Forward Names Matisyahu in Top Five

An excerpt from the Press Release

The Forward, American Jewry’s newspaper of record, today announced its highly-awaited “Forward 50” List of the most influential Jewish Americans.

This year’s Top Five, as diverse as the entire list itself, includes Steven Spielberg, Hasidic Hip-Hop sensation Matisyahu,

In the top 50 we find “Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, who has emerged as the most important leader of the Lubavitch Hasidic movement”.

Matisyahu
Equal parts reggae star, rapper and Hasidic cantor, Matisyahu is one of the biggest pop music phenomena of the past year, and the most unlikely. Virtually unknown just a year ago, the Lubavitcher singing sensation now headlines at some of the nation’s biggest concert venues. Later this month he heads for gigs in Amsterdam, Paris and Berlin. The singer, 26, whose given name is Matthew Miller, was born in a nonobservant Jewish home in suburban Philadelphia and raised in White Plains, N.Y. After dropping out of high school at 17 and following Phish to the West Coast, he found his way into the famous Carlebach Synagogue in New York City and began a spiritual journey that ended up in the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic community of Brooklyn. Simultaneously he pursued a music career. He now has a following that stretches all the way from Crown Heights to the pages of the “beer and babes” magazine FHM; his television appearances include “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” and “Last Call With Carson Daly.” According to his Web site, Miller combines the sounds of Bob Marley and Shlomo Carlebach. His songs, with titles like “Lord Raise Me Up” and “King Without a Crown,” speak of spiritual hunger in biblically inflected tones; set to reggae beats, they become supple, airy and sublime.

Yehuda Krinsky
The continuing growth of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement is one of the wonders of modern Judaism. Eleven years after the death of its charismatic leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Lubavitch has firmly established itself as a full-scale wing of American Judaism and a major force worldwide. This past year saw a rapidly growing acceptance of the movement’s new role by other Jewish groups. In Russia, the Chabad-dominated Federation of Jewish Communities received acknowledgement of its dominant role in Jewish life when the American Jewish Congress signed a formal cooperation agreement. On American college campuses, the national Hillel foundation began encouraging its local chapters to reach out and cooperate with Chabad Houses — Hillel is on about 500 campuses, compared to nearly 200 for Chabad — rather than view them as competitors, or worse, oddballs. Managing it all with a light touch, like the head of a giant franchising corporation, is Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, the steel-willed administrator once known as the rebbe’s “secretary.” Lubavitchers continue to insist they have no leader since Schneerson died, but Krinsky heads some of their most important institutions, including the crucial Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, Lubavitch’s educational outreach organization. He sounded uncannily like a leader when he addressed an international convention of Lubavitch rabbis in Brooklyn this past January. “This is the work you do,” Krinsky told the emissaries. “You find the people who do not see, and you guide them and hold their hand as you lead them to safe ground.”