See a rundown of the top 30

It’s less a case of “you’re fired!” and more like ata mefutar! Sir Alan Sugar has been left off the annual list of the 100 people most influential within Britain’s Jewish community.

Sir Alan, worth an estimated £800 million and star of the television show The Apprentice, has not been listed in The Jewish Chronicle’s Power 100, published yesterday.

The Chelsea boss Avram Grant is also absent, possibly a more astonishing exception given Chelsea’s ascent of the Premier League and passage to the Champions League final.

By contrast, the Times comment editor Daniel Finkelstein is in at No 11, and the non-Jewish Gordon Brown is at No 29. However, the Prime Minister ranks lower place than his predecessor Tony Blair, who last year was at No 13.

The highest-placed woman in the list is Dame Vivien Duffield, at No 4. She is fronting the plans for Britain’s first Jewish Community Centre, the ambitious London project planned to open in 2011.

The Power 100 list, topped by the Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, features other rabbis, philanthropists, journalists and academics, as well as other non-Jews besides Mr Brown. Sir Jonathan is described in glowing terms and compared favourably to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who is criticised for slipping on “banana skins”, as in the recent furore over his speech on Sharia.

The Jewish Chronicle says of Sir Jonathan: “Few can match his gift for drawing insights from the Bible into contemporary society and communicating them to a broad audience.”

Ben Rich, one of the judges, said that the list was an important way for people to understand who was making decisions and speaking on their behalf.

“It’s not about famous Jews. Otherwise we would have Amy Winehouse and Avram Grant on the list. It’s about influence on the community. Sir Alan is a generous philanthropist but he does not pursue a specific agenda.”

David Rowan, the Editor of the Chronicle, also defended the omission of Grant and Sir Alan. “For all their wider influence, they were deemed to have limited impact on the UK Jewish community. This is, after all, a list of the 100 people who do most to shape Jewish life in Britain, which is different from a list of successful people who happen to be Jewish.”

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, new in at No 51, is praised for hosting the first Chanukkah party at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Ed Balls, the Education Secretary, is a new entry at 54. His approach towards faith schools is of great importance to the Jewish community. The pop star and producer Mark Ronson is a new entry at 62, after his announcement that he will make a Chanukkah CD.

Gerald Ronson, the businessman and philanthropist, is in second place, with the property dealer Trevor Pears in third.