Georges Moustaki, a French singer and songwriter known as “The Wandering Jew,” has died. Moustaki died early Thursday at his home in Nice, France, following a long illness, the French news agency AFP reported. He was 79. The Egypt native won his nickname in France for his simple musical style and melancholic ballads. In addition to singing his own songs, he wrote and composed in the 1960s for such renowned artists as Edith Piaf, Yves Montand and Juliette Greco. Among the more famous of the hundreds …More

Boruch Spiegel, a Warsaw Ghetto hero and one of the last remaining fighters from the famous uprising, died earlier this month at the age of 93. Spiegel was one of an estimated 750 Jewish fighters that rose up against the Nazis in the spring of 1943. The resistance held off Nazi forces for a month, a surprising feat for the poorly armed Jewish prisoners. While the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was ultimate unsuccessful, it remains today as one of the most iconic instances of Jewish-led Nazi resistance. Spiegel is …More

Joyce Brothers, a noted pioneer in the genre of TV psychology and a prolific writer and television personality, died Monday of respiratory failure in New York. She was 85. Brothers was born in 1927 in Brooklyn, to two Jewish parents who were both attorneys. Brothers set out to have a professional career of her own as a young woman, earning teaching jobs at Hunter College and Columbia University. After the birth of her daughter, however, Brothers returned home to act as primary care giver. Her husband, Dr. …More

The oldest male survivor of the Holocaust passed away late last month at the age of 107. Leopold Engleitner was a Jehovah’s Witness imprisoned by Nazis for “conscientious objection.” He served time at a handful of concentration camps, including Mauthausen, refusing to renounce his faith in exchange for freedom. He was eventually released after agreeing to serve as a farm slave laborer for the rest of his life. When ordered to join Hitler’s army, he hid rather than join up. He was freed …More

The IDF shot down a drone from Lebanon near Haifa. [Times of Israel] Tunisian Jews hope for high attendance at this year's annual pilgrimage. [Arutz Sheva] Francois Jacob, French Nobel-winning Jewish scientist, dies at 92. [Forward] Poland is set to reintroduce kosher slaughter. [Arutz Sheva] An Israeli judge has made a landmark ruling in the Women of the Wall saga. [Forward] The Boston bomber suspect was allegedly trying to acquire a copy of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." [Algemeiner] …More

Carmen Weinstein, who famously led the Jews of Egypt and worked to preserve synagogues and Jewish cemeteries, died Saturday at 82. Weinstein was born in Cairo in 1931. She studied English Literature at Cairo University and earend a master’s degree from the American University in Egypt. She was fluent in French, English and Arabic. She worked at her family’s print shop as a young adult, which had become a stalwart business in the community. Her father was a popular leader within the Jewish community …More

McCandlish Phillips, an esteemed journalist who devoted himself to spreading Gospel in later life, died Tuesday at the age of 85. His death, brought on by complications from pneumonia, sparked many in the media to fondly recount what was perhaps Phillips’ most memorable contribution to journalism—an investigative report that unmasked a notorious Ku Klux Klan leader as a Jew. Phillips was already a respected reporter at the New York Times in 1965, when he set out to profile the story of Daniel Burros. …More

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was considered a good friend of Israel despite a rocky relationship with Prime Minister Menachem Begin, has died. Thatcher died Monday after suffering a stroke at the age of 87. Thatcher suffered from dementia at the end of her life, which was dramatized in the 2011 movie "The Iron Lady." The only female to serve as prime minister of Britain, Thatcher also was the longest continuously serving prime minister of the 20th century, leading her country and the …More

Peretz Hochman, a Warsaw Ghetto hero involved in the infamous uprising and a major figure in the underground smuggling scheme, died Sunday of cancer at the age of 85. Hochman was just a boy when he entered the Ghetto with his parents and one brother, but ultimately found his own way to contribute. Known affectionately as the “cigarette seller,” Hochman’s older brothers remained outside the Ghetto, masquerading as Christians, a ruse Hochman himself was ultimately able to pull off. He moved …More

Rabbi Herschel Schacter, a former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, has died. Schacter, the first US Army chaplain to enter and participate in the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp, died Thursday. He was 95. Along with serving as chairman of the Presidents Conference from 1967 to 1969, he was president of the Mizrachi-Hapoel Hamizrachi, founding chairman of the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry and chairman of the Chaplaincy Commission of the …More

Maxine Dovere, JNS.org Joseph (Yossel) Friedenson carried the title of “rabbi,” but his “pulpit” was far wider than any within four walls. Friedenson, longtime editor of the monthly Yiddish-language Dos Yiddishe Vort (which means “The Jewish Word”) journal published by Agudath Israel of America, died Feb. 23 in New York at the age of 93. For close to 60 years, his writing gave voice to the thinking and concerns of the post-Holocaust Eastern European Orthodox Jewish community. …More

Israel has lost one of the founding fathers of its rock and roll history. Musician and rock composing pioneer Shmulik Kraus passed away Sunday in Tel Aviv at the age of 77 after a 10-day hospital stay battling the swine flu. Kraus was born in Jerusalem in 1935, at a time when regional politics, identity, and borders were considerably unclear. This was the world that helped shape Kraus’ musical DNA and chart his destiny as a significant contributor to Israel’s rock and roll landscape. He was …More