Weighing in on the Forward 50
In the better late than never department... here's my take on this year's Forward 50 list.
Let's start with the Top 5. Assuming things haven't changed since my days at the Forward, the editors and writers over there were committed to producing a diverse list -- especially at the top. That usually means one organizational type, two at the most. A celebrity. At least one woman. Someone under 50 (under 40 would be better). And a person who lives somewhere outside of the New York metropolitan area.
Some years you get luck, and cover a bunch of the bases with one pick (see Sarah Silverman in 2008). Sometimes it takes more thought.
This year's entertainment pick -- Joel and Ethan Coen -- was right on the money, with "A Serious Man" out in theaters and "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" coming down the pike. Hey, if Steven Spielberg making a Shoah film with a gentile hero justified all that Jewey buzz, then the Coen brothers should be hailed as the Moseses of filmmaking.
Jerry Silverman, the new CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, makes sense also. He's a fresh face, and has an important job, as he looks to give a boost to North America's largest Jewish chraitable network -- at a time of escalating needs. The only question is why hasn't he ever been on the list before, as he helped transform the Foundation for Jewish Camp into a $20 million per year juggernaught.
Michael Oren is a provacative pick, on several fronts. I'm wondering: Does this mean the list is no longer limited to Americans? Or does being born and raised here make you permanently eligible, even if you move to another country? Or is working in the United States for a limited stint enough to qualify (even if in the process you give up your U.S. citizenship)? Don't get me wrong, the pick feels right (even for a Top 5er). I'm only asking because it relates to my questions about what could prove to be the worst Forward 50 decision of all time...
Dmitriy Salita? And not Yuri Foreman? If Lenore Skenazy and Ayelet Waldman can share an entry, why not two Orthodox Jewish boxers set to fight for championships? And if you're going to choose, try making sure that you go with the one with better odds on taking home the belt. As it stands now, Foreman is the champ -- and Salita is facing a tough fight later this month. Even if Salita also wins, what you have is a Jewish boxing champ studying to be a rabbi -- who did not make the Forward 50!?! What does this have to do with Michael Oren? The only thing I'm wondering is if Foreman was excluded because the Forward folks don't consider him American (even though he now lives in Brooklyn). But then why would would Oren qualify? Or, for that matter, Salita?
On the topic of lumping together and possible Top 5 candidates... Last year Rahm Emanuel was in the Top 5, and David Axelrod didn't even make the list. This year the Forward splits the difference, lumping the two Obama adviser together and placing them in the regular ranks. My two cents: They work as a pair, but Emanuel probably could have been a Top 5er again on his own, with Axelrod getting his own spot farther down the list. By most accounts, Emanuel seems to be the bigger player/enforcer on the Jewish-Israel stuff, and he's the guy the White House sent to pinch hit for Obama at the GA. But who would you bump from the top? Maybe Oren. Or maybe package those guys together -- Bibi's and Obama's top Jews in D.C.
Rounding out the Top 5 discussion... Sara Hurwitz. Does she deserve to be at the top? Had she been able to claim the title of rabbi, it would have been a reasonable choice. But in the end she accepted the title of Maharat instead, so I'm not sure this was the right pick. The Forward says that, under the guidance of Orthodox maverick Rabbi Avi Weiss, she has "dramatically broadened the boundaries of acceptable public roles for women in an Orthodox setting"; and then it plays up the fact that she and Weiss are "establishing a training program for other women who wish to become a Maharat." But Yeshiva University is already running an advanced Talmud program for women that has already placed women in full-time clergy roles in Modern Orthodox congregations. So why not Elana Stein Hain of Lincoln Square Synagogue or Lynn Kaye of the Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue? And why mention Weiss, and not Rabbi Shmuel Hain, who runs the Y.U. Talmud program (or, if Y.U.'s Center for the Jewish Future takes up the cause of placing these women, Rabbi Kenny Brander)? This isn't a matter of diminishing the accomplishments of Hurwitz and Weiss; it's just that in this case -- since the two of them passed on the rabbi title -- things are arguably moving faster (if not as loudly) within the establishment.
Oh, wait, one more Top 5 thought: Bernie Madoff? He's on the list, but not in the top tier. Interesting.
Perhaps no selection widens the scope of the Forward 50 more than Marsha Levick, a legal crusader -- with very little in the way of a distinctly Jewish resume. I'm not objecting -- after all, you can make a strong case that us Jewish media types should spend less time worrying about what Jewish organizations are up to, and more time reporting on what real life Jews are actually doing. Just thought it was worth noting.
I could go on, so I'll leave it at... Yes, Jay Michaelson is, among other things, a Forward columnist. But stop being so cynical. He's a smart choice for his role in the Jewish spirituality movement. And, who knows, maybe it means Eli Valley has a chance next year!
