- September 13, 2026
- 9:39 pm
- World News
Volodymyr Zelensky ranked 21st in the new ranking of the 50 most influential Jews in the world by The Jerusalem Post. This is the fourth appearance for the President of Ukraine in the list of the Israeli publication. In 2019, he immediately entered the top ten, after the Russian invasion in 2022 he became No. 1, then disappeared, returned to 22nd place, and now has risen one more position. But the story is more interesting than the numbers themselves: this ranking quite clearly shows how Zelensky’s perception has changed in Israel and the Jewish world.
Author: Stas Shifer
In the new list of The Jerusalem Post (September 10, 2026), Volodymyr Zelensky was ranked 21st. Ahead of him are Palantir founder Alex Karp and investor Josh Kushner, who jointly took the 20th position. Immediately after the President of Ukraine, at number 22, are the head of the Shin Bet David Zini and the Chief of Staff of the IDF Eyal Zamir. Such a company itself explains what this ranking is trying to measure: not popularity, not attitude towards a person, and certainly not the degree of their religiosity, but influence.
The first place in 2026 was taken by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump — The Jerusalem Post associates their position primarily with American mediation and the history of the return of Israeli hostages. Benjamin Netanyahu was second, Gadi Eisenkot third, Naftali Bennett fourth. Further in the top ten are Ronald Lauder, Miriam Adelson, Wiz founder Assaf Rappaport, Howard Lutnick, Sam Altman with Mark Zuckerberg, and Bari Weiss.
Against this background, Zelensky’s 21st place looks very different than just a line in another newspaper Top 50.
In 2019, he was already eighth. There was no war then.
Zelensky’s first appearance in the ranking did not happen after the Russian invasion or even on the eve of the war. The Jerusalem Post placed him in eighth place back in 2019, a few months after the presidential elections in Ukraine.
Above him at that time were Mossad director Yossi Cohen, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Benjamin Netanyahu, Benny Gantz, and Yair Lapid, Sigal Mandelker, Avigdor Lieberman, and journalist Bari Weiss. Following, ninth, was the head of the World Jewish Congress Ronald Lauder. For a politician who only took a state position for the first time that spring, eighth place was not an ordinary result.
The reason is also somewhat forgotten now. In 2019, Zelensky found himself in the middle of a huge American political scandal after a phone call with Donald Trump — the very plot that led to the first impeachment procedure of the US president. JPost then presented Zelensky precisely as the new Ukrainian president of Jewish origin, unexpectedly finding himself at the center of world politics.
That is, Zelensky was noticed as an influential Jew in the world even then when the words Shahed, Patriot, and F-16 were not associated with his name at all.
Then the interest faded. In the lists of The Jerusalem Post for 2020 and 2021, Zelensky is no longer there. In 2021, for example, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid jointly took first place — the editorial board considered their role in ending Netanyahu’s 12-year uninterrupted rule as the main political event of the year.
And then came February 24, 2022.
From No. 8 to No. 1: what changed in 2022
In the fall of 2022, The Jerusalem Post placed Zelensky in first place among the most influential Jews in the world. Not among Ukrainian politicians and not among representatives of the diaspora — in the entire ranking. Second was then Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, third was French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, fourth was US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides, Netanyahu took the fifth position.
The editorial board explained the decision quite simply: after the Russian full-scale invasion, Zelensky turned from an unusual Eastern European president with an actor’s past into a global political figure. JPost wrote that the war tested him with a challenge that very few modern leaders face and effectively made him a world symbol of Ukraine’s resistance.
Here a second layer appeared — Jewish.
The Kremlin simultaneously told the world about the need for some kind of “denazification” of Ukraine and waged war against a state whose president is Jewish, and part of his family was destroyed during the Holocaust. Zelensky’s grandfather, Semyon Zelensky, served in the Red Army and fought against Nazi Germany. The president himself repeatedly said that only he survived from his grandfather’s family during the Holocaust.
This contradiction was too obvious for the Israeli audience to ignore.
At the same time, Zelensky himself never tried to make Jewishness the main element of his political biography. The Jerusalem Post in the current profile also recalls his words from 2019: the question of him being Jewish is somewhere around the twentieth place among the characteristics by which he defines himself. In 2026, the author of the JPost material builds part of the text around this: Zelensky is interesting to them not as a professional “Jewish leader,” but as a leader of a country who is also Jewish.
And here begins the not very comfortable part of this story for Israel.
