The Shofar joins the membership in mourning the death of shul member Myra Gans. We extend condolences to her husband, Arnold, and the family.

Richard Barancik, the last surviving member of the Allied unit known as the Monuments Men and Women, which during and after WWII preserved a vast amount of European artwork and cultural treasures that had been looted and hidden by Nazi Germany, died on July 14 in Chicago. He was 98. The Monuments Men and Women were composed of about 350 people — among them museum directors, curators, scholars, historians and artists — whose missions included [...]

Louise Levy, along with hundreds of others ages 95 and older, was part of a study by the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine to understand how their genetic makeup led to their good physical and cognitive health during extremely long lives. She died on July 17 in Greenwich, CT. She was 112. She had been the oldest known living person in New York State, according to LongeviQuest, which maintains [...]

James B. Zagel, who as a federal judge sentenced former Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich to 14 years in prison for corruption and who earlier helped prosecute Richard Speck for the grisly killings of eight Chicago student nurses, died on July 15 at his home in Chicago. He was 82. The case against Rod Blagojevich centered on allegations that he had tried to sell the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois that had been vacated by [...]

Stephen M. Silverman, a long-time entertainment reporter and author who wrote a critically admired biography of British director David Lean and also a forthcoming book about the Broadway titan Stephen Sondheim, died on July 6 in Manhattan. He was 71. As a journalist, he wrote about Broadway and Hollywood for The New York Post, People Magazine and its website, People Daily, and was its news editor for 20 years. Some of Mr. Silverman’s books were [...]

Bo Goldman, a Hollywood screenwriter who took home Oscars for his work on “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975) and “Melvin and Howard” (1980), died on July 25 in Helendale, CA. He was 90. Film director Martin Brest, for whom Mr. Goldman worked on two films, “Scent of a Woman” (1992) and “Meet Joe Black” (1998), recalled that Mr. Goldman was known as “the screenwriter’s screenwriter,” but that he called him “the man with [...]

Paul Reubens, the comic actor whose bow-tied, childlike alter-ego Pee-wee Herman became an unlikely movie and television sensation in the 1980s, died on July 2 in Los Angeles. He was 70. Mr. Reubens had scores of acting credits in a career that began in the 1960s, but Pee-wee, a character he created in the late 1970s as a l0-minute bit when he was a member of the Los Angeles comedy troupe the Groundlings, overshadowed all [...]

Dorothy Tapper Goldman, a philanthropist and major collector of American historical documents who in 2021 sold her original printed copy of the U.S. Constitution, which her husband had bought in 1988 for $165,000, for a record-setting $43.2 million, died on July 23 at her home in Manhattan. She was 78. She used the proceeds from the sale to establish the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation, which has made substantial contributions to the New York Historical Society, [...]

Alan Sherman, a pioneer in strengthening connections between U.S. and Israeli sports for five decades, died on July 29 at his home in Potomac, MD. He was 87. He was instrumental in creating the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, a world resource for the contributions of Jews in sports. He was also the long-time vice president of the Maccabi USA/Sports for Israel, and introduced the U.S. to participation in the World Maccabiah Games. He [...]

Lois Libien, who provided household hints in books and in a nationally syndicated newspaper column, died on July 25 in River Vale, NJ. She was 87. Ms. Libien was best known for a practical, often witty, hand book first published in 1976 as “Super Economy Housecleaning.” Reviewing the handbook, The San Antonio Express said it provided “breezy advice on how to maintain appliances, make your own inexpensive cleaning solutions, and what to do if your [...]