Sometimes, I must confess, I can be such a jewpie^U. Now, of course I regard Judaism with the same special scorn I reserve for all religions, of course I think endogamy and voluntary isolation are bullshit (“We have lost more Jews to intermarriage than to the Holocaust”; ”..better to lose a kid here and there and save the community”), and of course I condemn Israeli violence (I’ve never been able to wrap my head around Zionism—why would America’s elite give a rat’s ass for some piece of desert?). But the thing is, I not only resonate strongly with Jewish secular culture (with Richard Rodriguez^ELZR arrogance I confess to trying to become more Jewish^ELZR), I find secular Jews extremely over-represented among what I consider to be the very best things we as a species have made—y’know, science, physics, math, computers, technology, the web, economics, capitalism, business, philosophy, literature, academia, modern pop culture…

That above, only impromptu, was what I answered when Andrea, whom I love but who can be frighteningly fundie^U some times, shocked me with some rather anti-semitic comments. She remained skeptical and demanded examples of such mensch. I stuttered two or three before I blanked out.

And this was how I started compiling a list of Jewish people I admire for some reason or other—a task surprisingly easier than I expected, thanks both to the famed Jewish self-obsession and to paranoiac antisemitism. I’ve included the intersection of influential AND admired-by-me Jews (so you won’t find, say, Freud or Marx, who while influential, are personally anti-admired) and I mention their books or accomplishments that have most impressed me. It’s been some months now of almost subconscious compiling and while the list is of course incomplete, it’s already intriguing.

So, a to-be-updated list of influential AND admired-by-me Jews:

1. Ludwig Wittgenstein ^WP: One of 20C’s greatest philosophers. What little I’ve understood of his Tractacus I’ve been very impressed. His “why do we call something a number?”^EEM is one of my favorite quotes ever.
   
2. Virginia Postrel ^WP: Libertarian writer of The Future and its Enemies^AM, the book that single-handedly got me out of college.
   
3. Cory Doctorow ^WP: Scifi writer of the Eastern Standard Tribe and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, blogger, cofounder of BoingBoing, (fascinating) columnist, college dropout university professor.
   
4. Joe Haldeman ^WP: Scifi writer of The Forever War^AM and None So Blind, one of my favorite scifi short stories ever.
   
5. Niels Bohr ^WP: One of 20C’s greatest physicists.
   
6. Josh Schwartz ^WP: Creator and executive producer of The O.C^WP, Gossip Girls^WP, and Chuck^WP college dropout.
   
7. Henri Lebesgue ^WP: Mathematician, creator of measure theory. [Not Jewish]
   
8. Philip Roth ^WP: Novelist.
   
9. Harold Bloom ^WP: Literary critic.
   
10. Sanford I. Weill ^WP: billionaire former CEO and chairman of Citigroup.
    
11. Steven Weinberg ^WP: Nobel physicist, science advocate.
    
12. Tobias Dantzig ^WP: Mathematician, author of Number^AM.
    
13. Sergey Brin ^WP: Google co-founder.
    
14. Larry Page ^WP: Google co-founder.
    
15. Isaac Asimov ^WP: One of the greatest scifi writers ever, a great science writer too, author of the Foundation series^WP.
    
16. Steven Pinker ^WP: Linguist.
    
17. Jared Diamond ^WP: Historian, author of Guns, Diamonds, and Germs^AM.
    
18. Franz Kafka ^WP: Novelist.
    
19. Bob Dylan ^WP: Singer and songwriter.
    
20. Richard Feynman ^WP: One of 20C’s greatest physicists, scientific rock star, author of Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!^AM and his famed lectures on physics^{EEM, AM}.
    
21. Andrew Grove ^WP: Intel CEO and founder early employee.
    
22. Karl Popper ^WP: Philosopher of science.
    
23. Ludwig von Mises ^WP: Major economist, libertarian, leading light of the Austrian school, author of Human Action
    
24. David Friedman ^WP: Major libertarian/anarchocapitalist economist, author of The Machinery of Freedom^ELZR and Hidden Order^AM.
    
25. Milton Friedman ^WP: Nobel free-market economist.
    
26. Darren Aronofsky ^WP: Film director of Pi^WP, Requiem for a Dream^WP:, and The Fountain^WP.
    
27. Albert Einstein ^WP: Physicist, so renowned he has become the archetypal genius.
    
28. Friedrich Hayek ^WP: Major free-market economist, author of The Road to Serfdom^AM Jewish.]
    
29. Stephen Jay Gould ^WP: Paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, historian of science.
    
30. James Harris Simmons ^WP: Mathematician, billionaire, founder of one of the most successful quant funds ever.
    
31. Bruce Schneier ^WP: Major cryptologist, author of Applied Cryptography^AM.
    
32. Norbert Wiener ^WP: Polymath genius, mathematician, creator of cybernetics, author of I Am a Mathematician^AM.
    
33. Mark Zuckerberg ^WP: Programmer, entrepreneur, creator of Facebook.
    
34. Thomas Friedman ^WP: Popular columnist, advocate for globalization, author of The World is Flat^AM.
    
35. Max Levchin ^WP: Multimillionaire entrepreneur, cofounder of PayPal^WP.
    
36. Ludvic Lazarus Zamenhof ^WP: Linguist, creator of Esperanto!
    
37. Ray Kurzweil ^WP: Futurist, inventor, leading writer on the singularity, author of The Singularity is Near^{ELZR, AM}.
    
