mitzvah. Nearly half a century later, Roberts is chairman and CEO of a company that is the nation’s largest video provider, largest Internet service provider…
Having won a 2012 MacArthur Fellowship implies that 35-year-old mathematician Maria Chudnovsky is a genius. But other committees have been explicit in calling her a “genius” — as well as “brilliant” and “distinguished” — when bestowing honors upon her. A conversation with the Columbia University professor isn’t all quantum theories and equations, though. In fact,…
Mark Yudof, 68, is one of the nation’s foremost free speech experts. And, as the president of the University of California, that means he often finds himself defending the free speech rights of those with whom he disagrees, such as harsh critics of Israel. The 10-campus system, which Yudof has overseen since 2008, is deeply…
Bruce Ratner may not have Barbra Streisand’s voice or Jay-Z’s rep on the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant. But the developer had every right to trumpet himself as the King of Brooklyn after his long-delayed Barclays Center finally opened its doors. Ratner beamed as the arena opened to sold-out shows by Babs and hip-hop’s big- gest star,…
On August 28, Meir Soloveichik, a 35-year old rabbi, stepped into the national spotlight at the Republican National Convention, delivering the opening invocation, the capstone of a year that saw his influence spread widely throughout political circles. In May, Soloveichik led a widely praised discussion on religion in education with Newark Mayor Cory Booker at…
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