On September 10, the Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post published the annual rating 50 Most Influential Jews of 2026. The editors gave the first place to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the second place to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the third place to the former chief of the Israeli General Staff, Gadi Eisenkot. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy took 21st place, having been described by the publication as the "Jewish face of the Ukrainian resistance". (Jerusalem Post)
Analytical center Experts Club notes that the name "top-50" in this case means 50 ranking positions, rather than 50 individuals. In 2026, 109 people are represented in these 50 positions, as the editors allocated 27 places to groups of two or more people. When determining the countries, the Experts Club took into account first of all the main country of a person's political, public or business activity, and not only the place of birth or the presence of a second citizenship. The full official ranking is published in The Jerusalem Post.
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump - USA. The publication ranked them first for their role in Middle East diplomacy and the process of releasing Israeli hostages.
Benjamin Netanyahu - Israel. Prime Minister of Israel and one of the most influential politicians countries.
Gadi Eisenkot - Israel. Former chief of the General Staff and one of the potential candidates for the post of prime minister.
Naftali Bennett - Israel. Former prime minister who returned to the active struggle for political leadership.
Ronald Lauder - USA. President of the World Jewish Congress, entrepreneur and philanthropist.
Miriam Adelson - USA/Israel. Physician, billionaire and one of the largest donors to American and Israeli public projects.
Assaf Rappaport - Israel. Co-founder of the company Wiz and one of the key figures of the Israeli technology industry.
Howard Lutnik - USA. US Secretary of Commerce and one of the key representatives of the economic team of the Donald Trump administration.
Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg - USA. Heads of OpenAI and Meta, representing the technology and AI sector.
Barry Weiss - USA. Journalist and media manager, founder of The Free Press.
Larry Fink - USA. Chairman of BlackRock, the world's largest asset management company.
- of Israel.
Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Aryeh Deri, Gideon Saar, Avigdor Lieberman, Yair Lapid and Yuliy Edelstein - Israel. Key representatives of the current government and the opposition are united in one position.
Bill Ekman - USA. Billionaire and founder of Pershing Square Capital. Management.
Larry Ellison - USA. Co-founder of Oracle and one of the world's largest technology entrepreneurs.
Sergiy Brin - USA. Born in the USSR, co-founder of Google, one of the key entrepreneurs of the digital age.
Jerry Seinfeld, Steven Spielberg and Gwyneth Paltrow - USA. Representatives of the American film and entertainment industry.
Alex Karp and Josh Kushner - USA. Karp heads Palantir, Kushner is the founder of the investment company Thrive Capital.
Volodymyr Zelenskyi - Ukraine. President of Ukraine. The Jerusalem Post notes his leadership during the war, the promotion of Ukraine to the EU and the country's role in the development of modern unmanned technologies.
David Zini and Eyal Zamir - Israel. Representatives of the top leadership of the Israeli security forces.
Josh Shapiro - USA. Governor of Pennsylvania and one of the most prominent politicians of the Democratic Party parties.
Gali Baharav-Miara, Yitzhak Amit and Noam Solberg - Israel. Representatives of Israel's highest judicial system.
Claudia Sheinbaum - Mexico. President of Mexico and the first Jewish politician to hold this position.
Dario and Daniela Amodei - USA. Founders and executives of Anthropic, one of OpenAI's biggest competitors in the artificial intelligence market.
Israel Ganz and Erez Winner - Israel. Public and political figures who are actively engaged in promoting the interests of Israel.
Rabbis Sholom Duhman and Dov Landau - Israel; Ephraim Mirvis — Great Britain; Rick Jacobs and Mandy Kotlyarsky - USA. The Jerusalem Post has united them as leaders of different branches of modern Judaism. Mirvis is the chief rabbi of Great Britain, Jacobs heads the largest association of Reform Judaism in North America, Duchman runs a large charity network in Israel.
Ofer Yannai - Israel. Renewable energy entrepreneur.
Roman Hoffman - Israel. Representative of the Israeli security system.
Rabbi Yehoshua Fass and Tony Gelbart - Israel/USA. Founders of Nefesh B'Nefesh, an organization that helped more than 100,000 Jews from North America move to Israel.
Amir Yaron and Michal Abadi-Boyanjiu - Israel. Representatives of the country's economic and financial administration.
