With an almost mystical mixture of Safedi kabbalah and Canadian sang froid, two Israeli women "shlichot" or emissaries have arrived in St. Louis aiming to infuse youngsters with Jewish wisdom and Israeli culture. Shany Batit and Eliana Smith are the fourth...

Using easy-to-read round numbers to describe the costs of terrorism shields our eyes from the true costs in human terms. More than 1,000 Israeli men, women and children have died as a result of Palestinian suicide bombings, shootings and rocket attacks,...

Last week I opened the Saturday St. Louis Post Dispatch, and was surprised to find the following headline on the inside page: "POPULAR SOFT DRINK RETURNS TO THE MENU AT THE JCC." Of course, my first reaction was to regret the fact that our town's once...

Friday, Feb. 29. Winter is ending and it's a beautiful, warm, Friday afternoon at the bustling Tel Aviv Port entertainment district. Families strolling, kids playing, old men debating, bicyclers of all ages whiz by. The restaurants and cafes are jammed....

Once again, with dismal predictability, the old pattern has returned. First, the Hamas terrorist regime in the Gaza Strip pounds Israeli towns like Sderot with repeated attacks with deadly Kassem rockets, causing numerous deaths and injuries among innocent...

On Feb. 27, I returned to St. Louis after my first visit to Israel, a 10-day mission coordinated by Focus Israel, a joint venture of Jewish Federation and Makom -- a collaborative initiative of the Jewish Agency's Education Department, community leadership...

The Jewish Federation-sponsored Focus Israel initiative, designed to strengthen ties between the St. Louis Jewish community and Israel, recently sent a delegation of rabbis, educators, and lay leaders to Israel for a 10-day journey. From those of us who...

Even before it begins the Arab summit scheduled for the latter part of March in Damascus, is in serious trouble; there are several political discords among Arab states as well as the region's continuing violent conflicts. Whereas a resolution to the crisis...

The grave humanitarian crisis in Darfur in southwestern Sudan in which a minimum of 200,000 innocent Darfurians have been killed and over 2.5 million expelled from their homes at the hands of Sudanese government-backed militias called the Janjaweed, drags...

NEWTON, Mass. -- Steven Spielberg announced recently that he had resigned as the artistic director of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, writing in a public statement, "I find that my conscience will not allow me to continue with business as usual." Later...

While history is based upon fact, it must always be remembered that history doesn't write itself. While this might seem like an obvious statement, it is one of the most ignored facts in history. Because the fact is, writing history is like writing a newspaper:...

Our February Cultural Leadership meeting took place at St. James African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church on Sunday, Feb. 17, which is the church home to one of my fellow Cultural Leadership friends, Mimi Brown. Mimi explained the history of the church...