Be sure to read through the list and judge for yourselves. Is anyone missing? Who would you bump to put him or her on?
Share
Facebook
13 Comments
Comments RSS Feed Reader Comments
Jacqui Man, oh man ! First of all it was Ami and not Avi. I have one question for
you : what does a crazy anti-Semite doing on a Jewish website like JTA ? Are
you looking for some reasons or motives for your Jew hatred? Look in the mirror
and you find the best object to despise.
You know considering Jews are only 0.8% of the worlds population. I find that so many desire to, in one way or another, degrade them.
However when a Jew dose it I say to myself “With friends like that.....”
Dr. Puss -
Where have you been hurt by Israel? Is it the magazines you read that are printed through a writing/proofing/type-setting/binding system that revolutionized the printing world and has remained the industry standard? Was it the “video pill” that is swallowed and shows the entire GI track - small and large intestines - in its travel, something never done before and is now the staple of the industry? This technique now saves 1,000’s of lives through very early detection of GI issues - cancers, lesions, polyps, etc., etc. That must really gall you.
Maybe you are horrified that the giant hospital in Gaza in which basement the entire Hamas leadership hid during Operation Cast Lead was built, staffed and is still supplied by Israel? Isn’t that terrible? And Israel has never touched it, despite Hamas’s ill use of it.
Maybe it was the horrible, world-crushing Israelis’ fault that the multi-million dollar greenhouse businesses left completely intact upon Israel’s withdrawal, were fully functional and with market access were instead completely destroyed by Hamas. And that buildings left intact ready for Palestinians to move into were instead destroyed by Hamas with the remaining ones now used as terrorist city attack training grounds. Citizens of Gaza have been forbidden to live in any part of the territory Israel evacuated. Wow! Suppression! Occupation!
Or perhaps you or one of your hated ... I mean loved ones was terrified and killed by one of the vast number of vascular, heart and brain surgery procedures developed by Hadassah Hospital and other medical institutions in Israel that are now the world standard and credited with countless saved lives?
Could it be the stent - invented in Israel - that has had spectacular success in repairing, restoring and opening arteries and veins? Stent procedures are now used worldwide effecting life saving and life extension to literally millions of people across the world.
Maybe you hate Israel for saving so many Arab children and leaders over the years. Yes, people full of hate, schizophrenic and viscous have saved the lives of many Arab dignitaries and leaders who had to be moved to Israel for treatment, because their countries -including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan - could not treat them. Why Israel? They didn’t want it known that they were sick and needed treatment. Yeah, paranoid Israel held those secrets. They were found out by leaks from the Arabs themselves.
Oh, yes ... many 1,000’s of Palestinians are alive today because Israeli hospitals fixed them and their children. Open heart surgery in infants was developed in Israel and has helped countless cruelly suppressed and tortured people have children they otherwise would have lost. How many of these children grew up to blow up Israeli citizens? I don’t know that answer, but neither has terrorism stopped Israel from its world class treatment of Palestinians.
Maybe the Intel Pentium Dual Core and Quad Core processors - developed solely in Israel at Intel’s request and has literally saved Intel and dramatically improved computing - have so horrified you that you cannot breathe while saying Israel.
There are so many more points I can make - I have barely even scraped the first cell in a ten-ton heap of grandeur Israel has bestowed on the world.
Can you name one thing the Arab nations have given the world in the last 600 years? I can’t. The Saudi official web site can’t.
But I digress. I didn’t mean to divert you by 0.001% from your overt, diehard hatred of Israel and Jews. But you must never accept a stent, use an Intel run computer, read a magazine, have your entire GI track scoped painlessly and with no side effects .....
Thomas: You needn’t be hostile or defensive. First, you know my last name is Pluss, not “Puss.” So, don’t be childish! Second, and more importantly, your list of Israeli/Jewish accomplishments in many fields, mostly the medical one(s), reminds me a bit of the habit the USSR exhibited back around 1960 of insisting that “it had been invented by us first,” which was, to be sure, a giant pack of lies. I wouldn’t deny that Israeli accomplishments in many fields are admirable, if not ground-breaking. BUT, at the same time, so are Swiss accomplishments, German accomplishments, American/Gentile accomplishments admirable, if not ground-breaking. So, please do get off your “high horse, ‘kay?” The very fact that Jewish accomplishments, Israeli accomplishments, and such, tend to work AGAINST World Jewry is that many Jews have the annoying, if not nearly reprehensible, habit of constantly “rubbing in” what they’ve accomplished! That habit will turn others against you very quickly! But, as an Israeli friend of mine told me years ago when I resided in Kiryat Shmona, “if I don’t blow my own horn, who will?” Well, if a person or a people do well, there’s no need to “blow one’s own horn,” unless, of course, the person or group is stricken with a sort of mass “histrionic personality disorder,” or another disability, including “group shadow schizophrenia” (and I can’t claim originality for that--it comes from a female Jewish scholar who has repudiated her Judaism because she found the belief system in which she was raised “repugnant.” If you want, I can get you a link to her works.) Do I “hate” Jews? Do I “hate” Israel? My word, no! I simply do NOT believe that Israel has a right to exist; I do not believe Jews have a right to constantly insist on some sort of “inherent superiority” to others. And am I a National Socialist? Of course I am. But what other National Socialist would bother to take the time to be the Socrates who tries to educate you Athenians? JTA should be thankful that it has ME as well as you. Happy Trails for Now, Dr. Jacques A. Pluss (and, oh, by the way, technically it’s The Reverend Dr. Jacques A. Pluss, Universal Life Church, and I work part-time in elder and hospice care, although I’m not an MD as my parents were--just a mere Ph.D.! And the views I express are mine, not those of the Universal Life Church).
