In his book, entitled "The Jewish 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Jews of all
Time," Michael Shapiro presented descriptions
of world's famous Jewish people, their works and how they influenced the world.
It is worth mentioning that the author of the book, besides being a writer is a
composer, pianist and lecturer, whose works were published in The New
Yorker, Esquire, Sports Illustrated, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York
Times Magazine.
Michael Shapiro started his
book by saying that each of the 100 Jews presented in the book had an impact on
mankind. All of them contributed to the way people live and contemplate today.
"Even the few who touched only the souls and
minds of Jews are important to us because of their defining presence on Jewish
identity," he wrote.
Seven Jews from the list of 100 were include not only
as the most influential Jews but also as the most influential people of all
time in the book written by Michael Hart
and entitled "100 Most Influential People in History."
These seven people are:
1. Moses
He is considered to be a religious leader, who is also
a lawgiver, a prophet and a military chief. Moses is also an authoritarian
prophet in Judaism and a prophet who
had a significant influence on Christianity,
Islam and a lot of other religions.
The book of Exodus says that the prophet's Hebrew
mother, Jochebed, was the one who hid him, when he was just born, from a
Pharaoh. The latter gave ordered that all Hebrew newborn boys have to be killed.
Moses was later adopted by the royal family of
2. Jesus of
He was the one to inspire numerous artists, sculptors,
architects, composers and writers. No one knows the exact birth date of Jesus
of Nazareth. The New Statement does
not say anything regarding his youth. He was a teacher, whose words were
recorder in the Gospels. Jesus
gathered a group of people who were meant to become his disciples. He also
inspired many people to follow him throughout a three-year period in Galilee,
Jesus was arrested by procurator Pontius Pilate from the Roman
administration. In
He was the one to focus on the nearness of the God's kingdom, faith
and repentance. Jesus was also known
as the one to heal the ill, being concerned for the poor, the children, the
elderly and the sick. Some say that Jesus of Nazareth is the most important
personality in the history of humanity. The life and death of Jesus parted the
history into B.C. (before Christ) and A.D. (anno Domini - in the year of the
Lord).
His teachings and prayers became the main knowledge
for those who are looking forward to understand the Western civilization and
the impact of the Christian Church.
3. Albert Einstein
A Jew born in Württemberg, Germany
on March 14, 1879, and considered to be one of the most influential physicists
in history. Einstein became internationally renowned due to his theory of
relativity and the equation that expresses the mass-energy equivalence E=mc2.
He was the one to receive in 1921 the Nobel Prize in Physics for his
contribution to Theoretical Physics and namely for the discovery of the law
of the photoelectric effect.
Shortly after he was born,
Albert's family moved to
Throughout his life he
received many European and American universities honored Albert Einstein with notable
doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy. As a lecturer he
gave lessons in Europe,
- Special Theory of Relativity.
- Relativity.
- General Theory of Relativity.
- The Evolution of Physics.
Some of his most influential non-scientific works include:
- Why War?
- My Philosophy.
- Out of My
Later Years.
4 Sigmund Freud
He was an Austrian
physiologist, medical doctor, psychologist
and the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud is recognized as one of the most
dominant thinkers of the 20th century. He worked closely with Joseph Breuer in
developing the theory, which sates that the mind is a sophisticated
energy-system and its structural study is the right province of psychology.
His biography was written in many languages and
published in different times. However, the most important one is considered to
be the biography written by Ernest Jones,
who was the closest friend of Sigmund Freud.
The Austrian psychologist was born in
His pioneering treatment of human dreams and actions
proved to be highly productive, besides psychology, being used in different
fields, such as anthropology, semiotics and artistic creativity and appreciation. One of his most controversial claims is that with the
help of psychoanalysis he managed to invent a new science of the mind.
Probably due to his Roman citizenship, Paul of Tarsus was known as Saul, a Jewish name.
There is no date of his birth, some say he was
born in the 1st century A.D. others, however, consider the St. Paul
was born in the last century B.C. During the rule of Roman Emperor Nero,
Some of the works of
The disputed writing include: Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1
Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, 3 Corinthians, and Epistle to the Laodiceans.
It is worth mentioning that the letters of Paul of Tarsus are the
earliest surviving works of Christian literature.
6. Karl Marx
He is one of the most influential socialist thinkers who became known in the 19th century.
Marx was a philosopher, social scientist,
historian and a revolutionary. Despite the fact that during his lifetime he was
often ignored at school, his social, economic and political ideas were widely
accepted among socialists shortly after Marx's death in 1883.
For a long period of time about half of all people
lived under regimes that were considered Marxist.
The success of his ideas came mainly due to the modifications they suffered.
These modifications were made according to different political situations.
The works of Marx had a great influence on society.
There was often a rivalry between Marx, who was a political activist, and Marx, who considered himself a student of
the political economy. A lot of his
anticipations regarding the future way of the revolutionary movement did not
succeed to become real. Nevertheless, Marx's ideas about the importance of the
economic factor in society, as well as his study of the class structure in
class conflict had a great impact on history, sociology and research of human
culture.
7. Gregory Pincus
This American
scientist became well-known for his important contribution in creating the birth control pill.
His Jewish family
lived in Woodbine,
Besides his contribution to developing the pill,
Pincus also studied the biochemistry
of aging, arthritis, cancer, as well as the reaction of the adrenal system to stress.
The work of Picus on the pill caught the attention of
one of the most popular supporters of birth control in the
Katherine Dexter McCormick was one of Sanger's friends and a philanthropist. He was the one to provide financial aid to Pincus, who gathered a team of scientists to work on the creation of a hormone-based substance, which would be able to imitate pregnancy.
The scientist carried on his research in
Even today Pincus is considered to be the main
scientist behind the development of the birth control pill. One of his major
honors was membership in the National
Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A.
