Jewish Geniuses

Behold, the geniuses have been announced!

On Tuesday, the MacArthur Foundation, embarking on its 34th year of genius-bequeathing, announced its 2015 fellows. Each will receive a “genius grant” in the amount of $625,000 over a period of five years. Among the class, at least three of them are Jewish and one is a Jewish studies professor, reported The Forward. Let’s meet them:

The Artist: Nicole Eisenman
The New York Times reported that Eisenman, 50, was shopping at her local grocery store buying bacon on Fire Island when she got the news of her selection as selection as a MacArthur Fellow. Eisenman, whose paintings go for about $75,000 a pop, was commissioned by the Jewish Museum in 2010 for an oil-on-canvas painting titled “Seder,” which was recently displayed from March to August during the Museum’s “Masterpieces & Curiosities” exhibition. Born in France, Eisenman now resides in Brooklyn. In 2005, she and artist A.L. Steiner founded Ridykeulous, an art collective that focuses on queer and feminist art.

The Historian: Marina Rustow
Rustow, 46, is a professor of Near Eastern Studies and History at Princeton University, who is combing through ancient documents to piece together a previously uncharted past: Jewish life during the Medieval Middle East, a period of civil unrest. Through the translation of ancient Arabic documents called the Cairo geniza texts, which were previously stored and forgotten in Cairo’s ancient Ben Ezra Synagogue for over a millennium, she’s hoping to unveil a historical perspective on the relations between the Jewish and Islamic communities of yesteryear. Rustow is the director of Princeton’s Geniza Lab and the co-editor of Jewish Studies at the Crossroads of Anthropology and History: Authority, Diaspora, Tradition (2011).

The Writer: Ben Lerner
Lerner, a bespectacled novelist, poet, and critic, is an English professor at Brooklyn College. The 36-year-old is the author of three books of poetry and, more recently, two critically-acclaimed works of fiction: Leaving the Atocha Station (2011) and 10:04 (2014). Lerner, a father of two young children, told The New York Times that the MacArthur grant would enable him to spend more time writing and less time teaching. “It means you don’t have to take on more things,” he said. “You use the money to make space for the work.”

The Health Activist: Gary Cohen
In 1996, Gary Cohen, co-founded the international organization Health Care Without Harm (HCWH), which advocates for the “greenification” of health-care corporations and hospital systems in over 50 countries. According to Cohen’s MacArthur bio, since its inception, HCWH’s outreach has eliminated the use of toxins such as mercury in medical equipment and severely reduced the the number of carcinogenic-emitting waste incinerators in the United States. The 59-year-old’s endeavors have been monumental in paving the path for healthcare reform and the adoption of safety procedures by health care institutions around the world.

Related: Editor Misreads Press Release, Thinks He Won MacArthur Genius Grant