Tomorrow in Maariv: The 100 Most Influential Jews in the World
Mark Zuckerberg, Primeminister Netanyahu, Jerry Seinfeld, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and Proffessor Ada Yonat - each and every one of these has changed, led and influenced to world. And they're all Jewish.
2. Benjamin Netanyahu (64), Israel: Prime Minister of Israel
3. Shimon Peres (90), Israel: President of Israel
4. Larry Page (40) and Sergey Brin (39), USA: Founders of Google
5. Steven Spielberg (66), USA: Film director, writer and producer
6. Elie Wiesel (85), USA: Journalist, philosopher and author
7. Alan Greenspan (87), USA: Economist
8. Michael Bloomberg (71), USA: Mayor of NYC, founder of Bloomberg press agency
9. Henry Kissinger (90), USA: Former US National Security Advisor and Secretary of State
10. Ben Bernanke (60), USA: Chairman of the Federal Reserve
11. Steve Ballmer (57), USA: CEO of Microsoft
12. Woody Allen (77), USA: Film director, writer and actor
13. Jacob Joseph "Jack" Lew (58), USA: Secretary of the US Treasury
14. Stanley Fischer (70), Israel: Governor of the Bank of Israel
15. Itzhak Perlman (67), USA: Violinist and conductor
16. Sheldon Adelson (80), USA: Buisnessman and publisher of "Israel Hayom"
17. Charles Bronfman (82), USA: Philanthropist
18. Natan Sharansky (65), Israel: Chairman of the Jewish Agency
19. Thomas Friedman (60), USA: Foreign-affairs Op-Ed columnist for the NY Times
20. Jerry Seinfeld (59), USA: Actor and comedian
21. Mortimer Zuckerman (76), USA: Real estate tycoon and media proprietor
22. Howard Kohr (57), USA: AIPAC Executive Director
23. Jill Abramson (59), USA: Executive editor of The NY Times
24. Eric Cantor (50), USA: House Majority Leader
25. David Remnick (55), USA: Journalist and author, editor of The New Yorker magazine
26. Philip Roth (80), USA: Author
27. Daniel Kahneman (79), USA: Economist, Nobel Prize recipient
28. Alan Dershowitz (75), USA: Lawyer and political commentator
29. Jeff Zucker (48), USA: President of CNN Worldwide, former CEO of NBC
30. David Axelrod (55), USA: Senior political analyst at MSNBC and former political advisor to President Barack Obama
31. Bernard-Henri Levy (65), France: Intellectual, author and businessman.
32. Martin Gilbert (76), UK: Historian and author
33. Jonathan Sacks (65), UK: Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth
34. Bob Dylan (73), USA: Singer-songwriter
35. George Soros (83), USA: business magnate, investor, and philanthropist
36. David Grossman (59), Israel: Author
37. Michael Dell (48), USA: Founder and CEO of Dell Inc.
38. Ed Miliband (47) and David Miliband (43), UK: British politicians and former ministers
39. Barbara Walters (83), USA: Journalist and TV host
40. Wolf Blitzer (65), USA: Journalist and TV host
41. Leonard Cohen (78), Canada-USA: Singer, author, composer and songwriter
42. Paul Simon (71), USA: Singer-songwriter
43. Rahm Emanuel (53), USA: Mayor of Chicago, former Whitehouse chief-of-staff
44. Michael Steinhardt (72), USA: Businessman and philanthropist
45. Ovadia Yosef (93), Israel: Spiritual leader of the Shas political party
46. Barbra Streisand (71), USA: Singer, actress and director
47. Ehud Barak (71), Israel: Former Commander-in-Chief, Minister of Defense and Prime Minister
48. Raymond "Ray" Kurzweil (65), USA: Futurist and author
49. Adin Even-Yisrael (Steinsaltz) (75), Israel: Rabbi, Israel Prize for Jewish studies recipient
50. Sheryl Sandberg (44), USA: Chief operating officer of Facebook
Lists tend to be accused of being shallow. After all, how can you really decide who's important and who isn't? And who decided that journalists really are the ones qualified to make that decision?
To try and deal with this issue, we chose not to rank ourselves, but rather hand the decision over to someone else. We reached out to 40 respectable and knowledgeable persons, both in Israel and outside of it, and asked them to create their own ranking. We also partnered up with the JPPI (Jewish People Policy Institute), that walked us through the entire process and helped us with their best knowledge and manpower.
We divided the 100 Jews into two groups: first came the list above, of the 50 overall most influential Jews - The second group was divided into 5 sub-groups: Science, law, art and culture, sports and Tikun Olam. Each category includes 10 people. The art and culture list members were chosen out of the general list (as will be explained), while the other 4 lists chosen by experts.
The first 50 were ranked by a committee made up of 25 experts. At first, we asked each expert separately to create a list of the 30 Jews they consider most influential. We didn't define "Jew" or "Influential", but we did ask them to pay special attention to young people, Women and Jews from outside the USA and Israel. We also stressed that the influence should be on the entire world, not just the Jewish world.
The result was very diverse. We ended up with 313 names, and our statistics advisor found the 109 names that appeared multiple times, which were automatically put through to stage 2. At this point, committee members were given a list of 150 names, randomly organized, and were asked to rank each name on a scale of 1-10, according to their influence. The more points a name got, the higher it ranked.
