I have been reading the St. Louis Jewish Light continuously since returning to St. Louis in 1998. Before that, I read it as a child in my parents’ home, though not as I do now.I appreciate the weekly rabbinical columns discussing the parsha, providing...
NEW YORK — It has become conventional wisdom in certain circles that the Oslo agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, which was signed 25 years ago Sept. 13 on the White House lawn, was simply a failure.There is no doubt that the great hopes...
Commentary on opioid epidemic ‘reflects an outdated narrative’Someone in our Thursday night Shalvah support group for people living with drug and alcohol abuse (Shalvah means serenity in Hebrew) brought me the Aug. 1 commentary in the Jewish Light,...
By Eric Berger, staff writer
• Published August 31, 2018
Are the media the enemy of the people, as President Donald Trump has now stated multiple times and with increasing frequency?Before we get to that, the more pressing question is, how will his supporters respond to that assertion?The “enemy” charge...
On April 23, 1943, Mordechai Anielewicz, the commander of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, penned his final letter.He, along with other ghetto fighters, fell to Nazi forces May 8.Anielewicz addressed the letter to Yitzhak Zuckerman, a clandestine operative...
(JTA) — The High Holidays are approaching. It is a time when Jews worldwide join together in the spirit of camaraderie, pouring out their hearts for a good new year.But the lead-up this year has been different, often pitting Jews against Jews in bitter...
(JTA) — Last year, I wrote an essay pleading with rabbis to deliver a High Holidays sermon that was relevant to the political moment.“I understand the typical view that it is better for rabbis to speak to higher values than to take sides in the rough-and-tumble...
By Pinchas Goldschmidt
• Published August 23, 2018
Israel’s passage of the nation-state law brought another round of barrages across the Atlantic underlining the growing alienation of the world’s two largest Jewish communities. The issues are increasingly familiar: American pluralism versus Jewish...
Missouri Jewish groups pen letter against hatredThe Jewish communities across Missouri welcome the Missouri Republican Party’s comments unequivocally condemning the anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, homophobic and racist rhetoric of Steve West, who won the...
Giving credit where dueWe all applaud Rabbi Susan Talve’s hard work in protest of our government’s cruel family separation policy. We also applaud the hard work of Rabbi Andrea Goldstein, who was standing next to Talve in two of the photographs that...
By Jonathan S. Tobin/JNS
• Published August 16, 2018
If American Jews are unhappy with Israel, it may not be so much a function of a new law that says it’s a Jewish State as the growing consensus that it is an “illiberal” state. That’s the new narrative being promoted by many of the Israeli government’s...
Although readers know I lean conservative, they also know, if they bother reading my columns carefully and are open-minded, that I am usually careful to criticize both sides of the political spectrum as behaving badly and contributing to polarization...
