Immediately after Elan Steinberg died early on April 6 at age 59, those who understood the tremendous historical role he had played spoke about what he had meant to them and to the Jewish community. Calling him “One of the great Jewish activists of the past decades,” World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder described…
In Yiddish there are some professions or positions that use the diminutive form of a name as a sign of popular endearment. These include Hasidic rebbes, cantors, thieves and actors. This was true of the beloved Yiddish actress Chayele Ash-Furman, who died on March 8 in Northern California at the age of 90. According to…
Crossposted from Haaretz One of the Haredi community’s most veteran leaders passed away overnight Tuesday in Bnei Brak. Rabbi Moshe Yehoshua Hager, the head of the Vizhnitz Hasidic dynasty and president of Agudath Israel’s Council of Torah Sages, died aged 95. His funeral will be held on Wednesday afternoon, and is expected to draw mass…
Poet, filmmaker, mystic, photographer and publisher Ira Cohen, who died last April, can still fill a room with energy. With the aid of Cohen’s address book, friends gathered this month at the Living Theatre on New York’s Lower East Side to celebrate the life of the Bronx-born countercultural figure who spent years mixing it up…
Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut, Senior Scholar at Holy Blossom Temple, died February 8 in Toronto at the age of 99. Holy Blossom, a Reform Synagogue, is the oldest congregation in Canada’s largest city. Rabbi Plaut was the longtime senior rabbi there, from 1961 to 1977. Plaut was born in Munster, Germany, the son of Jonas…
Crossposted from Haaretz Yaffa Yarkoni, one of Israel’s greatest and best-loved singers, passed away January 1 in Tel Aviv at the age of 86, following a battle with Alzheimer’s disease. Lyricist Avi Koren, a close friend of the singer’s for 45 years, recalled yesterday that Yarkoni, an Israel Prize laureate, once said to him: “Look…
Bernard Bellush, a labor historian and activist, has died of natural causes at age 94. Bernard Bellush, who was an editor of the the Forverts’s English supplement and served on the Forward Association’s board, died Friday night at a hospital, his wife, Jewel Bellush, wrote in a message to friends. Bernard Bellush was raised in…
It is hard to imagine the world without Adrienne Cooper, a friend said to me on learning that she was near death. As she did for so many others, she enriched my life for decades with thrilling song, wise words, and trenchant humor. She is perhaps best known as a concert and recording artist, one…
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