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.

Judith Kerr, the British book author and illustrator, who delighted children with tales of a hungry tiger and a mischievous cat named Mog, died May 22 at her home in London. She was 95.

Ms. Kerr moved to England in 1933 when her family left Germany to escape the growing threat of Nazism. She would later write about the experience in “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit,” the first in a trilogy of children’s books about a fictional Jewish girl named Anna, who flees the Nazis and returns to Berlin after WWII.

Ms. Kerr was recently named illustrator of the Year at the British Book Awards. Her newest book, “The Curse of the School Rabbit,” is scheduled for publication next month, following a career that has spanned 50 years.

Herman Wouk, whose stellar literary career extended past his 100th year thanks to page-turners like Marjorie Morningstar, Youngblood Hawke, The Caine Mutiny, and WWII epics The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, died May 17 at his home in Palm Springs, CA. He was 103. His death, just 10 days before his 104^th birthday, was confirmed by his literary agent, Amy Rennert. She said he had been working on another book when he died, the subject of which he had not yet told her, according to an obituary in The New York Times.

His critics only grudgingly acknowledged his narrative skill, yet his writing enthralled millions of readers in search of “a good story, snappy dialogue and stirring events, rendered with a documentarian’s sense of authenticity and detail,” The New York Times said.

On the question of his reputation, Mr. Wouk took a philosophical line. “In the long run, justice is done,” he told Writer’s Digest in 1966. “In the short run, geniuses, minor writers and mountebanks alike take their chance. Imaginative writing is a wonderful way of life, and no man who can live by it should ask for more.”