10 inspiring Jews who died in 2017
Published December 28, 2017
(JTA collage)
(JTA) — It’s always difficult to whittle down the list of influential Jews who died in a given year, but this year the task seemed to be especially tough. From a pioneering LGBTQ activist to a pair of legendary comedians to a 104-year-old haredi Orthodox rabbi, here are some of the Jews we lost in 2017 who left deep marks on their fields.
Sara Ehrman, 98
Sara Ehrman in 2016. (Screenshot from The New York Times)
The longtime Democratic Party activist, adviser on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and friend of the Clintons described herself as “first a Jew, second a Democrat and above all a feminist.” Sara Ehrman may be most famous for advising Hillary Clinton not to move to Arkansas to marry Bill — though she also worked on George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign and later advised President Clinton on Israel-Arab peacemaking. In addition, she helped organize Bill Clinton’s first trip as president to Israel, served as AIPAC’s political director and later worked with J Street. She died in June, more than 50 years after her entree into politics.
Zsa Zsa Gabor, 99
Zsa Zsa Gabor in 1952. (Nixon/Express/Getty Images)
Though this legendary Hollywood socialite and sex symbol was buried in a Catholic cemetery, she had Jewish roots. Born to Hungarian Jewish parents in Budapest, Sari Gabor (her real name) was married nine times and appeared in films such “Moulin Rouge” and “Lovely to Look At.” Her love life was a tumultuous public affair, and she has been called the first celebrity to be famous for being famous. Gabor died in February, less than two months from her 100th birthday.
Monty Hall, 96
Monty Hall in 1977. (Herb Ball/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank)
This TV icon, born Monte Halparin to Orthodox parents in the Canadian city of Winnipeg, co-created the game show “Let’s Make a Deal” and hosted it for nearly 25 years, starting in the 60s. Before becoming a radio producer in the 50s, Hall wanted to become a doctor — but he could not get in to medical schools due to the Jewish quotas common at the time, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He had a heart attack when his wife died in June and passed away in October.
Vera Katz, 84
Vera Katz (Screenshot from YouTube)
Over the course of the 90s and the 00s, Portland, Oregon, transformed from a boring port town into a dynamic symbol of hipster liberalism (or, to some sketch comedy fans, “Portlandia“). During that time, specifically from 1993 to 2005, the Pacific Northwest city had a three-term Jewish mayor: Vera Katz, who grew up in New York City as a poor Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. Before leading the city’s eco-friendly revamp, Katz, born Vera Pistrak in Dusseldorf, was a trailblazing politician in her adopted state: She was the first female speaker of the Oregon House, created the state legislature’s first women’s caucus and oversaw a reform of the state’s education system. Katz succumbed to leukemia, her third bout with cancer since 2000, in December.
Jerry Lewis, 91
Jerry Lewis in 1971. (Evening Standard/Getty Images)
Don’t let the funnyman’s stage name fool you: Jerry Lewis was born Joseph Levitch to parents who performed on the Borscht Belt hotel circuit. Lewis, who died of cardiac disease in August, rose to prominence as part of a duo with Dean Martin, with whom he made over a dozen wacky comedy films from 1949 to 1956. He would go on to star in dozens of other films, including “The Nutty Professor” (yes, the original one, well before Eddie Murphy’s 1996 remake) and Martin Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy.”
Don Rickles, 90
Comedian Don Rickles at Book Soup in West Hollywood, May 31, 2007. (Mark Mainz/Getty Images)
The well-known comic, nicknamed “Mr. Warmth,” loved to hurl insults at his audience members. But he was also a serious actor trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Rickles appeared in countless TV shows, performed standup into his 80s and acted alongside legends such as Clark Gable and Clint Eastwood on the silver screen. Younger audiences know him as the voice of Mr. Potato Head in the “Toy Story” series. He passed away in April from kidney failure.
Rabbi Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman in the central Israeli city of Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv, in 2012. (Yaakov Naumi/Flash90)
Rabbi Shteinman’s stature in the haredi (but non-Hasidic) world is legandary: witness the hundreds of thousands of mourners who came to his funeral in Israel earlier this month. The rabbi, who held few public positions, wrote dozens of books and lived modestly in the heavily Orthodox suburb of Bnei Brak, was considered the “gadol hador,” or great sage of his generation among the haredi Lithuanian-rooted community. “With the death of Rabbi Shteinman, the Jewish people lost a central beacon of spirit, heritage and morality,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement following the announcement of his death.
Simone Veil, 89
Simone Veil, then France’s minister of health, outside the Elysee Palace in Paris, 1974. (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Fewer than 70 people have been awarded France’s Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor — and Simone Veil, a Holocaust survivor who became a pillar of French politics, was one of them. After surviving Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, Veil became a lawyer and served as France’s minister of health and, later, as president of the European Parliament. She also was one of the few female members of the prestigious French Academie Francaise and spearheaded the legalization of abortion in France in the 70s. Veil died in June, less than a month from her 90th birthday.
Otto Warmbier, 22
Otto Warmbier arriving at a court for his trial in Pyongyang, March 16, 2015. (Xinhua/Lu Rui via Getty Images)
After being held in North Korea for more than 17 months for allegedly tearing down a propaganda poster during a student tour, Otto Warmbier was released, comatose, in June. He did not survive the injuries and died a week after being returned to the United States. JTA reported that he was an active member at the University of Virginia Hillel, but North Korea’s narrative said that Warmbier — who had been sentenced to 15 years of hard labor — stole the poster for an American church. Therefore, Warmbier’s Jewish identity was kept under wraps so as not to embarrass North Korea during negotiations for the release of the student. “[I]f that’s what their story is, there’s no point fighting it if your objective is to get him out,” the family spokesperson explained.
Edith Windsor, 88
Edith Windsor speaking at the Marriott Marquis Times Square hotel in New York City, June 19, 2017. (Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for The Trevor Project)
In 2009, Edith Windsor was forced to pay federal taxes on the estate of her late wife, even though her marriage was recognized as legal by the state of New York, where they lived. She took the case all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2013 that the federal government must abide by states’ rules in dealing with same-sex couples. That case paved the way for the court ruling, two years later, that removed all barriers to equal marriage rights nationwide. Windsor had already been an LGBTQ activist for decades and she was a prominent supporter of the Israeli advocacy group A Wider Bridge. Windsor was very active in Jewish circles, and was a longtime member of New York’s Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, which was founded to serve the LGBTQ community. She died in September.
