Joel Paley, a dancer, playwright and director who wrote the book and lyrics for “Ruthless!,” an award-winning Off-Broadway musical about an ambitious girls who will do anything — including murder her rival — to star in a grade school snow, died on Jan. 11 in Milford, CT. He was 69.

“Ruthless!” won the 1992 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Musical and the Drama Desk Award  for Mr. Paley’s lyrics. The musical has been performed hundreds of times around the world. When the show was revived Off-Broadway in 2015, Mr. Paley briefly stepped in to several parts to sub for ailing actors.

Jim Abrahams, who with the brothers David and Jerry Zucker arguably comprised one of the funniest trios of comedy writers in film history, died on Nov. 26 at his home in Santa Monica, CA. He was 80.

Mr. Abrahams and the Zucker brothers revolutionized film comedy with their straight-faced, fast-paced parodies of self-serious dramas like “Airplane” and “The Naked Gun.”

“We like to think of our humor as innocent,” Mr. Abrahams told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1988. There’s lots of innuendo but it’s childlike. I’d take a 7-year-old to see that. The toilet humor — they’d probably like that the best.”

Marshall Brickman, a writer whose show business career ranged  across film, late-night television comedy and Broadway, but who may be best remembered for collaborating on three of Woodie Allen’s best known movies, including the Oscar-winning “Annie Hall,” died on Nov. 29 in Manhattan. He was 85.

Mr. Brickman and Woodie Allen first teamed up on the script for “Sleeper” (1973) Later came “Annie Hall,” “Manhattan,” which won British and French film awards.

Mr. Brickman wrote the book for the Broadway hit “Jersey Boys,” which in 2005 won four Tony Awards, including Best Musical. For television, he was a writer for “The Muppet Show,” “Candid Camera” and “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,” for which he created one of Carson’s most popular characters, Carnac the Magnificent.

Mr. Brickman never had a career plan. He told The New York Times in 1986, “I made a lot of decisions based on how late I could sleep in the morning.”

Rabbi Simcha Raz, who authored dozens of books about Shabbat, Jewish holidays, and great Jewish figures throughout the generations, died on Dec. 10. He was 93.

At his funeral, his niece, the writer Hila Wolberstein, eulogized him: “Uncle Simcha wrote and edited many books in a rich and vibrant language. These books earned him a prominent place in Jewish literature. He succeeded in conveying the values of Judaism to readers and bringing them closer to great spiritual personalities, evoking deep empathy with their values. Through his writings, he shared stories, proverbs, and words of wisdom that are relevant to everyday life.

“Uncle Simcha had weekly radio programs for many years. With his warm and pleasant voice, he inspired listeners with uplifting content, allowing them to prepare for the Sabbath Queen. He was also invited to give thousands of lectures all over Israel and around the world.”

Morton Abramowitz, a former American diplomat and conflict mediator whose efforts to end and avoid wars, included helping to arm anti-Soviet guerrillas in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and founding the International Crisis Group for peace in the 1990s, died Nov. 29 at home in Washington, D.C. He was 91.

As an adviser, analyst and three-time ambassador, Mr. Abramowitz influenced U.S. policymaking in Europe and Asia, and helped forecast shifting priorities as the Cold War ended and other challenges emerged, including Islamist extremism and China’s rise as an aspiring superpower.

After retiring from government service in 1991, he took on the role of statesman emeritus as head of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the International Crisis Group.

David Bonderman, a founder of the giant investment firm TPG, who helped transform private equity into a multitrillion-dollar industry that reshaped corporate America, died on Dec. 11. He was 82.

Mr. Bonderman, a lawyer, took various legal paths over his career — law professor, civil rights lawyer, corporate lawyer — before becoming a financier. That led him to create what is now TPG, a $239 billion behemoth that buys companies, invests in start-ups, makes loans and more. Although he stepped down from day-to-day management at TPG about a decade ago, he retained the title nonexecutive chairman.

Finance was not the only field in which he made a mark. He became involved in historic preservation, playing a key role in the survival of Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan. He donated to wilderness conservation efforts, including the Wilderness Society and the World Wildlife Fund.