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Obituaries
ELSIE MARTIN
NORFOLK—Elsie Martin, longtime resident of Norfolk, passed away February 2, 2021.
Born September 5, 1926 in Czechoslovakia, she and her family immigrated to the United States in the mid-1930s to escape the persecution of the Jewish people of Europe. She was the daughter of the late Benjamin and Helen Martin.
She was a resident of Norfolk for over 70 years and was a legal secretary for a local law firm close to 40 years. She was a longtime, active member of Congregation Beth El Temple.
Survivors include her nieces Faith Dauer (Jeffrey), Jody Gallo (Paul), Rachel Martin (Tom), nephews Alan Salsbury, Marshall Salsbury (Elaine), Jeffrey Martin (Margaret), Joseph Martin (Norma) and Jonathan Martin; as well as numerous great nieces and nephews and extended family. She was predeceased by her sister Harriet Martin Salsbury and brothers Stanley Martin and Bernard Martin. She was much beloved by her family and friends.
Graveside services were held at Forest Lawn Cemetery with Rabbi Michael Panitz officiating. Services were live streamed on H.D. Oliver Funeral Apts. Facebook page. Memorial donations to Congregation Beth El Temple or Temple Israel or to a charity of one’s choice. Online condolences may be offered to the family at hdoliver.com.
ROSE ROSENBACH
NORFOLK—Rose Rosenbach, 90, passed away on Sunday, February 14, 2021.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, she was the daughter of the late Mary Miller Rottenberg and Joseph Rottenberg.
She was preceded in death by her beloved husband of 67 years, Kurt M. Rosenbach; her brother, Maurice and her daughter-in-law, Kathy. Mrs. Rosenbach was a member of Ohef Sholom Temple.
Left to cherish her memory are her children, Carolyn R. Perlman (Michael), Murray S. Rosenbach (Lisa), and Marcy R. Terkeltaub (Paul); Nine grandchildren, Jennifer (Jeremy), Erin (Greg), Melissa (Brian), Brandon (Callah), Jamie (Dustin), Staci (Jason), Stephanie (Joel), Melissa and Andrea; and two great grandchildren, Jacob and Jackson, as well as numerous nieces, nephews, and cousins.
A private family graveside funeral service took place in Forest Lawn Cemetery with Rabbi Rosalin Mandelberg officiating. The service was live-streamed through www.hdoliver.com.
Memorial contributions to Ohef Sholom Temple, 530 Raleigh Avenue, Norfolk, Va. 23507; Beth Sholom Village, 6401 Auburn Drive, Virginia Beach, Va. 23464; or Freda H. Gordon Hospice and Palliative Care, 5000 Corporate Woods Drive, Suite 500, Virginia Beach, Va. 23462). Online condolences may be sent to the family through www.hdoliver.com.
BERNARD “BERNIE” SCHLOSS
NORFOLK—Bernard “Bernie” Schloss, passed away February 9, 2021.
He was 88 years old and was born in Edelfingen, Germany. Bernie was the son of the late Henry and Regina Schloss, and was preceded in death by his brother, Max.
Bernie is survived by his three daughters, Laura S. Jones, Caroline M. Schloss, and Helen R. Schloss-Griffin and her husband, Yehudah Leib Griffin; and a brother, Benjamin Schloss and his wife, Sharon. He was loved by his seven grandchildren, Neal Hobbs, Emily Gibson and husband Eddie, Blakely Griffin and wife Nivia, and Krista Stocks and husband Troy, as well as his six great grandchildren Dillon, Samuel, Prudence, Hurly, Jordan, and Scarlett.
Bernie and his family fled Nazi Germany in 1939 by ship and came to America with his parents, grandparents, and brother Max. The ship he and his family boarded, landed in New York. Sponsored by a close relative, Bernie and his family soon moved to Norfolk, Va. He and his family built a successful meat packing company in Suffolk, Va., called the Virginia Packing Company, Inc. Bernie also served in the U.S. Coast Guard.
Bernie merited to complete 2½ cycles of the Babylonian Talmud with the B’nai Israel Daf Yomi group. He was a Torah observant Jew, a father, grandfather, great grandfather, and a well-loved pilar of the B’nai Israel community in Norfolk, Va.
Donations to the B’nai Israel Congregation of Norfolk, Va.
A graveside funeral service was conducted in B’nai Israel Cemetery. The service was live streamed through www. hdoliver.com. H.D. Oliver Funeral Apts.
ARI GOLD, YESHIVA STUDENTTURNED-POP STAR AND LGBTQ ICON
Ari Gold, a pop star who left his Orthodox Jewish roots to become a music icon of and activist for the LGBTQ community, died this month.
