Jewish Light Digital Edition: Nov. 16, 2022

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Beth Manlin, Vice President

Ben Weiss, Vice President

Justin Krachmalnick, Treasurer

Debra Klevens, Secretary

Joan Silber

TRUSTEES

Dan Bindler, Jerry Ehrlich, Richard Flom, Mark Gershenson, Caroline Goldenberg, Mia Kweskin, Debbie Lefton, Lauren Murov, Kara Newmark, Ryan Rich, Steve Rosenzweig, Bruce Sandweiss, Adam Schneider, Alan Spector, Todd Taylor, Dan Winograd

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JEWISH LIGHT PAST PRESIDENTS

Milton I. Goldstein*, Morris Pearlmutter* (founder), Morris Moscowitz*, Melvin Newmark*, Rabbi Alvan D. Rubin*, Vivian Zwick, Joseph Edlin*, Michael Newmark, Richard Stein, Yusef Hakimian*, Sanford Weiss*, Philip Isserman*, Linda Kraus, Richard Flom, Marvin Schneider, Barbara Langsam Shuman, Terry Bloomberg, John Greenberg, David Grebler*, Milton Movitz*, Gianna Jacobson, Jenny Wolkowitz, Gary Kodner, Jane Tzinberg Rubin, Steve Gallant, Laura K. Silver

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CANDLE LIGHTING TIMES

Shabbat begins Friday, Nov. 18: 4:28 p.m.

Shabbat ends Saturday, Nov. 19: 5:28 p.m.

Torah reading: Chayei Sarah

Shabbat begins Friday, Nov. 25: 4:24 p.m.

Shabbat ends Saturday, Nov. 26: 5:25 p.m.

Torah reading: Toldot

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It’s all about the story, and Judith Garfinkel sure has one to tell

Longtime St. Louis Art Museum docent Judith Garfinkel speaks to fourth and fifth graders from Imperial, Mo. on Oct. 19. PHOTO:

As hard as I try, there is no way to describe Judith Garfinkel’s command over her young charges at the St. Louis Art Museum other than to say she had them eating out of her hand.

There she was, all 5 feet, 105 pounds of her, impeccably dressed, red lipstick per fectly applied, perched on a portable stool in front of Thomas Hart Benton’s “Cradling Wheat” masterpiece. Seated cross-legged at her feet, the fourth- and fifth-graders from St. Joseph School in Imperial listened intently, seemingly mes merized by her every word.

At Garfinkel’s urging, some sketched parts of the painting in unlined black note books they had received a week earlier when they came for the first of a two-part museum visit.

“Last week, we studied portraits and looked at faces,” Garfinkel said to the chil dren. “Faces aren’t as important in this painting. It’s what the people are doing. What time of year do you think it is?”

One boy tentatively answered: “Umm, warm, maybe summertime?”

“That’s right,” Garfinkel said. “It’s har vest. You can see the three men and the boy with their shirtsleeves rolled up work ing hard, harvesting the grain.”

Garfinkel is 92 and has been a docent at the art museum for 61 years, leading tours once, twice and sometimes three times a week. “Cradling Wheat” is one of her favorite paintings and is among several she has chosen for this week’s lesson, paintings that tell stories. She says she’s more interested in having the children connect with the work through the story it tells rather than have them memorize facts and figures about the art.

“Judith is able to captivate students like no other docent. She can take the rowdiest kids and huddle them up, and they will be captivated for an hour and a half. It’s amazing. She knows what she’s doing but, more importantly, she loves what she is doing,” said Adria Brown, associate edu cator of the docent program and gallery teaching at SLAM. “She’s the longest serv ing and oldest docent in our program, but she is young in spirit.”

Direction to her day

NEWS & SCHMOOZE LOCAL NEWS

Garfinkel, who lives independently in a Clayton condo and still drives to the places she needs to go, explains that activities like being a docent provide “direction to her day” as well as a sense of purpose and con nection. She got involved with the muse

um’s docent program when it first started.

“A friend told me about this program that was brand new,” she recalled. “So I showed up for an interview. My friend did not. She never became a docent, and I never stopped.”

Garfinkel played tennis into her 80s, stopping not because of her age or having had both knees replaced (at the same time!) in her 60s, but because she felt “unbalanced” when she played after recov ering from kidney cancer surgery and chemotherapy. She continued to play golf until a few years ago when her golf part ner passed away. She still exercises daily, either using the treadmill and/or station ary bike in her building’s gym or, on nice weather days, walking.

