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

“Philip Roth: The Biography” by Blake Bailey, W. W. Norton & Company, 912 pages, $40. Published April 6, 2021

Author explores the life and many loves of Philip Roth

BY ROBERT A. COHN, Editor-in-Chief EmeritusPublished April 9, 2021

First, full disclosure:  I have been an unabashed admirer of the acclaimed novelist Philip Roth throughout my long career at the Jewish Light.  Roth, the tormented genius of American Jewish letters, who earned every major literary award except for the...

Philip Roth: A death in the family to generations of devoted readers

BY ROBERT A. COHN, Editor-in-Chief EmeritusPublished May 31, 2018

“At any event, all I can do with my story is tell it. And tell it and tell it.” —Philip Roth in “My Life as a Man”Acclaimed Jewish writer Philip Roth’s recent passing hit me like a death in the family. Like many American Jewish males of...

Philip Roth’s greatest creation was a character named Philip Roth

Miranda CooperPublished May 29, 2018

AMHERST, Mass. (JTA) — Philip Roth lent to American literature a singular, unapologetic voice to which nothing was sacred. His fiction critiqued everything from fascism to Jewish bourgeois assimilation to political puritanism to Jewish boyhood to the...

Logan Lerman in a scene from “Indignation,” a film adaptation of the Philip Roth novel. Photo: Alison Cohen Rosa

Philip Roth’s ‘Indignation’ comes to life onscreen

BY ROBERT A. COHN, Editor-in-Chief EmeritusPublished August 10, 2016

Philip Roth’s more than 30 novels have earned him every literary award except the Nobel Prize in Literature but have rarely served as the basis of successful films. “Goodbye Columbus” was a commercial success and entertaining, but  “Portnoy’s...

‘Harvest’ of local talent in new anthology

‘Harvest’ of local talent in new anthology

BY SUSAN FADEM, SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH LIGHTPublished April 21, 2011

From a simple nudge, oft-repeated, a 500-page volume took shape. "When are you going to do the next ‘Harvest' anthology?" professor emeritus Robert (Bob) Kohn would ask one of his exercise buddies, Howard Schwartz. During those mutual moments of huffing...

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