Mort Drucker, a longtime contributor to Mad magazine known for his caricatures of actors, politicians and other celebrities, died April 9 at his home in Woodbury, NY. He was 91.

Mr. Drucker began his professional career at 18, when he got a job assisting on the comic book Debbie Dean, Career Girl. He also worked on a syndicated single-panel strip, “The Mountain Boys,” before finding steady work with National Periodical Publications now known as DC Comics. He continued to freelance for DC even after joining Mad in 1956. “ I’ve drawn almost everyone in Hollywood,” he said.

Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, who inherited the leadership of the Novominsker Hasidic dynasty that was founded in Poland by his grandfather and transplanted to Brooklyn a century ago, died April 7 at his home in the Borough Park Section. He was 89 The cause was the coronavirus, according to Agudath Israel of America, the umbrella ultra-Orthodox organization.

The rabbi, known as a persuasive orator and respected scholar, had been president of the organization since 1998, and was chairman of its rabbinical Council of Torah Sages.

Hellmut Stern, who fled Germany with his family to escape the Nazis, then returned years later to join the Berlin Philharmonic as a violinist, died March 21 at his home in Berlin. He was 91.

Mr. Stern was a member of one of the world’s most illustrious orchestras for more than three decades. For most of that time, the Philharmonic was led by the strong-willed conductor Herbert von Karajan, one of the towering maestros of the 20th century. For Mr. Stern, the relationship was particularly fraught, because Mr. Karajan had been a member of the Nazi Party.

From his earliest days with the Philharmonic, Mr. Stern dreamed of arranging a concert tour of Israel. While Israel said it would welcome the musicians, it refused to accept Mr. Karajan. After Mr. Karajan died in 1989, Mr. Stern was finally able to negotiate the tour.

In April 1990, the orchestra under the direction of Daniel Barenboim, gave seven concerts in different Israeli cities. The high point came in Tel Aviv, where the Berlin ensemble joined with the Israeli Philharmonic in playing Saint-Saëns, Weber, Ravel and Beethoven under the baton of Zubin Mehta. The Israelis were moved to tears when the 120 Berlin musicians stood and played Israel’s national anthem.

“By returning to Germany after the persecution of the Jews and the Holocaust and becoming a member of our orchestra, he set a unique example of reconciliation and forgiveness,”  said Alexander Bader, a clarinetist and chair of the Berlin Philharmonic’s orchestra board.

Harriet Glickman, who in 1968 persuaded Charles M. Schulz, the creator of “Peanuts,” to add an African-American character to his roster of Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the rest of the gang, died March 27 at her home in Sherman Oaks, CA. She was 93.

She wrote to several cartoonists, including Mr. Schulz, urging them to add black characters to their strips. Following correspondence between the two, Mr. Schulz advised Ms. Glickman that she should look out for a strip to be published toward the end of July. On July 31, 1968, Franklin Armstrong appeared in “Peanuts” for the first time. Nothing aside from the color of his skin set him apart from the other children in the strip.

Long before sparkling water with brand names like Polar, Perrier and La Croix crowded market shelves and refrigerators, New Yorkers relied on seltzer men to deliver carbonated refreshment. Eli Miller, one of the last of the old-fashioned Seltzer men, covered a route in Brooklyn from 1960 until he retired in 2017. He died March 12 at his home in Brooklyn. He was 86.

Mr. Miller was inducted into the Brooklyn Jewish Hall of Fame in 2017. His fellow inductees that year included Judge Judy Sheindlin and Ira Glasser, a former executive director of

the American Civil Liberties Union.

Before his retirement, Mr. Miller often reassured his customers by saying, “Old seltzer men never die — they just lose their spritzer.”

Gerald Freedman, who directed countless plays, operas and musicals, including the original “Hair” in 1967 and more than a dozen Broadway productions, died March 17 at his home in Winston-Salem, NC. He was 92.

“I’m most proud of the way I’ve opened up so many actors to what acting really is,” the New York Times quoted him. “They have talent, they have intelligence, they have imagination but they have to add a reality. That’s the essence of anything they do. And that’s it, really. Reality. It sounds very simple, but it’s very difficult.”

Michael Sorkin, architect, author, teacher, and one of the most distinctive voices for social justice and sustainability in the design of the urban environment, died in New York on March 26, after contracting coronavirus. He was 71.

He was a professor and director of the urban design program at the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York. He was a longtime contributing editor to Architectural Record, architecture critic for The Nation, and an essayist for the Village Voice. He wrote or edited 20 books. His output of essays, lectures and designs, all promoting social justice, established him as the political conscience in the field.

In lectures and in years of teaching, Mr. Sorkin inspired audiences and students to use architecture to change lives, resist the status quo, and help achieve social equity.

At the time of his death, he was distinguished professor and director emeritus of the graduate urban design program at the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York.

[A personal note: I never met Michael Sorkin, but in a way I feel I knew him. A long-time friend, who was for many years chair of the architecture school, was a colleague of Michael Sorkin’s, and many of our conversations involved Mr. Sorkin’s theories of architecture, which corresponded to those of my friend. Both men believed strongly that architecture should serve the public need, not be an object that calls attention to itself.  SMB]