“Since the pandemic, I figure I’ve walked to Chicago and

back,” she joked, adding that one of her favorite walks is down Hanley Road to Wydown Boulevard, past her former home on Alexander Drive, where she raised her three children, each of whom continues to live in Clayton. She also has seven grand children ranging in age from 9 to 37.

Garfinkel, who belongs to Temple Emanuel, is twice widowed. Both of her husbands died of brain tumors, the first when she had two children ages 3 and 5 at home, and the second, Dr. Bernard Garfinkel, after 40 years of marriage (together they had a third child, and Bernard adopted the older two). She also had “two lovely gentleman friends” in the years following her husband’s death in 2005, but both have since passed away. Would she be interested in dating again?

“If someone were looking for me, but I’m not doing the looking,” she quipped, add ing, “but I don’t think there are too many men my age out there looking.”

‘Age is just a number’

Garfinkel, who grew up in Clayton, graduated from Northwestern University, where she majored in

BY JORDAN PALMER CHIEF DIGITAL CONTENT OFFICER

Stan Towerman served his country in the United States Air Force from 1952 to 1954, at the height of the Korean War. But Towerman never considered his service worthy of any accolades, or even much discussion in his life because while the war raged in Korea, Towerman was sta tioned in Newfoundland where he never saw combat. This fact influenced his feel ings about his own military service.

“Because we were thousands of miles away from any fighting, I never felt I was valuable in my service,” said Towerman, 92, a retired insurance executive in St. Louis. But one day in 2018 would change this veteran’s perception of his own service and the direction of his life.

Towerman was born in St. Louis in 1930. He grew up in a reasonably poor area of north St. Louis. His father worked hard as a butcher, but the family was poor.

“I was a bar mitzvah in an Orthodox shul that we did not belong to. We were poor as were many in our neighborhood at

the time,” said Towerman.

He attended Soldan High School with many other Jewish students and graduat ed fourth in his class in 1948, earning a four-year scholarship to St. Louis University, where he was just one of a handful of Jewish students. He graduated in 1952 with a business degree as well as with distinction as a member of the Air

Force ROTC.

“Korea was starting to heat up, so I joined the Air Force instead of being draft ed. That also committed me to serve two years of active duty, and six years of reserve time,” said Towerman. “I also got married in my last year at SLU, so I entered the military as a newlywed.”

Towerman spent the first year of active

service at Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts. In his second year, he was deployed to Newfoundland as a supply officer for a communications construction squadron.

“Our mission was to protect the early warning radar in Newfoundland, Greenland and Iceland because while the war continued in Korea, the worry was Russia would fly in and bomb the U.S,” said Towerman.

In 1954, he came out of his active-duty commitment, moved back to St. Louis and began a long career in insurance. He would enjoy a 65-year career in the field, creating his own company, the Towerman Organization, in Clayton, in 1960. But throughout his career and life, Towerman never considered his service to his country as anything he should be proud of.

The mission of Honor Flights is to honor and celebrate America’s veterans by invit ing them to share a day at our nation’s memorials.

“I had heard of the flights, but pretty much ignored them because I didn’t feel worthy,” said Towerman, who eventually did sign up for a flight in 2018. The flight would change his life.

“Visiting the memorials is just a fraction of what it means to experience an honor flight,” he said. “When you’re on it, it’s the interplay among the vets, and experienc ing what it feels like when the public sees us coming. They applaud and it’s the most exciting thing you have ever experienced.”

Like many veterans, Towerman says his day on the Honor Flight was the best day of his life. But perhaps more importantly, the trip made him re-examine his own service and its importance.

“Before the flight, I felt I did not serve well enough because I did not see active duty. After the flight, I felt different. The year I spent in Newfoundland was of value. I felt at that moment that I was loyal, and I served the way I was supposed to serve,” said Towerman.

The Honor Flight experience so influ enced Towerman that he decided to dedi cate his time and energy to the cause.

Since 2008, the Greater St. Louis Honor Flights (https://gslhonorflight.org/) has been the hub from which more than 2,500 local veterans have had the chance to experience an Honor Flight. Aside from one staff member, all of the work is done by volunteers. After his 2018 experience, Towerman volunteered himself.

