Adam Max, an investment manager who became a leading patron of Brooklyn cultural institutions, notably the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where he had been board chairman since 2017, died July 27 at his home in East Hampton. He was 62.

Mr. Max and his wife, Diane Max, gave numerous gifts to the BAM and were the largest donors by individuals in its history. Mr. Max was also a major benefactor of St. Ann’s Warehouse, the performance space now in Brooklyn’s Bridge Park. He and his wife were instrumental in the establishment of the New York Historical Society’s Center for Women’s History, which opened at the society’s headquarters in Manhattan in 2017. The couple also sponsored the Diane and Adam E. Max Conference on Women’s History there.

Mr. Max played a significant role in the opening last fall of BAM Strong, which included a visual art exhibition space, designed to unify the Academy’s facilities along Fulton Street in the Fort Greene section. Mr. Max and his wife headed the Next Stage Campaign, which raised more than $30 million for its endowment as BAM celebrated its 150th anniversary.

Richard Gelles, who helped draft landmark legislation that affirmed that the safety of a child should supersede attempts to reunite a family, died June 26 under hospice care at his home in Philadelphia. He was 73.

The new law made it easier for children who were languishing in foster care — because their biological parents still had custody — to be put up for adoption.

Dr. Gelles, who taught at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice, where he was also dean for more than a decade, was one of the world’s leading scholars of family violence and child welfare. Over a four-decade career, he wrote 26 books, served as an expert witness in scores of legal cases, and was a prolific contributor to the national conversation about domestic violence.

Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, one of Judaism’s modern-day commentators, died in Jerusalem on August 7. He was 83.

He began his career as an educator and school principal in Jerusalem. That was also the beginning of his writing career, which included about 60 books during his lifetime on an array of topics from the Talmud, the Torah, Jewish mysticism, Chassidism and Jewish philosophy.

In 1965, in conjunction with the government of Israel, he founded the Israel Institute for Talmudic Publications, later the Steinsaltz Center, from which he helped make Judaism and the heritage of Israel accessible by translating and explaining the Babylonian Talmud to the world. His writings have been translated into dozens of languages.

Among his long list of awards and degrees are the Israel Prize for Jewish Studies (1988); the President’s Medal (2012); and honorary doctorates from Bar-Ilan University, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and Yeshiva University in New York. The U.S. Library of Congress recently announced that an English translation of an extensive work about the Steinsaltz Center had been accepted into the library’s catalogue.

Bernard Bailyn, an American historian, author and academic specializing in U.S. Colonial and Revolutionary-era history, died August 7 at his home in Belmont, MA, a suburb of Boston. He was 97.

Bernard Bailyn was a professor at Harvard University beginning in 1953. He won the Pulitzer Prize for History twice — in 1968 and 1987. In 1998, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected him for the Jefferson Lecture. He was a recipient of the 2010 National Humanities Medal.

In his research, professor Bailyn looked at merchants, demographic trends, Loyalists, international links across the Atlantic, and especially the political ideas that motivated the Patriots. He was best known for studies of Republicanism and Atlantic history that transformed the scholarship in those fields. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and sciences in 1963.

Sumner M. Redstone, the billionaire entrepreneur who saw business as combat and his advancing years as no obstacle in building a media empire that encompassed CBS and Viacom, died August 11 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 97. His death was announced in a statement by National Amusements, the private theater chain company founded by his father.

Mr. Redstone had vowed never to give up the reins of his conglomerate, but in February 2016, he stepped away from managing it, and his daughter, Shari E. Redstone, took control of day-to-day affairs.

Beginning with a modest chain of drive-in movie theaters, Mr. Redstone negotiated, sued and otherwise fought to amass holdings that over time included CBS, the Paramount film and television studios, the publisher Simon & Schuster, the video retail giant Blockbuster, and a host of cable channels, including MTV, comedy Central, and Nickelodeon. At their peak, the businesses were worth more than $80 billion.

Ruth Gavison, an internationally acclaimed Israeli legal scholar died August 15. She was 75. Gavison, a founder of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, was one of the country’s most prominent and influential researchers and teachers in the field of law.

Among her many awards is the Israel Prize (2011), the country’s highest civilian honor; the Cheshin Prize (2009), and the Avi Chai Prize (2001). She was also granted honorary doctorates from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York (2003), and from Israel’s Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan (2009).

A member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Gavison was best known for her research, body of work, and sometimes controversial views on issues of religion and state, as well as on that of Israel as a Jewish and Democratic state.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said of Ruth Gavison in a statement, “Many times she refused to accept the accepted legal assumptions and led independent, courageous and groundbreaking positions that challenged the legal discourse and would leave their mark for many years.”