A nonprofit, independent news source to inform, inspire, educate and connect the St. Louis Jewish community.

St. Louis Jewish Light
A nonprofit, independent news source to inform, inspire, educate and connect the St. Louis Jewish community.

St. Louis Jewish Light
A nonprofit, independent news source to inform, inspire, educate and connect the St. Louis Jewish community.

St. Louis Jewish Light
All content by Andrew Silow-Carroll
Martin Greenfield, tailor for Bill Clinton and Colin Powell, in his Brooklyn shop. (Photo by mark peterson/Corbis via Getty Images)

Martin Greenfield, Auschwitz survivor and master tailor to American presidents, dies at 95

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published March 21, 2024
Singer Steve Lawrence, son of a cantor and half of ‘Steve and Eydie,’ dies at 88

Singer Steve Lawrence, son of a cantor and half of ‘Steve and Eydie,’ dies at 88

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published March 11, 2024
Richard Lewis in 2018

Comedian Richard Lewis, dark prince of Jewish neurosis, dies at 76

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published February 29, 2024
In his new book, “Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978,” he writes about an early, formative era before American Jewish institutions had unequivocally embraced Zionism, and when American Jewish leaders disagreed with the Israeli government over the fate of the 750,000 Palestinians displaced by Israel’s war for independence.

When ‘nice Jewish boys and girls’ first took up the cause of Palestinian rights

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published January 28, 2024
National Jewish Book Awards for the best books of 2023 were presented to works by, from left, Sabrina Orah Mark, Ruth Madievsky, Jeremy Eichler and James McBride. (Random House, Catapult, Knopf, Riverhead)

Jewish book of the year is announced

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published January 24, 2024
(JTA collage by Mollie Suss)

The best Jewish books I read in 2023

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published December 31, 2023
Palestinians and their supporters protest outside the Embassy of Israel in London two days after Hamas killed s1.200 people in an attack on southern Israel, Oct. 9, 2023.

Understanding what ‘Decolonization is not a metaphor’ really means

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published December 3, 2023
Samuel Klagsbrun, Israel Francus and Avraham Holtz were on the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary. (Via JTS)

Conservative Judaism’s flagship mourning death of 3 influential scholars

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published November 20, 2023
Ariel Levy and John Turturro at the opening night party for The New Group Theaters new play Sabbaths Theater, at Green Fig Urban Eatery in New York City, Nov. 1, 2023.

How Ariel Levy adapted Philip Roth’s filthiest book for the stage

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published November 3, 2023
Starbucks issued a statement expressing its “deepest sympathy for those who have been killed, wounded, displaced and impacted following the heinous and unacceptable acts of terror, escalating violence and hate against the innocent in Israel and Gaza this week.”

As Israel wages war on Hamas, Indiana U and other colleges, companies take flak over their responses

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published October 22, 2023
Israelis donate blood at a hospital in Tel Aviv after a barrage of rockets were fired and fighters from the Gaza Strip infiltrated Israel, Oct. 7, 2023. (Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)

Israeli opposition, pro-democracy protesters press unity in face of attacks from Hamas

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published October 7, 2023
Reproductions of book and magazine covers hang over the main book room of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, part of the centers new core exhibit.

25 years after opening, Yiddish Book Center overhauls its core exhibit for a wider audience

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published September 30, 2023
Jonathan Brent, executive director and CEO of YIVO, and Gitanas Nausėda, president of Lithuania, examine holdings in the Strashun Rare Books Room at YIVOs New York headquarters, Sept. 18, 2023. The room is named for a Jewish scholar in Vilna (now Vilnius) who collected nearly 7,000 volumes of Yiddish and other books before his death in 1885.

Lithuania’s president honors those who saved Jewish artifacts during and after the Holocaust

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published September 19, 2023
High Holiday prayers not working for you? Try remixing metaphors.

High Holiday prayers not working for you? Try remixing metaphors.

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published September 14, 2023
Claire Golomb, with the winner of a scholarship given at the University of Massachusetts Lowell to environmental science majors in memory her late husband, fellow survivor Dan Golomb, Oct. 27, 2015.

Claire Golomb, Holocaust survivor and scholar of children’s art and dreams, dies at 95 

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published August 29, 2023
We Need to Talk About Antisemitism responds to an era of rising concerns about hatred directed at Jews. (JTA illustration; Getty Images)

A rabbi answers her congregants’ question: Why do they hate us?