The classification of all 100 most influential Jews of
all time, according to Michael
Shapiro:
|
Rank |
Name |
Date |
|
|
1 |
Moses |
13th Cen. C.E. |
|
|
2 |
Jesus of Nazareth |
ca. 4 B.C.E. - ca. |
|
|
3 |
Albert Einstein |
1879-1955 |
physicist |
|
4 |
Sigmund Freud |
1856-1936 |
psychiatrist |
|
5 |
Abraham |
ca. 20th-19th cen B.C.E.; according to the Bible,
1813-1638 B.C.E. |
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
6 |
Saul of |
4 - |
|
|
7 |
Karl Marx |
1818-1883 |
philosopher |
|
8 |
Theodor Herzl |
1860-1904 |
writer |
|
9 |
Mary |
b. ca. 20 B.C.E. |
|
|
10 |
Baruch de Spinoza |
1632-1677 |
philosopher |
|
11 |
David |
fl. 1000 B.C.E. |
|
|
12 |
Anne Frank |
1929-1945 |
diarist |
|
13 |
The Prophets |
Biblical times |
|
|
14 |
Judas Iscariot |
ca. 4 B.C.E. - ca. |
|
|
15 |
Gustav Mahler |
1860-1911 |
composer |
|
16 |
Maimonides |
1135-1204 |
theologian |
|
17 |
Niels Bohr |
1885-1962 |
physicist |
|
18 |
Moses Mendelssohn |
1729-1786 |
philosopher |
|
19 |
Paul Ehrlich |
1854-1915 |
medical scientist |
|
20 |
Rashi |
1040-1105 |
rabbinical commentator |
|
21 |
Benjamin Disraeli |
1804-1881 |
politician |
|
22 |
Franz Kafka |
1883-1924 |
author |
|
23 |
David Ben-Gurion |
1886-1973 |
founder of Israel |
|
24 |
Hillel |
ca. 70 B.C.E. - |
theologian |
|
25 |
John Von Neumann |
1903-1957 |
mathematician |
|
26 |
Simon Bar Kokhba |
fl. |
general, leader |
|
27 |
Marcel Proust |
1871-1922 |
novelist |
|
28 |
Mayer Rothschild |
1744-1812 |
financier |
|
29 |
Solomon |
ca. 990 - ca. 933 B.C.E. |
|
|
30 |
Heinrich Heine |
1797-1856 |
poet |
|
31 |
Selman Waksman |
1888-1973 |
developed antibiotics |
|
32 |
Giacomo Meyerbeer |
1791-1864 |
created grand opera |
|
33 |
Isaac Luria |
1534-1572 |
kabbalist |
|
34 |
Gregory Pincus |
1903-1967 |
developed birth control pill |
|
35 |
Leon Trotsky |
1879-1940 |
facilitator of the Russian Revolution |
|
36 |
David Ricardo |
1772-1823 |
founded classical school of economics |
|
37 |
Alfred Dreyfus |
1859-1935 |
center of 1895 Dreyfus affair in |
|
38 |
Leo Szilard |
1898-1964 |
physicist; cyberneticist |
|
39 |
Mark Rothko |
1903-1970 |
painter |
|
40 |
Ferdinand Cohn |
1828-1898 |
bacteriologist |
|
41 |
Samuel Gompers |
1850-1924 |
labor leader |
|
42 |
Gertrude Stein |
1874-1946 |
author |
|
43 |
Albert Michelson |
1852-1931 |
physicist |
|
44 |
Philo Judaeus |
ca. 20 B.C.E. - |
philosopher |
|
45 |
Golda Meir |
1898-1978 |
prime minister of Israel |
|
46 |
The Vilna Gaon |
1720-1797 |
rabbinical scholar |
|
47 |
Henri Bergson |
1859-1941 |
philosopher |
|
48 |
The Baal Shem Tov |
1700-1790 |
religious reformer |
|
49 |
Felix Mendelssohn |
1809-1847 |
musician |
|
50 |
Louis B. Mayer |
1885-1957 |
motion picture pioneer |
|
51 |
Judah Halevy |
ca. 1075-1141 |
philosopher and poet |
|
52 |
Haym Salomon |
1740-1785 |
Revolutionary War patriot |
|
53 |
Johanan ben Zakkai |
ca. |
general, leader |
|
54 |
Arnold Schoenberg |
1874-1951 |
composer |
|
55 |
Emile Durkheim |
1858-1917 |
sociologist |
|
56 |
Betty Friedan |
1921-2006 |
feminist; founder of NOW |
|
57 |
David Sarnoff |
1891-1971 |
broadcaster |
|
58 |
Lorenzo Da Ponte |
1749-1838 |
Mozart's librettist |
|
59 |
Julius Rosenwald |
1862-1932 |
philanthropist |
|
60 |
Casimir Funk |
1884-1967 |
discoverer of vitamins |
|
61 |
George Gershwin |
1898-1937 |
composer |
|
62 |
Chaim Weizmann |
1874-1952 |
first president of Israel |
|
63 |
Franz Boas |
1858-1942 |
anthropologist |
|
64 |
Sabbatai Zevi |
1626-1676 |
religious leader |
|
65 |
Leonard Bernstein |
1918-1990 |
musician |
|
66 |
Flavius Josephus |
ca. 38-ca. |
historian |
|
67 |
Walter Benjamin |
1892-1940 |
literary critic, journalist, philosopher |
|
68 |
Louis Brandeis |
1856-1941 |
jurist |
|
69 |
Emile Berliner |
1851-1929 |
inventor |
|
70 |
Sarah Bernhardt |
1844-1923 |
actress |
|
71 |
Levi Strauss |
1829-1902 |
clothier |
|
72 |
Nahmanides |