David Levy, a Moroccan-born Israeli who rose from ditch digger to Israel’s political heights, often embodying the resentments of Jews of North Africa and Middle Eastern origin, who felt ill-treated by Europe-rooted elites, died on June 2 at a hospital in Jerusalem. He was 86.

Mr. Levy was Israel’s foreign minister three times in the 1990s and often its deputy prime minister across two decades.

He entered politics, starting in the Israeli labor federation, Histadrut, and then in the right-wing nationalist Herut Party, a core component of what would become Likud. “He swiftly learned how to play the political game,” the New York Times said.

As he told his biographer, “I had to find a road that would lead to the corridors of power.”

Yael Dayan, a celebrated Israeli writer who, after the death of her father, the war hero and statesman Moshe Dayan, entered politics and became a proponent of women’s rights, L.G.B.T.Q. issues, and a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict, died on May 18 at her home in Tel Aviv. She was 85.

Ms. Dayan was the last surviving child of Mr. Dayan, who served as Israel’s defense minister during the Six-Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973. With his distinctive black eyepatch, having lost his left eye in combat fighting with the British in WWII — he was the unmistakable patriarch of a family dynasty.

Ms. Dayan shot to literary stardom at age 20 with New Face in the Mirror (1959), an autobiographical novel written in English about a young female soldier whose father is a military commander. Other books followed.

As a member of the Labor Party, she served three terms in the Knesset, and was instrumental in passing legislation that outlawed sexual harassment. She also founded the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality, and backed measures protecting L.G.B.T.Q. individuals from discrimination.

Sigmund Rolat, a Polish Holocaust survivor who tapped the wealth he had accumulated as a businessman in the United States to support cultural projects in his homeland, died on May 19 at his home in Alpine, NJ. He was 93. Notable among his projects is the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews that stands on the grounds of the Warsaw Ghetto.

“I want the gate of our museum, and not the ‘Arbeit macht frei’ gate to be the first gate that will be seen by Jews visiting Poland,” Mr. Rolat told Forbes magazine in 2014, referring to the inscription (“Work sets you free”) that greeted inmates when they entered the main Auschwitz concentration camp. “The Jews should first learn our shared history,” he added. “And then, of course, they should see Auschwitz, but with a better understanding of what happened there.”

“It is not another museum of the Holocaust,” Mr. Rolat told McClatchy Newspapers in 2013. “It is a museum of life.”

Howard Fineman, a witty encyclopedic political reporter who dominated the fast-moving world of Washington journalism for nearly 40 years, died on June 11 at his home in Washington. He was 75.

He was what might be called the post-post-Watergate generation of crusading journalists. Mr. Fineman brought a polished professionalism to his tasks and assignments, The New York Times said.

“We are in what I view as a new global war for control of the search for truth,” he said. “We have to mobilize our truth-seeking strength to survive, for America and democracy to survive.”

Martin Starger, who as a senior executive at ABC in the 1970s helped bring “Happy Days,” “Roots,” “Rich Man, Poor Man” and other shows to the small screen before turning to producing movies, notably Robert Altman’s “Nashville,” died on May 31 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 92.Silverman,

Mr. Starger joined ABC in the mid-1960s and rose to positions of increasing importance, culminating in his promotion to president of ABC Entertainment in 1972. After three years, he left to start his own production company, with a deal to create programs exclusively for the network. Some of the programming he left behind for his successor, Fred Silverman, was responsible for ABC’s rise to the top spot in prime time for the 19076-77 season. Seven of the 10 top-rated shows that season were on ABC.

For the next two decades, Mr. Starger produced theatrical and television films, including “Sophie’s Choice,” “Escape From Sobibor,” and two Muppet movies. He also produced several Broadway shows, including the comedy “Lend Me a Tenor.”

This year’s Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction went to Jewish author Nathan Thrall for his book A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy. Published days before Oct. 7, the book focuses on a Palestinian father’s efforts to uncover news about his son following a bus crash. The Pulitzer jury called it “…a finely reported and intimate account of life under Israeli occupation of the West Bank.”

While Thrall’s book predates the Oct. 7 attack in Israel by Hamas, his book tour has been conducted in its shadow and has been a frequent magnet for controversy. Some tour stops canceled planned talks by Thrall, saying they would be “insensitive” in the midst of Israel’s war against Hamas. After the book’s publication, a local Jewish federation protested Thrall’s plan to teach a Bard College

course on whether Israel’s treatment of Palestinians could be considered apartheid.

Thrall is a Bard College professor based in Jerusalem; his work often is highly critical of Israel.

Carrie Robbins, a meticulous and resourceful costume designer who worked on more than 30 Broadway shows from the 1960s to the 2000s, died on April 12, in Manhattan. She was 81.

Critics hailed Ms. Robbins’ costumes over the years for transporting audiences to the Spain of Don Quixote, the underworld of early-18th-century London, and the ruined South during the Civil War. For “Grease,” she studied high school yearbooks from the 1950s. For a 1992 musical version of “Anna Karenina,” she found ball gowns from the turn of the 20th century. Describing Ms. Robbins’ work on a 1985 Broadway production of “The Octette Bridge Club,” a play by P.J. Barry set in the 1930s, The Reporter Dispatch of White Plains said she seemed “to have raided every thrift shop in town.” She said her biggest thrill in designing costumes was watching actors transform. “The guys in ‘Grease’ were reluctant to have their hair cut,” she said. “But when we cut it, put them in tapered pants and a jacket with the collar turned up, there they were — swaggering around the stage and flipping grease off their combs.”