Benjamin Schaeffer, 58, hero subway conductor battled MTA over Jewish holiday

(JTA) – For their third date, Benjamin Schaeffer took Lisa Smid to the New York Transit Museum for a personal tour. Schaffer knew his way around the Lower Manhattan shrine to the city’s transportation systems. A veteran subway conductor, for more than two decades, he had worked for New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, where he was Schaeffer was one of just two Orthodox Jews who worked as MTA conductors.

On April 28, Schaeffer earned a more dubious distinction when he became one of 96 New York transit workers to die of COVID-19. He was 58.

“The love of my life was many things: conductor, union shop steward, transit historian, author, former auxiliary PD, community activist, proud Orthodox Jew,” Smid wrote on Twitter. “He loved Brooklyn. And I will always love him.”

Schaeffer was no stranger to headlines. In October, he made news when the MTA asked him to prove that he observed the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah to get the day off from work. The year before, he was hailed as a hero when he quickly evacuated a subway car in Brooklyn after a passenger poured gasoline over the floor of the train. The MTA awarded Schaeffer a medal for his efforts.

In the days before his death, Smid and others led a frantic online push for blood plasma donors from those who had recovered from COVID-19, in the hope that it would help provide treatment for people with serious symptoms. Unfortunately, by the time Ben received the treatment, he had already been on a ventilator for some time.

“We’ve had our last subway ride together,” Smid wrote Tuesday on Facebook. “And it wasn’t his turn to get off.”

Elliot Samet, 69, pediatrician who helped establish Passaic Hatzolah

(JTA) – Every year on Purim, neighborhood children would line up outside the home of Elliot Samet in Passaic, New Jersey, waiting to show him their holiday costumes. “There would be a line up outside his house,” his friend George Matyjewicz told the JTA. “People just knocking on the door wanting to them him their costumes. That’s how much they loved him.”

For nearly 40 years, Samet had a pediatric practice in Passaic where he cared for countless children in the local Orthodox community. Over the years he grew legendary for his willingness to interrupt his Shabbat meals when parents showed up with medical questions. He was also a founding board member of the local branch of the Hatzolah emergency services organization.

Samet died on April 7 of a heart attack while battling COVID-19. He was 69. In keeping with current practice, the funeral was limited to close family and was streamed online.

“I would guarantee you, there would have been thousands at his funeral,” Matyjewicz said. “It probably would have been the largest funeral we ever would have had in this community.”

Originally from Detroit, Samet was a graduate of Paris Descartes University and did his medical residency at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn. He was an ardent supporter of the haredi Orthodox Agudath Israel organization, among other Jewish causes, Chabad.org reported.

“Your legendary smile on your face, your beautiful voice and your sense of humor kept everyone smiling,” Yitsy Kleinman, a member of the local Jewish community, told the Orthodox website Yeshiva World News.

Bud Rose, 77, ‘the Steve Jobs of medicine’

(JTA) – Nearly three decades ago, Burton Rose, a highly regarded kidney specialist and professor at Harvard Medical School, turned a rejection by the publisher of his medical textbook into a new venture that ultimately transformed the way medical practitioners work.

In 1992, Rose launched UpToDate after the publisher of his seminal book, Clinical Physiology of Acid-Base and Electrolyte Disorders, declined to make the work available by computer. Over time, the project broadened into a massive repository of clinical information for medical professionals and boasts nearly two million users around the world, according to its website.

“For clinicians around the world, UpToDate is essentially Google for medicine, but smarter and based on evidence,” three of Rose’s colleagues wrote in an article published after Rose’s death on April 24 from Alzheimer’s disease complicated by COVID-19. He was 77. One of those colleagues, Mark Zeidell, once dubbed Rose the “Steve Jobs of medicine.”

Rose was born in Brooklyn in 1942 and went to medical school at New York University, where he met his wife, Gloria, who was studying social work. After Rose served in the Navy for two years, the couple moved to Massachusetts, where they raised three children.

Known to his friends and colleagues as Bud, Rose was a regular at Shabbat services at Temple Beth Elohim in Wellesley, where Gloria once served as president. Rabbi Joel Sisenwine recalled a poignant talk Rose shared with the congregation during Yom Kippur services one year, at a time when his dementia had just begun to set in.

Rose shared “what it meant to bravely face a life where he was losing his memory and ability to recall small things,” Sisenwine recalled in an email.

“Most importantly, he talked about his family and especially his wife,” Sisenwine write.

