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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

Opinion

6 Jewish words no journalist can live without

6 Jewish words no journalist can live without

Published March 27, 2022

(JTA) — Philip Roth’s character Alexander Portnoy captured the insecurity of second-generation immigrants in two priceless sentences.  “I was asked by the teacher one day to identify a picture of what I knew perfectly well my mother referred...

The advice I gave Madeleine Albright when she found out she was Jewish

The advice I gave Madeleine Albright when she found out she was Jewish

Published March 25, 2022

(JTA) — “How long have known me, Stu?” Madeleine Albright asked me that question with a sense of urgency I had not heard from her before. It was mid-January 1996, and I was in my hotel room in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum....

Missouri State Capitol building in Jefferson City, Mo.

Bill would require a ‘best practice’: Yearlong contraceptive supplies

GAIL EISENKRAMERPublished March 23, 2022

This time next year, National Council of Jewish Women-St. Louis is hoping that women in Missouri will have one less thing to worry about. Senate Bill 641, sponsored by state Sen. Jill Schupp, D-Creve Coeur, would allow women to receive up to a 12-month...

What Zelensky gets wrong about the Holocaust in Ukraine

What Zelensky gets wrong about the Holocaust in Ukraine

Published March 22, 2022

(JTA) — In his March 20 speech to Israeli lawmakers, Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky invoked the Holocaust as analogous to what his country is currently experiencing. “I have the right to this parallel and to this comparison,” he said...

Rabbi Mark Shook

Rabbi Shook: Isaac Mayer Wise is spinning in his grave

Mark L. Shook, Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Temple IsraelPublished March 21, 2022

June 3, 2022, will mark fifty years since I was ordained a rabbi at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, Ohio. Looking at photos taken at the time, I am appalled to realize I was wearing a powder blue polyester suit. In...

The Ukrainian Jew who saved Yiddish music from oblivion

The Ukrainian Jew who saved Yiddish music from oblivion

Published March 20, 2022

(JTA) — Late last year, months before a Russian missile landed near the Babyn Yar memorial outside of Kyiv, Ukraine, the site’s foundation announced plans for a new museum to honor the 33,771 Jews slaughtered there by the Nazis in September 1941. Natan...

black silhouettes of three groups of different teen people standing and talking to each other

Keep it 100: Your teenspeak glossary, part two

AMY FENSTER BROWNPublished March 17, 2022

Recently, I created a makeshift glossary of trendy teen lingo for you, and you’ve made it clear you want more. The tremendous feedback I’ve gotten from so many of you proves I’m not the only one who doesn’t understand what the kids these days...

Bills attacking LGBTQ rights are an assault on Jewish values — and Jewish teens

Bills attacking LGBTQ rights are an assault on Jewish values — and Jewish teens

IDIT KLEIN and IS PERLMANPublished March 14, 2022

(JTA) — As we approach Purim – a holiday that honors the courage to be our true selves – we are alarmed by the surge of legislative attacks on the rights, safety and dignity of LGBTQ youth across the nation.   Among over 100 pending anti-LGBTQ...

Ukraine, Russia and the unbearable lightness of ‘never again’

Ukraine, Russia and the unbearable lightness of ‘never again’

Published March 14, 2022

(JTA) — After decades of fearing that we would forget the horrors of our recent past, I am starting to fear the opposite possibility: that we Jews remember our history all too well but feel powerless to act on its lessons.  The Russian invasion...

Is ‘never again’ now? The Ukraine war ignites a recurring debate

Is ‘never again’ now? The Ukraine war ignites a recurring debate

Published March 13, 2022

(JTA) — Seventy-nine years ago this month, crowds twice filled Madison Square Garden for a pageant, “We Will Never Die,” meant to draw attention to the slaughter of Europe’s Jews by the Nazis. Screenwriter Ben Hecht organized the spectacle and...

Is the West is selling out to Iran to lower gas prices?

Is the West is selling out to Iran to lower gas prices?

Jonathan S. Tobin, JNSPublished March 12, 2022

(JNS) Like politics, wars can make for strange bedfellows. In the Second World War, even a staunch anti-Communist like Winston Churchill saw no problem with an alliance with the Soviet Union. Making common cause with a totalitarian state led by a mass...

My heart breaks for Ukraine — and the Ethiopian Jews who can’t get the same embrace from Israel

My heart breaks for Ukraine — and the Ethiopian Jews who can’t get the same embrace from Israel

Published March 10, 2022

(JTA) — The past few days I couldn’t stop crying about the situation in Ukraine. Watching the news, reading articles and hearing reports took me to dark moments in my past. My heart broke to see people being victims again in a war that they...

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