Judy Wald, a top headhunter and talent spotter, who shaped careers in advertising’s golden era and transformed the industry’s recruiting field, died Feb. 12 in Manhattan. She was 96.

Ms. Wald was a formidable Madison Avenue gatekeeper. From copywriters to top creative directors, everyone in the industry knew that the path to a new job often ran through her. “I believe she invented me,” said Jerry Della Femina, who founded his own leading agency and wrote a memoir that was an inspiration for the long-running television series “Mad Men.”

Ms. Wald was sometimes compared to that show’s fictional characters. She was a stylish, brash and supremely confident entrepreneur at a time when few women wielded executive power on Madison Avenue.

Conductor James Levine, who ruled over the Metropolitan Opera for more than four decades before being eased aside when his health declined and then was fired for sexual improprieties, died March 9 in Palm Springs, CA. He was 77.

Known for bushy hair and an ever-present towel draped over a shoulder during rehearsals, Levine greatly expanded the Met’s repertory, and was especially praised for his performances of Wagner, Verdi and Berg.

In addition to his lengthy tenure at the Met, Levine was music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Ravinia Festival from 1973-93, the Munich Philharmonic from 1999-2004, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 2004-11.

He led upward of 110 performances in a season in the 1980s, including tours. He started conducting from a chair in late 2001, when tremors in his left arm and leg became noticeable. His health worsened in 2006. In May 2013, he conducted from a motorized wheelchair that he would use for the remainder of his career.

Naomi Rosenblum, who wrote about the history of photography and helped elevate it as an art form, died Feb. 19 at her home in Long Island City, Queens. She was 96.

A socially progressive academic, Dr. Rosenblum taught the history of photography at several institutions in New York: Brooklyn College, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, the Parsons School of Design, and the City University of New York Graduate Center.

She lectured around the world, and curated several major exhibitions, including one of the work of Paul Strand, the influential 20th-century modernist.

Actor Yaphet Kotto, who starred as ship engineer Dennis Parker in Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi horror film “Alien,” died March 14 in the Philippines. He was 81.

Kotto was born in New York to Cameroonian immigrants, who had converted to Judaism before Yaphet was born. He made his debut as a professional actor in 1960 in an all-Black stage performance of Shakespeare’s “Othello” in Harlem. He also played dictator Dr. Kananga in the 1973 James Bond film “Live and Let Die,” and received an Emmy nomination for playing Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the TV movie “Raid on Entebbe.” He appeared with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the thriller “The Running Man” in 1987, and later starred as Lt. Al Giardello in the NBC television series “Homicide: Life on the Street,” which aired from 1993 to 1999.

Hershel Shanks, who was captivated by the wealth of archaeological digs in Israel, published a magazine about intriguing discoveries and scholarly controversies in a field where the truthfulness of the Bible was tested and verified.

The magazine, Biblical Archaeology Review, which Mr. Shanks commanded for more than 40 years util his retirement in 2017, popularized what was considered arcane and technical subject matter and made it digestible for tens of thousands of readers.

In 1987, Mr. Shanks bought a second magazine, Moment, a Jewish affairs bimonthly that had been founded 12 years earlier by Elie Wiesel and Leonard Fein. He was its publisher and editor until 2004.

Hershel Shanks died Feb. 5 at his home in Washington. He was 90.

Norton Juster, who wrote one of children’s literature’s most beloved and enduring books, The Phantom Tollbooth, died March 8, at his home in Northampton, MA. He was 91.

The Phantom Tollbooth, first published in 1961, is the story of a bored little boy named Milo who, when a tollbooth inexplicably appears in his room, passes through it into a land of whimsy, wordplay and imagination. The book was illustrated by Jules Feiffer, who was early in his renowned career as a cartoonists and author. The book has sold almost five million copies, has been reissued multiple times, and was turned into an animated film and a stage musical.

Mr. Juster, an architect by trade, called himself an “accidental writer,” but he went on to write other children’s books. In a 2012 interview with CNN, he talked about the key to writing for young readers. “You have to retain, I guess, a good piece of the way you thought as a child,” he said. “I think if you lose all of that, that’s where the deadliness comes from. The idea of children looking at things differently is a precious thing. The most important thing you can do is notice.”

David Mintz, known as “the P.T. Barnum of tofu,” developed a nondairy dessert for his Jewish customers craving ice cream after dinner but forbidden by faith to mix milk with meat. Enter Tofutti, a creation made with tofu that satisfies kosher Jews as well as those who are allergic to dairy, are diabetic or vegan, or who are dieting to reduce their cholesterol. Tofutti made a multimillionaire of David Mintz, who died Feb. 24 at a hospital in Englewood, NJ, near his home in Tenafly. He was 89.

Tofutti took several years of experimentation and its creator gained 50 pounds in the process, according to The New York Times. A carton of soy milk purchased in Chinatown led the way to gallons of unappetizing gelatinous white concoctions poured down the drain of his kitchen in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. “I am personally responsible for clogging the sewers of New York City,” he told Forbes magazine in 1984. Finally, in 1981, Mr. Mintz tasted victory by incorporating tofu into his recipe.