This article is also available as a weekly newsletter, “Life Stories,” where we remember those who made an outsize impact in the Jewish world — or just left their community a better or more interesting place. Subscribe here to get “Life Stories” in your inbox every Tuesday.
Iris Appel, 102, a fashionista into her 11th decade
Senior style icon Iris Apfel died on Friday at 102. Born in Queens to a Jewish family, Apfel had a long career in textile design alongside her husband, Carl Apfel. She became famous as a fashionista in her 80s and 90s, thanks to her New York attitude, high-low style and signature oversized glasses.
“That natural born fashion sense was possibly passed down from her Jewish mother, Sadye (Syd), who ran her own fashion boutique,” our friends at Kveller report. “Iris was raised on a Jewish farm in Queens, and started collecting trinkets and accessories on visits into the city.”
In her long career she collaborated with Bergdoff-Bergman, had her own coloring book, was made into a Barbie doll, made carpets with Ruggable, designed brooches and earrings, became the first person to show her wardrobe at the Met and was the oldest model to be signed on by IMG models, at 97. In 2022, she was a guest of honor at a 101st birthday fundraiser for The Hampton Synagogue Children’s Center on eastern Long Island.
“When you don’t dress like everybody else, you don’t have to think like everybody else,” Apfel told the New York Times in 2011.
Rabbi Carl Wolkin, 77, who led his Chicago-area synagogue for 35 years
Rabbi Carl Wolkin was for 35 years the senior rabbi at Congregation Beth Shalom in Northbrook, Illinois. (Courtesy Beth Shalom)
Rabbi Carl Wolkin, who became the third rabbi of Congregation Beth Shalom in Northbrook, Illinois in 1980 and went on to serve the congregation for the next 35 years, died Feb. 24. He was 77.
Born in Philadelphia and raised in Syracuse, New York, Wolkin was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary and served for eight years as assistant rabbi at Temple Israel in Great Neck, New York. Under his leadership, Beth Shalom grew from 500 to more than 1,200 families.
“We’ve shared every aspect of life, of death over the years,” he told the Chicago Tribune when he retired in 2015. “I’ve helped people in all of those situations, whether I’m officiating, sermonizing or teaching. It’s all about interacting with people in a really meaningful way that can really change lives.”
Moshe Statman, 36, whose death leaves ‘a hole in the heart of West Hempstead’
Moshe Statman, shown with his wife Aliza and their three children. (The Chesed Fund)
Moshe Statman, 36, the son of klezmer virtuoso Andy Statman and the artist and teacher Barbara Statman, died Feb. 28 after a 14-month battle with leukemia. A longtime manager at the Hasidic-run B&H Photo Video store in Manhattan, Statman spent the eight months before his death in Los Angeles participating in a clinical trial in hopes of a cure.
Friends have set up a fundraising campaign in support of his wife, Aliza, and their three children, ages 12, 7 and 3. “He leaves a beautiful family and a hole in the heart of West Hempstead, [New York],” read a post on the Great Kosher Restaurants Foodie Facebook group, to which Statman had been a frequent contributor.
Brian Mulroney, 84, Canadian premier and friend to the Jewish community
Brian Mulroney, Canada’s 18th prime minister, delivers a eulogy during the state funeral service for President George H.W. Bush at the Washington National Cathedral, Washington, D.C., Dec. 5, 2018. (Kathy Reesey/Wikimedia Commons)
Brian Mulroney, who served as Canada’s prime minister for two terms in the 1980s, was known for some big accomplishments: fiscal and tax reform, free trade, helping to end apartheid in South Africa and enacting an acid rain treaty.
When he died Feb. 29 at age 84, the Canadian Jewish News also remembered his “remarkable” support for the Jewish community:
His dedication included hiring a succession of Jewish political advisors to be his chiefs of staff; appointing Norman Spector as the first Jewish ambassador to represent Canada in Israel; establishing a public inquiry to investigate how Nazi war criminals were allowed into Canada after the Holocaust; and welcoming Chaim Herzog, then the president of Israel, as the first leader of the Jewish State to address Parliament, in 1989.
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