Israel admired Zelensky, but Kyiv wanted more from him
Zelensky’s status in the Jewish world after February 2022 did not mean endless idyll between Kyiv and Jerusalem. On the contrary, the Ukrainian president quite quickly began to publicly ask Israel unpleasant questions — primarily about air defense systems and other military assistance.
Ukraine looked at Israel as a country that had learned to protect cities from missiles for decades and had unique air and missile defense technologies. Israel, on the other hand, looked at its own security, the Russian presence in Syria, the freedom of action of the Air Force, and relations with Moscow. These two logics were poorly accommodated in one sentence for quite a long time.
NAnews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency
Over the following years, the situation changed significantly on its own. Russia entered deeper into military cooperation with Iran, Iranian Shahed became one of the main means of Russian strikes on Ukraine, and the drone war from some distant Ukrainian experience turned into a topic that can no longer be separated from Israel’s own security.
We recently separately analyzed this link — what is known about Russian Geran and Iran’s interest in Geran-5 against the backdrop of the war with Israel and the USA:
https://nikk.agency/ot-shahed-k-geran-5/
So in 2026, an Israeli reads Zelensky’s biography quite differently than in 2022. Then Ukraine asked Israel to study its war. Now Israel itself is studying some things.
Not only Jerusalem Post: in 2022, Zelensky was noticed in the USA and the UK
There is another detail that is lost if you only look at The Jerusalem Post ranking.
In the same 2022, the American Jewish publication The Algemeiner included Zelensky at number 70 in the annual J100 — Top 100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life. However, a caveat is needed here: this is not a list of “100 most influential Jews.” J100 consciously includes both Jews and non-Jews — the editorial board calls positive influence on Jewish life and Israel the criterion.
About Zelensky, Algemeiner then wrote that the President of Ukraine has probably become the most famous Jewish politician in the world and a symbol of resistance to the Russian invasion. At the same time, the publication did not hide his dissatisfaction with Israel for refusing to provide military assistance to Kyiv. That is, even within the laudatory ranking, the relations between Ukraine and Israel were shown without a sweet picture.
And at the end of December 2022, the British The Jewish Chronicle went even further. In the selection of the main Jewish figures of the year, the editorial board placed Zelensky first and wrote that if it were a formal ranking, the Ukrainian president would “undoubtedly” take No. 1. He was called there “a modern Maccabee”, comparing Ukraine’s resistance to the struggle against a much stronger opponent.
Now this language may seem too pompous. At the end of 2022, in part of the Jewish world, it sounded quite natural — the mood was exactly like that.
Then Zelensky disappeared from the ranking again
And here’s what’s curious: the first place did not turn into a lifetime subscription.
In the JPost ranking for 2023, Zelensky is no longer there. The Ukrainian theme remained: the editorial board then placed Yael Eckstein and Roman Abramovich at 22nd place for helping Ukraine, but the country’s president did not make the list.
The editorial board did not separately explain the reasons, so it is not worth inventing them for it. But the political background is clear. For each such list, the past year is important, not the cumulative merits of a person over a decade.
In 2024, Zelensky returns — already in 22nd place. The Jerusalem Post defines him as a wartime president and role model for democracy — a president of a warring country and an example for democracy. The publication again writes about the war, Ukraine’s ability to continue resisting, Western support, and separately — about the Jewish history of Zelensky’s family.
In 2025, he is again not among the fifty. Then the list was topped by Netanyahu, second was Steve Witkoff, third was Mossad director David Barnea, fourth was Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir. JPost itself formulated the principle very clearly: it is about influence, not approval.
And now 2026 — Zelensky appears again, now at number 21.
Why he returned right now
In the new JPost article, the emphasis is already somewhat different. Zelensky is called “the Jewish president who became the face of Ukraine’s resistance”, but much is said not only about politics. It is separately noted how the Ukrainian army, with fewer resources, used technological solutions and drones that significantly changed modern warfare.
The publication also provides the heavy numbers of this war: according to estimates used by JPost, about 55,000 Ukrainian military personnel and at least 16,874 civilians have died, and about 20% of the country’s territory remains out of Kyiv’s control. These numbers should be perceived exactly as they are — as data provided by The Jerusalem Post to justify its own choice, not as a final universal assessment of all the losses of the war.
For the Israeli reader, there is almost a mirror story here.
In 2022, Ukraine looked at Israel and asked how to defend against missiles and Iranian drones. In 2026, Israeli military and specialists are already closely examining the Ukrainian experience of drone warfare, interceptions, cheap means of destruction, and the fight against Russian-Iranian technologies.
