Academy Award winner Alan Arkin, who appeared in more than 90 films and headlined the 2011 St. Louis Jewish Book Festival, died on Thursday. He was the son of Ukrainian and German Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn, where he was born in 1934. But over the...

Seriously now, this is no joke. Back in 2020, a survey from the Pew Research Center found that 5.3 million of the nation’s religious and cultural Jews cited humor as essential to their Jewish identity. Half of U.S. Jews say continuing family traditions...

This is a true story. Several years ago at a school awards assembly, a teacher/administrator/principal type gave an opening speech. Said educator was known for being nervous when addressing big groups. That, combined with too many notecards, produced...

Comedy roasts took off in this current era of unscripted cable television because they’re cheap to produce. The format is reliable, simple: A mix of comics and celebrities take turns lobbing potshots at each other and at the primary target, who finally...

Iconic Jewish comedian Jerry Seinfeld's four-arena comedy tour will make a stop here in St. Louis on November 11, at the Enterprise Center in downtown St. Louis. The tour, which will begin in San Francisco was announced today by both comedians on...

School is out for the summer! Raise your hand if you loved summer break. Sleeping late, going swimming, camp, no homework. It makes me long for my youth. But kids these days do things differently than we did back in the 1900’s when we were young. Then We...

Jen Weinman was going through a really hard time in her life. She was dealing with depression and had a bad breakup. Then she met a group of people who had a common interest: improv theater. “I asked them why they chose improv and one of them told...

Early in the pandemic, Sarah Silverman tried (and largely failed) to win us back with diarrhea. When Gal Gadot’s infamous “Imagine” video went off like a fart in shul — and Silverman’s own grunting contribution drew groans — the comic...

I love television so much that it inspired my home office décor, as you can see from this photo. Television can simultaneously be a huge waste of time, a way to stay informed, and educational, depending on what you’re watching.  Which category do...

Tuesday, May 23 marks another round of “Coffee Talk with SnL,” the nearly three-year-old gathering of local St. Louis voices hosted by National Council of Jewish Women St. Louis’ Past President, Susan Katzman, and Vice President of Membership, Lisa...

Imagine that the decade is the 1950s, and you’re safeguarding your spuds from kids trying to stick little plastic face pieces with pushpins into them. If you’re guessing this was the precursor to the mustachioed, bulbous figure known as Mr. Potato...

Last Sunday, the Jewish Women’s Archive held an advance screening of the film adaptation of Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, and it felt like a party. Not only because it was JWA’s first big public event since Covid, not only...