Julie Menin is the first Jew to be elected speaker of the New Yor City Council, the second-most powerful government position in America’s largest city. Mainstream Jewish leaders see Menin as a check on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and a potential guardrail on his actions, according to The Forward.
By Len Berk The whole story of Barbra Streisand and the sturgeon began a few months ago on a Thursday when I was at my regular spot at the fish counter. A pleasant, attractive woman ordered a pound of Nova and, before Slim, my sharp slicing knife, and I started our journey through the salmon, she said, “I’m buying this for Barbra Streisand.” I was skeptical, so I asked her what her relationship was with [...]
Dick Zimmer, a three-term Republican congressman from New Jersey, who sponsored the landmark legislation known as Megan’s Law, requiring states to disclose where convicted sex offenders are living, died on Dec. 30, 2025, at a nursing care facility in Flemington, NJ. He was 81. First elected to the House of Representatives in 1990, Mr. Zimmer sponsored Megan’s Law after the 1994 rape and murder of 7-year-old Megan Kanka in Hamilton Township, NJ. Her family had [...]
Gary Graffman, a former child prodigy whose successful international career as a concert pianist was cut short when a rare neurological disorder cost him the use of his right hand in his 50s, setting him on a new and distinguished path as a teacher and administrator, died on Dec. 27 at his home in New York. He was 97. His performing career lasted until the early 1980s, when he began to suffer from focal dystonia. [...]
Eva Schloss, an Auschwitz survivor who dedicated her life to speaking out against prejudice and to preserving the legacy of her stepsister Anne Frank, died on Jan. 10 in London. She was 96. “We hope her legacy will continue to inspire through the books, films and resources she leaves behind,” Ms. Schloss’s family said in a statement published by the Anne Frank Trust UK, an organization she co-founded to challenge intolerance and educate young people [...]
Josef Veselsky, a Holocaust survivor and table tennis champion who spent more than a year as Ireland’s oldest man, died on Jan. 10 at 107. Born Joseph Weiss to a Jewish family, he was 20 when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia. He changed his name after his mother, Bertha, urged him to change his name to “something more Slovak,” according to the Irish Times. He joined the resistance and survived the war in the Carpathian Mountains, according [...]
Rhoda Levine, one of the rare female opera directors to work steadily starting in the 1970s, at a time when the field was dominated by men, and who was acclaimed for clear, straightforward interpretations of the classics as well as stirring world premieres, died on Jan. 6 at her home in Manhattan. She was 93. She brought true theatrical acting into opera, insisting on directing singers as actors, demanding a kind of realism in an [...]
Jerome Lowenstein, a distinguished professor of medicine at New York University who in an artistic sideline helped found a literary journal and a small publishing imprint. The company drew book-world attention when it published a debut novel that won a Pulitzer Prize after being rejected by many other editors. Dr. Lowenstein died on Dec. 8 at his home in Manhattan. He was 92. In his 1997 book, The Midnight Meal and Other Essays About Doctors, [...]
Hessy Levinsons Taft, who as an infant appeared on the cover of a Nazi magazine in Germany, promoting her as the ideal Aryan baby, a distinction complicated by the fact that she was Jewish and had been exploited as part of a hoax, died on Jan. 1 at her home in San Francisco. She was 91. Th episode began in 1934, when Hessy was 6 months old and her parents hired a photographer to [...]
Georges Borchardt, a literary agent who arranged for the publication in English of Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir, Night, after it was rejected by 14 American publishers, and who introduced American readers to masters of the avant-garde, like the playwright Samuel Beckett, died on Jan. 18 at his home in Manhattan. He was 97. Mr. Borchardt had an astute eye for literary talent. At various times, he or the Manhattan agency that he and his wife, [...]
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