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A nonprofit, independent news source to inform, inspire, educate and connect the St. Louis Jewish community.

St. Louis Jewish Light

A nonprofit, independent news source to inform, inspire, educate and connect the St. Louis Jewish community.

St. Louis Jewish Light

A nonprofit, independent news source to inform, inspire, educate and connect the St. Louis Jewish community.

St. Louis Jewish Light

Jewish Pop Culture

First show in new "Steve Woolf Studio Theatre Series" debuting Friday

First show in new “Steve Woolf Studio Theatre Series” debuting Friday

JUDITH NEWMARK, Special to the Jewish LightPublished April 10, 2023

Becks Redman wishes she had had a chance to get to know Stephen Woolf. “We only met once or twice,” explained Redman, co-associate artistic director of the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and its director of new play development. She joined the Rep...

Molly Burris (left) and Joan Lipkin

Joan Lipkin, NJT’s Molly Burris win St. Louis Theater Circle Awards

Published April 10, 2023

Molly Burris received the 2023 St. Louis Theater Circle Award for Outstanding Performer in a Comedy, Female or Non-Binary Role, for her work in the New Jewish Theatre’s production of “Dear Jack, Dear Louise” last June. The epistolary comedy...

Photo Courtesy of ESPN.

ESPN looks at tension between Jewish Day school athletics and religious observance

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished April 10, 2023

The motto of the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School Boys Cross Country team (JDS) in Rockville, Maryland is “Nothing great comes easy," and that motto speaks volumes. You see the students at JDS are practicing Jews who must observe the Sabbath from...

From left, Abdallah El Akal and Stephen Dorff in the Israeli film ‘Zaytoun,’ which is part of Temple Israel’s 15th annual Israeli Film Festival. Photo: Eitan Riklis/Strand Releasing

Temple Israel plans Israeli Film Festival

Published April 6, 2023

On Sunday, April 30, the community is invited to Congregation Temple Israel’s 15th Annual Israeli Film Festival, from 3:30 to 8 p.m. Enjoy two Israeli films and Israeli-style refreshments and a presentation all about modern life in Israel during intermission.  The...

Five questions for science comedian Ben Miller coming to Helium comedy club

Five questions for science comedian Ben Miller coming to Helium comedy club

BILL MOTCHAN, SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH LIGHTPublished April 6, 2023

Jewish stand-up comedian Ben Miller works in a somewhat unusual genre of comedy. He uses science as the jumping-off point. This makes sense, since the New York-based comedian entered the entertainment industry after earning a science degree from Columbia...

"West Covina" from "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend"

The crazy-ex girlfriend audio Haggadah

Esther D. Kustanowitz and Erin Ben-Moche, The BagelsPublished April 4, 2023

After years of analyzing Rachel Bloom’s musical sitcom “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” we have created this audio Passover Haggadah filled with songs from the show. It comes with rules, of course. In this episode, Erin and Esther carefully considered...

How actor Adam Goldberg confronted antisemitism (on screen and off)

How actor Adam Goldberg confronted antisemitism (on screen and off)

By Curt Schleier, The ForwardPublished April 3, 2023

Last summer, as the cast and crew of CBS’ The Equalizer gathered to start filming the show’s third season, the writers approached Adam Goldberg about an episode they were then working on entitled “Never Again.” For those unfamiliar with...

Cory Michael Smith as Varian Fry, Amit Rahav as Thomas Lovegrove and other cast members in Transatlantic. Courtesy of Netflix © 2023

New Netflix show ‘Transatlantic’ chronicles an effort to save artists and thinkers from Nazis

By PJ Grisar, The ForwardPublished April 3, 2023

About 10 years ago, Anna Winger was walking with her father in Potsdamer Platz in Berlin when he noticed a street sign for Varian Fry Strasse. He asked her if she knew who Fry was. She hadn’t then heard of Fry, an American journalist who led...

Seymour Stein with David Byrne and Madonna in 1996. (KMazur/WireImage/Getty Images)

Seymour Stein, Jewish music mogul who discovered Madonna and The Ramones, dies at 80

Gabe Friedman, JTAPublished April 3, 2023

(JTA) — Seymour Stein, one of the most influential music executives of the 20th century, who frequently throughout his career referred to his Jewish Brooklynite roots, died at 80 on Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. The cause was an unspecified...

A Jewish family welcomes home their Navy man and gathers for a Passover Seder at their home in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1943. Minnesota Historical Society/CORBIS/Corbis Historical via Getty Images

How a coffee company and a marketing maven brewed up a Passover tradition

Kerri Steinberg, Otis College of Art and DesignPublished April 3, 2023

For more than a millennium, the haggadah has been the centerpiece of the Jewish holiday of Passover. The book sets out the ceremony for the Seder meal when families tell the biblical Exodus story of God delivering the ancient Israelites from slavery in...

Lindy Drew is the cofounder of Humans of St. Louis, a nonprofit group that shares photos and stories of people and places through its website, social media, and, as of December, a book. The book quickly sold out, but a reprinting is planned for this spring, with preorders available. 
Photos: humansofstl.org

Humans of St. Louis turns a page

Bill Motchan, Special To The Jewish LightPublished April 3, 2023

Lindy Drew didn’t know much about St. Louis when she moved here 10 years ago to attend Washington University. Now she has hundreds of friends, many of whom she’s photographed and written about. Her stories have also generated more than 130,000 social...

(Ben Yehuda Press)

From ‘how to’ to ‘why bother?’ The new guide to being Jewish

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTAPublished April 2, 2023

(JTA) — “What the son wishes to forget the grandson wishes to remember.” That’s known as Hansen’s Law, named for the historian Marcus Lee Hansen, who observed that while the children of immigrants tend to run away from their ethnicity in order...

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