The way Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been leading Israel through the year-long war, his power as a Jew has been considered unparalleled. However, there are four other Jews who preceded him in the list of the most influential Jews in the world.
The Jerusalem Post compiled a list of the world’s most influential Jews, which includes Doug Emhoff, Pennsylvania’s Jewish governor Josh Shapiro, Bill Ackman, the US billionaire battling campus antisemitism, and Antony Blinken, the top US Diplomat.
As his wife Kamla Harris became Vice President, Emhoff’s role graduated from a ceremonial role involving handshakes and ribbon cuttings. He has been using the platform to fight anti-semitism.
With Harris in the fray for the Presidential election, Emhoff is at the crossroads of history. He could become not only the first male spouse in the White House but also the first Jewish one. Carrying the weight of the aspirations of millions of American Jews, he has become the most influential Jew in the world.
Since the attack on Israel on October 7 triggered a spate of antisemitism across the world, Emhoff has been taking it heads on. He led the Biden Administration’s National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, launched in 2023, a sweeping initiative designed to confront hate wherever it festers.
“Even now, as we are getting ready for school, we are making sure students are going to be safe,” Emhoff declared. “Protests are fine, but when they cross the line… [students] need to be able to attend class.”
Antisemitism has been a major issue for Emhoff since Harris became vice president and became the second gentleman — he visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Oswiecim, Poland, in 2023. In Harris’s presidential campaign, Emhoff focused on Jewish audiences.
Number 2 – Josh Sapiro
A year ago, only a few people had heard of Josh Shapiro. The graph of the Governor of the Keystone State of Pennsylvania increased when he entered the race to become Harris’ running mate in July.
The politician is often compared to Barack Obama for his oratory skills, lost to Tim Walz, who became Harris’ running mate.
The first-time governor, who is proudly Jewish and attended a Jewish Day School in suburban Philadelphia, studied on a high school program in Israel, and kept a kosher kitchen in the governor’s mansion in Harrisburg, is now a widely recognized political name in America.
Number 3: Bill Ackman
Bill Ackman is a billionaire Jewish investor and director of the New York hedge fund Pershing Square. He has been taking on his alma mater, Harvard University, as there has been an outpouring of support for Hamas on US campuses.
Fifty-seven-year-old Ackman has amassed a fortune of $3.8 billion. He has a history of donating to Democrats. He founded the hedge fund Pershing Square Capital and for years waged high-profile, drawn-out battles against companies he believed to be mismanaged. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, he made $2.6 billion wagering that the stock market would drop.
When 30 student organizations at Harvard stated on October 9 labeling Israel as being “fully responsible” for the Hamas slaughter and the university’s administration remained silent, Ackman went ballistic. He has been seeking that the names of the signatories to the statement be made public so that his company and other potential employers would know their views before hiring them.
The campaign forced some organizations to withdraw their statements and prompted some students to cover their faces out of fear for their postgraduate future.
Ackman has been co-opting other donors like him to exert pressure on the institutions to curb pro-Palestinian activity on the campus. The donors like him exerted pressure by withholding financial contributions to the universities with anti-Israel and anti-Semitic behavior.
Number 4 Antony Blinken
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been adjudged the fourth most influential Jew in the world. Since taking over as America’s top diplomat in 2021, Blinken has been one of the most influential Jews on the international stage, influencing world events.
Especially in the aftermath of Hamas’s invasion of Israel on October 7, which left over 1,200 people dead and 251 captives, Blinken made nine regional trips that included visits to Israel to underscore American support for Israel’s war against the Iranian proxy groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
He spearheaded the US efforts to secure the Israelis held hostage by Hamas. This resulted in the release of 105 captives following the initial hostage agreement.
At a time when the United Nations Secretary-General said that the October 7 attack should be viewed within the context of “56 years of suffocating [Israeli] occupation” of the Palestinian people, Blinken placed the attack within the larger context of Jewish history, specifically the Holocaust, as he linked his own identity as a Jew with that of the Jewish people in Israel.
“After October 7, I come before you not only as the US secretary of State but also as a Jew,” he stated. “I understand on a personal level the harrowing echoes that Hamas’s massacres carry for Israeli Jews and indeed for Jews everywhere.”
Other Prominent Jews
Former Meta COO and author Sheryl Sandberg, famous for encouraging women to ‘lean in’ and make their voices heard, has been at 11 number for standing up for women ‘who can never lean in or speak up again’ – the victims of sexual assaults by Hamas on October 7.
She was instrumental in making a documentary about the rapes and sexual abuse of Israeli women by the terrorists called Screams Before Silence, which was released on YouTube in April.
More than 1.2 million people have watched the film, now available with subtitles in several languages. Sandberg oversaw the making of Screams Before Silence and personally conducted the interviews with rape victims, witnesses, first responders, medical personnel, forensic experts, and officials.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is ranked 28th as a symbol of Jewish entrepreneurship for becoming one of the most influential figures in the technology and media industry.
Claudia Sheinbaum, who became the first woman and Jewish person to lead Mexico in its more than 200-year history as an independent nation, also made the list at position 12.
Victoria Starmer, the new first lady at 10 Downing Street, has become the first Jewish first lady of the UK. She and Britain’s first Labour prime minister in the last 14 years will manage 10 Downing Street as a Jewish household. She has been placed in the 43rd position.
