Thursday, March 28th | 18 Adar II 5784

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The Top 100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life, 2017

In honor of The Algemeiner’s 4th annual gala, we are delighted to unveil our latest Algemeiner ‘J100’ list of the top one hundred individuals who have positively influenced Jewish life this past year. Before you work your way through this exciting list, we wanted to first share some of the thoughts that we discussed as we developed it. If we could group these ideas together, the first would be about creating lists, in general; then, what’s unique about lists and Judaism; some finer points differentiating our honorees from the organizations they lead; and important reflections on all those every day and anonymous-to-us heroes we also want to celebrate without ever knowing their names. And, of course, to thank everyone who helped create the list and worked hard to put together our J100 gala.

On Lists

There are lists, and there are lists. From the Forbes 400 to the Time 100, we are witness today to a proliferation of many lists in various magazines and newspapers. The New Yorker even made a list of The Hundred Best Lists of All Time! Lists have begun spreading in the Jewish media as well. It seems that in the feeding frenzy of our information overloaded society, categorizations and listings get our attention by presumably helping us make sense of the data flooding our psyches. Lists also carry an element of sensationalism — who made the list, who didn’t — feeding the hunger for competition — yet another staple of our superficial times. No wonder we don’t find such popularity contests waged in earlier centuries; living as desert nomads or inside of a shtetl, where everyone knew virtually no one else but their neighbors by name (for good or for bad), did not exactly lend itself to creating a top ten list of favorites. This is an exclusive product of the communications revolution and the global village it created.

Jewish Lists

Jewish sages, in particular, did not create such lists. Indeed, some actually dismissed the categorization of lists (even of the 13 Principles of Faith of Maimonides, let alone of a list of the “best” one thing or another). It begs the uneasy question of how one can even attempt to measure the value of a person? Isn’t everyone a hero in some way? On what grounds can we presume to judge who is more valuable then the next? With the J100 list we tried to create something more meaningful, a list aligned with our core mission: the 100 people who have had the most positive impact on Jewish life and Israel – men and women, Jew or non- Jew, who have lifted the quality of Jewish life in the past year. Think of it this way: Without these J100 – either the individuals or the organizations they represent – Jewish life would not be at the caliber it is today. Despite the artificial, superficial, and sensational nature of any list, we sought to transform the information deluge of our times by using the list to shine a spotlight on those gems in our midst, those people who are making a real difference in others’ lives.

We also seek to inspire and motivate our young and the next generation, our future emerging leaders, in rising to the occasion and perpetuating the highest standards of our proud tradition and legacy – in serving and championing the cause of Jews and Israel. Because, as we know, when the quality of Jewish life is raised, the quality of all lives is raised. However, the most exciting part of our work in choosing the J100, frankly, was sifting through hundreds of candidates and nominees to discover some surprising finalists. It was a joy to see the breadth of all those who merited a mention, to understand some of the great work being performed around the world on behalf of the Jewish people, and to celebrate their victories by bringing this great work to renewed public attention via this endeavor.

Individual vs. Organization

Inevitably, any list recognizing those who have positively influenced Jewish life will include the “usual suspects,” well-known leaders and officials of governments, organizations, and institutions. Like it or not, bureaucracy is part of the fabric of our society, feeding and supporting Jewish life around the globe, and it is that fabric that provides strength and cohesion to our disparate Jewish population.

Not all the names on the J100 were included for the same reason. Some are being honored for their personal contributions, others for their work at the organizations or nations they head. Some on the J100 are long established stars, others newcomers.

Like in any dynamic entity and living organism, we included both stalwart leaders with deep roots holding the foundation, while also introducing new branches that will lead us into the future.

