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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

Mike and Jane Weinhaus are flanked by their extended family. The couple, along with their two adult sons and one of their son’s wives, were among the first St. Louisans to contract the virus in March 2020. Both Michael and Jane were hospitalized; she spent nine days on a ventilator.

How the Weinhaus family found a new normal, 2 years after COVID

ERIC BERGER, Special to the Jewish LightPublished March 8, 2022

About a year ago, Mike Weinhaus was on the phone with a representative from his insurance company when the person asked, “Are you the family that was on the news with COVID?” Weinhaus, a member of Congregation Shaare Emeth, was indeed part of the...

St. Louis born rabbi tells his story of working a Covid ICU

St. Louis born rabbi tells his story of working a Covid ICU

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished January 18, 2022

"As a rabbi who works as a chaplain at a hospital in Indianapolis, I’ve held my tongue a lot when it comes to COVID-19 and the emotional strain it puts on the medical staff. But now — as my team at Indiana University Health is responsible for pastoral...

The Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90

Israel begins world-first trial of 4th Covid vaccine dose

Abigail Klein Leichman, Israel21cPublished December 27, 2021
Safety and efficacy of another booster shot is to be determined by a study of 150 healthcare workers whose antibodies from the third shot are waning.
What we know about Omicron and how to avoid getting it

What we know about Omicron and how to avoid getting it

Abigail Klein Leichman, Israel21cPublished December 2, 2021

It’s hard to believe we never heard of Omicron until a week ago. It was November 26 when the World Health Organization (WHO) designated the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus variant B.1.1.529 a “variant of concern” and named it Omicron after the 15th letter...

Israeli data shows Pfizer booster 93% effective

Israeli data shows Pfizer booster 93% effective

Abigail Klein Leichman, Israel21cPublished November 1, 2021

A third (booster) dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against Covid-19 is 93 percent effective in protecting individuals against severe Covid-19-related outcomes, compared with two doses received at least five months earlier. This conclusion is based...

Has Israel just found the cure for Covid?

Has Israel just found the cure for Covid?

Abigail Klein Leichman, Israel21CPublished August 16, 2021

Even with Israel’s world-leading rollout of Covid-19 vaccinations, drugs to treat Covid patients are in desperate need across the world. Two such drugs developed in Israel show great promise in clinical trials: EXO-CD24 and Allocetra. EXO-CD24,...

Gail Wechsler

Tell legislators to support safe access to state’s public hearings

By Gail WechslerPublished February 26, 2021

Last summer and fall, as the general election approached, citizens across the country voiced concern about the prospect of voting in person. With COVID -19 spreading, many jurisdictions saw a need, even if only temporarily, to expand absentee and mail-in...

Back-to-School Anxiety, COVID Style

Back-to-School Anxiety, COVID Style

Jewish Light EditorialPublished July 30, 2020

Normally at this time of year, back-to-school angst begins to arrive, usually in the minds of students who are hardly eager for summer vacation to end.But nothing is normal in the time of the coronavirus pandemic. This year, the anxiety typically felt...

Dr. David Rosen is an assistant professor of pediatrics and a pathobiology researcher at Washington University School of Medicine. 

Doctor would greenlight day school opening this fall, with conditions

BY ELLEN FUTTERMAN, EDITORPublished July 16, 2020

A couple of weeks ago, I joined a Zoom call with parents at Saul Mirowitz Jewish Community School, which is hoping to be able to resume in-person classes this fall even though the pandemic is far from over. While most schools in St. Louis County aren’t...

A JDC employee, right, delivers an aid package to a Jewish woman in Kharkiv, Ukraine, March 2020.  

For elderly Jews in the former Soviet Union, COVID-19 lockdown loneliness is debilitating

By Cnaan Liphshiz, JTAPublished July 2, 2020

(JTA) — Tamara Boronina, an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor living in Ukraine, can barely afford her small Odessa apartment on her monthly pension of $65.She is a widow whose only daughter died in 1999. Unable to visit the local Jewish community center...

Aaron Hadley Executive Director, Camp Ben Frankel in Southern Illinois

Reinventing Summer Camp: How some Jewish camps are going virtual this year

BY BEN SALES, JTAPublished June 18, 2020

Ask Jewish summer camp directors about the hardest part of designing a virtual camp experience for the COVID-19 era and they’ll laugh.Then they’ll say that all of it is hard. That they’ve never done anything like this before. That camp on a screen...

Dr. Alison Spatz Levine

Should Jewish camps open this summer? This camp doctor and nurse think it’s a bad idea

By Dr. Alison Spatz Levine and Heather Maiman, JTAPublished June 4, 2020

DENVER — In the summer of 1999, we slept head to head in top bunks at Camp Ramah in Canada. We also shared a viral upper respiratory illness that kept us from participating in the much-anticipated yom bli shemesh (a day without sun) while the rest of...

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