Many of us try to run our children's and grandchildren's lives, to the extent we can. And this is no recent phenomenon. In Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Portia laments, "I may neither choose who I would nor refuse who I dislike; so is the will...

Archbishop Raymond Burke, after a four-and-a-half year tenure as spiritual leader of the 500,000-member Roman Catholic community of Greater St. Louis, will leave that post at the end of August to accept a major appointment at the Vatican as Chief Justice...

Different strokes for different folks, I know. While Jewish law does not accept same-sex relations, I understand that some people perceive themselves to be homosexuals. I am not homophobic, and do not at all intend for this letter to be an indictment...

Anti-Semitism has often been called "the oldest hatred". At differing times in history, it has taken differing forms, some more obvious, as with quotas for Jewish students in colleges and universities up to the 1960s, through discrimination in employment...

I recently returned from three weeks in Israel. As much as I enjoyed spending time with friends and family, this trip was bittersweet. On July 2, only a day after I arrived, a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem killed four and wounded over fifty when...

Just one year ago I would have never expected to travel to Israel -- twice. The first time was in July of 2007, when I was able to attend a professional seminar at the Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Educators of different ages, cultures, countries,...

Before Hurricane Katrina hit, New Orleans had a Jewish population of about 10,000, about one percent of the general population. After Katrina, it was 7,500. The drop in numbers is proportional to the general population before and after Katrina. New Orleans...

RJC ad prompts response I am writing to protest the inclusion of the advertisement run by the Republican Jewish Coalition with the headline "I used to be a Democrat" in the Jewish Light. The ad speaks for itself. It is full of silly, meaningless generalities...

Sometimes, headlines tell the whole story. It's often the case with the harsh reality of "prisoner exchanges" between the democratic State of Israel and terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and Fatah. "ISRAEL WILL FREE TRIPLE-MURDERER IN SWAP" was last...

I know most Jewish Light readers will be horrified by the very thought of allowing the JCA to close, but it's something we need to consider. To be sure, we in St. Louis are fortunate to have the leaders who have been in charge of the JCA from the board...

As this week's St. Louis Jewish Light goes to press, alarming news was breaking that Iran's Revolutionary Guards test-fired nine medium and long-range missiles, including one with a 1,200-mile range. Iranian officials pointedly announced the test-firings...

In a most welcome development in the long struggle over the future of the Cedars at the Jewish Center for Aged, St. Louis County Circuit Judge Melvyn W. Wiesman ruled in favor of Cedars/JCA in its trial seeking an injuction to prevent PAMI, the mortgage...