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published August 20, 2023
Author Elizabeth Graver tells the story of her mothers Turkish Jewish family, above, in her novel “Kantika.” Her grandmother, Rebecca Baruch, who inspired the novels main character, is seated front row, fourth from right. (Courtesy of the author)

A novel of Sephardic life revives the Jewish family saga

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published August 6, 2023
Aharon Ariel was a Jerusalem-born scholar and journalist who fought in Israels War of Independence; at right, Ariel with his granddaughter Yael Ariel-Goldschmidt. (Courtesy Yael Ariel-Goldschmidt)

Journalist and scholar Aharon Ariel, 97, veteran of Israel’s war of independence and ‘walking encyclopedia’

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published July 18, 2023
J. Robert Oppenheimer, left, at the Guest Lodge in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 1946. (Ed Westcott/DOE Digital Archive Image); Lewis Strauss when he was Acting Secretary of Commerce, 1958-59. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce)

At the heart of the film ‘Oppenheimer’ is a clash between real-life Jews 

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published July 16, 2023
Marlena Spieler wrote that she carried her signature green and white polkadot handbag to most corners of the world. (Roving Feast, Substack)

Marlena Spieler, globetrotting writer of Jewish cookbooks, dies at 74

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published July 11, 2023
Reuben Baron, far right, and his wife Joan Boykoff Baron, second from right, were among the honorees at a Jewish National Fund dinner in Teaneck, New Jersey, Dec. 15, 2015. (Gerald Bernstein, via The Jewish Standard)

Reuben Baron, Jewish co-author of the most widely cited paper in the history of psychology, dies at 86

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published June 27, 2023
Betty Woolf, left, and her siblings Minna and Joseph celebrate their 90th birthday in 2017. (Courtesy Jason Paladino)

Betty Woolf, last surviving sibling of world’s oldest mixed triplets, dies at age 96

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published June 20, 2023

Robert Gottlieb, legendary editor who championed Joseph Heller, Robert Caro and Chaim Potok, dies at 92

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published June 15, 2023
Amitai Etzioni

The Israeli origins of Amitai Etzioni’s big ideas about community

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published June 11, 2023
Magda Teter’s new book explores how “white European Christians branded both Jews and people of color with ‘badges of servitude’ and inferiority.” (Chuck Fishman)

Author finds common root for antisemitism and racism is ‘Christian supremacy’ 

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published May 15, 2023
(JTA illustration by Grace Yagel; Photo by Erik Marmor/Flash90)

‘Two Israels’: What’s really behind the judicial reform protests

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published April 9, 2023
(Ben Yehuda Press)

From ‘how to’ to ‘why bother?’ The new guide to being Jewish

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published April 2, 2023
(JTA illustration by Mollie Suss)

Which side are you on: Jewish American or American Jew? 

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published March 19, 2023
Director Norman Jewison and actor Chaim Topol (Tevye) share a laugh on the set of the 1971 film “Fiddler on the Roof.” Courtesy of Zeitgeist Films.

How the late actor Topol turned Tevye into a Zionist

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published March 12, 2023
Pogrom? Terrorism? What do we call what happened in Huwara?

Pogrom? Terrorism? What do we call what happened in Huwara?

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published March 7, 2023
Jeremy Dauber is the author of Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew (Yale University Press)

A history of Mel Brooks as a ‘disobedient Jew’

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published March 5, 2023
Larry David attends a bat mitzvah in a season 6 episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” (HBO)

No joke, the entire history of Jewish comedy is in this one book

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published February 19, 2023
Israelis march during a rally against government plans to give lawmakers more control of the judicial system, Tel Aviv, Feb. 4, 2023. (Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)

Diaspora alarm over Israel: Your guide to what the critics are saying

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published February 12, 2023
Composer Burt Bacharach (left) and lyricist Hal David hold Oscars they won for Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, at the Academy Awards, April 7, 1970. (Bettmann/Getty Images)

Missouri born Burt Bacharach, sophisticated Jewish hitmaker of the ‘60s and ‘70s, dies at 94

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published February 9, 2023
Scholars and enthusiasts alike believe this portrait of Abraham Lincoln, taken on November 8, 1863, eleven days before his famed Gettysburg Address, to be the best photograph of him ever taken.Public domain

The real story about Abraham Lincoln and a New York cantor is better than the legend

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published February 8, 2023
A Peeps Mobile at the Just Born candy factory in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. (Andrew Silow-Carroll)

Bob Born, Jewish maker of Peeps marshmallow candies, dies at 98

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published January 31, 2023
What American Jews fight about when they fight about Israel

What American Jews fight about when they fight about Israel

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published January 22, 2023
Michael Twitty’s ‘Koshersoul,’ a memoir of food and identity, named Jewish book of the year

Michael Twitty’s ‘Koshersoul,’ a memoir of food and identity, named Jewish book of the year

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published January 18, 2023

An Israel analyst’s best- and worst-case scenarios for the new right-wing government

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published December 8, 2022

Comedian Freddie Roman, who brought the Borscht Belt to Broadway, dies at 85

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published November 29, 2022

A Black writer explores how U.S. and Germany differ in remembering their pasts

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published November 29, 2022

The exhausting, never-ending job of debunking antisemitic conspiracy theories

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published November 21, 2022

Birmingham, Alabama, synagogue fire wasn’t an antisemitic attack, rabbi says

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published November 6, 2022

High Holiday prayers not working for you? Try remixing metaphors

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL, JTA
Published September 25, 2022

Elena Kagan, in synagogue talk, says courts lose legitimacy when they stray from precedent

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published September 13, 2022
‘Quiet quitting’ sounds sort of … Jewish?