38. Joshua Schachter ^WP: Programmer, creator of del.icio.us.
    
39. Levi Strauss ^WP: Inventor of jeans.
    
40. John von Neumann ^WP: Mathematician, legendary polymath. One of 20C’s smartest, most influential men.
    
41. Erich Fromm ^WP: Psychologist, author of The art of loving^AM and Escape from Freedom^AM.
    
42. Michael Moritz ^WP: Famous Sequoia Capital venture capitalist, major Silicon Valley figure.
    
43. Arthur Blank ^WP: Businessman, Home Depot’s^WP cofounder.
    
44. Michael Bloomberg ^WP: Entrepreneur, founder of the Bloomberg network^WP.
    
45. Steve Ballmer ^WP: Executive, Microsoft’s CEO, billionaire.
    
46. Mark Cuban ^WP: Billionaire web entrepreneur.
    
47. Ayn Rand ^WP: Libertarian writer, author of Atlas Shrugged^AM, major 20C philosopher.
    
48. Paul Halmos ^WP: Mathematician, author of Naive Set Theory^AM and I Want to Be a Mathematician^AM.
    
49. Susan Sontag ^WP: Writer of, among others, her fantastic Notes on Camp.
    
50. Jorge Wagesnberg ^WP: Physicist, philosopher of science, writer of 500 preguntas sobre la incertidumbre^ELZR, El Gozo Intelectual, and A mas como, menos porque.
    
51. Georg Cantor ^WP: Mathematician, creator of transfinite numbers.
    
52. Theodor Herzl ^WP: Writer, essayist.
    
53. Marcel Proust ^WP: Major novelist.
    
54. Richard Stallman ^WP: Programmer, creator of Emacs, and father of the free software movement.
    
55. Murray Gell-Mann ^WP: Major 20C physicist.
    
56. Viktor Frankl ^WP: Psychologist, author of Man’s Search for Meaning^AM.
    
57. Marvin Minsky ^WP: Major AI figure, cognitive scientist, author of The Society of Mind^AM.
    
58. Jef Raskin ^WP: Major interface designer, father of the Macintosh, author of The Humane Inteface^{ELZR, AM}.
    
59. Aza Raskin ^WP: Interface designer, founder and president of Humanized.
    
60. Eliezer Yudkowsky ^WP: Major thinker on the singularity^ELZR, high-school and college dropout.
    
61. George Soros ^WP: Billionaire, financier, philanthropist, “the world’s only private citizen with a foreign policy.”^BN
    
62. Howard Schultz ^WP: Founder of Starbucks, author of Pour your heart into it^AM:
    
63. Michael Dell ^WP: Founder of Dell, billionaire, author of Direct from Dell^AM.
    
64. Carl Sagan ^WP: Cosmologist, science writer.
    
65. Woody Allen ^WP: Film director and writer.
    
66. Eva Vertes ^WP: Health researcher^ELZR, personal hero.
    
67. Steven Spielberg ^WP: Billionaire film director, movie virtuoso^ELZR.
    
68. Joel Spolsky ^WP: Software blogger of Joel on Software, programmer.
    
69. Bob Rosenschein ^WP: founder and CEO of Answers Corporation, creators of Answers.com, without which life wouldn’t be nearly as bright.
    
70. Stephen Wolfram ^WP: Mathematic, programmer, physicist, likely next Newton, author of A New Kind of Science.
    
71. Robert Nozick ^WP: Libertarian economist, philosopher. Author of Anarchy, State, and Utopia and, say, Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?.
    
72. Natalie Anger: Atheist science writer, author of The Canon.
    
73. Charles Stross: ^WP Scifi writer, author of the mindblowing Accelerando, programmer, blogger.
    
74. Seymour Papert ^WP: Education pioneer, creator of Logo, mathematician, computer scientist.
    
75. Herbert Simon ^WP: Computer scientist, cognitive phychologist, Nobel economist, one of the most influential social scientists of the twencen, author of The Sciences of the Artificial.
    
76. John McCarthy ^WP: Major computer programmer and AI researcher, creator of Lisp.
    
77. Edward Fredkin ^WP: Digital physicist and philospher, one of the first people to imagine that the whole universe might be a computer, college dropout multimillionaire programmer and entrepreneur.
    
78. Douglas Hofstadter ^WP: Major cognitivist and AI researcher, author of Goedel, Escher & Bach.
    
79. David Gelernter ^WP: Interesting computer scientist.
    
80. Benoit Mandelbrot ^WP: Mathematician, father of fractals.
    
81. Mitch Kapor ^WP: Multimillionaire designer of Lotus 1-2-3, cofounder of EFF.
    
82. David Ricardo ^WP : One of the most influential classical economists. Popularizer/discoverer of the principle of comparative advantage.