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 Asaf Shalev

Israeli reporter sneaks into Mecca, triggering outcry in Saudi Arabia and embarrassment in Israel

ASAF SHALEV, JTA
Published July 19, 2022
Baruch Lanner, who was convicted of abusing students at a New Jersey yeshiva where he worked, is seen here on Florida's sex offender registry.

Israel says US sex offender won’t get citizenship amid lobbying by prominent American rabbis

Asaf Shalev, JTA
Published July 19, 2022

WhatsApp’s reclusive founder has quietly become a megadonor to Jewish causes

ASAF SHALEV, JTA
Published June 15, 2022
A Rothschild who debunks conspiracy theories for a living is writing the book about Jewish space lasers

A Rothschild who debunks conspiracy theories for a living is writing the book about Jewish space lasers

Asaf Shalev, JTA
Published May 23, 2022

Rebuffed privately, influential rabbis go public with plea to cut off American Jewish funding of Israeli extremists

ASAF SHALEV, JTA
Published April 7, 2022

Is finance giant Morningstar boycotting Israel? New BDS battlefront emerges in investing world

ASAF SHALEV, JTA
Published February 8, 2022
The Luzzatto High Holiday Mahzor (Sotheby's)

Medieval Jewish prayerbook sold for $8.3 million, a near-record for Judaica

Asaf Shalev
Published October 20, 2021

How offshore accounts turned the British Virgin Islands into an east Jerusalem landlord

Asaf Shalev
Published October 19, 2021

Creator of Chabad’s famous menorah sexually abused girl, lawsuit claims

Asaf Shalev
Published October 12, 2021
Mark and Erica Gerson (Michael Gerson)

Meet the Jewish couple funding Christian missionary hospitals in Africa

Asaf Shalev
Published October 6, 2021

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan give $1.3 million to Jewish causes

Asaf Shalev
Published September 20, 2021
A view of the destroyed Karnofsky family building where Louis Armstrong was a regular guest in New Orleans, Louisiana on Aug. 31, 2021. (Alan Smason/Crescent City Jewish News)

Scattered by Hurricane Ida, the Jews of New Orleans prepare for High Holidays

Asaf Shalev
Published September 1, 2021

At least 150 sex abuse lawsuits filed against NY Jewish institutions under Child Victims Act

Asaf Shalev and Ella Rockart
Published August 30, 2021
Israeli Supreme Court rules that Jews of Morocco are ineligible for Holocaust compensation

Israeli Supreme Court rules that Jews of Morocco are ineligible for Holocaust compensation

Asaf Shalev, JTA
Published August 27, 2021
Rabbi Mary Zamore, the executive director of the Women's Rabbinic Network (Steve Shawl)

The Reform movement is investigating itself over history of rabbinic sexual misconduct

ASAF SHALEV, JTA
Published August 11, 2021
Firefighters respond at the scene of a plane crash at a house in Sheparivtsi, Ukraine on July 28, 2021. (Screenshot/YouTube)

4 dead, including 3 Jerusalem yeshiva students, in Ukraine plane crash

Asaf Shalev
Published July 28, 2021

Boycott Israel? No, Ben & Jerry’s is boycotting social media.

Asaf Shalev
Published June 16, 2021
The first page of a newly discovered letter written by a passenger of the USS Delaware in 1834, following one of the first American voyages to Palestine. (Courtesy of Kedem Auction House, Jerusalem)

186-year-old letter detailing U.S. diplomatic visit to Holy Land surfaces in auction

ASAF SHALEV
Published May 7, 2021

Netanyahu backs down on Cabinet appointment of loyalist, averting a constitutional crisis in Israel

ASAF SHALEV
Published April 28, 2021
New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, shown in December 2019, said "we will not allow some vocal residents’ intolerance to drive local government decisions.” (Laura E. Adkins / JTA)

New Jersey town being sued again for discrimination against Orthodox Jews

ASAF SHALEV
Published April 28, 2021

The Jewish National Fund’s iconic blue charity box is now accepting bitcoin

Asaf Shalev
Published April 23, 2021
A scanned page of the list of Baghdadi Jewish men exempt from Ottoman military service published by Rabbi Shlomo Bekhor Husin in 1892 and archived at the National Libary of Israel in Jerusalem. (Courtesy of Jacob Rosen-Koenigsbuch)

Is your name on this list? Your Jewish roots might be in Cairo, Baghdad or nearby.

Asaf Shalev
Published April 19, 2021

Group that ‘elevated white supremacist voices’ should remain on Boston Jewish council for now, internal report says

Asaf Shalev
Published April 14, 2021
An aerial view of American Jewish University's Sunny & Isadore Familian Campus in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles. (Courtesy of Communications Department, AJU).

American Jewish University seeks a partner to share its Los Angeles campus

Asaf Shalev
Published April 6, 2021

Students in Arizona, teachers in LA: A Jewish high school plans a post-COVID hybrid future

Asaf Shalev
Published April 2, 2021

NY Times’ Bret Stephens is editing a new Jewish journal, starting with an issue on ‘Jews and social justice’

Asaf Shalev
Published March 24, 2021

Jewlia Eisenberg, musical intellectual and Jewish radical, dies at 50

Asaf Shalev
Published March 15, 2021

This historian is preserving North African Jewish music from a bygone era

Asaf Shalev
Published March 12, 2021

Jews in mourning are finding unexpected comfort in virtual minyans

Asaf Shalev
Published March 3, 2021
Fritz Berggren appears in a holiday video shared by the U.S. Department of Defense in 2018. (Department of Defense)

‘Jewish ideas poison people,’ State Department official writes on Christian nationalist blog

Asaf Shalev
Published February 26, 2021

Israel to spend $50M compensating families of children who disappeared in state’s early years

Asaf Shalev
Published February 24, 2021
Rep. Jim Langevin, left, of Rhode Island greets former Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin at a Ruderman Foundation Inclusion Summit in Boston. (Noam Galai)

Ruderman foundation, main donor to Jewish inclusion efforts, ends its disability giving

Asaf Shalev
Published February 23, 2021
Load More Stories