This type of list — “The top 100 people positively influencing Jewish life” — has its inherent challenges. First, what defines “positive”? What some consider positive, others consider destructive. Jews notoriously disagree on what positive impact means. Fully cognizant of the controversy such a list could stir, we approached the creation of this list with a particular strategy, infused with a sense of humility and respect, to be as all-inclusive as possible while maintaining our integrity. This list should not be seen as an endorsement of anyone or any entity and way of thinking; rather, the people on this list are a reflection of the rich and broad spectrum of Jewish life – those who have positively contributed and helped shape the Jewish future.

We want this list to not be a definitive one, but a type of snapshot and perspective of the Jewish world today. The J100 is far from perfect — but which list of this type would not be? Rather, we want it to serve as a provocateur, challenging us all to think about what we value and consider precious; what we honor as being a positive influence on Jewish life and on Israel.

Anonymous Heroes

Jewish life, now and throughout history, is fraught with innumerable heroes – mostly unsung. A mother unceremoniously bringing up a beautiful family. A quiet nurse attending to the ill. An anonymous philanthropist sending food packages to the needy. The unobtrusive kindergarten teacher lovingly attending to and shaping young lives. Positive influences abound, yet few are called out.

Moreover, the Jewish community is decentralized. A leader in one city or town who has a major impact on their community may be completely irrelevant in another city. No list – not of 100, not of 1,000 – could capture and do justice to the countless daily acts of heroism and nobility impacting Jews and Israel.

There are innumerable rabbis, lay leaders, educators, and administrators who are beloved and are transforming their Jewish communities. As important as these individuals may be – and they certainly deserve their own list – the J100 does not include these heroes. Instead it focuses on individuals that have global and international impact, and that come from diverse groups – such as writers, teachers, government officials, and organizations. In some ways, the J100 should be looked at not as a bunch of disjointed individuals, but as a mosaic – a confluence of many different colors and hues that create a diverse painting.

Thank You

In the spirit of The Algemeiner, we want this list to lift the quality of our discourse and standards in seeking out the best within and among us. We hope you enjoy reviewing and studying this list, and we welcome all your feedback, critiques, and suggestions to be included next year, in what has become a tradition at our annual gala event. 

Disclosure: Algemeiner staff  and their immediate families were disqualified for inclusion on the list. Some of the J100 finalists are friends and associates of The Algemeiner and some are members of the GJCF Tribute Committee. As a media entity with many relationships, The Algemeiner inevitably has many friends and supporters; yet we didn’t feel it fair to disqualify highly qualified candidates simply due to their connection with us. Instead, fully cognizant of that reality, we placed special emphasis on impartiality and objectivity to choose only those who fit the criteria.

— The Algemeiner editors

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David Hatchwell Altaras

President of Madrid's Jewish community

For well-known and infamous historical reasons, Spain’s Jewish community is a decidedly small one, yet it has produced one of the most dynamic Jewish leaders in Europe. David Hatchwell Altaras is president of the Jewish community in Madrid and has served in numerous Jewish organizations over the years, including Birthright, the Genesis Prize, and the Maccabi World Union, and has shown a strong interest in relations between Israel and China.

Altaras has also been involved in combating antisemitism and the BDS movement, most notably ensuring that Jewish rapper Matisyahu could perform at a Spanish music festival despite racist attempts at canceling his show over his support for Israel. Of his outsized influence,
Altaras says, “It doesn’t matter how big or small you are; it’s all about your attitude.”

Asked about his understanding of Judaism,
Altaras simply replied, “Judaism is Faith, Commitment and Free Will at once.” (Photo credit: YouTube screenshot.)

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Sandra Arroyo Salgado

Judge, ex-wife of Alberto Nisman

Sandra Arroyo Salgado has become the keeper of the flame for her ex-husband, the late Argentinean prosecutor Alberto Nisman. Chief investigator of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center, which killed 85 people, Nisman fingered Iran as the culprit and accused then-President Christina Kirchner and Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman of colluding with the Islamic republic.

The night before he was due to testify before congress on the matter, Nisman was found shot to death in his apartment. The incident was almost instantly ruled a suicide, which nearly no one believed, and it is now widely assumed that he was murdered. By who remains an open question.

