News of iconic Israeli singer-songwriter Arik Einstein’s sudden death November 26 at age 74 spread quickly throughout Israel and around the globe. Israelis and Jews the world over, including political leaders and famous artists, poured out their shock and grief, many saying that the iconic entertainer’s passing signaled the end of an era. While he…
When Judge Edward R. Korman asked us to assist him, as special master and deputy special master, with the allocation and oversight of the $1.25 billion Swiss Banks Settlement, we knew that there were lessons we needed to learn from those who had devised and administered earlier Holocaust compensation programs. We remain ever grateful that…
Cheb i Sabbah, a DJ, producer and composer known for combining Asian, Middle Eastern and African influences into his global electronica music, died November 6 at age of 66. The San Francisco-based Sabbah was born Haim Serge El Baz in Constantine, Algeria to a working-class Jewish family with some Berber ancestry. Major music publications have…
(JTA) — Saul Kagan, the founder and a longtime chief of the Claims Conference, died Saturday at age 91. Kagan helped found the organization in 1951 to be the main vehicle for negotiating with Germany over restitution for Holocaust survivors. In a statement announcing his death, the Claims Conference credited Kagan with securing tens of…
Michael Stein, a co-founder of the influential Washington Institute for Near East Policy think-tank, has died. Stein died Nov. 7, one day before he turned 88, the Washington Institute said in a release. “Mike was a giant — a man of great ideas, boundless energy, and profound devotion to principle,” the institute’s current chairman, Howard…
Yiddish folksong expert, researcher and anthologist Chana Mlotek died on November 4 at age 91. Mlotek maintained a decades-long association with the Forverts and with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, where she was the institute’s music archivist. When I worked with Mlotek at YIVO, people would come to the archives and say, “I only…
Lou Reed — legendary rock iconoclast, gimlet-eyed poet laureate of the New York City streets, and one of the most important songwriters of the past fifty years — died yesterday at his Long Island home in Southampton, N.Y., following a long battle with liver disease. If it seems amazing that Reed lived to age 71,…
I first heard those eerie xylophone notes that open the Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning” when I was 14, sitting on the rug of my friend Mollie’s bedroom. A moment later, I heard Lou Reed’s voice for the first time, and everything changed. That day, we were two Upper West Side Jewish girls who showed up…
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