Andrée Geulen was not Jewish, but because of her, 300-400 Jewish children were saved during the Nazi occupation of Belgium. For that she was honored in 1989 by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Among the Nations, as recognition given to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from the Nazi genocide. She was a young Belgian teacher at an all-girls boarding school in Brussels in the 1940s when her Jewish students were no longer [...]
Charlotte Frank, who blazed a career path beginning as a fourth-grade teacher in New York City to become a policymaker codifying ambitious curricula for millions of students, died on May 26 at her home in Manhattan. She was 93. The daughter of unschooled Eastern European immigrants, Dr. Frank was recruited in 1980 to oversee curriculum and instruction for the New York City school system by Chancellor Frank J. Macchiarola. She is credited with bringing new [...]
Isaac Berger, known as Ike, who won three Olympic medals, six World Championships (twice winning gold), and eight U.S. national championships in weightlifting during the 1950s and ‘60s, died June 4. Berger is remembered for his feats of strength, performing massive lifts while competing in the featherweight class. He was the first featherweight in history to lift more than 800 pounds in the snatch and clean and jerk events. Also, he was the first American [...]
A.B. Yehoshua, the acclaimed Israeli novelist whose storytelling offered human portraits that captured the conditions in a land fraught with political strife, died on June 14 in Tel Aviv. He was 85. In an oeuvre of 11 novels, three short-story collections, and four plays, he tackled as variety of narrative forms — from surrealist to historical — and delved into uncommon subjects. “Critics praised him for his nuanced understanding of the contradictory impulses that bedevil [...]
Lennie Rosenbluth, the All-America forward who led a North Carolina team to an unbeaten season and a thrilling victory over Wilt Chamberlain’s Kansas squad in the 1957 NCAA basketball tournament championship game, died on June 18. He was 89. Rosenbluth, at 6 feet 5 inches, averaged 28 points per game in the 1956-57 season and beat out Chamberlain for the Helms Foundation College Basketball Player of the Year award. His Tar Heels went 32-0 and [...]
Sheryl Sandberg has announced that she will leave Meta, the parent company of Facebook, after 14 years as its chief operating officer under Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership. When Zuckerberg hired the Google executive, she called the move “to help another young company grow into a global leader the opportunity of a lifetime.” She said she plans to focus on her personal philanthropy and her foundation, Lean In, and will also remain on Meta’s board of directors. [...]
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the U.S. will launch a team to help the Ukrainian authorities prosecute war crimes committed during the Russian invasion; the effort will be headed by Eli Rosenbaum, a 36-year veteran of the Justice Department who previously led U.S. eff0rts to identify and deport Nazi war criminals. Garland announced the initiative during a surprise visit to Ukraine on June 21. Rosenbaum was head of the department’s Office of Special investigations, [...]
“The Dance of the Flags,” a feature of the Jerusalem Day celebration in Israel, on May 28, commemorates the reunification of East Jerusalem with West Jerusalem following the Six-Day War of 1967. Asish photo
Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) have unearthed a 2,100-year-old agricultural farmstead in Northern Israel’s Galilee region. According to Dr. Amani Abu-Hamid, director of the salvage excavation for the IAA, the occupants of the homestead appear to have left in a hurry, leaving behind their possessions. “We were lucky to discover this capsule, frozen in time, in which articles remained where they were left by the occupants, who apparently left in haste, perhaps from [...]
Israel has signed an historic free trade deal with the United Arab Emirates, its first with an Arab country. The agreement will eliminate customs duties on 96% of food and agricultural products, cosmetics, medical equipment and medicine, according to Israel’s economic ministry. Meanwhile, an Israeli news station has reported that a senior Israeli official visited Saudi Arabia for talks on security, one of several recent signs indicating that Riyadh could be the next capital to [...]
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