Myron Kinberg and Bernie Steinberg were best friends. Both were born in 1945 and grew up in University City. They met in the sixth grade at Delmar-Harvard Elementary School. They excelled at sports, especially wrestling, and attended Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
Then, both men devoted their lives to Jewish learning.
Kinberg and Steinberg remained friends throughout their lives, although their career paths separated them geographically. What never changed was their desire to live the values of Judaism and encourage others to do the same.
Kinberg died in 1994 at the age of 51. In 2000, he was inducted into the University City High School Hall of Fame. Steinberg died in January 2024 at the age of 78. On the one-year yahrzeit of Steinberg’s death, the Jewish Light salutes the two St. Louis natives through the words of their loved ones.
Part I: All-American looks, accomplished athletes
As a toddler, it wasn’t immediately apparent Kinberg would become an elite athlete, but he already showed signs that he would grow up to be ruggedly handsome. Both he and Steinberg are remembered as being good looking as teenagers.
“I looked at Bernie, and he had on really nice clothes. He had on white buck shoes. I thought, ‘Well, that boy is cute.’”
— Roz Snider Steinberg (Bernie Steinberg’s widow)
“Myron was a real jock, but he wasn’t flamboyant. He was naturally gifted, and he looked like Charles Atlas.”
— Robert Kinberg (brother)
“When Myron was about 3 years old — and I would have been about 8 — I thought he was so cute, so I dressed him up like a girl all the time. And it turns out that he became this incredible athlete.”
— Sheila Kinberg Fisher (sister)
Steinberg and Kinberg were exceptional wrestlers. In their senior year at U. City, they were co-captains of their weight class. Both were Missouri state wrestling champions. Kinberg was good at football and baseball, too. He was a teammate of the late Ken Holtzman, who went on to pitch a no-hitter for the Chicago Cubs.
“Henry Holtzman (Ken’s father) asked my mom, ‘Can your boy catch?’ and my mom said sure. She meant just catch a ball, not play catcher. But as it turned out, Myron could catch Kenny Holtzman, and Kenny, at age 10, had a curveball that was like a foot wide. Myron really was the only guy to catch Kenny in Little League and in school for the next 10 years.”
— Robert Kinberg
“Bernie was a fast runner, but his main sport was wrestling. In the ninth grade, when he told me he was going to wrestle, I thought he meant like on the TV show ‘Wrestling at the Chase.’ I kept asking him, ‘Why would you want to do that?!’”
— Roz Snider Steinberg
Clare Kinberg is an author and managing editor of the Jewish feminist journal Bridges. While researching a book, she had occasion to contact St. Louis Business Journal co-founder Mark Vittert. Late one night, Vittert called her and asked whether she was related to Myron Kinberg.
“One of Mark Vittert’s best friends was a wrestler who had been matched with Myron. His friend said, ‘I can’t do this — Myron Kinberg will kill me.’ He was terrified, and that story about Myron stuck with him for 50 years. That was his reputation outside of U. City.”
— Clare Kinberg (sister)
Part II: Jewish identity
The Kinberg family attended Congregation Shaare Emeth. The Steinbergs were members of Congregation B’nai Amoona. In the early 1960s, U. City schools had a substantial Jewish enrollment. That didn’t always insulate Jewish kids from ugliness. Steinberg and Kinberg experienced their share of antisemitic behavior.
One incident occurred in the Delmar Loop when Steinberg was beaten up by a gang member. He was hospitalized for a week, and there was concern he might lose sight in one eye.
In 1961, another incident happened late one summer night in Heman Park, when Steinberg and Kinberg were walking through the park with some friends. A group of older boys drove up and called them “Christ-killing Jews.” The older boys told them the park was for gentiles only and started a fight.
“Bernie said he had to sit there and watch his friends get beaten up, and it really upset him.”
— Roz Snider Steinberg
“They got their heads smashed. They were really in a pretty brutal fight.”
— Clare Kinberg
“Myron was actually on top of one guy and then somebody came out from nowhere and took a swing at him and cut his upper lip. He had a scar there for the rest of his life.”
— Clare Kinberg
Whether these incidents had an impact on Steinberg and Kinberg’s decision to devote their lives to Judaism is difficult to say. As young adults, they were both introspective and eager to heal the world. Roz Snider Steinberg called Bernie “deeply spiritual.”
“I would have these philosophical conversations with Myron. I would often say something, and he would reply, ‘Well, you know, what you said is very Jewish!’”
— Sheila Kinberg Fisher
After graduating from high school, Kinberg enrolled at Wesleyan University and persuaded Steinberg to follow him.
“Bernie loved Wesleyan. It changed his life. He was interested in religion, and he took a course with one of the professors that he just loved. It was a course on Christianity. Bernie and Myron wanted to take a Jewish course. Well, they didn’t have anything like that.”
— Roz Snider Steinberg
“The weekend of their graduation was the Six-Day War in Israel. That was a marker in all Jews’ lives in one way or another.”
— Clare Kinberg
Part III: Advancing Judaism
After earning bacholor’s degrees from Wesleyan, Kinberg attended Hebrew Union College and received his rabbinic degree. Steinberg attended the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York where he taught Hebrew. They both made aliyah, and Steinberg lived in Israel for 13 years.
Eventually, Kinberg led congregations in Kansas and New York and for 18 years at Beth Israel in Eugene, Ore. He founded a halfway house designed to help ease the transition of psychiatric patients into the community and he received honors from Eugene, Ore., Human Rights Commission, the NAACP and the Inter-Religious Commission for Peace in the Middle East. He earned a lifetime achievement award from Peaceworks.
Steinberg was a founding fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute at Columbia University. He was also a faculty member at the Jerusalem-based Pardes Institute, and he was a lecturer at the Kennedy School at Harvard University. From 1993 to 2011, he was executive director of Harvard Hillel. He received the Covenant Award and the Benjamin J. Shevach Award for Distinguished Leadership in Jewish Education from Hebrew College in Boston.
Sadly, another parallel in their lives occurred when Steinberg suffered a heart attack in 1994 and Kinberg died from a heart attack in 1995. At Kinberg’s funeral, Steinberg delivered the eulogy.
“That was a tough experience for Bernie. But he was able to do it and do it well. He had people laughing one minute and crying their eyes out the next minute, then laughing again. It was stupendous, and it came from the heart.”
— Roz Snider Steinberg
Throughout their professional lives, Steinberg and Kinberg both remained committed to human rights and achieving peace in the Middle East. They were devoted to teaching and helping others and they made friends wherever their travels took them.
“Myron’s congregants loved him. After 29 years, I still come across former congregants who, after they learn I am his brother, genuinely gush such nice things about him, how easy he was to talk to and how their now-grown children still fondly remember him as bar and bat mitzvah students he trained.”
— Robert Kinberg
“Bernie Steinberg was one of the most remarkable human beings I have ever known. I have rarely, if ever, met anyone so committed to the sacred art of nurturing young adults and encouraging them to blossom. When I worked at Hillel, there was always a steady stream of young Jewish professionals who would come to see Bernie — to get his advice, to receive his assurance, to be challenged to think differently and more deeply about whatever was on their mind.”
— Rabbi Shai Held (president and dean of the Hadar Institute)
“Myron was a great athlete, obviously, and gregarious and he tried to bring out the good in people.”
— Clare Kinberg
“Both men were charismatic. People trusted them and opened up to them. They both knew the importance of listening.”
— Roz Snider Steinberg
