Nach Waxman founded a Manhattan bookstore that became a global mecca for chefs, cooks, culinary academics, epicurean writers, and anyone who enjoyed eating as much as he did, died August 4 in Manhattan. He was 84.

Mr. Waxman’s passion for and curiosity about food made his store, Kitchen Arts & Letters, a go-to source for all kinds of culinary history and customs, as well as for recipes that he insisted should be sources of creative inspiration rather than rigid paint-by-numbers templates. Faced with a dining challenge, customers knew whom to call.

Mr. Waxman once said that about two-thirds of his customers were culinary careerists purchasing professional tools. “Knives are one tool,” he told The New York Times in 1998. “Books are another.”

Leon Litwack, whose pioneering books on slavery demonstrated how Black people thought about and shaped their own liberation, even as they were constrained by racism in American society, died August 5 at his home in Berkeley, CA. He was 91.

Professor Litwack, a son of immigrants from Russia, brought an ethos of patriotic dissent to both his teaching and his scholarship at the University of California, Berkeley, The New York Times said. The historian’s job is to give voice to the marginalized and to make the well-off uncomfortable, he said.

He immersed himself in the archives to discover Black voices and their stories and show how they thought about, and struggled against, oppression. One notable fruit of that effort was Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (1979), which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

Dr. Marc Lieberman, an ophthalmologist and self-proclaimed “Jewish Buddhist” brought sight back to thousands of Tibetans stricken by cataracts, died on Aug. 2 at his home in San Francisco. He was 72.

Dr. Lieberman, who called himself a “JuBu,” retained his Jewish faith but incorporated aspects of Buddhist teachings and practices. He kept kosher and observed the sabbath, but he also meditated several times a day. He studied the Torah, and also led efforts to build a Buddhist monastery in Northern California.

In 1995, he founded the Tibet Vision Project. Twice a year, sometimes with a colleague, he traveled to Tibet, where he oversaw cataract surgeries and trained Tibetan doctors to perform them. Over the next 20 years, some 5,000 people regained their full sight thanks to Dr. Lieberman.

Mimi Stern-Wolfe, a pianist and conductor who specialized in music programs with a social justice or political theme, died June 21 at a care center in Manhattan. She was 84.

In the late 1970s, Ms. Stern-Wolfe, a fixture on the Lower East Side of Manhattan for most of her adult life, founded Downtown Music Productions, which in the years since has presented a wide range of programs, including performances by and for children, eclectic shows by the Downtown Chamber and Opera Players, and concerts featuring works by women and music of the Holocaust. Ms. Stern-Wolfe played and conducted at many of the performances, often leading from the piano bench.

Most of her productions were staged on the Lower East Side or in surrounding neighborhoods.

Dr. Paul Auerbach, an emergency care physician who pioneered the field of wilderness medicine in the 1980s and then taught ways to heal people injured by the unpredictable, died June 23 at his home in Los Altos, CA. He was 70. Out in the wild, knowing how to treat a venomous snake bite or a gangrenous infection can mean the difference between life and death. In the 1970s, however, the specialized field of health care known as wilderness medicine was still in its infancy.

“Paul literally conceived of this subspecialty of medicine,” said Dr. Andra Blomkalns, chair of emergency medicine at Stanford. “At the time, there wasn’t a recognition that things happen when you’re out doing things. He developed this notion that things happen to people all the time, which is now a big part of our identity in emergency medicine.”

His book, Management of Wilderness and Environmental Emergencies (1983), is widely considered the definitive textbook in the field, with content about snakebite, frostbite and lightning strikes, etc.

Last year, shortly before he received his cancer diagnosis, the coronavirus pandemic began to take hold. “The minute it all first happened, he started working on disaster response,” his wife, Sherry, said. “Hospitals were running out of PPE. He was calling this person and that person to learn as much as he could. He wanted to find out how to design better masks and better ventilators. He never stopped.”

Still unknown is the number of residents who died in the June 24 collapse of the Champlain Towers South apartment building in Surfside, FL. Many religious and ethnic groups have lost members of their communities, but it is rumored that the building’s residents were largely Jewish. The Shofar will continue to monitor the facts of the tragedy as they are released, and will report to readers in subsequent issues. The Shofar joins all in mourning the loss of loved ones.

Josef Silverstein, a scholar and outspoken critic of Myanmar’s repressive military leaders over a turbulent half-century, died June 29 at his home in Guilford, CT. He was 99.

Professor Silverstein, who taught international relations and Southeast Asian studies at Rutgers University, focused on democracy and human rights in Myanmar both as an academic expert and as an on-the-ground adviser to opposition groups.

Professor Silverstein’s publications include the books The Political Legacy of Aung San (1972), Burmese Politics: The Dilemma of National Unity (1980), and Burma: Military Rule and the Politics of Stagnation (1977).