Arroyo Salgado, herself a federal judge, has led something of a one-woman campaign to find the answer. She continues to insist in both domestic and foreign media that her ex-husband was murdered and the Argentinean government is covering up the crime. In 2017, she went so far as to meet with the pope, who expressed support for her efforts. (Photo credit: YouTube screenshot.)

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David Brog

Executive director, Maccabee Task Force

As founding director of Christians United for Israel and executive director of the Maccabee Task Force, David Brog has been fighting for Israel and mobilizing its supporters, Jewish and non-Jewish, for decades. This year he took on a new challenge: fighting anti-Israel bias and racism on college campuses.

Among his contributions to the cause is his new book “Reclaiming Israel’s History: Roots, Rights, and the Struggle for Peace,” which seeks to refute the anti-Israel propaganda, lies, and defamation rife on campuses today.

“Through my work with CUFI and the Maccabee Task Force, I’ve been educating college-age students and young people about the conflict for years,” Brog says. “What I learned years ago was that most kids, Jewish and Christian, have very little knowledge of the real history.”

His book sets out this history and gives students the “knowledge to be able to win the hearts and minds of students who are being inundated by lies taught in classrooms.” (Photo credit: Maxine Dovere.)

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Out of their grief, Stuart and Robbi Force have forged a crusade against one of the nastiest practices of the Palestinian Authority: the payment of blood money to terrorists and their families.

“Like the American public, we were not educated until something happened,” says Robbi Force. That something was the brutal 2016 murder of their son Taylor by a Palestinian terrorist while on a trip to Israel.

Taylor, a West Point graduate and veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq who was 28 at the time of his death, is the namesake of the Taylor Force Act, a bill now making its way through the Senate that would cut funding to the Palestinian Authority until it ceases paying salaries to terrorists and their families.

Stuart Force says he and his wife’s campaign for the bill “does help us focus, rather than just walking around the house looking at the pictures – ‘I remember when we did this. I remember when we did that.’”

In August 2017, the bill passed a critical committee vote and is now set to go before the full Senate. (Photo credit: Facebook).

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Gilles-William Goldnadel

Founder and chairman, Lawyers Without Borders

A prominent French-Jewish lawyer and writer who is now representing the family of murdered pensioner Sarah Halimi, Gilles-William Goldnadel is one of the most outspoken supporters of Israel and opponents of antisemitism in France.

Founder and chairman of the group Lawyers Without Borders, which fights discrimination and advocates for human rights, and head of the Association France-Israel, Goldnadel has angered both left and right, and even the French Jewish establishment itself, through his oft-controversial opinions and activism.

In particular, Goldnadel agitates against what he has called "Islamo-Nazism" and "Islamo-Leftism,” which he regards as the foremost antisemitic danger to the Jews of France. As a result, he has often criticized mainstream Jewish organizations, especially the umbrella group CRIF, of which he was once a member, of indulging Muslim and leftist antisemites.

For all of this, Goldnadel has branded himself a “combat Jew,” a reputation he continues to live up to. (Photo credit: YouTube screenshot.)

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Malcolm Hoenlein

CEO, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations

For three decades, Malcolm Hoenlein has served as the public face of Jewish organizational life in the United States as CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. The supremely influential Hoenlein serves as what has been called “Mr. American Jewry.”

Today, Hoenlein is particularly concerned with the rise of Islamic extremism and antisemitism both at home and abroad.

Regarding Islamic radicalism, Hoenlein notes, “When I started speaking in the late 1980s about the danger of Islamic fundamentalism, people thought I belonged in the loony bin. After 9/11, I literally got hundreds and hundreds of letters from people saying, We apologize. We just didn’t see it. We didn’t get it.”

Regarding antisemitism, Hoenlein asserts, “It must be treated like all other forms of racism and bigotry. I want people in America to act before it becomes like Europe.”

