Beatrice Mintz
Beatrice Mintz, a cancer researcher whose many groundbreaking discoveries included the crucial finding that certain cancerous cells could be tamed by contact with normal neighboring cells, without the use of harsh treatments like chemotherapy and radiation, died on Jan. 3 at her home in Elkins Park, PA.
Dr. Mintz was an embryologist whose work spanned a number of disciplines, and her pioneering contributions have proved essential in helping researchers unravel some of the complexities of how cancer operates.
An elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Mintz won numerous prestigious prizes and awards. They included the National Medal of Honor for Basic Research by the American Cancer Society, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association for Cancer Research, and the first March of Dimes Prize in developmental biology, which she shared with Ralph L. Brinster in 1996.
Dr. Mintz was notorious for having a demanding personality and for setting exacting standards that few others could meet. At one point, she was thinking about an endowed chair in her name that would be reserved for a female scientist, but then added that she couldn’t think of anyone who would qualify.
Miriam Naor
Former Chief Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court Miriam Naor, who spent 38 years in the justice system and served 14 years on the Supreme Court, died Jan. 24. She was 74.
Naor was born in Jerusalem in 1947 and received her law degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1980, she was appointed as a judge on the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court, and in 1988 she became a judge in the Jerusalem District Court. She was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2003 and served as chief from 2015 to 2017, when she retired.
An array of politicians and government officials expressed sorrow at Naor’s sudden death. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called her “a respected jurist, careful to maintain the required balance between the variety of values in Israeli society, and to strengthen the national and Zionist character of the State of Israel.”
Cecile Klein and Edith Hodes Rose
Cecile Klein and Edith Hodes Rose, two Jewish supercentenarians, died in the same week. Klein spent seven months as Canada’s oldest person before passing away on Jan. 13. She was 114. New Jersey’s oldest resident, Edith Hodes Rose, died on Jan. 11, at the age of 111.
Sheldon Silver
Sheldon Silver, the once-indomitable leader of the New York State Assembly, whose career and reputation were undone by6 a 2015 corruption conviction, died Jan. 24. He was 77.
Mr. Silver had been incarcerated at Devens Federal Medical Center in Ayer, MA. Kristie Breshears, a spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Prisons, said in a statement that Mr. Silver had died at the nearby Nashoba Valley Medical Center. The cause of death was not immediately clear, but Mr. Silver had a history of cancer and chronic kidney disease, according to statements made by his lawyers in 2020.
Mr. Silver was elected to the State Assembly in 1976, and served as speaker from 1994 to 2015. His dominance crumbled early in 2015 when he was accused of accepting nearly $4 million in illicit payments in exchange for taking official actions for a cancer researcher at Columbia University and two real estate developers. Mr. Silver managed to avoid prison until 2020, when his legal maneuvers were finally exhausted, leaving him to serve a six-and-a-half-year sentence.
Ricky (Renee) Fenster
The Shofar joins the membership in mourning the death of Ricky (Renee) Fenster on Dec. 15, 2021. Ricky will be remembered fondly by many in our congregation as a welcoming presence and the wife of Rabbi Myron Fenster, who served our congregation for several years before he retired from the pulpit.
Condolences may be sent to Rabbi Fenster and family at 2 Reed Drive, Roslyn, NY, 11576.
Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim, one of Broadway history’s songwriting titans, whose music and lyrics reset the artistic standard for the American stage musical, died Nov. 26 at his home in Roxbury, CT. He was 91.
An intellectually rigorous artist who perpetually sought new creative paths, Mr. Sondheim was the theater’s most revered and influential composer-lyricist of the last half of the 20th century. His work melded words and music in a way that enhanced them both, The New York Times said. From his earliest successes in the late 1950s, when he wrote the lyrics for “West Side Story” and “Gypsy,” through the 1990s, when he wrote the music and lyrics for “Assassins” and “Passion,” he was a relentlessly innovative theatrical force.
The first Broadway show for which Mr. Sondheim wrote both the words and music, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” won a Tony Award for best musical and ran for more than two years. In the 1970s and ‘80s, his most productive period, he turned out a series of strikingly original and varied works, including “Company” (1970), “Follies” (1971), “A Little Night Music” (1973), Pacific Overtures” (1976), “Sweeney Todd” (1979), “Merrily We Roll Along” (1981), “Sunday in the Park With George” (1984), and “Into the Woods” (1987).
He wrote soliloquies, conversational duets and chatty trios and quartets. For “Night Music,” he wrote two sarabands, two mazurkas, a polonaise, an etude and a gigue. Overall he wrote both the music and the lyrics for a dozen Broadway shows, plus compendium revues like “Side by Side by Sondheim,” “Putting It Together,” and the autobiographical “Sondheim on Sondheim.” Five of them won Tony Awards for best musical, and six won for best original score.
In addition to his theater work, Mr. Sondheim wrote occasional music for films. Six cast albums from his shows won Grammy Awards, and “Send In the Clowns” won the Grammy for song of the year in 1975
Zena Stein
Dr. Zena Stein, a South African-born epidemiologist whose influential work encompassed the effects of famine on children, the health of entire communities afflicted by poverty, and the impact of the AIDS crisis on women in Africa, died on Nov. 7 at her home in Coatesville, PA. She was 99.
Dr. Stein’s research focused closely on Women’s health at a time when the bulk of scientific study spotlighted men. She was also well known for her research on child development and on mental illness. She and her husband, Dr. Mervyn Susser, worked as a team and conducted hundreds of studies, many of which shaped the field of epidemiology and community health care. Dr. Stein is listed as the author or co-author of 270 academic articles and several books.
Dr. Stein later turned her attention to the effects of the H.I.V/AIDS crisis on women, who made up a minority of patients and were often overlooked. In 1987, she co-founded the H.I.V. Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University. The center embarked on the first major effort to draw attention to women living with AIDS. It is now one of the largest centers of its kind in the world.
Get Social