As worldwide headlines focus on the election and installation of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina as Pope Francis I, Cohnipedia flashes back to January 1999, when Pope John Paul II made a historic visit to St. Louis, the first such visit by...

In the first Cohnipedia columns of 2013, the 50th anniversary of the St. Louis Jewish Light as an autonomous newspaper with its own independent Board of Trustees has been explored through the significant accomplishments of its lay leaders. Volunteers...

As the St. Louis Jewish Light continues its celebration of 50 years as an autonomous publication with its own governing board of trustees, most of the Cohnipedia columns this year will explore the history of the Light as well as some of the stories the...

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the St. Louis Jewish Light as an independent, non-profit entity with its own board of trustees.  This milestone will be celebrated with months of features in the publication and online, leading up to the Light...

In August, a Cohnipedia column addressed the on-again-off-again and finally off merger courtship between United Hebrew Congregation and Temple Israel—two storied St. Louis congregations whose rabbis and lay leaders have been among the true giants of...

For the past few years, there has been a spate of stories in the Jewish Light, plus lots of informal discussion about possible mergers among local synagogues. There was extensive discussion between the leadership of Temple Israel and United Hebrew about...

To paraphrase Christopher Wren, if you seek the monuments in St. Louis with a Jewish connection, just look about you. In previous Cohnipedia columns, we have noted the Jewish connections to the statue of “The Runner” at Kiener Plaza (Jewish sculptor...

The "Cohnipedia" column is based on the belief that I am blessed with a good memory, although I have found that it is far from perfect. When I was a kid, I had a nearly complete memory of the story lines, dialogue and character biographies of the nearly...

If there had been a local Jewish version of the National Enquirer in St. Louis back in the 1860s, the tabloid would no doubt have devoted oceans of ink to Rabbi Solomon Hirsch Sonneschein and his wife, Rosa Fassel Sonneschein, who can truly be described...

This story was originally published on September 22, 2011. The nation is in the midst of marking the Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War, the conflict which President Abraham Lincoln described in the Gettysburg Address as "testing whether...

Rabbi Peter J. Rubinestein, during a 1977 visit to St. Louis, struck the pose he assumed while a model for the statue of "The Runner" in the Harry J. Kiener Park on Sixth and Market. Rabbi Rubinstein, now the rabbi of the Central Synagogue in New York...

While the Second Commandment prohibiting the making of "graven images" may have inhibited some Jewish artists in the past, it didn't deter the late sculptor William Zorach, whose distinctive "massive and compact" style attracted critical acclaim.Turns...