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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

Netflix’s ‘Russian Doll’ features a Hungarian ‘Gold Train’ filled with Nazi loot. What’s the real story?

Netflix’s ‘Russian Doll’ features a Hungarian ‘Gold Train’ filled with Nazi loot. What’s the real story?

Published April 25, 2022

(JTA) — When Season 2 of “Russian Doll,” Natasha Lyonne’s sci-fi exploration of identity and trauma, dropped on Netflix Friday, it immediately became clear that teasers of the season’s Jewish content were not overblown. In the season, which...

Barry Levinson's "The Survivor" tells story of man who boxed to survive Auschwitz

Barry Levinson’s “The Survivor” tells story of man who boxed to survive Auschwitz

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished April 24, 2022

More than 80 years after the end of the Holocaust we are once again living in a time of rising antisemitism, and watching genocide happen, this time in Ukraine. These facts make it even more crucial that we continue to remember and pass down the stories...

Gwyneth Paltrow funds historical marker at her Jewish ancestors’ cemetery in Poland

Gwyneth Paltrow funds historical marker at her Jewish ancestors’ cemetery in Poland

Published April 21, 2022

(JTA) — Actress and lifestyle guru Gwyneth Paltrow funded the erection of a sign offering information on Jews in her ancestors’ hometown in Poland. The informational signboard is to be unveiled next week at the Jewish cemetery of Nowogród in northeastern...

APRIL 22: Jewish fighters patrol during the battle for Haifa in April 1948.

This week in Israeli history: April 21-27

CENTER FOR ISRAEL EDUCATION, israeled.orgPublished April 21, 2022

April 21, 1947 — 2 Jewish Militants Kill Themselves Moshe Barazani, 20, of Lehi (the Stern Gang) and Meir Feinstein, 19, of the Irgun kill themselves with a grenade smuggled into their prison in Jerusalem to prevent the British from hanging them...

"Can We Talk?" episode 74: A Half-Century of Women Rabbis

“Can We Talk?” episode 74: A Half-Century of Women Rabbis

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished April 21, 2022

Fifty years ago, Rabbi Sally Priesand made history by becoming the first woman rabbi in America. In this episode of the podcast Can We Talk?, women rabbis from three Jewish denominations reflect on the milestone. We speak with Rabbi Dianne Cohler-Esses,...

Class is in session as two movie mensches launch “FilmShul”

Class is in session as two movie mensches launch “FilmShul”

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished April 20, 2022

Celebrating and honoring the massive contribution of Jews in Hollywood is at the heart of FilmShul, one of the more unique offerings for the Jewish community to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic and it's is finding audiences across the country. What...

Executed Irgun fighter’s tefillin found after 75 years

Executed Irgun fighter’s tefillin found after 75 years

Hanan Greenwood, JNSPublished April 20, 2022

(Israel Hayom via JNS) -- Decades after they were lost, the tefillin (phylacteries) of Irgun fighter Dov Gruner, who was hanged by the British in 1947 after being caught during a raid on the Ramat Gan police station, are going on display in a new exhibition...

Simon Igielnik (left) with his parents, Jack and Fela, during a 1995 family trip to Israel.

Documentary on Holocaust featuring St. Louis survivors re-airing Sunday

Jordan Palmer and Eric BergerPublished April 20, 2022

Nine PBS is re-airing an important documentary on Holocaust survivors who settled in Kansas City after World War II. Two of them later moved to St. Louis. “All These Delicate Sorrows,” which premiered last June will reair Sunday, April 24 at 4...

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...

Liev Schreiber will play Anne Frank’s father in new Disney+ series

Liev Schreiber will play Anne Frank’s father in new Disney+ series

Published April 18, 2022

(JTA) — Jewish actor Liev Schreiber will play Anne Frank’s father Otto in a new Disney+ limited series, the latest dramatization of the Frank family’s harrowing life in hiding from the Nazis. The eight-episode miniseries, “A Small Light,”...

In L.A., a new exhibit on the American deli reveals some Jewish truths

In L.A., a new exhibit on the American deli reveals some Jewish truths

Rob Eshman, The ForwardPublished April 16, 2022

In the 1930s, there were 5,000 delis in New York City. By way of comparison, Starbucks, which seems to be on every street corner, has 241 outlets in New York. And those delis were much more than just places to get coffee or a pastrami. “I’ll...

Tennessee Republican: Let the homeless be inspired by Hitler, whose life ‘got him in the history books’

Tennessee Republican: Let the homeless be inspired by Hitler, whose life ‘got him in the history books’

Rudy Malcom, The ForwardPublished April 14, 2022

A Republican state senator in Tennessee cited Adolf Hitler in a legislative session Wednesday as an example of somebody who overcame poverty and achieved fame. Arguing in favor of a bill that targets unhoused people camping on public property,...

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