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David Miliband 51 (New)
Making his Parliamentary bow as Foreign Secretary last July, David Miliband told MPs that Britain would be guided by “bedrock” principles in its Middle East policy. There would be no contact with Palestinian rejectionists and Israel would be taken to task over settlements which were “contrary to international law”. Mr Miliband, 42, is the son of Marxist theoretician Ralph Miliband, a Belgian-Jewish refugee from the Nazis, and Polish-born Marion Kozak, a supporter of left-wing Jewish groups. In Israel, the jury is out on him. At home, the South Shields MP has won friends by being the first Foreign Secretary to host a menorah-lighting ceremony and a video address to Wizo in which he said he had been “lucky” to have spent time in Israel.
Rabbi Naftali Schiff 52 (19)
The power behind social and educational organisation Aish UK, renowned for attracting unaffiliated young Jews to its programmes. Rabbi Schiff was raised in London and studied in Jerusalem, where he received semichah. He returned to England in the late 1990s to help generate funding for Aish trips to Israel and elsewhere.
Syma Weinberg 53 (New)
“The cotton wool that protects Sir Jonathan Sacks and the bandages that prevent him saying anything problematic,” according to our panel, Syma Weinberg has been executive director of the Chief Rabbi’s office since 1997. A former deputy head of Hasmonean Primary School, she went on to serve the Jewish Educational Development Trust and Jewish Continuity after two years on the British Educators’ Fellowship Programme. A respected and pragmatic operator.
Ed Balls 54 (New)
Gordon Brown’s Education Secretary angered some Jewish school supporters by exposing schools he said had breached the government’s admissions code. But in a subsequent article for the JC, the Normanton, West Yorkshire, MP made it clear that state-aided schools could seek donations for religious studies or security, provided requests were kept separate from the admissions process. He has also told the JC that “Jewish schools play a very important part in our education system and I absolutely want that to carry on”. His department has pledged £4.65 million to finance a further three years of sending sixth-formers to Auschwitz through the Holocaust Educational Trust.
Ita Symons 55 (80)
Chief executive of the Agudas Israel Housing Association, Ita Symons has been at the forefront of efforts to make affordable, good-standard housing available to the less well-off members of Stamford Hill’s Charedi community. A recent breakthrough has been gaining planning consent for a major project on the site of the former Avigdor School in the face of local opposition. It is one of “three multi-million-pound projects in the heart of the community,” Mrs Symons said. “They will make a massive difference to people’s lives.”
Rabbi Yoni Sherizen 56 (New)
The chief executive of Jewish Student Chaplaincy has built a professional organisation which has attracted modern Orthodox young educators. A Power 100 judge touted him as “a future major star — that is, if the community can hang onto him”. Rabbi Sherizen studied at New York’s Yeshiva University and in Jerusalem. Formerly student chaplain at Oxford, he sees his role as to inspire and strengthen Jewish identity; to increase the quality and choice of Jewish campus activities; and to provide high quality education in Judaism.
Lord Winston 57 (New)
The fertility expert and media personality told the JC last year that medical research which enabled scientists to create embryos that are part-human and part-animal would not contravene Orthodox values. He has chaired the Lords’ Science and Technology Select Committee and explored the relationship between science and religion in his book and BBC1 series, The Story of God. Music is another love and the 67-year-old North-West Londoner chairs the governing body of the Royal College of Music. For the BBC’s Play It Again, he was coached on the saxophone by Sir John Dankworth and Courtney Pine before performing a challenging solo to a packed Royal Albert Hall.
Anthony Julius 58 (New)
One of Britain’s top legal minds who has represented clients as diverse as Diana Princess of Wales and American academic Deborah Lipstadt, whom he successfully defended in a libel action brought by Holocaust-denier David Irving. The Cambridge University graduate is consultant and former litigation head of London firm Mishcon de Reya. As an author, his works include an examination of the antisemitism of TS Eliot. His legal team was dropped by Heather Mills during her acrimonious divorce battle with Sir Paul McCartney, but there were more pressing personal issues during the year —his second wife Dina Rabinovitch, a JC and Guardian columnist, died of breast cancer.
Keith Black 59 (57)
One of the leading lights behind the regeneration of Manchester Jewry with particular involvement in UJIA, the Community Security Trust and helping to improve facilities for students. In business life, he is managing director of the family-run outdoor-clothing company Regatta, which employs over 350 staff at its Manchester headquarters and is the UK’s biggest supplier of outdoor and leisure clothing.
Professor Leslie Wagner 60 (New)
With faith schools increasingly under the government’s microscope and some Jewish primaries and secondaries struggling to fill places, the Derby University Chancellor is at the forefront of communal educational planning as the chairman of the Commission on Jewish Schools, a Jewish Leadership Council project. He has said that it will not “shirk any issue just because it is difficult and will not accept wishful thinking as a substitute for hard choices”. Professor Wagner, 65, has held a string of higher-education appointments.