Death is a fact of life. This week, we honor the life of Charlotte Rae, born Charlotte Rae Lubotsky, who brought joy, and wisdom as Mrs. Garrett in “Diff’rent Strokes” and the subsequent “The Facts of Life.” On Sunday, she died at 92 from bone cancer. In her last year, choosing to forgo treatment, she…
The Ivanka Trump fashion brand met an untimely death on Tuesday morning, July 24th. It was only 11 years old. The brand’s sudden demise was confirmed by its founder, Ivanka Trump. Ivanka Trump brand began as a fine jewelry company, and grew to include so much more: shoes, bags, even clothes. The brand was initially…
At the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), we educate Jewish leaders as klei kodesh; that is, skilled organizational visionaries in the service of God and the Jewish people. None embodied that mission with more unadorned authenticity than Richard Siegel, of blessed memory. In 2007, Richard became interim director of the School of Jewish…
Rich Siegel, one of the creators of The Jewish Catalog, died Wednesday evening in Los Angeles after a two-year battle with cancer. He was 70. The news was shared in an email to friends and colleagues by Barry Holtz, professor at The Jewish Theological Seminary. In 1973, Siegel, along with Michael and Sharon Strassfeld, created…
Robert S. Rubin, a philanthropist and investment banker, has died at 86. As chairman of the board of the Brooklyn Museum, Rubin defended the institution from censorship after then-mayor Rudy Giuliani took offense at one of its planned exhibits. His son Nathaniel told The New York Times’s Sam Roberts that the cause of Rubin’s death…
Dr. Fanya Gottesfeld Heller, the Holocaust survivor, author, and educator, has passed away. Heller authored the book, “Love in a World of Sorrow: A Teenage Girl’s Holocaust Memoirs,” and was the subject of the 2009 documentary film, “Teenage Witness: The Fanya Heller Story.” She was 93. Fanya Gottesfeld was a teenager when she was forced…
In the spring of 1976, the Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter appointed Zbigniew Brzezinski (March 28, 1928 – May 26, 2017), who was teaching at Columbia University, as his foreign policy adviser. I served at that time as the director-general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, and I knew that Brzezinski had never visited Israel, so I…
Before my mother died, I didn’t think about her aesthetic vision, though I always loved her fantastical photographs (1980s–2000s) and large abstract paintings (1970s) that filled our family’s brownstone in Manhattan’s West Village. But at her funeral, Rabbi David Adelson, dean of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and a family friend, delivered a eulogy…
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