Hoenlein believes the best way to do so is by bringing world leaders together in a “global summit” to combat the phenomenon. (Photo credit: YouTube screenshot.)

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Susan Julien-Levitt

Co-founder and executive director, Alums for Campus Fairness

Susan Julien-Levitt is co-founder and executive director of one of the more effective anti-BDS organizations on college campuses. Alums for Campus Fairness organizes alumni to fight the BDS movement and a general atmosphere of anti-Israel hostility.

The group began at Vassar when alumni witnessed a violently anti-Israel event, and has now spawned 16 other groups at schools like Oberlin and UCLA. The organization “works to promote an intellectually vibrant college experience while identifying and countering the antisemitism that has infected many campuses, often in the form of anti-Zionism.”

Julien-Levitt herself has lamented the attacks on Israel “as a human rights abuser worthy of pariah status while ignoring the substantial ongoing human rights abuses occurring in Israel’s neighboring countries.”

Citing one BDS-supporting academic, she said the “apparent belief that academics and academic institutions should be shunned based on the policies of their governments shows a disregard for the fundamental principles of academic freedom.” (Photo credit: Twitter.)

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Francis Kalifat

President, Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions

“What an awful feeling to have to be forever vigilant, attempting to fade into the background. What an agonizing feeling to follow a solitary path, deprived of the solidarity of our compatriots,” said Francis Kalifat, president of CRIF, in a 2017 speech.

As head of France’s umbrella Jewish organization, Kalifat is facing a daunting task. As he himself put it, “The fight against antisemitism is our main cause because French Jews are in the most difficult situation they have experienced since World War II.”

This antisemitism, he says, is coming from two main sources: The far-left and the Muslim community, in both of which “we see this new antisemitism advancing under the guise of anti-Zionism.”

Most recently, Kalifat has taken up the cause of Sarah Halimi, who was murdered by a Muslim neighbor in what many French Jews believe was an antisemitic murder, though the authorities refuse to consider it as such. “Why this silence?” Kalifat asked. “Why this denial of antisemitism?” (Photo credit: Twitter)

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Moshe Kotlarsky

Vice chairman, Chabad’s Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch

As vice chairman of Chabad’s Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, which supervises the work of shluchim (emissaries) all over the globe, Moshe Kotlarsky oversees one of the most successful Jewish outreach programs in the world.

As it is often said, wherever you find Coca Cola you also find Chabad. The shluchim constitute a global network of emissaries that help Jews in often remote places to practice their faith, and seek to encourage a return to religiosity among the secular.

“I think that a Chabad shaliach has a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging,” Kotlarsky says as a way of explaining the project’s success. “Every one of our shluchim has a DD degree — not a Doctor of Divinity but a Doctor of Dedication and Devotion. When you go out with that degree and you’re bound to an ideology and you’re inoculated by the teachings of the Rebbe; that is the sole root of the success that is going on.” (Photo credit: YouTube screenshot.)

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Yehuda Krinsky

Chairman, Chabad’s Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch

“The magnitude of what the Rebbe created and inspired to this very day is obvious to any observer, and it will continue in perpetuity,” says Yehuda Krinsky, the chairman of Chabad’s Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch.

Chabad today is the most public and, in many ways, most successful Chasidic sect in the world. Krinsky and the board of Merkos oversee the wide Chabad network and its expansion throughout the world.

As a result, “Newsweek” named him America’s most influential rabbi in 2010, and the "Daily Beast" named him number three in 2013. (Photo credit: YouTube screenshot.)

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Mark B. Levin

Executive vice chairman, National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry

Washington adviser to the World Jewish Congress and executive vice chairman and CEO of the National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry, Mark B. Levin is one of the foremost Western activists on behalf of the Jews of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

An expert on Soviet Jewry and antisemitism, Levin has been involved in these issues for decades. He has labored on behalf of often forgotten communities, receiving awards for his service from the Russian Jewish Community Foundation and the Ukrainian president.