Well, the full name is the Reverend Dr. Jacques Anthony Reinhard Heydrich Pluss. Does he hate Jews? Certainly not, but he has an odd way of expressing himself on this subject. Reinhard Heydrich was head of the Gestapo, and Here is something about Jews Pluss wrote, on one of his blogs, as recorded by the History News Network: “Liquidate them wherever you find them. If they hide, search them out and execute them. They are, by nature, dangerous sub-humans who have developed clever ways to cheat, lie and steal from others. Remember that no Jew has ever done an honest day’s work in his or her life. Hence, they represent the ultimate parasite.” This from a chronically underemployed Internet crazy. Anyone can become a minister in the Monastery branch of the Universal Life Church, to which Pluss belongs, by simply filling out a form. Why do you people waste your time in reasoned arguments with this pathetic, squalid little space cadet?
Hello, “Mr. Warburg!” Yes, great, you can quote from the HNN piece done on me back in 2007! I commend you on your memory. Likewise, I “commend” you on labeling me as “underemployed” and bashing my Ordination, as well. The “pathetic, squalid little space cadet” comment was the best you could come up with, eh? Why, in the past, you have entitled me one of the “most virulent Nazi’s in America,” or something very close to that! What changed your mind? Additionally, I recall all too well ytour constant gripe while you were on the faculty of WPU-NJ that professors there were “chronically underemployed.” Oh, Stan, after a while your constant harping on the same old nonsense exposes you for the bore you truly are. And boy I think you wish you could enjoy my kind of “underemployment!” Finally, the work I do in hospice care and such is all volunteer work. As you yourself said in another post elsewhere “. . . Pluss doesn’t need a job. . . .” That’s true, old colleague. Reverend Dr. Jacques Anthony Reinhard Heydrich Pluss.
Does it really require an exceptional memory to quote something written in 2007? As to the “ordination,” we both know that the Universal Life Church in general is a scam, and that filling out a questionnaire is the only requirement for becoming a ‘minister” in the schismatic branch that you have joined. But you go from one marginal, renegade organization to another, that is when you can. I suspect you are the only person ever to be denied membership in the American Nazi Party. There is a certain distinction in that. You are too crazy even to to be a Nazi!
I really see no contradiction between being “one of the most virulent Nazis in America” and “a pathetic, squalid little space cadet.” This is the verge of 2010. Nazism has been defined as a criminal conspiracy by almost every counry in Europe, including Switzerland, since the late 1940s. It’s insane to be a Nazi in America. Have you noticed that the President of the United States is an African American, and that anti-Semitism has no political importance any longer? It’s only a provocative internet diversion. There is a massive denial of reality in being a Nazi in America in 2010.
I believe you probably agree with me that most of the faculty members at WPU were and still are chronically underemployed. This embarrassed them, as it would most men, especially educated men. I think it embarrasses you somewhat. Otherwise wjy would you list yourself as a partner in a horse farm in which you have a 10% interest, and the other owners haven’t allowed you on the property in years? Why would you print a book-length rave that no legitimate publisher could possibly consider, with an endorsement on the rear dust jacket by a general who never existed?
There are times when i wonder whether or not you are exploiting your mental illness as a way to of maintaining some kind of identity. There are also times when I wonder whether your fragile self-control will snap and you will become dangerous.
I’m glad that you don’t mind not having had a real job since you were in your late 40s. My only interest is that you are never again in a position where you have the opportunity to influence young people.