‘Quiet quitting’ sounds sort of … Jewish?

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published August 28, 2022
The Catskills meet Mount Sinai at a night of Jewish comedy

The Catskills meet Mount Sinai at a night of Jewish comedy

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published August 21, 2022
How to understand Nathan Fielder’s HBO show ‘The Rehearsal’

How to understand Nathan Fielder’s HBO show ‘The Rehearsal’

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published August 7, 2022

Can Jews ever agree to disagree?

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published August 4, 2022
When a Jewish group fought antisemitism with radio shows and comic books 

When a Jewish group fought antisemitism with radio shows and comic books 

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL, JTA
Published July 24, 2022

The Torah supports me in an argument with my wife that I will never win

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL, JTA
Published June 26, 2022

Religion for non-believers: It’s a Jewish thing

Andrew Silow-Carroll, Editor-in-Chief of the New York Jewish Week
Published June 19, 2022
An app that identifies trees and flowers is changing my life 

An app that identifies trees and flowers is changing my life 

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL, JTA
Published June 5, 2022

What is a Jew? Israel’s renovated Diaspora museum attempts a three-story answer.

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL, JTA
Published May 29, 2022
The ‘queer, disabled’ Zionist who challenged the conventions of Israel’s founders

The ‘queer, disabled’ Zionist who challenged the conventions of Israel’s founders

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published May 22, 2022
Jeffrey Veidlinger, University of Michigan

What Putin’s talking about when he talks about ‘denazification’

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL
Published February 28, 2022

John Oliver just celebrated ‘Look for the Union Label,’ a ’70s labor jingle with deep Jewish roots

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published November 16, 2021
Dani Dayan, who was Consul General of Israel in New York from 2016-2020, became the chair of the Lad Vashem directorate in August 2021. (Courtesy)

The new chair of Yad Vashem wants to build a ‘firewall’ between politics and Holocaust remembrance. Can he?

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published November 9, 2021
Jacob Leiter and his grandmother, Susi Kasper Leiter, examine an heirloom Bible that had been hidden by family members during the Holocaust, June 9, 2021. (USHMM)

A New York family is reunited with an heirloom Bible thought lost in the Holocaust

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published October 20, 2021
Children attend a rally for peace and unity in Point State Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to remember victims of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, Nov. 9, 2018. (Flickr Commons/Gov. Tom Wolf)

What the Tree of Life shooting revealed about American Jewry

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published October 19, 2021
A New Yorker article about circumcision features an illustration by Javier Jaén. (Jewish Week)

We may be talking about Gary Shteyngart’s botched circumcision for a long time

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL
Published October 11, 2021
Two By Two by Barbara Reid is a whimsical version of the Noahs Ark story. (Scholastic)

Noah’s ark is one weird bedtime story

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published October 8, 2021
The authors grandmother’s French residence permit from 1914 includes a spelling of her husband’s original name, Karolchouk, before he and his brothers changed it to Carroll. (Courtesy)

No one lost their Jewish last name at Ellis Island. But we gained a safe haven.

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published September 13, 2021
Trader Joe’s is not your synagogue. But what if?

Trader Joe’s is not your synagogue. But what if?

Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
Published June 22, 2021
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, seen at a Hanukkah event in 2019, has been counting on support from Brooklyn’s Orthodox community in his race for New York City mayor. (Office of the Brooklyn Borough President/Flickr)

NYC’s mayoral candidates haven’t said much about Jews or Israel. The Pew study suggests why.

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL
Published May 21, 2021
Ira Sheskin, a prominent Jewish demographer, conducted at least 43 Jewish federation population surveys between 1982 and 2014. (Uriel Heilman)

A new Pew survey comes out today. Here’s how studies like it have shaped 3 decades of Jewish life.