Most recently, Levin made an impassioned plea for President Trump to retain a State Department special envoy on antisemitism, writing, “It’s a position that allows our country to lead by example. And it has inspired other nations to follow suit in making the eradication of antisemitism a priority.” (Photo credit: NCSEJ.)

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Lillian Pinkus

President, AIPAC

The first female president of AIPAC in a decade, Lillian Pinkus is faced with some formidable challenges; in particular, the rise of divisive and polarizing politics in the US.

Pinkus came into office in 2016 pledging to expand and diversify the powerful lobby, saying, “We need to grow the number of people who are involved in AIPAC and we need to grow the number of people that are involved in pro-Israel politics.”

But at the 2016 annual policy conference, then-candidate Donald Trump’s criticism of President Obama caused upheaval, prompting an emotional disavowal from Pinkus.

At the 2017 conference, Pinkus repeated her admonitions and a warning as well. “Support for Israel is not immune” from the intense partisanship of American politics, she said. “Elements on each side of the aisle are trying to fracture our movement.” She urged Israel supporters to “work harder than ever before to hold the ideological center.” (Photo credit: AIPAC.)

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David Schizer

Executive vice president and CEO, Joint Distribution Committee

The new head of the venerable Jewish charity the Joint Distribution Committee, David Schizer has never been anything less than accomplished.

Born in Brooklyn, he served as dean of Columbia Law School, the youngest man ever to do so, and took a leadership role in Jewish institutions like the Ramaz school and the 92nd Street Y. In 2017 he was interviewed for the office of Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Policy by the incoming Trump administration.

“Every Jewish family has a history of poverty, religious persecution, or violence –
the only difference is how long ago it was. For me personally, it is profoundly meaningful to be appointed CEO of an extraordinary organization that has been a lifeline to Jews in their hour of need, and that renews Jewish life throughout the world,” Schizer said of his new office at the JDC.

One particular area of concentration for Schizer is aiding the small but growing Jewish communities of Eastern Europe. (Photo credit: JDC.)

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Michael Joseph Schudrich

Chief rabbi of Poland

As Chief rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich finds himself presiding over what he calls “a tiny community struggling with reasserting its Jewish identity and with the historic responsibility of preserving a glorious past.”

Indeed, Schudrich has found that one of his major tasks is reconnecting what is essentially a community of modern marranos with their own heritage. Due to the Holocaust and then decades of communist rule, many Polish Jews who survived hid their identity from others, including their own children.

“We don’t know how many behaved so, but estimates are that there were tens of thousands,” says Schudrich, so many, in fact, that a hotline was set up for people who think they might be Jewish. Since the fall of communism, he adds, “thousands of Poles have discovered their Jewish roots.”

In July 2017, Schudrich accompanied Ivanka Trump to lay a wreath at a memorial to the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt. (Photo credit: Wikipedia.)

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Natan Sharansky

Chairman, Jewish Agency for Israel

For eight years, Natan Sharansky has overseen Israel-diaspora relations as head of the Jewish Agency. Tasked with maintaining connections with Jewish communities around the world, as well as fostering Aliyah and public diplomacy, the former Soviet Prisoner of Zion, refusenik leader, and leading politician has by most accounts done an excellent job, with the Agency asking him in 2017 to serve an extra year as chairman.

This year, Sharansky has been tasked with managing two potential crises: the sudden freeze of a plan to create an egalitarian prayer section at the Western Wall and a controversy regarding the recognition of conversions by the Israeli rabbinate. “Although I was skeptical of the value of remaining for an additional year, what has taken place in recent months has convinced me that it is important that I remain,” he said.

Sharansky warned of the cost of the growing rift between Israel and the diaspora, saying, “I do believe that we can overcome these (current) crises. I’m not sure we will be able to restore this type of relationship and trust. And that’s a big loss.” (Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.)

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