Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, the larger-than-life soldier and politician whose stormy, six-decade career helped to define the image and character of the Jewish state, has died at 85. He had been in a coma since suffering a massive stroke on January 4, 2006, while serving as prime minister. A charismatic leader and a…
Amiri Baraka, the New Jersey poet laureate whose works were celebrated by blacks but often condemned by Jews, has died. Baraka’s writings, lectures and poetry brought him national renown beginning in the 1960s, and the one-time black nationalist was celebrated by many African Americans as a voice of the disenfranchised. He was a winner of…
The Budapest-born soprano Marta Eggerth, who died on December 26 at the age of 101, incarnated the fact that the frothy Middle European art-form of operetta had a vastly significant Jewish element. Both Eggerth and her husband the star tenor Jan Kiepura (1902-1966), Poland’s prefiguration of Mario Lanza, had Jewish mothers. This made life difficult…
(JTA) — In 1992, Edgar Bronfman was preparing to leave North America for Paris for his first meeting with then-French President Francois Mitterand at the Elysee Palace when at the last minute Bronfman decided he wanted to take an unexpected meeting in Geneva instead. So he asked Serge Cwajgenbaum, Bronfman’s right-hand man in Europe, to…
(JTA) — In the coming days, many eulogies will attempt to capture the magnitude of the loss suffered this week by the Jewish community. Really, though, all you need are eight words: Edgar Bronfman was a prince of his people. There are other machers who devote much of their time and money to Jewish causes. But…
Billionaire businessman and philanthropist Edgar Bronfman, the chairman of the Seagram Company and long-serving president of the World Jewish Congress, died at his New York home on Saturday aged 84. Montreal-born Bronfman took control of the Seagram empire from his father, Samuel Bronfman who had founded the liquor company in 1924. He then expanded its…
Nelson Mandela, who died December 5, has become a beloved icon for all of South Africa, and no less for its Jewish community. But until he became the first democratically elected president of South Africa, he had had no formal relationship with its organized Jewish community. That was because the formal structures of the community…
Al Chernin, who died November 26 at age 85, was one of the last of the giants of Jewish public affairs. That overused cliché notwithstanding, his death truly marks the end of an era. It was an era characterized by a communal structure and a communal approach to public affairs that is today all but…
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