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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 History

Donald Trump and Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun light a candle during an Oct. 7 remembrance event at the Trump National Doral Golf Club, in Doral, Florida, Oct. 7, 2024. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Trump issues Yom Hashoah proclamation

JNS StaffPublished April 24, 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday issued a proclamation to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah) in Israel. Below is the full text: April 23, 2025 By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation On Yom HaShoah, Holocaust...

Leo Wolf, Tom Green and Bill Kahn.

They built a museum so we wouldn’t forget—now it’s our turn to remember

By Greg Yawitz, Myron FreedmanPublished April 22, 2025

“We can’t let people ever forget,” said Leo Wolf, chairman emeritus of the St. Louis Holocaust Committee and a Holocaust survivor, in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s 1995 coverage of the opening of the St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center. “We...

Holocaust survivors (L-R) Guenter Pappenheim, Eva Fahidi-Pusztai and Heinrich Rotmensch sit in wheelchairs at a ceremony at the Buchenwald concentration camp on Jan. 27, 2020, the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. All three died before the 80th anniversary. (Jens Schlueter/AFP via Getty Images)

Half of Holocaust survivors alive today will be dead in 6 years, new analysis finds

Grace Gilson, JTAPublished April 21, 2025

Almost all of the Holocaust survivors alive today will be dead in 15 years, a new projection by a leading organization advocating for their compensation finds. While the timeline is something of an actuarial inevitability — the Holocaust ended 80...

1928 Citroën B14 Coupe

Your guide to finding Jewish stories we featured inside ‘Roaring’ at the Art Museum

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished April 18, 2025

I’ve been hearing from quite a few of you who’ve already gone—or are planning to go—see “Roaring: Art, Fashion and the Automobile in France, 1918–1939” at the St. Louis Art Museum. One note stood out: “My husband and I just read your...

‘Ecce Homo’ (Behold the Man), by 19th-century painter Antonio Ciseri, depicts Pontius Pilate presenting Jesus to a crowd in Jerusalem.
Tungsten/Galleria d'Arte Moderna via Wikimedia Commons

A Roman governor ordered Jesus’ crucifixion – so why did many Christians blame Jews for centuries?

Nathanael Andrade, Binghamton UniversityPublished April 16, 2025

It’s a straightforward part of the Easter story: The Roman governor Pontius Pilate had Jesus of Nazareth killed by his soldiers. He imposed a sentence that Roman judges often inflicted on social subversives – crucifixion. The New Testament...

One mystery donor. Hundreds of voices. A legacy saved.

One mystery donor. Hundreds of voices. A legacy saved.

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished April 16, 2025

The St. Louis Jewish community didn’t waste any time. Just three days after launching an emergency fundraising campaign to protect its digital archive of Holocaust survivor stories, the museum reached its $130,000 goal—and then surpassed it—thanks...

St. Louis Holocaust Museum scrambles to save survivor stories after funds cut

St. Louis Holocaust Museum scrambles to save survivor stories after funds cut

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished April 14, 2025

The St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum has launched an emergency fundraising campaign to save its Holocaust survivor stories after losing over $130,000 in federal support. The cut jeopardizes efforts to finish digitizing and sharing more than 300...

Yom HaShoah event to honor Holocaust survivors and the journalists who told their stories

Yom HaShoah event to honor Holocaust survivors and the journalists who told their stories

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished April 14, 2025

There are stories that live in history books and then there are stories that survive because someone was there to tell them. On April 27, St. Louis will gather at Congregation Temple Israel for its annual Yom HaShoah commemoration, focusing...

The documentary ‘Prosecuting Evil’ looks at Ben Ferencz, a war crimes investigator and a prosecutor at the post-WWII Nuremberg trials.

St. Louis law library honors Nuremberg prosecutor who put Nazis on trial

Published April 2, 2025

As part of its monthly educational series, the Law Library Association of St. Louis, a public and membership law library located in the Civil Courts Building in downtown St. Louis, is presenting a program in April focusing on Nuremberg prosecutor Ben...

Pres. Harry Truman from the “The Trials of Harry S. Truman,” by Jeffrey Frank

When Missouri’s own Harry S. Truman’s addressed Jewish troops for Passover 1945

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished April 2, 2025

In March 1945, with World War II nearing its end and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s health failing, Vice President Harry S. Truman stepped up to deliver a Passover message to Jewish troops serving overseas. Roosevelt was just weeks from death. Truman,...

The scarab seal from Tel Azekah. Photo by Emil Aladjem/Israel Antiquities Authority.

Toddler finds 3,800-year-old amulet on family trip

JNS StaffPublished April 1, 2025

In early March, during a family trip to Tel Azekah near Beit Shemesh, three-and-a-half-year-old Ziv Nitzan from Moshav Ramot Meir stumbled upon an extraordinary piece of history—an ancient scarab amulet dating back approximately 3,800 years. The young...

A can of memories: how one family’s sardine salad tells a story of survival and tradition

A can of memories: how one family’s sardine salad tells a story of survival and tradition

By Margi Lenga Kahn, Special To The Jewish LightPublished April 1, 2025

Not everyone is a fan of sardines. Perhaps you have tried them and enjoyed them, or didn’t enjoy them, or perhaps you are thinking, “Why would I want to eat sardines?”  Sardines are among the healthiest, most sustainable and least expensive fish...

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