This is the 25th anniversary of our Forward 50 list of influential American Jews. It is also the first one in our all-digital era, and the first overseen by Jodi Rudoren, who took over as Editor-in-Chief in September. We’ve made a few changes.
First, we dropped any pretense of selecting the “most” influential, which seemed an impossible task anyhow, given the vastness and variations of work inside Jewish communities, not to mention Jews’ significant influences on secular politics, business and culture high and low. Instead, we aimed to go a bit beyond the headlines to find influential, intriguing and, yes, inspiring characters you might not know much about.
We also didn’t do it alone. More than 200 readers responded to our call for nominations, and 14 of their suggestions made the final list.
And instead of us writing about the Forward 50, we asked them to share some things about themselves.