In June, Benjamin D. Singer participated in a Jewish Community Relations Council of St. Louis event alongside Missouri State Rep. Tracy McCreery, a Democrat, and John Saxton, a former member of the St. Louis Republican Central Committee. Since becoming...

Once again Howard Schwartz has retained the title of the Jewish Literary Zondek, or “Godfather” of St. Louis, bringing forth his latest book “A Palace of Pearls: The Stories of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav” (Oxford University Press, $34.95, cloth).Schwartz,...

Rabbi James Stone Goodman came to town soon after graduation from Hebrew Union College. “I was ordained in 1981,” said Goodman, 69, a Detroit native. “This was my first stop.”It has been a long one. Beginning at Congregation Shaare Emeth and...

Bas Rozendaal had to be deliberate as he dipped into the mikvah, a ritual bath used for conversions to Judaism and other religious practices.At 6-foot-2, he had to fully immerse himself three times without touching the floor or the sides of the shallow...

St. Louis fans of bluegrass or the blues are likely to have heard two accomplished Jewish musicians playing gigs around town. Joel Ferber and Ethan Leinwand both grew up on the East Coast, but they settled in the Midwest.Ferber, 59, is a Long Island native...

Pier Marton puts on a pair of disposable blue gloves on a weekday afternoon earlier this month, reaches into a plastic storage container and carefully pulls out rolls of film.He places a sheet of 12 negatives under a camera, which allows him to record...

When Jason Kander was about to deploy to Afghanistan as part of his Army service, an instructor in intelligence school shared this bit of intelligence with him:“… one Jewish soldier to another – [he] told me not to tell any of my translators that...

Rabbi James Goodman recently stepped away from Neve Shalom, the congregation he founded 29 years ago. In January, Goodman and his wife, Rabbi Susan Talve of Central Reform Congregation, lost their daughter Adina Chaya Talve-Goodman. Goodman took a leave...

Paula Gold recalls with crystal-clear clarity the day she bolted upright in bed at 3 a.m.“The Big G says open a yoga studio,” remembers Gold, who pinpoints this epiphany to 10 months ago. “It’s like the story of Jonah when the Big G tells him...

Ed Finkelstein, publisher of the St. Louis/Southern Illinois Labor Tribune, along with supporters of organized labor in Missouri earned a big victory last week with the defeat of Proposition A, the so-called right-to-work measure. Finkelstein, 80, has...

The tweet heard ‘round the worldTo hear Beth Wilensky tell it, donating airline frequent flyer miles to help reunite refugee children who had been separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexican border was an easy gesture — tikkun olam, helping...

Rabbinic traditions usually call for more exercise of the mind than of the body, but for Ze’ev Smason of Nusach Hari B’nai Zion, that’s not always the case.“I got this harebrained idea 10 years ago and wanted to do it both as a way of involving...