He was 47, and the cause was leukemia.
Gold was born and raised in an Orthodox family in the Bronx, New York. NPR once reported that his musical talent was discovered while singing at his brother Steven’s bar mitzvah at age five.
He attended Ramaz, a prominent Modern Orthodox Jewish day school in New York, before going to New York University. Gold wrote about what he called his “sheltered” upbringing in an essay in the LGBTQ magazine The Advocate in 2013 and has noted in interviews that his coming out to his parents in college severely strained his relationship with them.
“The shame was deep and the shame was real, and that’s why I have been so passionate, because I know how I felt growing up with that fear. I thought everyone would excommunicate me,” Gold told NY1 in 2019.
In his 20s, Gold became a star of the gay club scene in New York City before releasing his debut album in 2001, which openly referenced gay relationships and earned him a following as an artist unafraid to sing about his identity.
He would go on to release seven albums and become close friends with other LGBTQ icons, such as the TV stars RuPaul and Laverne Cox. He also worked with homeless gay youth and worked to raise awareness about AIDS. While no
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OBITUARIES
longer Orthodox, he stayed connected to his Jewish identity, he told the Los Angeles Jewish Journal in 2015.
Gold was first diagnosed with cancer in 2013. His brother Elon is a noted standup comedian who references his Jewishness in routines. (JTA)
TURNED OFF FROM THE VACCINE BY MISINFORMATION, 36-YEAR-OLD HAREDI ORTHODOX MAN IN ISRAEL DIES OF COVID
Avraham Bedman, a 36-year-old man from Jerusalem, died of COVID on Wednesday, Feb. 10. His fellow synagogue members are blaming his death on misinformation about the coronavirus vaccine.
According to Kikar Hashabbat, an Israeli news site, an email sent to members of Bedman’s synagogue claimed that Bedman did not get the coronavirus vaccine because he was afraid it would cause infertility.
That falsehood has become rampant in Orthodox communities in the United States and Israel, prompting some in communities that prize fertility and where large families are expected to fear the vaccine.
In Israel, despite the high death toll exacted by the coronavirus in the haredi Orthodox community, many have remained hesitant to take the vaccine. A vaccine drive in one haredi Orthodox city will serve cholent and kugel, popular foods typically served on Thursday nights and Shabbat in Orthodox homes, to convince Orthodox residents to be vaccinated.
In the U.S., Orthodox doctors and nurses in recent weeks have worked to debunk misinformation about the vaccine and fertility with fact sheets and information sessions for women held over phone hotlines, but the misinformation has persisted.
Bedman’s fellow synagogue members called those who spread misinformation about the vaccine “murderers” and encouraged others to be vaccinated to save lives.
“He had the opportunity to be vaccinated, already at the beginning of the vaccination operation, because he was at risk, but he said he heard that it might cause him to not become a father,” a leader of the synagogue, Rabbi Yishai Lesser, told Kikar Hashabbat. “The one who made him afraid is responsible for his death.” (JTA)
Hershel Shanks, the one-time publisher and editor of Moment magazine and a powerhouse in the popularization of biblical archaeology, has died at 90.
He died Feb. 5 at his home in Washington, D.C., from COVID-19, his daughter told The Washington Post.
An attorney by training, in 1975 he started Biblical Archaeology Review, a Washington-based magazine that reached more than 250,000 subscribers at its peak in the early 2000s. The magazine took scholarly works on Middle East history and archaeology and adapted them for a popular audience with titles like “Did a Rolling Stone Close Jesus’ Tomb?” and “What We Don’t Know About Moses and the Exodus.” Readers ranged from devout Jews to evangelical Christians.
Shanks and the magazine’s affiliated Biblical Archaeology Society also played an advocacy role in the field itself, especially in leading a successful campaign to “free the Dead Sea Scrolls” from a small circle of scholars that had exclusive access to the ancient Jewish religious manuscripts found in the Judean Desert.
In 1987 Shanks bought Moment, a bimonthly magazine of Jewish ideas and opinions that had been founded 11 years before by Elie Wiesel and the writer Leonard Fein. He ran the magazine until 2004.
Shanks was the author or editor of more than a dozen books on biblical archaeology and other topics, and also founded two other magazines, Bible Review and Archaeology Odyssey. (JTA)
Chris Sisler, Vice President, Member of Ohef Sholom Temple, Board member of the Berger-Goldrich Home at Beth Sholom Village, James E. Altmeyer, Jr., President, James E. Altmeyer, Sr., Owner
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