Edward Orshan ’55

Ed survived COVID-19 only to die of natural causes in a nursing home near Beverly Hills, Calif., Jan. 22, 2021.

He was born Dec. 30, 1933, in Newark, N.J. He graduated from James Madison High School in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he was president of the student government. At Princeton he joined Court Club, majored in psychology, and was involved in IAA football, basketball, the Psychology Club, Whig-Clio, and the Nassau Lit. He roomed with Fred Neuman.

His life embraced a remarkable variety of friends and ventures: He was born in the same year and on the same block as Philip Roth; his high school classmate was Ruth Bader Ginsburg; he earned a law degree at Harvard but never used it; his roommate and close friend John Avildsen later won an Oscar for directing Rocky; he moved to Israel, where with George Frankel they opened the first Chinese eatery in Tel Aviv (Frankel moved to Canada and was inducted into the British Columbia Restaurant Hall of Fame); and a few years ago he became religious and with friends founded the Happy Minyan, a Jewish community inspired by the teachings of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach.

Ed is survived by his three sons, Nathaniel and Gabriel Orshan, and Itai Berli, and by his former wife, Nan Orshan-Tomlinson.