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Abraham Zarem, one of the last surviving Manhattan Project scientists, dies at 106
(JTA) — Abraham Zarem was 28 when he joined the Manhattan Project, the vast U.S. government effort to develop the atom bomb.
Engineers like him gathered in secret laboratories in New Mexico, California, New York City and elsewhere to provide the practical know-how the theorists lacked.
“‘They were geniuses, but didn’t know how to build a f—king thing,’” Zarem recalled, according to his longtime rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, David Wolpe.
Zaum, who went on to a distinguished career in technology, business development and leadership management training, died March 8 in Los Angeles. He was 106, and one of the last surviving members of the army of scientists, technicians, bureaucrats and clerks who helped build the weapon that would force Japan’s surrender in World War II and usher in the Atomic Age.
After the war, Zarem joined the staff of the United States Naval Ordnance Test Station at Pasadena, where as head of the electrical section of the physical research division he developed a high-speed camera used to study intense light sources and other phenomena. Popular Mechanics called the Zarem camera — 25,000 times faster than any movie camera then available — a “miracle.”
In 1963, Zarem served as senior vice president of Xerox, leaving in 1970 to launch a consulting business. He returned to Xerox as founder and CEO of its Xerox Development Corporation in 1975. He later served as founder and managing director of Frontier Associates, a technology consultancy.
Born in Chicago on March 7, 1917, Zarem was valedictorian of his undergraduate class at the Armour Institute of Technology (now the Illinois Institute of Technology), and earned his doctorate on the physical properties of the electric spark at the California Institute of Technology. He headed the Stanford University Research Institute in Los Angeles while still in his 30s.
Later he served as distinguished senior advisor for Neuroscience Technology Transfer for the UCLA Brain Research Institute and a member of the Urology Advisory Board of the UCLA Geffen School of Medicine. Additionally, he served as distinguished visiting executive in Science and Technology for Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
One of Zarem’s companies, Electro-Optical Systems, developed the “world’s first practical ion engine” — an experimental high-energy thruster for spacecraft. It now resides in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.
Zarem was also a regular at Temple Sinai, where Wolpe said Zarem mentored him as a young rabbi. Zarem and his wife Esther were generous contributors to the congregation; Wolpe remembered Zarem chanting from the book of Jonah on Yom Kippur when he was 99.
“Abe Zarem was a brilliant, buoyant, passionate, pious and philanthropic person,” Wolpe told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency this week. “He had a central role in some of the key scientific events of human history — the atomic bomb, the moon landing — and yet took an interest in everyone lucky enough to meet him. Abe was truly yachid b’mino — unique in his time. He will be greatly missed.”
Unlike with some of his collaborators on the Manhattan Project, there is no public record of Zarem grappling publicly with the moral implications of the weapon he helped develop. Years after their war work at Caltech, a man who worked under Zarem as a lab assistant said he felt no guilt, because without the detonations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he told a local newspaper, “We would have lost 500,000 Americans in the invasion of Japan.”
But Zarem did go on the record in 1952 on a different topic, in advice he shared with a labor and management magazine: “Keep your feet warm, and your head cool. And watch out for the hotheads with cold feet.”
His survivors include his children, Janet, David and Mark.
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The post Abraham Zarem, one of the last surviving Manhattan Project scientists, dies at 106 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel’s Netanyahu to Discuss Second Phase of Gaza Plan with Trump Later This Month
Trucks transport tanks on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza, Israel, November 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that the second phase of a US plan to end the war in Gaza was close, but cautioned several key issues still needed to be resolved, including whether a multinational security force would be deployed.
Netanyahu, speaking to reporters alongside German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Jerusalem, said that he would hold important discussions with US President Donald Trump at the end of the month on how to ensure the plan’s second phase was achieved.
The prime minister’s office in November said that Trump had invited Netanyahu to the White House “in the near future,” although a date for the visit has not yet been made public.
Netanyahu said that he would discuss with Trump how to bring an end to Hamas rule in Gaza. A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is entering its second month, although both sides have repeatedly accused each other of violating the truce agreement.
Netanyahu said that it was important to ensure Hamas not only upholds the ceasefire but also follows through on “their commitment” to the plan to disarm and for Gaza to be demilitarized.
Israel retained control of 53 percent of Gaza under the first phase of Trump’s plan, which involved the release of hostages held by terrorists in Gaza and of Palestinians detained by Israel. The final hostage remains to be handed over are those of an Israeli police officer killed on October 7, 2023 fighting Gazan militants who had invaded Israel.
“We’ll get him out,” Netanyahu said.
Since the ceasefire started in October, the terrorist group has reestablished itself in the rest of Gaza.
GERMAN CHANCELLOR: PHASE TWO MUST COME NOW
According to the plan, Israel is to pull back further in the second phase as a transitional authority is established in Gaza and a multinational security force is deployed, Hamas is disarmed, and reconstruction begins.
A multinational coordination center has been established in Israel, but there are no deadlines in the plan and officials involved say that efforts to advance it have stalled.
