Artist and Writer Rachel Abrams Dies

By Forward Staff June 7, 2013

Writer, editor and artist Rachel Abrams died June 7 of stomach cancer, at age 62.

Abrams came from a noted neo-conservative family that included her mother, Midge Decter, a founder of the Project for a New American Century; her stepfather and longtime Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz, and her husband, political scientist and diplomat Elliott Abrams. Abrams’ brother, John Podhoretz, is the current editor of Commentary.

She was a board member of the Emergency Committee for Israel and maintained a blog, “Bad Rachel,” that was critical of liberal thinkers and American Middle East policy. Her work also appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Commentary and The Weekly Standard.

An email to the members of Ansche Chesed synagogue on the Upper West Side included this remembrance from John Podhoretz:

Rachel was many things—a writer of great power, a visual artist and sculptor of immense talent, an editor of remarkable delicacy. She spent her teenage years wandering around the Upper West Side of Manhattan…barefoot, in preparation for the three years she would spend on Kibbutz Machanaynim in the 1970s. She was tough minded and tender-hearted, and her passions were her children, her husband, her family, the United States, Israel, the Yankees, Anna Karenina, mystery novels and the Cooking Network. She was surrounded in her last days by her beloved family–husband Elliott, children Jake and Nani and Joey, children-in-law Hannah and Gaby and Josh, by me and her sisters Naomi Decter and Ruthie Blum and by her parents, Midge and Norman Podhoretz.

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