BY ROBERT A. COHN

Editor-in-Chief Emeritus

Nov. 22, 1963:  a date that is as seared in the American consciousness as much as the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 and the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas is indeed one of those events where Americans old enough to remember know exactly what they were doing when they heard the news.

I was a 24-year-old third year student at the Washington University, cramming for the upcoming bar exam in Jefferson City and checking out job prospects in town.  On that sunny and cool Friday afternoon in St. Louis, I went to lunch with a couple of fellow students to Valencia’s, then a popular Italian restaurant on Delmar Boulevard east of Skinker.

On the way back to campus, we were half-listening to the radio when the announcer said, “Connally was also slumped over in the car.” Slowly we realized that this was not a report of a traffic accident, but an early news flash that JFK had been shot and rushed to the Parkland Hospital in Dallas.  By the time we reached our Constitutional Law class in January Hall, one of our classmates, Bob Meier, announced: “They just said on the radio that President Kennedy had been given the last rites of the Catholic Church and has been pronounced dead.”

Classes were soon called off. Several of us walked through the campus quadrangle, which was eerily silent except for some students who were crying and trying to comfort each other.  

President Kennedy was hugely popular in the local and national Jewish community.  Back in the early 1960s, Jews were overwhelmingly liberal and strongly supported Democratic candidates.  While narrowly defeating Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election, Kennedy was estimated to have received more than 60 percent of the Jewish vote.

The Jewish Light’s edition of Nov. 27, 1963 was a montage of photographs of JFK — as a handsome child; being decorated for bravery in his rescue of the PT 109 boat during World War II; kissing his adorable daughter Caroline (now the U.S. Ambassador to Japan) as his wife Jackie looked on; with Eleanor Roosevelt, and other scenes from his life.  Light Editor Geoffrey Fisher headlined the page, with another JFK quote:  “With good conscience our only reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love….”

That same issue contained thoughts from the late Rabbi Jerome W. Grollman of United Hebrew, then president of the St. Louis Rabbinical Association. He quoted King David’s lament on the death of King Saul, “How the mighty have fallen,” and the late Rabbi Menachem Zvi Eichenstein, Chief Rabbi of the Orthodox Jewish community of St. Louis, who said, “The death of President Kennedy is a heavy blow, not only for the entire free world, but also to our people and to the State of Israel.” Grollman hosted a community-wide memorial service at UH.

The offices of the Jewish Federation were closed the following Monday.  Rabbi Robert P. Jacobs, then director of Hillel at Washington University, said students were in “shock” over the horrific news about the immensely popular president.

The lead editorial in the Nov. 27, 1963 Light was headlined, “We must meet the challenge.” It said in part, “As a nation we stand stunned in shock and grief and disbelief over the heartless events that have taken President Kennedy from us.”  The editorial urged readers to pick up the torch that JFK held aloft to carry on his work to assure the success of his goal of equal rights for African-Americans, security at home and strength abroad.

The grief of JFK’s murder was overpowering, like a collective blow to our national conscience.  Feelings were still raw two days after the assassination, and following the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald, the suspected assassin.  I was teaching a class at Shaare Emeth Religious School with the question of the day on the chalkboard:  “Is Lee Harvey Oswald guilty or innocent in the eyes of the law?”  It was to be a lesson in the constitutional principle that a suspect is “innocent until proven guilty.”

I was just beginning to open the discussion when the late Irv Abram, then the assistant principal of the religious school, came into the classroom to announce:  “Mr. Cohn, you have to revise your lesson plan.  Oswald has just been shot.”  The bizarre footnote to a national tragedy hit the Jewish community especially hard, since the man who gunned down Oswald as national TV cameras carried the event live was Jack Ruby, a Jew born Jacob Rubinstein, the owner of a Dallas night club.  The following week the topic for an essay by the students was, “Should we be ashamed that Jack Ruby is Jewish?”

Yes, those of us to have been aware of what happened can recall exactly where we were and how we responded to the murder of President Kennedy.  In many ways, the nation has never fully healed from this traumatic event, but the positive aspects of JFK’s legacy live on to give us hope for a better future.