Board of Deputies President Marie van der Zyl has been named as one the Algemeiner Jewish 100 – the top 100 people influencing Jewish life around the world.
The list, compiled by the Algemeiner Jewish weekly newspaper, which is based in New York, contains a wide range of people from a variety of fields, including chess player Garry Kasparov, actors Sacha Baron Cohen and Helen Mirren, US President-elect Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhayu.
Marie’s citation reads: “London-born Marie van der Zyl is the 48th president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which represents the Jewish community in the United Kingdom. Assuming the role in 2018, Van der Zyl was quickly thrown into the conflict between British Jews and the opposition Labour Party, which had become a vehicle for crude antisemitism and anti-Zionism under its previous leader, Jeremy Corbyn. In 2020, Van der Zyl joined other faith leaders in speaking out forcefully against the genocidal repression of Uyghur Muslims by the Chinese Communist regime, noting the “similarities between what is alleged to be happening in the People’s Republic of China today and what happened in Nazi Germany 75 years ago: People being forcibly loaded on to trains; beards of religious men being trimmed; women being sterilized; and the grim specter of concentration camps.”
Marie said: “It is wonderful to be named among such a stellar list. This is great recognition for the important work the Board of Deputies has been doing over the past year on a variety of issues.”
You can see the complete list here: https://www.algemeiner.com/list/the-top-100-people-positively-influencing-jewish-life-2020/