Bernard Kalb
Bernard Kalb, a veteran correspondent for CBS, NBC and The New York Times, died on Jan. 8 at his home in North Bethesda, MD. He was 100.
He reported for The Times from 1946 to 1962, for CBS during the next 18 years, and as NBC’s
State Department correspondent from 1980 to 1985. Then, for nearly two years, he served in the Reagan administration’s State Department.
Mr. Kalb accompanied President Richard M. Nixon on the trip to China that proved to be a major step in the normalization of relations between the two nations. He also made virtually every overseas trip with Henry A. Kissinger, Cyrus R. Vance, Edmund S. Muskie, Alexander M. Haig Jr., and George P. Shultz during their tenures as secretary of state.
For six years starting in 1992, Mr. Kalb was the moderator of the weekly CNN program “Reliable Sources,” which analyzed the news media’s objectivity and interviewed print and broadcast journalists. He continued lecturing on journalism and foreign affairs into his 90s, including as an occasional panelist on “The Kalb Report,” a televised series of live talks hosted by his brother, Marvin Kalb, at the Washington National Press Club.
Norm Fruchter
Norm Fruchter, a civil rights activist, documentarian and novelist who devoted his career to seeing that all students receive a sound basic education regardless of their race, ethnicity, class or income, died on Jan. 4 in Brooklyn. He was 85.
Mr. Fruchter, as lifelong educator, helped secure approval to start Independence High School in Newark in 1970.. The school, intended for struggling students, became a prototype for alternative secondary schools across the country.
Victor Navasky
Victor W. Navasky, a journalist who for 276 years as either editor or publisher commanded the long-running left-leaning magazine The Nation, and who also wrote the book, Naming Names, a breakthrough chronicle of the Hollywood blacklisting era, died Jan. 23 in Manhattan. He was 90.
The Nation, an influential voice for civil rights, free expression, progressive labor legislation, and anti-war opinion, also provided a forum for feminist voices.
Mr. Navasky also published two widely praised works of history — a study of the Justice Department under Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and his account of those who testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee and chose to inform on colleagues.
Rabbi Elliot T. Spar
The Shofar joins the membership in mourning two deaths in the Congregation family: Rabbi Elliot T. Spar, father of shul member Ari Spar, died on Nov. 30. Long-time shul member Irma Strimban died on December 15. May their memories be a blessing.
Pablo Eisenberg
Pablo Eisenberg was only 7 years old in 1939 when he boarded an American-bound liner with his parents and younger sister in Bordeaux as the Nazis were poised to invade France. But as young as he was, their nail-biting escape nevertheless instilled in him a lifelong commitment to powerless people left behind.
In 1973, he wrote an article published in Grantsmanship Center News, a philanthropic journal, in which he called on major foundations, individual donors, corporate charities and philanthropies in general to be more socially responsible, transparent, accountable and equitable in determining who received their largesse. He had a passion for improving the lives of everyday people.
Mr. Eisenberg died on Oct. 18 in a nursing home in Rockville, MD. He was 90.
While many charities remained insular, others responded to Mr. Eisenberg’s goading by directing more donations to community organizations and diversifying their boards.
Ed Rudy
On Feb. 7, 1964, when the Beatles were greeted by thousands of screaming fans at John F. Kennedy International Airport, a radio reporter named Ed Rudy was there. When they performed in Washington, Mr. Rudy was there. And when they headed to Miami Beach, he was there.
Mr. Rudy filed reports to a syndicate of radio stations throughout the Beatles’ two-week tour of the United States, their first performances in the country. Soon after, he packaged his material into a 35-minute album, “The American Tour With Ed Rudy,” which rose to No. 20 on Billboard’s Top LPs chart.
Fifty-eight years after the Beatles arrived in America, Mr. Rudy was still selling his albums. “It was exciting and fab all the way,” he wrote in 1964. “I contracted Beatlemania and this disease will be with me for a long, long time. Mr. Rudy died on Nov. 7 at his home in Aventura, FL. He was 93.
Harriet Bograd
In the summer of 2001, Harriet Bograd visited her daughter Margie, who had taken a summer job in a remote village in Ghana. When Ms. Bograd and her husband, Ken Klein, arrived in the village, Sefwi Wiawso, they learned about its community of two dozen families who considered themselves Jewish. In the week she was there, Ms. Bograd turned her enchantment with the villagers into a practical project that has become a major source of income for the community. She guided artisans in fashioning the colorful kente cloth sold in the local market into challah covers. A trained lawyer, she set up the community as an incorporated business that sold the challah covers across the United States for $36 each. Thousands have been purchased.
In the years after that trip, Ms. Bograd worked with the nonprofit organization Kulanu, which supports “isolated, emerging or returning” Jewish communities in places where even most American Jews don’t realize there are Jews: Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Cameroon, Madagascar, Indonesia, Pakistan, Guatemala, the Philippines and more — 33 countries in total.
“It gave her joy that these people felt they were connected to the greater Jewish world and felt they belonged,” said Mollie Levine, deputy director of Kulanu, whose Hebrew name means “all of us.”
Harriet Bograd died Sept. 17 in a Manhattan hospital, following complications of heart surgery.
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