The actor, Peter Michael Falk, the star if the television detective series, Columbo, passed away today at the age of 83. Falk played an eccentric detective and lieutenant in the Los Angeles Police Department, who dressed sloppily, drove a beat up Peugeot, always referred to the wisdom of his wife who was never seen, and always brought his more affluent, high-society suspects to justice by tricking them with flattery, fake stupidity, and the famous line, “.. Just one more thing…” Falk’s recent films included “Checking Out,” in which he played an aging Jewish actor who gathers his whole family to say goodbye before he commits suicide, the “Princess Bride,” and “The In-Laws,” with Alan Arkin.
Broner leads one of her seders
Also, this week, E. M. Broner, the co-author of “The Women’s Haggadah,†passed away at the age of 83. Professor Broner, one of America’s leading feminists, first has “The Women’s Haggadah,†published in Ms. magazine in 1977. It was based on the seders she hosted in her Manhattan apartment. Attendees included the Jewish poet, Grace Paley, Gloria Steinem, U.S. Member of Congress Bella Abzug and Letty Cottin Pogrebin. In 1978, she published, “A Weave of Women,” the fictional story of abused women living together in Jerusalem who live, heal, and create new feminist rituals. After her father passed away, Broner published “Mornings and Mournings: A Kaddish Journal,†(1994) which chronicled the year she spent trying to say the Kaddish prayer for her father in an Orthodox synagogue in New York City.
