Velvel Pasternak, a leading publisher of Jewish music, who recorded, transcribed and preserved the singular melodies that have typically been passed along by tradition within Hasidic sects, died June 18 in Oceanside, NY. He was 85.

Working from his Long Island home, tape recorder in hand, he drove to the Borough Park and Crown Heights neighborhoods of Brooklyn, which have large Hasidic populations, and recorded the mostly un-notated music of the Modzitz, Lubavitch, Bobov and Ger dynastic groups. The works were incorporated in his first book, Songs of the Chassidim, published in 1968.

The next year, Mr. Pasternak took a sabbatical from teaching at local day schools and flew with his family to Israel, where he visited Hasidic enclaves like Bnei Brak, and recorded another batch of songs that had never been published.

In addition to the obscure Hasidic melodies, he published some 200 collections of better-known Yiddish and Israeli folk songs, spirited klezmer tunes, Sephardic melodies, cantorial classics, sorrowful songs of the Holocaust, and other music.

Sylvia Miles, who earned two Academy Award nominations (for “Midnight Cowboy” and “Farewell My Lovely” and decades of glowing reviews for her acting before drawing equal attention for her midlife transition to constant partygoer and garishly flamboyant dresser, died June 12 in Manhattan. She was 94.

Despite her relish for the spotlight, Ms. Miles never published a memoir. When asked why by an interviewer in 2001, she replied, “I don’t have all the answers. My life’s been a mystery to me.”

Martin S. Feldstein, a conservative Harvard economist and a former chief economic advisor in the Reagan administration, who was unafraid to publicly disagree with fellow White House officials, died June 11. He was 79.

Professor Feldstein had a long career teaching at Harvard. He later counseled the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama and for three decades, from 1977 to 2008, was president of the National Bureau of Economic Research that under his leadership became a gathering point for economists, particularly those focused on policy-oriented work.

Nechama Rivlin, wife of Israeli president Reuven Rivlin, died June 4 at Rabin Medical Center in Petach Tikvah, a day before her 74th birthday. Israel’s first lady had suffered from pulmonary fibrosis, a condition in which scar tissue accumulates in the lungs and makes it difficult to breathe, and had undergone a lung transplant in March.

Born in an Israeli farming community, she married the future president in 1971, and was a trusted adviser throughout his political career. She is survived by her husband, three children, and seven grandchildren.

Robert L. Bernstein, who built Random House into an international publishing giant, and founded Human Rights Watch to encourage freedom of expression and relief for oppressed people, died May 27 in Manhattan. He was 96. He was a man of “eclectic tastes with a passion for good books and noble causes,” The New York Times said.

As the head of Random House from 1966 to 1990, he published a host of American authors, including James A. Michener, Toni Morrison, William Styron, Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, E.L. Doctorow and Robert Ludlum. He also published the Soviet dissidents Andrei D. Sakharov, Yelena G. Bonner and Arkady N. Shevchenko; the Argentine Journalist Jacobo Timerman, and the Czech writer-revolutionary Vaclav Havel.

With Mr. Bernstein as founding chairman, Human Rights Watch and its constituent groups established a global presence, exposing genocide, torture and war crimes in Africa and Central America, and political corruption, criminal justice violations, racial and gender discrimination, and other abuses in many lands. He retired in 1998 after 20 years at the helm.

In 2011, he established a new group, Advancing Human Rights, and became its chairman. “I never imagined that at 88 years old I would be founding a new human rights organization,” he said, “but I am doing it out of necessity, because I believe there are trends which are doing great damage to democracies throughout the world.”

The Shofar joins the membership in extending deepest condolences to shul member Sherry Shaw Kastner on the death of her father, Gerald Shaw. May the family be comforted by the memories of times spent together.