Ivan Reitman, who as producer, director or both was a force behind some of the most successful and beloved film comedies of the last 45 years, including “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” “Stripes,” “Ghostbusters,” and “Twins, died on Feb. 12 at his home in Montecito, CA. He was 75.

Mr. Reitman made his mark with movies that often featured memorably outrageous scenes and unexpected casting. Critics sometimes complained that his films could seem too loosely structured and acted, something often attributed to his casting of comedy improv actors. But those who worked with him said there was method behind the onscreen madness he orchestrated.

Kathryn Kates, who appeared as a counterwoman in two memorable scenes from “Seinfeld” involving baked goods in short supply — chocolate babkas land marble rye bread — and racked up numerous screen credits over nearly 50 years in the business, died on Jan. 22, in her brother’s home in Lake Worth, FL. She was 73.

The actress, who grew up in Great Neck on Long Island, appeared in “Shades of Blue,” “Friends From College,” “The Good Fight,” “Law and Order,” “Orange is the New Black,” and “The Many Saints of Newark.” But it was in the two episodes of “Seinfeld” that she made her mark, offering a New York attitude for which she was recognized on Manhattan’s streets for decades.

Martin Tolchin, a former reporter for The New York Times, who covered Congress and who later was the founding publisher and editor of The Hill, a successful newspaper devoted to events on Capitol Hill, died on Feb. 17 at his home in Alexandria, VA. He was 93.

Mr. Tolchin received the 1982 Everett McKinley Dirksen Aware for Distinguished Reporting of Congress, named for the Republican Senate minority leader of the 1960s. In addition to his newspaper work, Mr. Tolchin co-authored with his wife, Susan Tolchin, several books about Washington politics. He published a memoir in 2019.

Herbert Benson, a Harvard-trained cardiologist, whose research showing the power of mind over body helped move meditation into the mainstream, died on Feb. 2 at a hospital in Boston. He was 86.

Dr. Benson was open to the possibility that state of mind could affect a person’s health — common sense today, but a radical even heretical idea when he began researching it in the mid-1960s. He wrote 11 books, several of which delved further into the physiological effects of spirituality and faith. He was the first Western doctor allowed to interview Tibetan monks about their practices, and he became friends with the Dalai Lama during that Buddhist spiritual leader’s visit to Boston in 1979.

Dr. Benson believed that praying could help a sick person, although meditation and prayer could never replace drugs and surgery completely, he said. Both medical treatment and spiritual care were necessary, he said — a fact that Western medicine had long tried to ignore, and one that he spent his career trying to correct.

Trude Feldman, a second-string member of the White House press corps whose insistent approach to seeking access and asking softball questions won her exclusive interviews with American presidents and other world leaders, died on Jan. 23 in Washington. She was 97.

Ms. Feldman interviewed every president from Lyndon B. Johnson to George W. Bush. For McCall’s magazine, she wrangled the first interview with Richard M. Nixon and his wife, Pat, after the president resigned in 1974. She went on to be granted the final presidential interviews with Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan and George Bush. She had the first interview with Bill Clinton after he publicly apologized in 1998 for covering up what he admitted was an inappropriate relationship with the White House intern Monica Lewinsky. In their talk, Ms. Lewinsky’s name never came up. Instead, Ms. Feldman and Mr. Clinton discussed the implications of repentance on the coming Jewish Day of Atonement.

Ms. Feldman wrote for an array of newspapers, wire services, women’s magazines and local Jewish journals; many of her articles were syndicated. Her opinion pieces appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Jerusalem Post, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, and the New York Times.

She insisted that her interviews be one-on-one without aides present. When in the 1980s, she showed up to question Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, she was escorted to the office by a young brigadier general, who proceeded to sit down with his own pad and paper to take notes. But this would not do. So Brigadier General Colin Powell had to take his notebook and leave.

The Shofar joins the membership in extending deepest condolences to Elaine and Phil Goldman on the death of Estelle Goldman, wife of Stanley Goldman, Phil’s late brother.