Last month, on a below freezing day, I rode the Amtrak train from my home in Chicago to my childhood home of St. Louis. I was on my way to a Breaking the Silence event at Congregation B’nai Amoona. Breaking the Silence is an organization of former...
BY RABBI JOSEF DAVIDSON
• Published September 19, 2019
In the title story of Philip Roth’s “Goodbye Columbus,” a young man from Brooklyn’s lower middle-class has been invited to dinner at his girlfriend’s home in one of Long Island’s more posh neighborhoods. Her family has a huge home, and dinner...
Ellen Futterman, Editor
• Published August 8, 2019
Studying dark days to enlightenUnder the heading, “highlights of my summer vacation,” teachers Ellie DesPrez and Jill Donovan say their time spent at the Belfer Conference in Washington, D.C. about tops the list.English teachers at John Burroughs...
By Bill Motchan, Special to the Jewish Light
• Published July 25, 2019
If you could put a value on a blessing, what might it be worth? For a unique, nearly 90-year-old blessing, the going rate is $6,750. That’s the amount a bidder paid last week in Tel Aviv for a well-traveled Lincoln penny, the subject of frenzied bidding...
By Rabbi Carnie Shalom Rose
• Published June 6, 2019
This coming Shabbat, Jews the world over will once again initiate the public reading of the fourth of the Five Books of Moses known as Sefer Bamidbar (or more accurately BeMidbar), the Book of Numbers. For me, this Torah portion holds special significance...
Congregation B’nai Amoona’s Camp Ramot Amoona has created a new, community service-based opportunity for students across the St. Louis Jewish community who are entering the seventh or eighth grade in the fall. Registration is now open for “Taking...
Ellen Futterman, Editor
• Published October 18, 2018
To the rescueAfter exiting his plane in the Newark, N.J. airport on Monday, Gavriel “Gavy” Friedson spotted a situation all too familiar to him. An elderly Orthodox Jewish woman in a wheelchair was turning blue in the face as she and her family approached...
In this week’s parasha, Ki Tavo, Moses instructs the Israelites on the laws surrounding the bikkurim, the first fruits. He tells the people, “When you come in to the Land … you shall take of the first of all the fruit of the Land … and put it...
By Eric Berger, Special to the Jewish Light
• Published April 26, 2018
When Cantor Shira Lissek performs in the main sanctuary at Congregation B’nai Amoona, the acoustics will likely be familiar to her. That’s where she sang in the choir as a teenager and where her father, Leon Lissek, spent 30 years as the hazzan.If...
Ellen Futterman, Editor
• Published October 18, 2017
A true geniusWhen Sherrie and Nelson Rich of University City received an early morning call last week from their 42-year-old son Damon, who lives in Newark, N.J., their first reaction was concern.“He never calls early in the morning, so of course, being...
By Ellen Futterman, Editor
• Published September 6, 2017
The idea began percolating three years ago, when a friend in Israel talked about how donating a kidney had changed her life. Lynnsie Balk Kantor was intrigued.“She wound up leaving her job and working for the organization that gets recipients for kidney...
Many of the hot-button political issues today relate to how we assist those on the margins of society. Refugees, government subsidized health care and social welfare programs are issues that divide Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives.I...
