The Forward, in collaboration with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Jewish media outlets around the world, is sharing obituaries of people in the Jewish community who have died from the coronavirus or ensuing complications. Do you know someone who has…
COVID Deaths
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News Avraham Yeshayahu Heber, 55, Helped Hundreds Of Israelis Find Kidney Donors
(JTA) — Avraham Yeshayahu Heber, an Israeli rabbi whose charity facilitated hundreds of kidney transplants, died of the coronavirus. Heber died April 23 in Jerusalem. He was 55. Heber was the founder of Matnat Chaim (Hebrew for “gift of life”), an organization started in 2009 that matches kidney donors with transplant patients. The organization is…
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News Ted Ruskin, 76, Avid Student Of Denver Jewish History
(JTA) — DENVER (Intermountain Jewish News via JTA) — Theodore “Ted” Paul Ruskin, whose activism mirrored the evolving face of Jewish Denver, died of COVID-19 on April 7, 2020, at the Medical Center of Aurora. He was 76. Rabbi Avraham Mintz officiated at an April 12 graveside service at Mt. Nebo Cemetery. Feldman Mortuary made…
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News Alex Klein, 71, Kosher Caterer Whose Prayers Stormed The Heavens
(JTA) — Yom Kippur had just ended and as the members of his synagogue prepared to go home to eat after a long day of fasting, Alex Klein walked up to the Holy Ark and, placed his hand on it, and began speaking directly to God. He stood that way for the better part of…
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News Benjamin Levin, 93, Last Surviving Member Of The Legendary Avengers Partisan Group
(JTA) — Benjamin Levin spent much of his early life fighting. At just 14, he joined a militant group fighting the Nazis in his native Lithuania. After the war, he worked to smuggle Jewish refugees to pre-state Israel. And in 1948, he arrived on the shores of the newly established Jewish state aboard the Altalena,…
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News Michael Sorkin, 71, Urban Planner Who Proposed Design For A Palestinian Capital In Jerusalem
(JTA) — Michael Sorkin never thought small. In 2001, the Washington, D.C.-born architect offered a comprehensive blueprint for turning East Jerusalem into the capital of a Palestinian state. He followed up that proposal a year later with a book, “The Next Jerusalem: Sharing the Divided City,” an examination on how urban planning could facilitate peace…
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News Fred Pressner, 73, Led Venezuelan Jews During The Chavez Era
(JTA) — Fred Pressner, a former president of the Venezuelan Jewish community, died April 18 of COVID-19. He was 73. Born in Romania to survivors of the Holocaust, Pressner emigrated to Venezuela in 1960. He would go on to assume the presidency of the Confederation of Israelite Associations of Venezuela, the country’s umbrella of Jewish…
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News Mark Steiner, 77, Celebrated Philosopher Of Mathematics
JERUSALEM (JTA) — While Mark Steiner may have been one of the most important philosophers of mathematics of the past half century, it was his warmth, humor and love of Judaism that most endeared him to his colleagues. The Hebrew University professor died of COVID-19 on April 6. He was 77. Born in the Bronx…
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News Noach Dear, 66, Former New York City Councilman And State Supreme Court Judge
(JTA) — Noach Dear, a longtime New York City Council member representing largely Orthodox areas of Brooklyn, died April 19 in New York of complications related to COVID-19. He was 66. Dear was elected to the council in 1983 representing sections of Midwood, Bensonhurst and Borough Park that were heavily populated with Orthodox Jews. Dear…
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