The Shofar has been advised of two deaths within the shul family. Long-time shul member H. Lee Blumberg died Sept. 30. Mary Anthea Mueller, mother Tim Mueller, a long-time friend of the congregation, died Dec. 4. The Shofar joins the membership in mourning these losses.

Marcelle Ninio, who was imprisoned in Egypt from 1955 to 1968 for her role in a failed Israeli spy operation in 1954, died Oct. 23 in Ramat Gan, Israel, near Tel Aviv. She was 89.

According to an account in the New York Times, Ms. Ninio, who was born in Egypt, was a devoted Zionist. She was working as a secretary in Cairo when she was recruited in 1951 by an Israeli intelligence agent to the secret Unit 131. The outfit was largely dormant until 1954, when Gamal Abdel Nasser seized authority in Egypt after leading the coup that overthrew the monarchy of King Farouk two years earlier. Israel was concerned that Nasser would nationalize the Suez Canal and block access to a critical shipping route. Unit 131’s mission was to detonate bombs to show that Nasser could not protect American and British property or people. The plot failed. She and others were arrested, tried and convicted. She was sentenced to a 15-year term.

In 2005, she and the two other surviving members of what was called Operation Susannah were given military ranks in the Israel Defense Forces for their service to the country.

Marta Kurtag, a pianist and teacher who shared a 72-year collaboration with her husband, the prominent avant-garde composer Gyorgy Kurtag, profoundly influencing his work and joining him in dual recitals, died Oct. 17 in Budapest. She was 92.

She played a pivotal role in Hungarian musical life as a piano teacher — first at the Bela Bartok College of Music in Budapest, from 1953 to 1963, and then, after 1972, on the faculty of the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, Hungary’s storied conservatory from which she had graduated in 1952. A pianist of considerable skill and insight, she had a solo career of her own in Eastern Europe.

Of the joint piano recitals, Alex Ross of The New Yorker wrote, “You felt that you were eavesdropping on an intimate family affair. Like some sweet old couple in a movie, the Kurtags smiled at each other and allowed their bodies to sway with the music, apparently oblivious of the packed hall of new-music aficionados watching them.”

At risk after WWII had broken out, Jews faced increasing repression in Hungary. Her father urged her to flee. With forged papers and the help of a Zionist group, she crossed into Romania. Left behind, her parents and her brother perished.

The family of Bruce Bloom acknowledges with gratitude the many expressions of sympathy and condolence from shul members and friends. Cards, letters and phone calls have eased the sense of loss during this difficult time, the family said.

Shul member Sara Bloom, co-editor of The Shofar, announces to readers that Bruce Bloom, her husband of 58 years, died Oct. 18, from complications of Parkinson’s disease.

Elaine Feinstein, a British poet, novelist and biographer whose writing was inspired by her Jewish heritage,  died Sept. 23 in London. She was 88.

Ms. Feinstein published more than a dozen poetry collections and 15 novels. She also translated the Russian poet Marine Tsvetaeva (1892-1941), whose work she found particularly inspiring, and which influenced her own.

She often explored the relationship between being Jewish and being English. Ever present with her was the knowledge that had her ancestors settled in Germany rather than England, her life might have been very different. “My Jewish upbringing was a source of strength,” she told The Guardian in 1988.

Harold Bloom, an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University, died Oct. 14 in New Haven, CT. He was 89. He taught his last class at Yale three days prior to his death.

Following the publication of his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 40 books, including 20 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and a novel. During his lifetime, he edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom’s books have been translated into more than 40 languages.

Bloom was a defender of the Western canon (Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, etc.) at a time when literary departments were focusing on what he called the “literature of resentment” (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, neoconservatives and others). Armed with a photographic memory, Professor Bloom could recite the whole of Shakespeare, Milton’s Paradise Lost, all of William Blake, the Hebraic Bible, and Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene.

He was born into an Orthodox Jewish household, the youngest of five children. The first book he read was an anthology of Yiddish poetry. He graduated from the Bronx High School of Science, and was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.