“I started a recruitment effort to find and get more veterans to go on their own Honor Flights,” said Towerman. “I get chills down my leg and get very emotional just talking about it. Every day I try to recruit. It’s become my life.”

Since he started, Towerman has recruit ed an estimated 140 veterans to travel on their Honor Flight.

“We consider Stan an ambassador for the Greater St. Louis Honor Flights,” said volunteer Bill Seis. “Anytime Stan sees anyone wearing a veteran’s cap, he engag es that person and asks if they have taken an Honor Flight. If they have not, he will discuss the experience, and then share any information he gets with us.”

So far, Towerman has recruited 140 vet erans to participate in an Honor Flight, and he’s not done yet.

“It really was the best day of my life, and when I pitch it to veterans, I tell them they deserve to have the best day of their lives too,” said Towerman. “I tell them they deserve to experience the feeling of people applauding as we come off the plane, or near a memorial. If you can change a per son’s life, even for one day, then that’s sig nificant. It’s what drives me.”

If you know a U.S. veteran who would like to take an honor flight, or you yourself are a veteran and interested, Towerman invites you to call him at 314-277-1989.

For decades, Stan Towerman downplayed his military service. An Honor Flight changed that.

Stan Towerman

Lost memoir of St. Louis woman’s escape from Nazis found in storage container

BY BILL MOTCHAN

SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH LIGHT

Lilo Fauman was a Holocaust survivor, a proud grandmother, a talented writer and an extrovert. Born in 1923 in Munich, Fauman and her family narrowly escaped the Nazis during Kristallnacht and arrived in the United States in February 1939.

Fauman died in 2004 in St. Louis at the age of 80. Her headstone bears the inscrip tion “A WOMAN OF SPIRIT.” She left her family many memories including a vivid memoir that detailed her teenage years, an account far different from what most peo ple think of as happy teen years.

Most 15-year-olds aren’t fleeing a gov ernment regime bent on their elimination. vvv

“The brown uniforms of the Nazis were everywhere. Even my non-Jewish friends wore them. Everybody yelled ‘Heil Hitler’ instead of ‘Guten Tag’ to each other, except me, of course.” vvv

The story Fauman told was chilling. She wrote it as an adult student in the Washington University Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) sometime in the late 1990s. Fauman had moved to St. Louis from Detroit and found a group of friends, other writers who worked on their fami lies’ histories.

As part of the OLLI program, pods of students share their stories with each other, offering encouragement and advice to improve the narrative. Fauman didn’t need much assistance. She was a natural storyteller.

vvv

“At 3 o’clock in the morning the tele phone rang to inform my father that our large and gorgeous synagogue was on fire, one that was set by the Storm Troopers. They also told my father that he should leave his house at once.”

vvv

The OLLI administrative staff was dili gent about preserving at least one copy of each student’s memoir. Fauman’s memoir was among those packed away in a stor age container when Janet Gillow, the pro

Fabulous Holidays at Fabulous Holidays at

gram director, was doing some cleaning and organizing. She found Fauman’s man uscript along with personal photos of fam ily members circa 1940.

“In the class, the students encourage each other and read each other’s work,” Gillow said. “This was Lilo’s copy. She must have tucked the photos in the book, maybe forgot about them when the book got boxed up.”

Gillow did some digging and learned that Fauman attended the former Brith Sholom Kneseth Israel. Then, in a Google search, she discovered Fauman’s grand daughter Laura Horwitz. Gillow had

worked on projects with her years earlier, when Horwitz was working with We Stories, a racial studies education program she co-founded.

Gillow’s instincts were correct, and she was eager to return the memoir and photos. Horwitz, a member of Kol Rinah with her husband, Guy Friedman, and two children, remembers how she got the information.

“Janet sent me an email,” Horwitz recalled, “that specifically said, ‘This is probably a pretty strange email to receive

FAUMAN

on page 15A

A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor Christmas Show

See LILO

Above, Janet Gillow, director of the Washington Univer sity Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, found a memoir written in the 1990s by Lilo Fauman, who escaped Ger many in 1939 and eventually came to St. Louis. At left, Fauman’s granddaughter Laura Horwitz with son Jonah hold photos of Lilo Fauman.

