New York Jewish Week<\/a>) \u2014 Standing before hundreds of mourners last month, Rabbi David Wise held up a T-shirt with the words \u201cProud American, Proud Zionist.\u201d<\/p>\nIt was the shirt he had planned to wear to the Israel Day Parade that morning. Instead, he carried it to honor Cara Trager, a Queens-based journalist and congregant of his whose sudden death days earlier had left the local Jewish community reeling.<\/p>\n
Most in attendance had planned to attend the parade, as did Trager, whose fierce support for Israel was a defining conviction of her life.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was nobody more pro-Israel, and a bigger Zionist, than her,\u201d Trager\u2019s husband, Michael, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. \u201cThe joke I would say is that I knew how to tell her I love you. I had to tell her I\u2019m pro-Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trager died May 29 from injuries sustained when she and her husband were struck by a car while returning to their home in Hollis Hills, Queens, from an Israeli restaurant four days earlier. She was 71.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will spend the rest of my life missing her, and wishing she was here,\u201d Trager\u2019s son, Eric Trager, said during her funeral on May 31. \u201cMy mother, Cara Trager, loved, and was loved deeply. This is how I will remember her, and this is how I hope she will always be remembered.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michael Trager said that he and his son both attended the May 27 arraignment of the driver who started the chain-reaction collision, Dawood Faisal.<\/p>\n
Faisal, 22, has been charged with manslaughter in the second degree, leaving the scene of a collision resulting in death, reckless driving and other crimes for speeding. Faisal pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in Queens Criminal Court, and was remanded to custody without bail.<\/p>\n
Michael Trager said that he believed that Faisal had been \u201clooking to do damage in a heavily Jewish area.\u201d Faisal\u2019s attorney, Sara Pervez, did not respond to a JTA request for comment.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs devastated as the family is, and me in particular, I\u2019d like to at least hope that justice is served, that this puts an end, or at least helps put an end, to senseless violence,\u201d Trager said.<\/p>\n
But amid the grief and search for answers, Trager\u2019s family said they remembered her for her resilience, passion and enthusiasm for life.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Judaism, we choose life, and she chose life again and again and again,\u201d said Trager\u2019s daughter, Rachel Sales. \u201cShe was never less of herself, she was always like, you get the full Cara Trager, all her beliefs, all her opinions, all her love, all her energy, all of it, you know, and we weren\u2019t ready for \u2026 we weren\u2019t ready, and she wasn\u2019t ready at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to her husband and children, Trager is survived by her daughter-in-law, Alyssa Saunders; her son-in-law, Benjamin Sales, who worked at JTA until last year; and her grandchildren Max, Teddy, Dov and Yael.<\/p>\n
Born on May 4, 1955, in the Bronx to Alex and Sylvia Selinger, Trager grew up in a neighborhood with few Jews. While Sales said her grandparents were \u201csuper into Jewish identity and very Zionist,\u201d the lack of a larger Jewish community left her mother \u201chungry for Judaism\u201d throughout the rest of her life.<\/p>\n
Trager attended James Monroe High School and then Queens College, where she wrote for the school newspaper and quickly discovered a talent for storytelling. In 1975, Trager met her future husband, Michael, at a mutual friend\u2019s party. When they reconnected at another gathering the following year, Michael Trager said he was smitten immediately.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to marry her that night, but you know, it might be helpful to graduate college, which we did,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it was a great marriage. It was really a great marriage.\u201d<\/p>\n
After graduating from college, Cara Trager went door to door with her resume, and began her career writing for trade publications, according to her family.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe really, really wanted to be a writer,\u201d Sales said. \u201cAnd I think people said, like, \u2018You\u2019ll never be able to do it, this is impossible,\u2019 and she was dead set on making it work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before having her first child in the early 1980\u2019s, Trager decided to leave the typical newsroom environment and strike out on her own, eventually building a successful freelance business that included bylines in the New York Post, Crain\u2019s New York Business and Newsday, which she continued writing for until her death.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was a storyteller, you know, she kind of had like a flair,\u201d Sales said. \u201cShe just liked asking a lot of questions. She was very curious about people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alongside her journalism, Trager also produced publications and marketing materials for a host of Jewish organizations, including the UJA-Federation of New York, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Theological Seminary.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe accomplished so much in her 71 years,\u201d Sales said. \u201cShe was definitely a trailblazer in terms of being a journalist, being able to work from home, being totally present for her kids, while also building a full career.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beyond her professional life, Trager dedicated herself to supporting local Jewish institutions, including serving on the board of the Solomon Schechter School of Queens, which her children attended, and serving in several leadership roles at the family\u2019s synagogue, Etz Hayim at Hollis Hills Bayside.<\/p>\n
Trager and her husband visited Israel 11 times together over their lives, and she was also a board member of a children\u2019s home in Israel. Sales said that her mother would frequently tell her and her brother detailed stories about the Holocaust and the birth of the State of Israel when they were young around the dining room table.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was really her passion,\u201d Sales said. \u201cWe were Conservative. She would never describe herself as observant or religious, but [it was] really more about Jewish identity and Jewish resilience and Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Known as the matriarch of her family, Trager\u2019s family said she approached motherhood with the same passion she brought to journalism and Jewish activism.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was an inspiration,\u201d Rachel Sales said. \u201cShe loved people, she loved stories, she loved life, and she was stolen from us, she was 100% stolen from us by, we don\u2019t know why yet, but we\u2019ll find out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hello, fellow Forward reader! I\u2019m Joel Brown, a Forward reader and supporter for more than 15 years, and currently the chair of the board of directors.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m an avid Forward reader because it ticks so many of my essential boxes: excellent journalism, Jewish focus and diverse viewpoints. In today\u2019s political climate, what I most appreciate is the Forward\u2019s independence \u2014 made possible by the generosity of its membership.<\/p>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cara Trager at the Western Wall in Jerusalem in January 2026. (Courtesy of Rachel Sales) By Grace Gilson…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-262612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Cara](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1781137305_569_trager1.jpeg\")
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