Who We Lost in 2015: May Their Memories Be a Blessing

Over the last year, we’ve have taken note of some of this year’s losses. Among them are actor Leonard Nimoy, performance artist Rachel Rosenthal, neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks, fashion designer Arnold Scaasi, scholar and visual artist Svetlana Boym, and musician Yosi Piamenta. But there are so many more—less heralded Jewish contributors to art, culture and science who also went to their eternal rest this year—to whom I want to pay tribute. May their memories be a blessing.

Attorney and civil rights activist Faith Seidenberg was most famous for forcing America’s oldest continually operating bar—McSorley’s Old Ale House in Manhattan’s East Village—to let women inside. During the summer of 1970, Seidenberg and a co-worker pushed their way into the all-bro-clubhouse and were refused service. They sued…and changed American law. Today, public places are no longer allowed to discriminate on the basis of gender. But Seidenberg fought other groundbreaking battles too: She determined that minors should be allowed representation when they appeared in court, defended civil rights workers involved in voter registration drives in the South, and won a landmark Title IX sex discrimination case involving the Colgate’s women’s ice hockey team. (She died on January 16, at 91.)

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