Few people can rival Elizabeth Taylor’s impact on American popular culture. Taylor’s life was a warp-speed roller coaster of dizzying ups and downs.  Her heart-stopping physical beauty combined with bonafide acting ability launched her acting career...

“Bibi: My Story” by Benjamin Netanyahu, Simon & Schuster, 724 pages, $35 Mark Twain’s famous response to the premature publication of his obituary — “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated” accurately describes the political...

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, inspired both adulation and condemnation during his career, both of which are true to this very day, 83 years after his death in London in 1939. Freud, whose towering intellect inspired admiration from his...

In his superbly written new biography, “The Trials of Harry S. Truman,” Jeffrey Frank, a Presidential historian, avoids both adulation and harsh judgment of the Man from Missouri. For admirers and skeptics of HST, Frank, who previously wrote about...

In this vivid, lurid new book, Paul S.  Hirsch, a visiting history scholar at the University of Texas, compellingly explores the surprising extent to which the once lowly comic book industry was exploited by both sides of the Iron Curtain during the...

Even before comics superhero fans could fully process the spectacular box office success of Sony’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” Warner Brothers is awash with the super grossing “The Batman,” DC Comics’ brooding, noirish (and Jewish) Caped Crusader,...

The above headline is an obvious play on President John F. Kennedy’s historic speech in front of the Berlin Wall: “Ich bin Ein Berliner”—“I am a Berliner!”  The horrific unprovoked war on the innocent people of Ukraine perpetrated by Russian...

The recent — and extraordinarily dumb — decision by a Tennessee school board to ban Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust-themed graphic novel “Maus” from its library is a reminder that mice cartoons have grown way beyond Mickey,...

At 82, I’m dealing with the harsh reality of illness and death striking down relatives and friends.  Add to this the relentless news of the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, the cloud of sadness can envelop the soul.   One thing we can...

The birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. will be marked this year on Sunday, Jan. 16. Considering his major accomplishments as the leader of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement - for which he earned a well-deserved Nobel Peace Prize - it is still...

Two local Jewish organizations, MaTovu and the St. Louis chapter of J Street, were approved for full membership in the council of the Jewish Community Relations Council, in a meeting via Zoom Monday evening. The JCRC is the central coordination umbrella...

Readers of the Jewish Light are familiar with my lifelong obsession with comic books.  As a kid, I had over 1,200 Golden Age comic books in neat stacks on my windowsill in our Westgate apartment in my beloved University City.  I knew most of the stories...