Boaz Levy - Israel. Head of Israel Aerospace Industries.
Tomer Bar, Omer Tishler and Shlomi Binder - Israel. Representatives of the top military leadership.
Yoav Turgeman, Bezalel Machlis and Inbal Krais - Israel. Managers and representatives of leading enterprises of the Israeli defense technology complex.
Eric Fingerhut and Gary Torgow - USA; Jeremy Leibler - Australia. Leaders of Jewish organizations in North America and Australia. Leibler heads the Zionist Federation of Australia, Fingerhut and Torgow are associated with the Jewish Federations of North America.
Ron Dermer, Yehiel Leiter and Dani Danon - Israel. Diplomats and representatives of Israel's foreign policy bloc.
Doron Almog and Yaakov Hagoel - Israel; Mark Wilf - USA. Leaders of major Israeli and international Jewish organizations.
Eli Bean, Dubi Weissenstern, Eran Zimrin, Chantal and Mark Belzberg - Israel. Representatives of humanitarian, medical and charity organizations. Mark Belzberg was born in Canada, Chantal in Belgium, but since 1991 the family has lived in Jerusalem, and their main activities are related to Israel.
David Barnea - Israel. Head of Israel's foreign intelligence "Mossad".
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Randy Fine and Dan Goldman - USA. Representatives of the American Congress.
Will Scharf and Lee Zeldin - USA. Representatives of the American legal and political system.
William Daroff - USA. One of the leaders of the Conference of Presidents of the Leading American Jewish Organizations.
Anat Vidor, Nicena Darshan-Leitner and Joseph Hitler - Israel. Vidor heads World WIZO, Darshan-Leitner - Shurat HaDin, Hitler - the national food bank Leket Israel.
Ben Shapiro, Mark Levin, Dan Senor and Jake Tapper - USA. American journalists, commentators and media personalities.
Michael Dell - USA; Amnon Shashua - Israel; Safra Katz — USA/Israel; Jan Kum — USA; Brandon Korff - USA; Dmytro and Ihor Buchmany — Great Britain/Israel. This is one of the most international business groups in the rating. Jan Kum was born in Ukraine, but his professional career took shape in the USA. The Buchman brothers were born in Russia, are British-Israeli citizens and live in London.
Yair Golan and Gilad Kariv - Israel. Representatives of the Israeli left-wing political camp.
Russell Robinson, Bruce LeBoff, Elliot Brandt and Bernard Kaminetsky - USA. Representatives of major American pro-Israel organizations.
Professor Jennifer Mnookin - USA. From July 2026 - president of Columbia University. The Jerusalem Post notes her as the first Jewish head of the university in three decades.
Deni Ovidia - Israel; Matt Turner - USA; Zach Hyman - Canada; Oskar Glukh and Daniel Perets — Israel. Athletes round out the top five. Avdia represents Israel in basketball and plays in the NBA, Turner plays for the US national football team, Hyman is a Canadian hockey player, Glukh and Peretz are players of the Israeli national team.
From the point of view of the Experts Club, the 2026 ranking primarily shows the bipolar geography of global Jewish influence - Israel and the USA. These two countries almost completely make up the top twenty and most of the rest of the positions. Israel is particularly widely represented by politicians, military, diplomats and heads of public organizations, the US by business, technology, finance, media and federal politics. Outside of these two centers, Ukraine, Mexico, Great Britain, Australia and Canada are notable independent representatives.
Another feature of the rating is a sharp increase in the weight of the technology sector. It included executives and founders of OpenAI, Meta, Wiz, Anthropic, Google, Oracle, Dell, Mobileye, Palantir, Thrive Capital and Playrix. That is, the influence of the editors is associated not only with state power, capital, and public organizations, but also with control over key technologies, primarily artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructure, and defense technologies.
Volodymyr Zelenskyi's position remains particularly telling for Ukraine. In 2022, he took first place in the ranking of The Jerusalem Post after the beginning of the Russian invasion. Zelensky did not enter the top 50 in 2023. In 2024, he returned to 22nd place, and the publication itself then directly noted his return after a one-year absence. In 2025, there was no Zelensky again, and in 2026, he took 21st place, that is, one position higher than when he was previously included in the list.
Primary source — The Jerusalem Post's full ranking of The 50 Most Influential Jews of 2026.