My Dear “Warburg” : Yes, I must have really “gotten to you” this time, as your rant about me in your last post clearly indicates. But, as usual, you have “the facts” half wrong. For instance, there are only two remaining partners in my horse ranch: one who owns 90%, and me. The others “bailed out” long ago. But since the place--from which I am not barred, that would be illegal--constantly loses money, as such, it is an excellent tax write-off for me. Your logic in connecting my interest in a horse ranch with embarrassment at “underemployment” at WPU-NJ (I never thought myself “underemployed” and if I was embarrassed by being connected with WPU-NJ, it was because of the insane “political correctness” and ersatz “social engineering” which went on there) and then with the publication of “Jumping Fences” seems, to be kind, rather odd. How, in the world, do you make these strange “mental leaps?” More importantly, why do you even bother? Clearly, you do keep some sort of tabs on me--and if that gives you something to do, well, fine. But remember that you appear to have an obsession with me, and while I’m flattered in a way by that, I pity you for your obsession--it indicates your state of mental unbalance. As for my Ordination in the Universal Life Church, if you thought so little of the Church or of my inclusion in it, why did you attempt to tarnish my reputation in it by sending references to my National Socialism to the Church via “comments” to my member profile? And Stan, the American Nazi Party is a joke. Only “Stille Hilfe” could persuade me to try to infiltrate it. Ah, but I’ve responded to your childish tantrum more than enough. If you want more attention, go and try to “needle” someone else. I suppose that’s what you do best--it is a talent of most malcontents like yourself.
Finally, before I stop wasting JTA’s time and space fiddling around with you (and getting way “off topic,” which you don’t seem to mind) I’ll ask you this--how do you know that I don’t privately tutor students of many ages in many different subjects, ranging from ESL to college-level history and literature? Chew on that one for a while, Stan. I suppose you’ll have to respond to my post--you’ll insist on having the “last word,” just like a four year old. Fine, go ahead. Maybe it’ll help you to sleep better. I myself never have trouble sleeping, for I have never doubted the rectitude of my views or actions. Complete moral freedom, Stan, is a wonderful thing. Auf wiederhoeren, Reverend Dr. Jacques Anthony Reinhard Heydrich Pluss.
There is not much to respond to here. You really know virtually nothing about me, as revealed by the amusing biographical sketches you post on neo-Nazi web sites. Who do you think reads this stuff?
A little biographical clarification may dispel your idea that I have some sort of obsessive interest in you. I was not born in the United States but in Germany. Both my father and his two brothers were decorated officers in the Abwehr before the Nazi period. My aunt and 12-year-old cousin, Else and Inge Goldschmidt died in that Holocaust you claim never happened. I remain a German national and travel on a German passport. I am not a peripheral member of my family but am central in ii and am now the senior member. Two of my cousins who live in New Jersey won a long-fought legal decision recently, not against the German government, as you maintain, but against a business cartel that had been using our good name on their department stores until very recently. I was never in psychoanalysis but was associate editor of Literature and Psychology for eight years. I never claimed to be an Israeli agent. I was on the BOD of Herut USA, and both Joe Brandes and I received death threats (at WPC) that caused the Israeli consulate to advise us to seek police protection. The remarkable thing is that all this occurred in the 1970s, before you came to WPC. I suppose your source for misinformation was was the dim-witted former dean you worked for. It’s difficult to tell whether these are his distortions or yours.
That Stille Hilfe stuff is really crazy mental garbage by the way.
I have no interest in you personally, but I have long monitored neo-Nazi activity in the USA and am probably more familiar with the cast of characters than you are. You are especially interesting to me for two reasons: first, you are the only really educated neo-Nazi. It’s difficult to imagine such a person, however disturbed, adopting the attitudes of the thugs, psychotics, and mental defectives that aggregate in these groups or associating with them. You are obviously well aware of this, which is why you keep doctoring yourself. Second, American Nazis try to keep within the law since they understand that they are pushing the limits of the First Amendment, although, like Bill White and Hal Turner, they sometimes fail to accomplish this. You openly advocate enslavement and murder. The answer may be that “Complete moral freedom . . . is a wonderful thing” in your disturbed thinking. It’s the classic definition of a psychopath. This is why I believe you may one day become dangerous.
- 1
- 2
- Next Page »
Leave a Comment
To leave a comment, you must first be logged in to JTA. If you are not registered, please click here.
Already a JTA member?
Need to know? Get JTA's free e-newsletters!
Dr. Jacques Anthony Pluss
12/02/09 06:34 PM
Avi: Man, oh man! The people on this list ought to be imprisoned in Gaza as retribution for Israeli crimes against humanity there, not given honors, awards, or citations! You folks are just plain crazy--but you won’t stop until you’ve either overtaken Western Civilization (doubtful--but you don’t think so) or started World War III (probable)--which will be the last one! Then, we can all return to scratch-plowing--that is, if we live! I tell you, Jews are all “shadow” schizophrenics, to be sure. You’d be glad to return us all to the Early Bronze Age! Dr. Jacques A. Pluss.