She notes that the creatures in his best-known book, “Where the Wild Things Are,” were inspired by the Jewish relatives “who hovered like a pack of middle-aged gargoyles above the childhood sickbed to which he was often confined.” She also mentions melancholy aspects of his background, including how he hid his sexuality from his parents. In a long obituary for the prominent children’s book author, Fox touches on Sendak’s way of making dark, serious themes accessible to children and how his books were received (sometimes skeptically). ‘But it is your duty, Sir, to brief the witness, to explain to him that all external elements must be removed that do not pertain to this trial.'” ‘I know it is difficult to cut short such testimony,’ Justice Landau told Mr. According to the parameters set by the indictment, these narratives were not strictly germane to the case. Hausner called witnesses who testified about horrors in Polish and Lithuanian ghettos. “On one occasion, as The New York Times reported, Justice Landau became impatient with the chief prosecutor, Gideon Hausner, after Mr.
Fox’s obituary highlights the fact that Landau himself was a refugee from Nazi Germany, his actions during the trial and his career afterward as president of Israel’s Supreme Court. During the 1961 trial, Eichmann sat in a bulletproof glass booth and ultimately was sentenced to death by hanging. Landau was the presiding judge in the trial of Nazi War criminal Adolf Eichmann. “Many of her English lyrics concerned the empowerment of women and other disenfranchised groups, stemming, her associates said on Monday, from the quiet pride she took in her life as a gay woman.” The obituary’s mention of Friedman’s sexuality ignited a debateabout whether she had been right to keep it a secret. Fox’s obituary highlighted these creations and also brought to light the fact that Friedman was a lesbian - a fact known to some that Friedman had preferred to keep private during her lifetime. The Jewish singer-songwriter helped create beautiful folky melodies for traditional prayers that invigorated American Jewish life across the denominational spectrum. (‘Maven,’ Yiddish for cognoscente, derives from the Hebrew noun mevin, ‘one who knows.’)”
Steinmetz a ‘lexical supermaven,’ an accolade that in two scant words draws exuberantly on Greek, Latin, Yiddish and Hebrew. The ordained rabbi was the executive editor of Random House’s dictionary division journalists frequently called on him as an expert “on matters semantical, grammatical and etymological.” Steinmetz likely would have enjoyed his obituary by Fox with its definitions and derivations of words, dictionary-style.įox wrote: “Writing in The New York Times in 2006, William Safire, who knew from language mavens, called Mr. Steinmetz was a widely respected Jewish Hungarian-American expert in linguistics and lexicography who wrote about both English and Yiddish.
Fox intends to turn to book-writing full time.Īmong the highlights of her time on the “dead beat” were obituaries of Jewish newsmakers, which like so many of her obits stand out for the vividness of her prose and the humor she sometimes brought to solemn moments.
NEW YORK ( JTA) - New York Times obituary writer Margalit Fox announced she was leaving her position after writing farewells to more than 1,400 notable, notorious or downright unusual people over a 14-year span.