Einstein, Spielberg picked for new Jewish hall of fame
BY RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
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Published: October 3, 2009
After more than 209,000 votes from around the world, 18 men and women have been chosen for the new National Museum of American Jewish History’s Hall of Fame.
The museum, set to open in November 2010 in
Philadelphia, had listed 218 finalists on its Web site for its "Only in America” gallery, featuring artists, athletes, scientists and civic and religious leaders.
The winners include established celebrities, such as
Barbra Streisand and
Steven Spielberg, as well as more Judaism-specific figures, such as Rabbis Mordecai Kaplan and
Isaac Mayer Wise, who founded the Reconstructionist and Reform movements, respectively.
Other honorees include musicians
Irving Berlin and
Leonard Bernstein;
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis; physicist
Albert Einstein; baseball pitcher
Sandy Koufax; cosmetics entrepreneur and philanthropist
Estee Lauder; activist poet
Emma Lazarus; Bible translator Rabbi Isaac Leeser;
Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir; polio vaccine inventor
Jonas Salk; labor leader
Rose Schneiderman; Yiddish writer
Isaac Bashevis Singer;
Hasidic Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson; and Zionist women’s leader Henrietta Szold.
The number 18 was chosen for its religious significance, as the Hebrew numerical symbol of life.
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