Synagogues with a rich historyIn the story “Small but dedicated community keeps Belleville synagogue moving forward” (Ohr Chadash Teen Page, Oct. 11), Olivia Riutcel, a freshman at Webster Groves High School, wrote on the merging of two old synagogues...

“We are in the midst of a mental health crisis, and we are trying to deal with it in a proactive, integrated, eyes-open response,” Rabbi James Stone Goodman writesI was conversing with Maimonides’ father, Maimon ben Yosef, who introduced me, when...

First, women marched in St. Louis, Washington, D.C., and in thousands of other cities. The next year, they did it again because the dangerous consequences of the current White House administration’s policies were crystal clear. And now a record...

Now in the second year of Donald Trump’s presidency, we are still trying to figure out what to make of his foreign policy. Clearly, he is not a “liberal internationalist” like Jimmy Carter, of the sort who strongly values international law and...

Support for Amendment 1As the words of Isaiah denouncing corruption and our traditional tikkun olam obligations may still be ringing in our ears from the High Holidays, we recall an earlier passage from Isaiah, 33:15: One “who walks in righteousness...

There was one corner of New York City last Thursday where the Senate Judicial Committee hearings into the accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh went largely unnoticed: the United Nations building perched on the East River, site of...

Not even the combined writing skills of Allen Drury and Tom Clancy could have come up with a more dramatic political scenario than last week’s hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee.The testimony first by professor Christine Blasey Ford and...

Whether you agreed with the process or not, last week’s dramatic Supreme Court confirmation hearing had to impress on everyone the importance of voting.With razor-thin margins in both the Senate Judiciary Committee and the full Senate, and the rancorous...

Words matter. Words can create or destroy — a life, a reputation, a relationship, a movement, a moment. And words can create worlds. The first words spoken in our world were, “Let there be light. And there was light.” (Genesis 1:3) Creation here...

On Friday, Sept. 28, at the end of one of the busier non-war, non-natural-disaster U.S. news weeks in some time, BuzzFeed.com responded to what it saw as extreme news fatigue among American readers. As a public service, the news site republished a story...

“It is not happy people who are thankful, it is thankful people who are happy.”  I love these words and find them so fitting for Sukkot. Coming on the heels of the Yamim Nora’im, the Days of Awe, Sukkot reminds us to stop, recognize the world around...

As the current president of Kesher Israel Congregation in this city’s Georgetown neighborhood, I write to correct erroneous and unsupported statements about Kesher that were made in a JTA op-ed by Loribeth Weinstein, the CEO of Jewish Women International.In...