Elie Wiesel died in 2016 at the age of 78. During his lifetime, he wrote more than 40 books, including seven collections of profiles of Jewish sages. Filled With Fire and Light, a posthumous eighth volume, was released in November. It is a treasury of previously unpublished lectures about the lives of biblical prophets, talmudists and leaders of the Hasidic world.

Curt Schleier, writing for The Forward, described the lectures as “simply told tales of intelligence, perseverance and miracles.” Wiesel was a scholar and a teacher, he said, but his writing is a “conversation with the reader…leavened with a sense of humor.”

Sarah Aroeste — American singer, musician, composer, author, educator, Sephardic culture activist — has recorded the world’s first-ever all-Ladino Hanukkah album. “Hanuká! was released on Nov. 19 in plenty of time for this year’s super-early start to the Festival of Lights. From board books for babies to middle-grade novels, animated videos to Carnegie Hall performances, Aroeste showcases contemporary Sephardic culture on many platforms. Driving her projects motivation to increase interest in and connection to her ancestral language of Ladino, a Judeo-Spanish linguistic. “How do I do that? With joy,” she says.

The actor, Paul Rudd, 52, is People magazine’s 2021 “Sexiest Man Alive.” Audiences have fallen in love with the actor over the years. This month alone, he’s returning with Will Ferrell for the new Apple TV+ series “The Shrink Next Door,” and is taking on one of Hollywood’s most treasured franchises with “Ghostbusters: Afterlife.”

Despite his rise to leading man superstardom, Rudd insists he’s most happy at home with his wife of 18 years, Julie, and their kids Jack, 17, and Darby, 12.

Now that he’s officially sexy, Rudd anticipates his life changing a lot, he says. “I’m hoping now that I’ll finally be invited to some of those sexy dinners with Clooney and Pitt and B Jordan. And I figure I’ll be on a lot more yachts. I’m excited to expand my yachting life. And I’ll probably try to get better at brooding in really soft light.”

Karen Friedman, a judge on the Baltimore City Circuit Court’s 8th Judicial Circuit, has been appointed by President Joe Biden to serve as director of criminal justice innovation, development and engagement at the Department of Justice. She will start in the newly created position, which is housed in the department’s Office of Justice Programs, on Jan. 3, 2022.
Friedman was the first female Orthodox Jewish judge in Maryland. She has served on the circuit court since 2014, and will step down from the bench at the end of this year. Friedman was previously a district court judge in Baltimore, and before that served as a judge on the city’s Orphans’ Court.
The appointee has a long history of activity and involvement in the Jewish community. “Being a woman and being Jewish have been important factors in my life, and in shaping who I am and how I view the world. And that definitely informs my decisions on the bench,” Friedman said. “Jewish people have a strong belief that if you change one life, it’s as though you’ve changed the world. If you grow up with that belief and that belief is part of your value system, then you know that your ability to touch people’s lives on the bench is so important.”

The Shofar has learned that shul president Judith K. Weiner has been selected as a featured artist in the Heckscher Museum’s 2022 Emerging Artists Instagram Takeover Series. She will be introduced on the museum’s website beginning in mid-December, and on its Facebook and Instagram accounts in January.

The 2021 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded jointly to David Julius, pictured left, and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch. “Our ability to sense heat, cold and touch is essential for survival and underpins our interaction with the world around us,” the Nobel Committee said. “In our daily lives, we take these sensations for granted, but how are nerve impulses initiated so that temperature and pressure can be perceived? This question has been solved by this year’s Nobel Prize laureates.

Julius, a professor at the University of California/San Francisco, and Patapoutian, a professor at Scripps Research in California, will share the Nobel Prize of 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.1 million).

In an autobiographical piece published online last year in honor of his winning the prestigious 2020 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, Julius described his family’s Jewish roots, saying he “grew up in a seaside Brooklyn neighborhood…that’s been a landing pad for Eastern European immigrants like my grandparents, who fled Czarist Russia and antisemitism in pursuit of a better life.”

Dr. Joshua Angrist is one of a trio of economists to share the 2021 Nobel Prize in economics for pioneering research that transformed widely held ideas about the labor force, showing how an increase in the minimum wage doesn’t hinder hiring, and for creating a framework to study this type of societal issue that can’t rely on traditional scientific methods. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the three have “completely reshaped empirical work in the economic sciences.”

Sharing the prize with Dr. Angrist, a professor at MIT, are David Card of the University of California, Berkeley, and Guido Imbens from Stanford University.