Rich’s commitment to social justice that characterized her sustained engagement in the world emerged from the provocation and the aspiration that was her Jewishness.

Not afraid to make enemies and blessed with many loyal friends, [she] was unrelenting and consistent in upholding the highest standards for rigor and clarity in philosophy and in academia more generally.

She never put herself in the limelight to lead and yet she was a leader.

Annette made a huge difference in people’s awareness and understanding of the importance of truth and the civil right of access to one’s birth certificates and to information about one’s self.

She never put much stock in her pioneering achievements ... until she became a grandmother... It was when she had her granddaughters around her that she began to think about what their lives were going to be like.

While she wasn’t your typical 'Bubbe,' cooking brisket or baking kugel, she was a gifted public speaker and totally dedicated to Hadassah, her synagogue, the Land of Israel, the Jewish people, and her family.

She faced discrimination overtly as a Jew and less overtly as a working woman... Those experiences sensitize people to what fair treatment is. We knew that to be fair was important, to work for improving the world an essential task.

She found that her feminism conflicted with the synagogue practice of denying women a place on the bimah. Only later did she [find] a sympathetic rabbi and a group of congregants who also believed in women’s equality.

She was born into a family of great rabbis and scholars; if she had been born a boy, her path would have been clear. Having been born a girl, she had to find her way. She did so with great success in her public and private lives, and did so with wisdom and grace.

Beyond her extraordinary artistic accomplishments, Adrienne was a mentor, resource, and role model to so many who have lived, or at least sojourned, in Yiddishland.

There are the doers in this world and there are the passive people who live vicariously through the doers. Thinking and learning is doing, because it makes you active and aware of your life

While always ready to challenge Jewish convention when necessary, she also honored those traditions that didn’t need changing. Indeed, numerous friends across Adina’s wide community bake challah because Adina taught them—a tradition she learned from her own mother, Toby.

Her generosity was boundless; she provided resources or advice, but the recipient had to be willing to listen and follow through. Nothing disappointed her more than someone settling for less than they could do.

She was never conflicted about whether or not to stand up on some issue or for someone who needed her support. She never slogged through some inner debate, yes or no, what shall I do? It was natural for her to just go ahead forcefully and say and do what was right in her eyes.

She always treated everyone the same regardless of race, gender, class, or age. She knew innately that these things were right. It took society a full generation or more to catch up with her.

A civic activist, storeowner, and avid collector of folk art, she was my family’s compass—there for every decision, every change, every milestone.

Vera Saeedpour became an expert on the Kurds because she was a Jew, and she died leaving the world a bit more sensitive to their plight than it was before she was here.

Ultimately, RIA created “an explosion of knowledge” in every aspect of medicine and was used in thousands of laboratories in the United States and abroad.