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.

Otto Dov Kulka, a historian of the Holocaust at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, died Jan. 29 in Jerusalem. He was 87.

At age 31, he was the youngest survivor of Auschwitz to testify in 1964 in a trial of nearly two dozen former SS officers who had served at that extermination camp. He delivered a moving account of how Jewish inmates had sung Hebrew hymns before being loaded onto trucks that would convey them to the gas chambers. 

Before writing his memoir, Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death: Reflections on Memory and Imagination, published in 2013, Professor Kulka had approached his research on the Holocaust in an impersonal way. The memoir gave him a new way to address the subject. He saw it as an effort to bridge what he called “two modes of knowing — historical scholarship and analysis on one side, reflective memory and the work of the imagination on the other.”

The memoir was honored with the Geschwister-Scholl Prize in Germany and the Jewish Quarterly Literary Wingate Prize in Britain.

The Shofar joins the membership in expressing condolences to long-time shul member Jesse Reece on the death of his mother, Evelyn Reece, who died on Feb. 2, in Virginia. She was 95. Funeral services were held on Feb. 10 at the Beth Moses Cemetery in North Babylon, NY. May the family be comforted by memories of times spent together, and the support of many friends in the shul family.

Walter Bernstein, whose career as a top film and television screenwriter was derailed by the McCarthy-era blacklist, and who decades later turned that experience into one of his best-known films, “The Front,” died Jan. 23 at his home in Manhattan. He was 101.

“I was still in Hollywood in 1947 during the Hollywood Ten,” Mr. Bernstein said, referring to the prosecution of writers, producers and directors who had appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee and refused to answer questions about their Communist affiliations.  No one took the hearings seriously at first, but they soon would. Mr. Bernstein was considered untouchable both in Hollywood and in New York.

Mr. Bernstein and other blacklisted writers were forced to work under assumed names for sympathetic filmmakers. It was during this period that Mr. Bernstein and his colleagues began the ruse of protecting their anonymity by sending stand-ins to represent them at meetings with producers, a ploy later dramatized in “The Front.”

Six decades after the fact, Mr. Bernstein voiced a warmly nostalgic view of the Red Scare period. “I look back on that period with some fondness in a way, in terms of the relationships and support and friendships,” he told The New York Times. “We helped each other during that period. And in a dog-eat-dog business, it was quite rare.”

Jamie Tarses, who became president of ABC Entertainment at age 32, the first woman to become a network’s top programmer, died Feb. 1 in Los Angeles. She was 56.

According to The New York Times, she “fizzled in epic fashion, brought down by corporate dysfunction, unvarnished sexism, self-sabotage, weaponized industry gossip, and scalding news media scrutiny.”

Ms. Tarses, who had worked at NBC, had a reputation for spotting hit shows, and shepherded “Mad About You,” “Frasier,” and “Friends.” Following various indiscretions and corporate squabbling, she resigned in 1999, leaving ABC with several hit shows, including “Dharma & Greg,” Aaron Sorkin’s “Sports Night,” and “The Practice,” a popular legal drama from David E. Kelley.

Sonny Fox, who as the host of the children’s television show “Wonderama” presided over a four-hour combination of fun and learning on Sunday mornings from 1959 to 1967, died on Jan. 24 in Encino, CA. He was 95.

The show, which was taped before an audience of about 50 youngsters, became a dazzling mixture of cartoons, spelling bees, games, contests, dramatizations and magic. Reportedly, kids waited years for tickets to attend the show. 

Later, he hosted “Let’s Take a Trip,” and briefly “The $64,000 Challenge,” which was his undoing. He inadvertently uttered either all or part of the name Michelangelo to a contestant on a critical question about art. He was ousted, but was never found guilty of any wrongdoing. The Times said. 

The impact of Mr. Fox’s time at “Wonderama” resonated for decades, in letters, emails and social media reminiscences from the grown-up children who had watched the show on TV.