The Jewish 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Jews of All Time - Hardcover

Shapiro, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0806518146 ISBN 13: 9780806518145

Publisher: Citadel Pr, 2000

Synopsis

Jewish men and women have been influential in religion, politics, music, commerce, law, sports, diplomacy, philosophy, literature, art, and motion pictures. Who were the most influential Jews, and how do they rank? Individuals from the biblical, classical, medieval, and modern eras appear in the pages of The Jewish 100. This updated edition contains various changes to the 1994 edition, including an entry on slain Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin.
Eminently readable, informative, and entertaining, The Jewish 100 is history on a vast scale. It is a panoramic story of an irrepressible people who have risen to the greatest heights in a variety of fields, including such master musicians as Mahler, Mendelssohn, Sondheim, Gershwin, and Goodman; such writers and thinkers as Proust, Spinoza, Marx, Buber, and Maimonides; the pioneers of media, including Mayer and Sarnoff; diplomats, statesmen, and warriors such as King David, Ben-Gurion, Disraeli, Weizmann, and Kissinger; as well as dozens of other giants who have shaped their times and continue to exert influence to this day.
Each entry presents a complete and thorough biography with a cogent argument for that person's rank in the pantheon of world history, plus a photograph or drawing of the individual.

About this title

About the Author

Daniel Shapiro, Associate Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project, teaches negotiation at Harvard Law School and in the psychiatry department at Harvard Medical School/McLean Hospital.

From Booklist

Each man or woman on Shapiro's list of the most influential Jews of all time had a special influence on humankind, changing the way we live and think. A few touched the souls and minds of Jews only but are important to the world because of their defining presence on Jewish identity. Starting with Moses, the prophet and lawgiver who led the Israelites out of Egypt, Shapiro ranks and examines them in their order of influence. Second is Jesus, followed by physicist Albert Einstein; then Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, and Abraham, the founding patriarch of the Jews. The list includes such diverse figures as composer Gustav Mahler; Maimonides, the greatest Jewish scholar of the Middle Ages; Rashi, the world's foremost Talmudist; artist Mark Rothko; and actress Sarah Bernhardt. In compiling any list, the author risks being criticized for what the reader believes to be mistaken omissions or inclusions. Despite Shapiro's engaging and cogent list, the omission of Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Elie Wiesel is incomprehensible. Unfathomable, too, is the omission of Nobel Prize winners Isaac Bashevis Singer and Saul Bellow, as well as writer I. L. Peretz, one of the major personalities in modern Jewish history and the formative influence on modern Yiddish literature. George Cohen

Edition details

• Publisher: Citadel Pr
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0806518146
• ISBN 13: 9780806518145
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 387