Shapiro - The Jewish 100 : a ranking of the most influential Jews of all time

From Abraham to the death of Simon Bar Kokhba in the tragic revolt against the Romans of 135 C.E., the Jewish people exerted an influence on world civilization more profound and lasting than any other ancient culture. Surely other peoples added their own richness to humanity: Babylonian government, Chinese invention, Egyptian architecture, Greek philosophy, literature, and democracy, Hindu mysticism, Roman imperialismall contributed much to the forces of history.

Yet the Jews were a people capable of producing Moses and Jesus of Nazareth and inspiring the Prophet of Islam. The beliefs of Christians and Muslims in one God come directly from the Jewish Shma (Hear, O Israel, the LORD our GOD, the LORD is One!). Those words, first uttered in a desert almost devoid of life, blossomed into the faiths of countless billions.

When the Romans massacred Bar Kokhba and his rebels, the survivors were either sold into slavery or dispersed into the empire. Except for the flowering of Jewish expression in pre-Inquisition Spain, no Jew, until Baruch de Spinoza in the seventeenth century, was permitted to leave any mark on Western civilization. Almost 1,600 years were spent in seclusion and bare survival. Jews did not participate to any noticeable degree in the Italian Renaissance or the Elizabethan Age. Nonetheless, during these centuries of hiding and Diaspora, a succession of rabbis of genius and an observant people kept the Jewish religion and culture intact.

Only when leaders such as Moses Mendelssohn and the Rothschilds pulled themselves and their people out of the ghetto that was their lot in Europe (and with the special help of Napoleon) did Jewry again participate in the development of a world community. The period from the Enlightenment in the late 1700s through the present day has witnessed the third greatest period of Jewish culture and influence.

This book ranks the 100 most influential Jews of all time. In their areas of human endeavor each of them worked a special influence on mankind. They changed the way we live and think. Even the few who touched only the souls and minds of Jews are important to us because of their defining presence on Jewish identity.

Some of the Jewish 100 modified their Judaism into something new. Saul of Tarsus became Paul, disciple of a man he claimed was the Jewish Messiah. Spinoza applied a logic that carried him straight out of Judaism. Karl Marx imposed an almost biblical sense of history to prove the imperative of his political ideal. Whether their modifications improved life will always generate discussion and argument. Their special examples prove why examining the influence of the Jewish 100 is so compelling.

Another source of debate is the relative weight given to different spheres of human involvement. Figures from the Bible are not necessarily more influential than some contemporary people. Neither is entertainment always less crucial to humanity than religion or science.

Some of the Jewish 100 have had the benefit of thousands of years to work their unique influence. The weight of centuries would seem to favor the ancients over the moderns. However, it would be unfair to belittle the accomplishments of an Albert Einstein because a King David preceded him by three thousand years. Einstein will remain influential into the next millennium as mankind either suffers nuclear conflagration or hooks onto the speed of light to blast far into space.

This overview of the Jewish 100 is not designed to be a reference book. Most of the lives of the Jewish 100 are very adequately described in encyclopedias and learned biographies. Rather, in the Talmudic tradition of presentation and analysis, the Jewish 100 have been ranked and examined in their order of influence on the world, not just on Jews. The rankings are open for discussion. Not all the Jewish 100 were great and good men (though most were), but all altered conventions or directed society into what they viewed as righteousness, seeking to improve life not only for their minority but for all of Gods children.