“What will be the timeline? What are the forces that are coming in? Will we have international forces? If not, what are the alternatives? These are all topics that are being discussed,” Netanyahu said, describing them as central issues.
Merz said that Germany was willing to help rebuild Gaza but would wait for Netanyahu’s meeting with Trump, and for clarity on what Washington was prepared to do, before Berlin decides what it would contribute but that phase two “must come now.”
NETANYAHU: WEST BANK ANNEXATION REMAINS A SUBJECT OF DISCUSSION
Netanyahu said that he would also discuss with Trump “opportunities for peace,” an apparent reference to US efforts for Israel to establish formal ties with Arab and Muslim states.
“We believe there’s a path to advance a broader peace with the Arab states, and a path also to establish a workable peace with our Palestinian neighbors,” Netanyahu said, asserting Israel would always insist on security control of the West Bank.
Trump has said he promised Muslim leaders that Israel would not annex the West Bank, where Netanyahu’s government is backing the development of Jewish settlements.
The “question of political annexation” of the West Bank remains a subject of discussion, Netanyahu said.
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Frank Gehry, renowned architect who began life as Frank Goldberg, dies at 96
(JTA) — Frank Gehry, a Jewish architect who became one of the world’s most renowned innovators in his field for his contributions to modernist architecture, including the famed Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, has died at 96.
His death following a brief respiratory illness was confirmed on Friday by the chief of staff at his firm, Meaghan Lloyd, according to the New York Times.
Gehry was born Ephraim Owen Goldberg on Feb. 28, 1929, to a Jewish family in Toronto. In 1947, Gehry moved to Los Angeles with his family and later went on to graduate from the University of Southern California’s School of Architecture in 1954.
The same year, he changed his name to Gehry at the behest of his first wife who was “worried about antisemitism and thought it sounded less Jewish.” He would later say he would not make the choice again.
Among Gehry’s most acclaimed works, which feature his signature, sculptural style, are the Bilbao Guggenheim, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris and the DZ Bank Building in Berlin.
Gehry also often returned to the motif of a fish, including two large fish sculptures in the World Trade Center in New York City and on Barcelona’s seafront. Some tied the fish motif to his recollections about his Jewish grandmother’s trips to the fishmonger to prepare for Shabbat each week.
“We’d put it in the bathtub,” Gehry said, according to the New York Times. “And I’d play with this fish for a day until she killed it and made gefilte fish.”
Gehry began to identify as an atheist shortly after his bar mitzvah. But in 2018, while he was working on ANU-Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, he told the Jewish Journal that Judaism had influenced his career nonetheless.
“There’s a curiosity built into the [Jewish] culture,” he said. “I grew up under that. My grandfather read Talmud to me. That’s one of the Jewish things I hang on to probably — that philosophy from that religion. Which is separate from God. It’s more ephemeral. I was brought up with that curiosity. I call it a healthy curiosity. Maybe it is something that the religion has produced. I don’t know. It’s certainly a positive thing.”
In 1989, Gehry won the prestigious Pritzker Prize, considered one of the top awards in the field of architecture, and in 1999 won the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects. In 2007, Gehry also received the Jerusalem Prize for Arts and Letters and in 2016 won the Presidential Medal of Freedom from then-president Barack Obama.
His survivors include his wife, Berta Isabel Aguilera, daughter Brina, and sons Alejandro and Samuel. Another daughter, Leslie Gehry Brenner, died of cancer in 2008.
The post Frank Gehry, renowned architect who began life as Frank Goldberg, dies at 96 appeared first on The Forward.
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Herzog Says Wellbeing of Israelis His Only Concern in Deal With Netanyahu’s ‘Extraordinary’ Pardon Request
Israeli President Isaac Herzog speaks during a press conference with Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics in Riga, Latvia, Aug. 5, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ints Kalnins
i24 News – In an interview with Politico published on Saturday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog remained tight-lipped on whether he intended to grant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “extraordinary” pardon request, saying that his decision will be motivated by what’s best for Israel.
“There is a process which goes through the Justice Ministry and my legal adviser and so on. This is certainly an extraordinary request and above all when dealing with it I will consider what is the best interest of the Israeli people,” Herzog said. “The well-being of the Israeli people is my first, second and third priority.”
Asked specifically about President Donald Trump’s request, Herzog said “I respect President Trump’s friendship and his opinion,” adding, “Israel, naturally, is a sovereign country.”
Herzog addressed a wide range of topics in the interview, including the US-Israel ties and the shifts in public opinion on Israel.
“One has to remember that the fountains of America, of American life, are based on biblical values, just like ours. And therefore, I believe that the underlying fountain that we all drink from is the same,” he said. “However, I am following very closely the trends that I see in the American public eye and the attitude, especially of young people, on Israel.”
“It comes from TikTok,” he said of the torrent of hostility toward Israel that has engulf swathes of U.S. opinion since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, “from a very shallow discourse of the current situation, pictures or viewpoints, and doesn’t judge from the big picture, which is, is Israel a strategic ally? Yes. Is Israel contributing to American national interests, security interests? Absolutely yes. Is Israel a beacon of democracy in the Middle East? Absolutely yes.”