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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

Dvar Torah

The Jewish holiday that urges us to find our joy in everyday moments

The Jewish holiday that urges us to find our joy in everyday moments

Maharat Rori Picker NeissPublished May 3, 2023

The religious philosopher Mircea Eliade speaks about religion as attempting to transform the chaos in our world into the cosmos. Essentially, he says that we take that which is unknown — that which can be different and scary — and try to make it known. We...

After death, holiness? Responding to the scourge of gun violence

After death, holiness? Responding to the scourge of gun violence

RABBI JAMES BENNETTPublished April 26, 2023

We must have become numb to gun violence. Hardly a day goes by without another mass shooting in a school, shopping center, place of worship or public square. We don’t even know what qualifies as a mass shooting these days. Deaths attributable...

Jews being led to Umschlagplatz; photo taken from a window of St Zofia Hospital at the corner of Żelazna and Nowolipie Streets, most likely (to be confirmed) overlooking Nowolipie Street; author’s comment noted after the war at the back of the print held in the USHMM archive in Washington, DC:
”Scenes from the evacuation of the ghetto, ca 20 April 1943”
Photo: Z. L. Grzywaczewski / from the family archive of Maciej Grzywaczewski, son of Leszek Grzywaczewski / scan of the negative: POLIN Museum, Archaeology of Photography Foundation

The symmetry of storytelling can be an amazing thing, with the right story

Published April 20, 2023

We marked Yom HaShoa, Holocaust Memorial Day, on April 17-18. I don’t remember the details of the story, but I do remember some of the names. He was a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto. We met him on sabbatical to Israel, mid-’90s. I was studying music...

Rabbi Noah Arnow

Jewish GOAT Moments

RABBI NOAH ARNOWPublished April 14, 2023

What moment was the G.O.A.T. in Jewish history? We often focus on our “lachrymose history,” tallying up tragedies, expulsions, destructions, and slaughters. It might be harder to come up with good moments. There is a certain intense relief and...

D’var Torah: Each step of our  journey has a higher purpose

D’var Torah: Each step of our journey has a higher purpose

RABBI LORI LEVINE, Congregation Shaare EmethPublished March 22, 2023

Have you ever opened a book that was so technical and so outside your realm of understanding that you found it difficult to get through? Like the words were all in English, but you were reading without understanding a thing?  For many people, this perfectly...

Cantor-Rabbi Ronald D. Eichaker serves United Hebrew Congregation and is a member of the St. Louis Rabbinical and Cantorial Association, which coordinates the weekly d’var Torah for the Light.

D’var Torah: Shabbat bolsters our identity, perspective on the world

CANTOR AND RABBI RON EICHAKERPublished March 16, 2023

These 22nd and 23rd sections of our annual cycle of Torah readings (Vayakhei-Pekudei) opens as the Israelites are commanded to observe the Shabbat. Moses continues his acquisition of donations from the people to continue the construction and...

D’var Torah: Changing times

D’var Torah: Changing times

RABBI JORDAN GERSONPublished March 10, 2023

A student’s arrival on a college campus is often accompanied by a great deal of uncertainty. Students must adjust to a new environment, new schedules, and a new sense of freedom and autonomy. In response to these changes, students, even those that go...

From the Foster Bible. (Wikimedia)

What the 12 gems on Aaron’s breastplate really meant to remind him

By Rabbi Andrea GoldsteinPublished March 2, 2023

If you are a person who values attention to detail in the clothes that you wear, then Parshat Tetzaveh is the portion for you. In this week’s portion, we find an elaborate description of what Aaron, Moses’ brother, is commanded to wear when he...

Parashat Terumah: Making space for G-d

Parashat Terumah: Making space for G-d

Rabbi Brigitte RosenbergPublished February 23, 2023

In parashat Terumah, following the exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, G-d requests that the Israelites now build a sanctuary so that G-d can dwell among them.  Per G-d’s request, Moses asks the people to bring gifts - things...

Rabbi James Stone Goodman

D’var Torah: The Old Man of ‘Mishpatim’

RABBI JAMES STONE GOODMANPublished February 16, 2023

The last line of parashat Mishpatim reads: “And Moses came into the cloud and went up the mountain, and Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights (Exodus 24:18)." Don’t you want to know what Moses sees up the mountain? In the Zohar, the...

Image from Adobe.com

What Moses’ relationship with his father-in-law reveals about his own loneliness

Rabbi Rachel Kay BearmanPublished February 8, 2023

“Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, brought Moses’ sons and wife to him in the wilderness, where he was encamped at the mountain of God. He sent word to Moses, ‘I, your father-in-law Jethro, am coming to you, with your wife and her two sons.’ Moses...

Stock Image from Adobe.com

Torah teaches us that diverse routes lead to the truth

Rabbi James M. Bennett, Senior Rabbi of Congregation Shaare EmethPublished February 1, 2023

Why can’t we all just get along? Why can’t everyone else see things the way I see them?” It is so obvious. Or so we think. We remember it as if it happened yesterday: “Then Moses held out his arm over the sea and God drove back the sea...

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