And here the 21st place ceases to be just a compliment to Zelensky.
Zelensky is not alone there: the Ukrainian trace in the Top-50 is much wider
There is another detail in The Jerusalem Post ranking that is easy to miss if you only look at Volodymyr Zelensky’s 21st place. The President of Ukraine is far from the only person in this list whose biography is connected with Ukraine.
Moreover, in two cases, it is not about distant family roots at all.
In 15th position along with Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Aryeh Deri, Gideon Sa’ar, Avigdor Lieberman, and Yair Lapid, The Jerusalem Post placed Yuli Edelstein. The Israeli politician was born in Chernivtsi on August 5, 1958. The official biography of the Knesset today directly indicates the place of birth — Ukraine. In the USSR, Edelstein was a refusenik, secretly taught Hebrew, was arrested by the KGB in 1984, and received three years in camps. He was able to repatriate to Israel in 1987, and much later became the Speaker of the Knesset.
At the opposite end of the list, under No. 46, is a group of major entrepreneurs, among whom is Jan Koum — co-founder of WhatsApp. And here the Ukrainian connection is even more obvious. Koum was born in Kyiv in 1976, in a Jewish family, spent his childhood in Fastiv, Kyiv region, and moved to the USA with his mother as a teenager in 1992. In his current profile, The Jerusalem Post also directly calls him a Ukrainian-born American — an American born in Ukraine.
But if you count not only the place of birth but also family roots, the Ukrainian map of the ranking expands even further.
In 19th place along with Jerry Seinfeld and Gwyneth Paltrow is Steven Spielberg. His connection to Ukraine is not from the series “once ancestors lived somewhere in the Russian Empire.” The director himself said that three out of four of his grandparents were born in Ukraine. Among the places he named are Kamianets-Podilskyi and Sudylkiv, the current Khmelnytskyi region. Spielberg has visited Ukraine and spoke of himself as an American of the second generation in a family of immigrants from there. In the JPost ranking, he stands even higher than Zelensky — however, he shares the position with two other Hollywood representatives.
There is a Ukrainian trace significantly higher — in 12th position. There The Jerusalem Post combined New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and Julie Menin. The Tisch family is one of the most famous Jewish business dynasties in the USA, but the American part of its history began with emigration from Ukraine. Jessica’s ancestors came to the United States in 1904, and the family’s surname was then Tichinsky — Tishinsky. Already in America, it turned into Tisch.
It turns out to be quite an interesting picture. In one 2026 ranking, we see Zelensky from Kryvyi Rih, Edelstein from Chernivtsi, Koum born in Kyiv and raised in Fastiv, Spielberg, a descendant of Jews from Kamianets-Podilskyi and Sudylkiv, and Jessica Tisch, whose ancestors came to America from Ukraine more than a century ago.
This does not mean, of course, that The Jerusalem Post compiled some hidden “Ukrainian ranking.” Each of them has their own story, country, and reason for being in the Top-50.
But for the Ukrainian-Israeli story, the coincidence is still strong. At least five figures in the current list have a direct biographical or family connection to Ukraine. And in this sense, Zelensky’s 21st place is only the most visible part of a much older connection between Ukraine, Israel, and the Jewish world.
No. 8, then No. 1, now No. 21 — but the line is more important than the place
If you restore only the confirmed positions of Zelensky in the main ranking of The Jerusalem Post, it turns out to be a rather torn biography: No. 8 in 2019, No. 1 in 2022, No. 22 in 2024, and No. 21 in 2026. Between these appearances, there were years when Zelensky’s name was not in the Top 50 at all.
That’s why the current ranking is more interesting than the news “Zelensky took 21st place.”
In 2019, Israel saw a young Ukrainian president of Jewish origin, unexpectedly bursting into world politics. In 2022 — a person who stayed in Kyiv after the Russian invasion and became an international symbol of resistance. Then the attention shifted to other directions, including after October 7 and Israel’s own wars. Now Zelensky has returned to the ranking already in a world where the Russian-Ukrainian and Middle Eastern wars sometimes intersect through Iran, drones, air defense, American politics, and the same players.
The search query “Zelensky — Jew” once more often led to conversations about his origin, parents, or grandfather-frontline soldier. Now other questions stand next to it: what place does Zelensky occupy among the most influential Jews in the world, why did The Jerusalem Post place him at 21st place in 2026, and how has this ranking changed since 2019.
The answer, if very briefly, is this: it was not so much Zelensky who changed.
The world around him changed. And with it — what Israel and Jewish media considered him influential for.