St. Louis congregation Neve Shalom quietly closes after 33 years

BY BILL MOTCHAN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH LIGHT

The St. Louis area recently lost a 33-year-old congregation. Neve Shalom, a Jewish Renewal community, quietly dis banded after the High Holidays. Dwindling membership was the primary reason Neve Shalom made the difficult decision to cease operation, according to Tom Wilde, board president.

“In the last days, we had about 40 fami lies,” Wilde said. By contrast, at its peak Neve Shalom had a membership of nearly 200 families.

“We had a pretty good size and we had a very good turnout on Friday nights,” Wilde added. “When I joined 25 years ago, Friday night was a big event.”

A major draw for Friday night services was Rabbi James Goodman, the congrega tion’s founder, who is married to Rabbi

Susan Talve of Central Reform Congregation. Goodman spent 29 years at Neve Shalom and stepped away in 2018. Now affiliated with CRC, Goodman is a noted musician and storyteller. His skills made Neve Shalom Shabbat services pop ular events.

Prior to Goodman’s departure, he was often joined by Will Soll, another talented musician and Torah scholar. Having spiri tual leaders like Goodman and Soll was a blessing, Wilde said. He compared them to another local MVP-caliber duo.

“We had Goldschmidt and Arenado,” Wilde said, referring to the Cardinals’ top players.

Taking care Of each other

The Neve Shalom community also had talented cooks among its members, according to Ellen Lawrence, a longtime

board member.

“We have great bakers,” said Lawrence, who learned to make challah at Neve. “I even taught challah baking classes at some of our events. We had amazing bak ers and cooks in that organization. I mean, really incredible.”

Lawrence also taught religious school for a number of years and helped organize events. The intimate nature of a small con gregation was a plus for her.

“It was really focused on learning and spirituality and tikkun olam,” she said. “I

can’t tell you how many times a lot of peo ple made dinners for people who were ill or dying. We took care of each other and that’s what I really loved about it. I loved the sense of spirituality.”

Lawrence also re-learned Hebrew at Neve Shalom.

“I even got bat mitzvahed with my oldest daughter. She did the Torah, I did the Haftorah.”

For members, it was easy to get involved in activities, according to Wilde: “All you had to do is show up and we would get you involved to your level of interest.”

A nomadic journey

One of the challenges Neve Shalom faced for years was the lack of a permanent phys ical location. In the early days, it shared a space with a church on Conway Road. That was not ideal, in part because a number of members were uncomfortable with the Christian imagery in the sanctuary.

From there, Neve Shalom moved to Rainbow Village, the Creve Coeur-area community for adults with developmental disabilities. Eventually, Neve Shalom was asked by Covenant Place to move into a space at the former CHAI building. When that location began renovation efforts, another move was planned, back to Rainbow Village. Then COVID hit and the congregation moved online.

Converting to Zoom services for Saturday morning Torah study initially proved successful for Neve Shalom. It was convenient and safe for participants. In 2022, as the rest of the world moved back to post-COVID in-person gatherings, Neve Shalom found its small congregation becoming smaller. That’s when the board voted unanimously to close permanently.

Saying goodbye

Since 1947, the St. Louis Jewish Light has been a cornerstone of our community, telling our stories and connecting us by offering a local Jewish perspective on moments that matter.

We recently moved from paid subscriptions to completely free subscriptions. Our award-winning print newspaper is mailed to over 10,000 households and our digital newsletter, The Morning Light, is delivered to over 6,000 inboxes each weekday morning. Several thousand in our community also receive our topical digital newsletters, in addition to staying connected through our strong social media presence.

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We thank you for your generous support,

officers

Bethe Growe, President

Laurie Chod, Vice President

Beth Manlin, Vice President

Ben Weiss, Vice President

Justin Krachmalnick, Treasurer

Debra Klevens, Secretary

Laura K. Silver, Immed. Past President

Joan Silber, Committee Chair

trustees

Dan Bindler, Jerry Ehrlich, Richard Flom, Mark Gershenson, Caroline Goldenberg, Mia Kweskin, Debbie Lefton, Lauren Murov, Kara Newmark, Ryan Rich, Steve Rosenzweig, Bruce Sandweiss, Adam Schneider, Alan Spector, Todd Taylor, Dan Winograd

Even members who saw the handwrit ing on the wall were dismayed by the clo sure announcement.

