By Rabbi Joseph Fred Benson
• Published July 25, 2019
The article “Making a Minyan” (July 17 edition), speaks to what has been an ongoing issue among St. Louis synagogues since the late 1980s. My observations come as being the last Shamash in the history of Shaare Zedek Synagogue. When I succeeded...
In any crime against a community, certain things must happen to provide some measure of healing and redemption.But as we recently marked the 25th anniversary of the horrific bombing of the AMIA Jewish center on July , 1994 in Buenos Aires, Argentina,...
For Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., their timing couldn’t be any better. They are reveling in the victim status that they have achieved due to their confrontation with President Donald Trump, in which he said that the pair...
NEW YORK (JTA) – A recently released Pew Research Center report about global restrictions on religion focuses mostly on discrimination against, and the persecution of, various religious groups in different countries. Jews are prominent targets as always,...
NEW YORK (JTA) – Over the past few weeks, I’ve been getting inquiries from Jewish communities all over the country about taking a trip to the U.S. border with Mexico. T’ruah, the organization where I work, has been one of the leading Jewish groups...
By Robert A. Cohn & Dale Singer
• Published July 18, 2019
Editor’s Note: With the 50th anniversaries of the Apollo 11 lunar mission and the Woodstock musical festival this summer, Jewish Light editorial writers Robert A. Cohn, 79, and Dale Singer, 70, take a break from crafting a traditional editorial to look...
Summer break is a good time to pause and reflect on America’s schools. Our K-12 institutions have come in for constant criticism as inferior to schools in many other countries. In contrast, American higher education generally has been considered the...
By Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz
• Published July 18, 2019
Israeli Education Minister Rafi Peretz’s recent tone-deaf declaration that intermarriage is akin to a “second Holocaust” was shocking and shameful, and desecrates the memories of those who perished in the Holocaust. While Peretz, who leads the Jewish...
(JTA) — What was Kellyanne Conway trying to say when she asked a Jewish reporter, “What’s your ethnicity?”During a press gaggle Tuesday at the White House, Breakfast Media correspondent Andrew Feinberg asked the White House counselor a question...
SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — When the last Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, died in July 1994, I was one of many journalists in the Jewish media who did not see how the Hasidic movement he led could survive, much less thrive, in his absence.It...
Americans, and Jews in particular, feel rightly indignant by the many casual references applied to the Holocaust in contemporary culture. Many feel, with much justification, that it’s blasphemous to make simplistic analogies between sequestering children...
By Scott Berzon, Executive Director
• Published July 11, 2019
Last weekend, we watched as the Women’s USA World Cup team did what they do best: win. At times along their path to the championship, the team made it look effortless, but each and every victory was due to dedicated teamwork on and off the field. As...