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL
Published May 11, 2021
Former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver arrives at the federal courthouse in New York, Nov. 24, 2015. (Seth Wenig/AP Images)

Sheldon Silver, former NY Assembly speaker, ordered back to prison, sources say

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL
Published May 6, 2021
A vandal smashed windows at the Chabad-Lubavitch of Riverdale, N.Y., in a series of attacks on area synagogues that began on April 24, 2021. A lone suspect has been arrested in the spree. (Twitter)

Hate crimes see 73% rise in NYC, with Asians and Jews most targeted

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL
Published May 6, 2021
Brendan Hunt, also known as “X-Ray Ultra,” appears in one of his YouTube videos. (Screen shot from YouTube)

NY man convicted of threatening lawmakers railed against ‘Zionist Occupied Government’

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL
Published April 29, 2021
New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang, top, third from left, meets with haredi Orthodox Jewish leaders in Borough Park, Brooklyn, in an undated photo supplied by his campaign. (Yang for New York)

Top NYC mayoral candidates vie for haredi Orthodox endorsements

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL
Published April 28, 2021
The Regal Edwards theater in La Verne, California, forced to close due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is seen in May 2020. (Russ Allison Loar/Flickr Commons)

Portal for federal grants will no longer launch on Shabbat, following complaints

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL
Published April 25, 2021

Brooklyn man, 19, charged with breaking into Capitol on Jan. 6

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published April 22, 2021

NY judge killed in hit and run while vacationing in Florida

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published April 12, 2021

Yehuda Ben-Yishay, Israeli psychologist who pioneered treatment for brain trauma, dies at 88

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published April 12, 2021
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, is interviewed by Michael Miller, head of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, April 1, 2021. (Screenshot from YouTube)

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez meets with top NYC Jewish group for first time since assuming office

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published April 6, 2021
Influential critic Morris Dickstein was born in the Lower East Side and attended Jewish schools. (Nancy Crampton)

Morris Dickstein, literary critic and public intellectual, dies at 81

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published March 30, 2021

A ‘Nazi love story’ about a mass murderer who got away

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published March 30, 2021
Mayor Bill de Blasio visited the Ezra Medical Center in New York’s Boro Park neighborhood Sunday, March 14, 2020 to speak with Holocaust survivors who were getting their COVID-19 shots. (Twitter/ @NYCMayor)

Germany funds vaccination drive for Holocaust survivors

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published March 23, 2021

Jewish Theological Seminary names first woman as dean of its rabbinical school

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published March 22, 2021
(Screen shot from Jewish Link)

NJ Jewish paper apologizes for joke about shooting Palestinians

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published March 22, 2021

The COVID relief package includes $2.75B for private schools. Orthodox Jewish groups thank Chuck Schumer.

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published March 15, 2021
Yeshiva Basketball

Yeshiva University men’s basketball is on a 35-game winning streak

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published March 3, 2021
Michael Che makes a joke about Israels vaccine rollout on Saturday Night Live on Feb. 20, 2021. (Screen shot from YouTube)

What Jewish comedians made of Michael Che’s Israel Joke

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published February 24, 2021
Beyond the shul

Is the Jewish deli the new synagogue?

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published February 11, 2021

NYC mayor says city will make sure Holocaust survivors get vaccine

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published February 11, 2021
Portrait of Florence Mendheim, from the Leo Baeck Institution

Meet the Jewish librarian who spied on New York Nazis in the 1930s

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published February 10, 2021
View of Manhattan Detention Complex known as The Tombs.

Jewish inmate’s COVID-19 death cited in effort to get vaccines to NY prisoners

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published February 4, 2021
Lerner

Rabbi Stephen Lerner, 80, brought over 1,800 students to practice of Judaism

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published February 1, 2021

Times Square’s new ‘Margaritaville Resort’ to include a first-floor synagogue

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published January 28, 2021

Clergy ask why New York’s prisoners aren’t on priority list for vaccines

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published January 28, 2021

More than a dozen Jews, but not Sheldon Silver, among Donald Trump’s last-minute pardons

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published January 20, 2021

How Valerie Harper’s Rhoda embodied a very Jewish type

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published September 3, 2019

What Trump really (maybe) meant by calling Jewish Democrats ‘disloyal’

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published August 21, 2019

Trader Joe’s is not your synagogue. But what if?

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published August 9, 2019

It can’t be anti-Semitism if you’re not an anti-Semite, right? Right?

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published July 26, 2019

The kid in me wants another shot at the moon

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published July 18, 2019
Why did Kellyanne Conway ask a Jewish reporter about his ethnicity?

Why did Kellyanne Conway ask a Jewish reporter about his ethnicity?

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published July 17, 2019

Donald Trump and the perils of loving Israel just a little too much

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published July 16, 2019

Top Trump officials headline conference focusing on the ‘new anti-Semitism’

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published July 15, 2019

Lucette Lagnado, whose prize-winning memoir recalled her family’s Egyptian-Jewish past, dies at 63

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Published July 11, 2019
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