In synagogues last week, we read about how Aaron was comforted after the sudden, untimely deaths of his sons. And in the media, we read of an outpouring of comfort to the families who lost sons and friends as shivas commenced.
In Chicago, Illinois, Joshua Ozersky, PhD, 47, was found dead in his hotel room, hours after a very late night karaoke party. He was in Chicago for the prestigious James Beard Awards, the “Oscars” for chefs of food journalists. Ozersky, a Portland, Oregon based food writer and blogger was famous for his international food festival called Meatopia, which began as a party for his book, “Meat Me in Manhattan.” He was also known for his writing in Esquire, The Wall Street Journal, and Time, and was the founding editor of New York magazine’s Grub Street blog, for which he received a James Beard Award in 2008. His latest book was “The Hamburger: A History.” Joshua Avram Ozersky was born in Miami on Aug. 22, 1967, the only child of Anita and David Ozersky. When he was 12, his family moved to Atlantic City, NJ. He graduated from Rutgers, and received a PhD from Notre Dame. He is survived by his wife, Danit Lidor.
Esquire’s Tom Junod wrote, “Josh Ozersky was a meat man. He knew meat, revered it, studied it, sang it, evangelized it, wrote about it, and, of course, ate it. Lots of it. Life, for Josh, was meat, and writing. Everything else was a side.” He added, “…the Josh I knew had a vegan’s soul, a kind of innocence that informed his writing at least as much as his hunger did. He was sweet and he was kind, and if you wrote something he liked, he made sure to let you know it… He made moral judgments, in his eating, in his reading, in his writing, in everything he did, but they were the same moral judgments, in that they all sprang from the same place: his big, broken, throwback’s heart.
Here is an interview on meat from The Forward (aka The Jewish Forward) with Ozersky representing Time magazine:
Worldwide news was made upon the sudden death of David Goldberg. It was reported that he and his wife were vacationing at a Nayarit resort area development – Palmasola- on the Southwest coast of Mexico when he was found unconscious on a gym treadmill. He most likely fell, hit his head on the equipment, and succumbed from the trauma and injuries. Attempts to revive him failed. Goldberg, 47, was the CEO of SurveyMonkey.com and a mentor to many in the Silicon Valley. He was a well-respected former executive at Yahoo, Launch Media, Benchmark Capital, and Capitol Records. His wife is Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Re/code’s Kara Swisher wrote, “He was truthful without being snarky and hopeful without being deluded. For anyone involved in the evolution of the Web and its many characters, this is rare. Humility is not something common this world, as you might imagine. Even when he aced other players in poker, a game dear to his heart, he was nice about it.”
At his memorial service this week, U2 vocalist Bono sang, and on a White House blog, U.S. President Obama extended his sympathies. Sandberg wrote in a Facebook post that, “We had 11 truly joyful years of the deepest love, happiest marriage, and truest partnership that I could imagine.” Some who came to his memorial at Stanford were, Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, and PayPal co-founder Max Levchin. Goldberg and Sandberg married in 2004; they have two children. Sandberg credited Goldberg with supporting her executive career at Google and Facebook. Goldberg hailed from Minnesota, where Mel, his late father, taught Law, and Paula, his mother, is the founder of the Pacer Center, a Minnesota nonprofit group that assists parents of disabled children and young adults.
Also, suddenly and sadly, we lost Or Asraf, a young 22 year old Israeli hiker and IDF veteran, who was killed during the earthquake in Nepal’s Bamboo Village in the Langtang region. Asraf’s body was found by several of his IDF comrades from the Golani Brigade’s Egoz unit. They traveled to Nepal to help in the search for him. Upon his arrival back in Israel, Or’s father, Patrick, said, “It is symbolic that his friends in the [IDF] unit, who stand here with me, acted out of camaraderie and even as they endangered their own lives. I am proud of the State of Israel that sent a rescue team and more, when bigger countries did not even send one rescuer.” Last year, Or has been was moderately wounded in the Saja’iyya neighborhood of Gaza City. He left the army following his recovery and was on a hiking trip with members of his unit when the earthquake occurred.
