Time’s top-100 list

The May 5 issue of Time magazine includes its annual list: “The 100 Most Influential People in the World.” Here are the 2014 Jewish listees in alphabetical order. All but one have strong Bay Area ties.

Anat Admati

Anat Admati, 56. Born and raised in Tel Aviv, this Stanford economist is the co-author of “The Banker’s New Clothes,” which has become a worldwide rallying point for those interested in reforming our financial system. She has taught at Stanford since 1982.

Megan Ellison, 28, film producer and daughter of Larry Ellison, 69, the head of Redwood City–based Oracle. It’s easy to scoff at a woman whose father gave her literally billions to invest in films she thought should get made. But she has proved her taste and courage, bankrolling recent hits “Zero Dark Thirty,” “American Hustle” and “Her.”

Jenji Kohan, 44, the producer and head writer of Showtime’s “Weeds” and Netflix’s “Orange is the New Black”; Tom Steyer, 57, a San Francisco hedge fund manager with a Stanford MBA who bankrolls a climate change center at Stanford; and Janet Yellen, 67, the first woman to head the Federal Reserve and a former U.C. Berkeley professor. Her husband, Nobel Prize–winning economist George Akerlof, 73, wrote about their decision to marry quickly after meeting: “Not only did our personalities mesh perfectly, but we have also always been in all but perfect agreement about macroeconomics.” Now, how many couples can say that?

A ketubah’s journey

Ginnifer Goodwin

Last year, I wrote about how actress Ginnifer Goodwin, 35 (TV’s “Once Upon a Time”), spoke at her Reform congregation in her hometown of Memphis, Tenn., about becoming more observant. On Jimmy Kimmel’s show on April 23, Goodwin talked about her pregnancy and her April 12 wedding to Josh Dallas, her co-star.

Micha Greenstein, Goodwin’s bat mitzvah rabbi, conducted the wedding, with just 10 guests in attendance. While Dallas isn’t Jewish, Goodwin made it clear to Kimmel that their child will be raised Jewish.

Then she shared an amazing wedding story. Her wedding planner, Goodwin said, had called the morning of her nuptials and, in a frantic voice, told her that her car had been broken into and some items were stolen, including Goodwin’s ketubah, or wedding contract. Goodwin told the planner not to worry, the rabbi was at the hotel and “I’m sure that there is stationery there” — implying that the rabbi could write up a replacement ketubah. But right after she got off the phone, Goodwin got messages from her agents.

She told Kimmel: “This sounds like a joke — two Jews were walking down the street in Hollywood, [and] found a piece of paper in the middle of the street, read Hebrew, knew that the 13th of Nissan was like the 12th of April, and that therefore it might be important that we get this piece of paper back with my name on it — [they] Googled who represents Ginnifer Goodwin, found my reps at home on Saturday, and got us back our ketubah.”

The frat next door

The new comedy “Neighbors” (opening Friday, May 9) boasts a tribe-heavy cast. The plot: Seth Rogen, 32, and Rose Byrne play a nice couple with a baby who try to be friendly when a wild fraternity takes over the house next door. But the couple quickly loses patience with the frat’s all-night “rages” and a war of sorts ensues. Zac Efron plays the head of the frat. During one party scene, he lays a kiss on a coed played by Halston Sage, 20 (Efron is now dating Sage in real life). Dave Franco, 28, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse, 24, play the other big frat boy parts. And then there’s Lisa Kudrow, 50, as a college dean trying to tame the fraternity. And of course, the director, Nicholas Stoller, 38, is Jewish.

Columnist Nate Bloom, an Oaklander, can be reached at [email protected].