Marion Joseph, whose concern about her grandson’s struggles as a first grader propelled a back-to-basics approach to teaching reading throughout the country, died on March 24 at her home in Walnut Creek, CA. She was 95.

Ms. Joseph exerted her influence on education by shifting the emphasis in reading instruction to phonics, the sounding out of vowels and consonants in words, and away from the so-called whole-language approach, which focuses on the meaning and context of words in literature.

She had no formal training in education but immersed herself in the methodology of teaching literacy when she learned that her grandson, Isaac, was being given difficult reading assignments without being taught to parse the words by sounding them out phonetically. Through phonics, she insisted, children learn to read and write primarily by putting individual letter and vowel sounds together.

Responding in large part to her advocacy, a California task force focused on improving reading instruction, agreed to restore phonics to the curriculum. Other states followed.

As for Isaac, whose struggle with reading in the first grade prompted Ms. Joseph’s phonics crusade, most of the literature he now consumes comes from audiobooks, he said.

Mimi Reinhardt, a secretary in Oskar Schindler’s office who typed up the list of Jews he saved from extermination by Nazi Germany, died on April 8, in Herzliya, Israel. She was 107.

Mrs. Reinhardt was one of 1,200 Jews saved by German businessman Schindler after he bribed Nazi authorities to let him keep them as workers in his factories. The account was made into the acclaimed 1993 film “Schindler’s List” by director Steven Spielberg.

Mrs. Reinhardt was born Carmen Koppel in Vienna, Austria, in 1915, and moved to Krakow, Poland, before the outbreak of WWII. After Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, she was confined to the Krakow ghetto before being sent to the Plaszow concentration camp in 1942.

Her knowledge of shorthand got her work in the camp’s administrative office, where, two years later, she was ordered to type up the handwritten list of Jews that were to be transferred to Schindler’s ammunition factory.

After the war, she made her way to the United States, where she lived until immigrating to Israel in 2007. Her son, Sasha Weitman, said that after coming to Israel, she “became a kind of a celebrity” because of the film’s popularity.

Gilbert Gottfried, the comedian who gave voice to the parrot in the hit Disney animated feature “Aladdin” and the duck in commercials for Aflac insurance — and whose manic, loudmouthed and highly original stand-up routines mixed old-fashioned borscht-belt shtick with cringeworthy vulgarity — died April 12 in Manhattan. He was 67.

  Mr. Gottfried maintained an ardent following, especially among comedy connoisseurs who respected his timing as well as his other talents. Although he was best known for his loud, annoying voice, he was also an excellent impressionist, whose best-known voices included Jerry Seinfeld, Andrew Dice Clay, and Groucho Marx.

He was a regular on late-night talk shows, appeared in several movies, and co-hosted a popular podcast, “Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast.” About his penchant for crude humor, he said, “I don’t always mean to offend. I only sometimes mean to offend.”

Sidney Altman, a molecular biologist who was awarded the 1988 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for sharing in the discovery that ribonucleic acid, or RNA, was not just a carrier of genetic information but could also be a catalyst for chemical reactions in cells — a breakthrough that paved the way for new gene therapies and treatments for viral infections — died on April 5 in Rockleigh, NJ. He was 82.

The discovery that RNA could function as an enzyme upended one of the central tenets of biology: that proteins are necessary to perform chemical reactions in cells. The discovery suggested that simple RNA molecules had come before proteins and DNA, the double-helix building blocks of life. The finding ran contrary to what at the time was established theory, which held that the proteins that were the catalysts in enzymes. The Nobel Institute declared that the discovery had “a profound influence on our understanding of how life on earth began.”

Dr. Altman spent most of his career at Yale University, was involved in the Judaic studies program there, and was an honorary trustee of the university’s Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life.

Marvin Chomsky, an Emmy Award-winning director renowned for his work on historical dramas, including the blockbuster mini-series “Roots” and “Holocaust,” died on March 28 in Santa Monica, CA. He was 92.

His career began as an art director and scenic designer for TV shows, including “Captain Kangaroo,” “Arthur Godfrey Time,” and “Studio One,”  followed by “The Wild Wild West,” “Star Trek,” “Gunsmoke,” “Mission: Impossible,” “Hawaii Five-O.,” and “Mannix.”

After “Roots” and “Holocaust,” he won Emmys for directing “Attica,” “Inside the Third Reich,” and “Peter the Great.”

Robert Morse, whose impish, gap-toothed grin and expert comic timing made him a Tony-winning Broadway star as a charming corporate schemer in the 1961 musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” who later won another Tony for his portrait of the writer Truman Capote in “Tru,” and who capped his long career with a return to the corporate world on the television series “Mad Men,” died April 20 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 90.

“How to Succeed” ran for more than 1,400 performances and won seven Tony Awards, including for Mr. Morse as best actor in a musical, as well as the Pulitzer Prize for drama. A 1967 film adaptation with Mr. Morse was a hit as well, and the show has been revived twice on Broadway.

In 2007, he was cast as the eccentric head of an advertising agency in the acclaimed AMC series “Mad Men.” The role brought him five Emmy nominations. Although the role of Bertram Cooper was straight drama, Mr. Morse got to return to his musical comedy roots in the spring of 2014 when the character died and then reappeared in a fantasy song-and-dance sequence.

“What a send-off!” Mr. Morse said of the opportunity to shine in the spotlight. “It was an absolute love letter.”

The Shofar joins the membership in extending deepest condolences to Rochelle Garmise and the Garmise and Richter families on the death of Rochelle’s mother, Yeta Richter, on Feb. 27, at San Simeon by the Sound, in Greenport, NY. She was 103.