Forward 50 2012
For the highest-ranking Jewish representative in Congress, elections are mainly about helping others. Majority leader Eric Cantor crisscrossed the country this election year, helping out struggling fellow Republicans with a boost of energy and campaign cash. At 49, Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in Congress, has established himself as a political powerhouse mentioned in any…
Though Nathan Englander may identify himself as an “apostate,” one of this 42-year-old author’s greatest talents is his ability to capture the spectrum of Jewish experience. In this year’s story collection, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank,” Englander channeled voices of Israeli settlers, Jewish children and senior citizens, and, in the…
On the spectrum of Jewish foods, gefilte fish is at the extreme end of iconic Ashkenazi fare. And bacon? Well… it’s not even on the spectrum. But the two are brought together in the passions and profession of Brooklynite Jeffrey Yoskowitz. Along with Liz Alpern and Jackie Lilinshtein, Yoskowitz, 28, launched an artisanally crafted, sustainably…
The publication this year of the Forward 50 has happened differently from previous years. This entry includes the final video of this year’s Top 5: those American Jews who we think have had the most significant impact on the news in the past year. Whether you love him or hate him for it, Sheldon Adelson,…
With no Jewish politician vying for a major national post this election year, it has fallen once again to Jon Stewart at the helm of “The Daily Show” to keep the fight fair and the conversation haimish. Stewart, born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz in Lawrenceville, N.J., wears his loyalties to New Jersey, Judaism and honest (though…
It had been too long since Michael Chabon, 49, one of his generation’s most gifted prose stylists, set his sights on contemporary America. Chabon’s most recent full-length novels had seen the author exploring the lives of comic book artists in the 1940s (Pulitzer Prize–winner “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay”) and an alternative Jewish…
There was a time in the not-so-distant past when the American deli was in dire straits. The last quality holdouts, like the iconic Katz’s Deli in New York and Langer’s Deli in Los Angeles, were still going strong, but the deli landscape overall was rather desolate. Even in New York — dotted with as many…
To be the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times is one of the toughest jobs in American journalism. All sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remain perpetually convinced that whoever holds the position is sympathetic to their opponents, and are eager to prove it. Ethan Bronner passed the highly charged post on to Jodi…
The man who discovered teenage megastar Justin Bieber is Scooter Braun, a 31-year-old talent manager from Greenwich, Conn. Braun is known for finding promising acts on YouTube, drumming up an early fan base with more YouTube videos and then releasing his talent to the broader public with big name endorsements (which in Bieber’s case came…
Until last January, Andrew Adler, 58, was the little-known publisher of a little-known weekly paper called the Atlanta Jewish Times. Long active in the Atlanta community, he had bought the publication, which has a circulation of about 4,000, about two years earlier. Then came the column. In a January 13 opinion piece, Adler wrote that…
At only 29 years old, Ross Perlin has an impressive stack of accomplishments to his name. What’s more impressive is the effect his work is having, from media empires in Manhattan to tiny villages in southwest China. A graduate of Stanford University, Cambridge University, the University of London and the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, New York…
