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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 Books

We're honoring Jewish American Heritage Month with our list of 10 from St. Louis

We’re honoring Jewish American Heritage Month with our list of 10 from St. Louis

Bill Motchan, Special to the Jewish LightPublished May 13, 2022

In 2006, May was proclaimed Jewish American Heritage Month, which pays tribute to Jewish Americans who helped form the fabric of American history, culture, and society. Throughout U.S. history, Jewish St. Louisans have made significant contributions to...

How Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Joshua Cohen mines the Israeli-American relationship for comedy and tragedy

How Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Joshua Cohen mines the Israeli-American relationship for comedy and tragedy

ADAM KIRSCHPublished May 11, 2022

(JTA) — For many younger Jews, being critical of Israel is itself a form of attachment. They may not consider themselves answerable to the Jewish state, but they definitely feel answerable for it in the eyes of the world. The same is true of some Jewish...

New Truman bio offers balanced perspective on his presidency

New Truman bio offers balanced perspective on his presidency

ROBERT A. COHN, Editor-in-Chief EmeritusPublished May 4, 2022

In his superbly written new biography, “The Trials of Harry S. Truman,” Jeffrey Frank, a Presidential historian, avoids both adulation and harsh judgment of the Man from Missouri. For admirers and skeptics of HST, Frank, who previously wrote about...

Cindy Levin. Photo: Bill Motchan

Advocacy leader’s work inspires others to become activists

BILL MOTCHAN, Special to the Jewish LightPublished May 4, 2022

If you’ve ever signed a petition, written a letter to the editor or marched for a cause you believe in, you participated in a form of advocacy. It’s an act of free speech that can help call attention to important issues. Cindy Levin has made advocacy...

Jennifer Grey knows you care about her nose

PJ Grisar, THE FORWARDPublished May 4, 2022

In her new memoir, Jennifer Grey leads with her nose. For the first 29 years of her life, the “Dirty Dancing” star’s trademark proboscis was her pesky “friend,”  demanding three-quarter profile headshots. It was the feature that prompted her...

56 hidden letters unearth one woman's unknowable Holocaust past

56 hidden letters unearth one woman’s unknowable Holocaust past

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished April 27, 2022

(JWA) - After a career spent telling other people's stories, Eleanor Reissa has finally uncovered her own. In 1986, when her mother died at the age of sixty-four, Eleanor went through all of her belongings. In the back of her mother’s lingerie drawer,...

From the left: Moishe (Morris), Mailekh (Marcel), and Khil (Harry) Lenga in either Rome or Stuttgart, circa 1945. Lenga family collection.

St. Louisan Harry Lenga beat the Nazis by fixing watches to survive

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished April 26, 2022

On this, Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah), we honor the victims, remember the survivors, and educate the community about the history and lessons of the Holocaust. One such story has become a book, which will be released later this summer.  "The...

Barbara Ballinger and Margaret Crane returning to St. Louis for book signing

Barbara Ballinger and Margaret Crane returning to St. Louis for book signing

Published April 20, 2022

Left Bank Books & St. Louis Public Library, welcome former St. Louisans Barbara Ballinger and Margaret Crane, who will discuss with humor, optimism, energy, and honesty the book that will help readers face what comes their way as they age,...

St. Louis poet Jason Sommer retells his father's real-life story of Nazi brutality in new memoir

St. Louis poet Jason Sommer retells his father’s real-life story of Nazi brutality in new memoir

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished April 18, 2022

St. Louis author and poet Jason Sommer's father, Jay, is 98 years old and losing his memory. More than 70 years after arriving in New York from World War II-torn Europe, he is forgetting the stories that defined his life, the life of his family, and the...

Local Jewish author dives into Woodstock ‘then and now’

Local Jewish author dives into Woodstock ‘then and now’

JUDITH NEWMARK, Special For The Jewish LightPublished April 14, 2022

When Alex Ludwig was born in 1979, Woodstock was 10-year-old news. Of course, people remembered the festival, a counter-cultural phenomenon that drew some 500,000 kids to Max Yasgur’s dairy farm for three days of peace, love and music. And what...

Are you a young Jewish writer? A new local literary magazine wants to publish you

Are you a young Jewish writer? A new local literary magazine wants to publish you

By Daniel Shanker and Avital VorobeychikPublished April 14, 2022

Machshava is the Hebrew word for thought. It’s the perfect name for Epstein Hebrew Academy’s literary magazine, as the Machshava encompasses thoughts reflected throughout the St. Louis Jewish community. Thought is a purposely vague term, opening...

The cover of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” edition of the Maxwell House Haggadah features an illustration of the hit show’s cast. (Maxwell House)

A “brief” history of the Maxwell House Haggadah

Kerri Steinberg, Otis College of Art and DesignPublished April 13, 2022

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...

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