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

Ben Cohen writes a weekly column for JNS.org on Jewish affairs and Middle Eastern politics.  The senior editor of  The Tower Magazine and TheTower.org, Cohen is the author of “Some of My Best Friends: A Journey Through Twenty-First Century Antisemitism.”

Netanyahu’s Russian realism

By Ben CohenPublished June 29, 2016

These are the days that Vladimir Putin has been aching for since the end of the Cold War. On Dec. 5, 1989, three weeks after the Berlin Wall was torn down, angry crowds stormed the Dresden Headquarters of the Stasi, the brutal secret police of the Soviet...

Refusenik rabbi to share his story on STL visit

By Repps Hudson, Special to the Jewish LightPublished April 17, 2013

Nearly 43 years ago, at the beginning of the resistance movement of Soviet Jews, Josef Mendelevich was facing 15 years in prison for attempting hijacking of a plane to fly himself and other refuseniks to Sweden and to freedom. He was 22 and in the early...

Historian looks at Europe’s Jews ‘On the Eve’ of war

By Burton A. Boxerman, Special to the Jewish LightPublished July 25, 2012

Numerous books have been written about Europe in the 1930s prior to the holocaust.   In Bernard Wasserstein’s provoking book, “On the Eve, The Jews of Europe Before the Second World War” (Simon and Schuster, 552 pages; $32.50), the author, a Professor...

Participants dancing at a concert held to celebrate the end of the first Limmud FSU conference in Moldova, June 2012.

Moldovan Jews struggle to maintain their historic community amid poverty, anti-Semitism

By Gavin Rabinowitz, JTAPublished June 20, 2012

CHISINAU, Moldova -- To tour the largely empty Jewish communities of Moldova and its capital, Chisinau -- once known by Jews the world over as Kishinev -- is not to wonder where did all the Jews go but why there are any remaining. Overgrown cemeteries...

Matthew Bronfman, center, is made an honorary citizen by the mayor of Otaci, the town in Moldova where his great grandfather Samuel Bronfman was born.

For Matthew Bronfman, a ‘surrealistic’ return to the Old Country

By Gavin Rabinowitz, JTAPublished June 10, 2012

OTACI, Moldova -- After just half an hour the little blue tour bus painted with smiling dolphins died with a smell of something burning, leaving Matthew Bronfman stranded next to a muddy field somewhere in rural Moldova. It was a surreal start to what...

President Obamas use of the term Polish death camps during a May29, 2012 ceremony at the White House to honor the late Polish partisanJan Karski caused a stir.

President Obama’s ‘Polish death camps’ mistake is common

By Michael Berenbaum, JTAPublished June 4, 2012

LOS ANGELES — President Barack Obama made a simple and very basic mistake when he spoke of Polish death camps during the presentation of a posthumous Medal of Freedom to Jan Karski, a Polish resistance fighter who was among the first to report German...

Editorial: Unchain Chen

Published May 2, 2012

On the heels of the news about Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, Charlie Brennan on his morning show Monday on KMOX Radio asked a listener, What should the United States have done if Anne Frank had managed to escape from her secret annex in Amsterdam...

Regina Spektor

Regina Spektor stays true to Jewish roots

By Ben Harris, JTAPublished April 18, 2012

NEW YORK—Regina Spektor has a cold—or as she calls it, “a nondescript New York disease.” The singer is onstage at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York headlining a benefit concert for the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, or HIAS, which helped resettle...

IDF soldiers raise a glass at a model seder on their base.

Israel’s army gears up for one of its biggest operations: Passover

By Marcy Oster, JTAPublished April 4, 2012

JERUSALEM—With Passover nearing, the Israeli army is embarking on one of its biggest operations of the year.Whether in the field, on a base or with family living abroad, “every last soldier has everything he needs for seder night,” asserts Capt....

Outcome uncertain in bitter Brooklyn special election

JTAPublished March 21, 2012

NEW YORK -- The outcome of a bitterly fought special election between two Jewish candidates in a southern Brooklyn state Senate district remains uncertain the day after the vote. Democrat Lewis Fidler and Republican David Storobin both claimed victory...

Robert A. Cohn, Editor-in-Chief Emeritus

Iran and Israel: Best and worst-case scenarios

BY ROBERT A. COHN, Editor-in-Chief EmeritusPublished March 14, 2012

Can we “handle the truth” about the Iran-Israel crisis, or has the debate become so partisan, ideological and acrimonious that it is impossible to agree on even the most basic facts?  This piece is an attempt to put into perspective where things...

Demonstrators in Moscow protest Vladimir Putins re-election, including one carrying a sign reading We are not an opposition, we are your employers! with the word fired over a drawing of Putins face, March 5, 2012.

No surprises in Putin victory, but question for Russian Jews is what comes next

By Uriel Heilman, JTAPublished March 5, 2012

With Vladimir Putin’s re-election as president of Russia pretty much a foregone conclusion, the question facing Russia was never what would result from last weekend’s election but what would happen after the vote. Thousands of protesters turned out...

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