When gunman Robert Bowers fired on the Tree of Life congregation late last month, he shook the whole tree, from the roots in Pittsburgh to the branches of Jewish communities across the world. At Washington University, Bowers struck close to the root—several...
Word came from 600 miles away, but it could not have felt closer to home. The horrifying news arrived while many here were still in shul. It sounded surreal and yet all too familiar.A shooter had invaded a place of worship, on Shabbat, shouting, “All...
By Rabbi Yonason Goldson
• Published November 8, 2018
Nearly a century ago, on Sept. 1, 1923, a violent earthquake struck Japan, devastating Tokyo, Yokohama and the surrounding cities. One hundred thousand people lost their lives, and many had their lives turned upside down.The news reached as far as the...
A different take on vigil speakersI attended the vigil at the Jewish Community Center last Sunday (Oct. 28) and had a very different reaction than the opinion of Dr. Myron Jacobs (Letters to the Editor, Oct. 31 edition). To me, the program was uplifting...
(JTA) — My father, whose own father changed his unpronounceable last name to Carroll when he came to America, would often tell a story about job hunting in the late 1940s and 50s. It was only after the interview that the men across the desk would ask,...
“The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity.”— William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”The events unfolding over the past few days have revealed a deadly poison at the...
A synagogue under fire, the body count climbing. Several reactions rose within me simultaneously, the reactions shaped by the different lenses of my life. The first is the lens of Mother. The mother in me weeps, both for the dead and their families...
Condolences from NAACP On behalf of the St. Louis NAACP I extend our heartfelt condolences to our families and friends within the Jewish community. But it cannot go unsaid that with the establishment of the Third Reich in 1933, German leaders proclaimed...
(JTA) — Last August, when I was speaking at a synagogue in East Hampton about a rising tide of anti-Semitism and intolerance, a congregant stood to tell me that the number of right-wing anti-Semites in this country could fit in that sanctuary.The problem,...
First, women marched in St. Louis, Washington, D.C., and in thousands of other cities. The next year, they did it again because the dangerous consequences of the current White House administration’s policies were crystal clear.
And now a record...
Now in the second year of Donald Trump’s presidency, we are still trying to figure out what to make of his foreign policy. Clearly, he is not a “liberal internationalist” like Jimmy Carter, of the sort who strongly values international law and...
Synagogues with a rich historyIn the story “Small but dedicated community keeps Belleville synagogue moving forward” (Ohr Chadash Teen Page, Oct. 11), Olivia Riutcel, a freshman at Webster Groves High School, wrote on the merging of two old synagogues...