Martin Lovett, 93, last surviving member of acclaimed Jewish string quartet

(JTA) – Martin Lovett, a British cellist and the last surviving member of the world renowned Amadeus String Quartet, died in London on April 29 after contracting COVID-19. He was 93.

The British-born Lovett was the last member to join Amadeus, whose other three players were all Austrian-born Jewish refugees who met in an internment camp after fleeing Nazi-occupied Vienna. Lovett had to learn German quickly to communicate.

Lovett was just 20 when Amadeus had its first performance, in 1948, at London’s Wigmore Hall. The group would go on to become one of the most celebrated string quartets of the 20th century, touring the world extensively and making 200 recordings, including the complete works of Mozart, Brahms and Beethoven.

“The Amadeus were the first British string quartet to conquer the world stage, earning a global reputation from their recordings for Deutsche Grammophon and major U.S. tours,” the classical music critic Norman Lebrecht told JTA

Lovett was born in London in 1927 to a secular Jewish family. His father, who gave him his first lessons, had performed in the Hallé and London Philharmonic orchestras. In 1942, at age 15, Lovett received a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Music.

The quartet disbanded in 1987, after which Lovett continued to perform in various chamber groups and was a judge in international chamber music competitions. He was awarded an Order of the British Empire for his services to music, as well as the German Grand Cross of Merit and the Austrian Cross of Honour for Arts and Sciences.

“They were an incredibly intense, hard-working, tight-knit ensemble,” Lebrecht said. “At a time when England was still referred to on the continent as ‘the last without music,’ they broke down all barriers.”

Sidney Fleischer, 102, decorated war veteran who fought in eight battles

(JTA) – Sidney Fleischer came into the world just prior to one of the worst pandemics in history – the 1918 flu pandemic that killed as many as 50 million people worldwide. And he left the world in the midst of another. Fleischer died of COVID-19 on April 7 in Boston. He was 102.

Fleischer was a student at Boston University when World War II broke out. When he learned about the plight of European Jews, he immediately enlisted in the U.S. Army, ending up as a gunner on a B-17 bomber. A decorated soldier, Fleischer served in campaigns across North Africa and Italy, in the end receiving eight battle stars indicating his participation in eight military campaigns. He was declared Veteran of the Day on the Veteran Affairs website in 2018.

“I’m told this is virtually unheard of,” Fleischer’s daughter Daralynn Fleischer told JTA, referring to her father’s eight battle stars. “And I never knew about this until he fell a few years ago and I went through his drawers for papers and found his army discharge.” Daralynn added: “Every little girl thinks their father is a hero, but mine really was.”

After the war, Fleischer returned to Boston, raising four children and working as a wholesale shoe salesman until 2005.

In the 1960s, Fleischer supported the civil rights movement, and later was an early proponent of LGBTQ rights. “It was always important to him that we had friends from all walks of life,” Daralynn said. “I always thought of my father as one of the lamed vavniks because that’s who he was: kind and big hearted,” said Daralynn, referring to the 36 hidden righteous men of Jewish lore.

Tedje van der Sluis, 93, Auschwitz survivor whose marriage was subject of film

(JTA) – Tedje van der Sluis had lived by her husband’s side since she was a teenager.

The couple, both Holocaust survivors from Amsterdam, had been inseparable since 1945, when they met at a Jewish orphanage. But Tedje, who suffered from dementia, was when alone when she died on April 11 at Beth Shalom Jewish nursing home in Amsterdam. She was 93. Her family have only a vague idea of what she went through in her final hours.

It was a lonely end to a love affair so legendary it was the subject of a 2018 Dutch television documentary. “Tedje & Meijer: The Promise of Love,” shows Meijer lovingly caring for Tedje as her dementia worsens. The couple used childlike terms of endearment for one another until Meijer’s death in January, and they were often kissing, hugging and rubbing noses. Their love for each other “was so strong, so intense” that “there was actually no space for anyone else between them. Not even their children,” their daughter Mirjam said in the documentary.

Tedje met her future husband in 1945 at a high school called GICOL, which functioned as an orphanage for Jewish children who had lost their families in the Holocaust.

“We had, of course, lost everyone,” Meijer says in the documentary. Tedje’s mother died before the war, but her father and sister were taken to the Westerbork concentration camp and later to Auschwitz, where in 1944 Tedje too was eventually sent.

Though they led happy lives, the past was never far below the surface, their children said. The couple’s grandson, Yotam Bar-Ephraim, said the family’s only solace is in believing the couple are reunited in the afterlife. Their anniversary would have been celebrated on April 28.