Three local names appear on this year’s Forward 50 list of newsworthy and notable Jews, an annual compilation by the Jewish Daily Forward.
Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg was one of the top five on the list, which was released Nov. 10. Aside from the “top five” designation, the list is not presented in any ranked order.
Aside from being a powerful woman in the male-centric tech world of Silicon Valley, Sandberg, 44, a resident of Menlo Park, this year published “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead,” urging women to work hard at their careers rather than blaming societal barriers. Her message, criticized as often as it is praised, launched more than 10,000 “lean-in circles” in at least 50 countries, devoted to encouraging women’s success.
Also on the list is philanthropist Tad Taube, 82, president of the Koret Foundation and chairman of Taube Philanthropies. The Woodside resident devotes much of his considerable financial muscle to Jewish causes, including the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford. Much of his current focus is on Jewish life in his native Poland, including the newly opened Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. The museum, which chronicles 1,000 years of life in Poland, was created through Taube’s personal drive and a reported $9.3 million grant from his foundations.
Cookbook author Mollie Katzen, a Berkeley resident, rounds out the local contingent on the list. After introducing a generation to the concept of cooking without meat in her 1977 classic, “The Moosewood Cookbook,” Katzen, 63, has become a champion of grains, dairy and vegetables as dietary staples — although she is not, as many people believe, a vegetarian. Just put vegetables at the center of your plate, she argues in her newest book, “The Heart of the Plate: Vegetarian Recipes for a New Generation.”
The Forward 50 list this year for the first time included two non-Jews — Pope Francis, lauded for his clear denunciations of anti-Semitism and his outreach to the Jewish community, and Angelina Jolie, for publicizing the threat of the BRCA gene mutation, which is prevalent among Ashkenazi Jews.
Three men were included on the list, but with a “shanda” designation: Milwaukee Brewers star Ryan Braun, 29, who suggested that his positive drug test was the result of anti-Semitism; Bob Filner, 78, who resigned as mayor of San Diego after 18 women accused him of sexual harassment; and William Rapfogel, 59, accused in September of stealing $5 million from a New York social service agency he had led for 20 years, the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty.
A complete list of the Forward 50 is at www.forward.com/specials/forward-50-2013.