“It was heartbreaking,” said Ellen Lawrence. “It’s been part of my life for so long. It’s really important to give back to the community and we did something that I don’t know of any other synagogue in the area had done. We had a policy that if you couldn’t afford to host a bar or bat mitzvah for your child—if you had fallen hard times—the hospitality members would provide it anonymously.”

The Neve Shalom board decided to go out on a festive note, and made its first post-COVID event an in-person celebra tion for erev Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur at the Dielmann Recreation Complex.

“After years of COVID and being dis placed, that was very bittersweet,” Wilde said. “It was so nice to be back in person and having a Neve service, knowing that it’s really the end. We had some lovely trib utes that were given by various members of the congregation, and some faces that we hadn’t seen for a while were in atten dance. So I have to say that made it a sweet memory. The memory is really sweet more than sad.

“All of us are still in the community,” he said. “And we have our roots at Neve Shalom, but we are using that to continue our giving to the Jewish community.”

In a January 2009 file photo, Rabbi Jim Goodman (right) and Keith Rashke take part in a prayer vigil at Congregation Neve Shalom during the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Bethe Growe President

Laurie Chod Vice President,

Betsy Schmidt Chief Executive Officer

BY BILL MOTCHAN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH LIGHT

The world’s largest decentralized memorial commemo rates the lives of people deported by the Nazis before and during the Holocaust.

The Stolpersteine Project was conceived by German artist Gunther Demnig. It consists of 75,000 stolpersteine (stumbling stones) in 28 countries, primarily in Europe. The square, 4-inch stones are laid in the pavement in front of the last known place of residence of victims of the Nazis. Their names are engraved on a brass plaque on top of each stolpersteine

Requesting a stolpersteine is not complicated, but it does require some work. Permission must be obtained from local authorities and the property owner of the resi dence. Demnig’s foundation requires careful research to assure accuracy. It also insists on finding living descen dants before a stolpersteine is installed.

The Jewish Light discussed the significance of stolper steine with three Jewish St. Louis descendants of Holocaust victims and survivors who traveled to Germany to see the commemorative stones.

The pediatrician

Kent Hirschfelder, a docent and for mer board chair at the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum, is a student of history, but he knew little about stolpersteine. He was quite familiar with the achievements of his great-uncle, Isidor Kurt Hirschfelder, a pediatrician in Krefeld, Germany. That’s because a pediat ric hospital is named for him. So is Hirschfelder Strasse, a residential street, and a school and a plaza.

“He was revered in the community,” said Hirschfelder, a member of Congregation Shaare Emeth. “He was a mensch. He would see patients after he was forbidden to see gentiles. They would sneak out to him at night because he was such a good person, and he wouldn’t charge them if they couldn’t pay. He invented the birthing room for mothers. He probably survived until 1941 because he was revered.

“He also served in the German army in World War I. He was on the front lines and decorated with the Iron Cross. And on Oct. 27, 1941, a gentile woman patient came to him and said, ‘The last transport out of Krefeld is tomorrow. I’ve seen your name on the list. My husband is in the Gestapo, and I’d be in a whole lot of trouble if he knew I was here.’

“So Isidor put on his World War I uniform, he put his Iron Cross around his neck. He took the weapon that he had used to defend his country and he took his own life.”

The stolperstein bearing Isidor Hirschfelder’s name and street address also states: flucht in den tod (suicide). It’s a stark reminder that nobody was pro tected from the Nazi regime, not even a

The stolpersteine controversy

Isidor Hirschfelder’s former Krefeld home is now on a busy commercial street with pedestrians looking into retail store windows for sale items. They likely aren’t walking down Ostwall Street in search of Holocaust memorials embedded in the sidewalk. The placement of stolpersteine makes some people uneasy. By walking on the stones, it could be interpreted as a sign of disrespect. That’s why you won’t find a single stolpersteine in Munich.

On the other hand, the engraved brass plate is distinc tive and eye-catching, so even people who aren’t familiar with the memorials may stop and look down. To read the engraving requires one to bend over slightly. That act of bowing down could also be read as a sign of respect. For Kent Hirschfelder, stolpersteine memorials represent a good way of making sure people don’t forget about Nazi atrocities.

Ostwall 148. The former private home is now a dress shop.

NHBZ welcomes new rabbi

When Nusach Hari B’nai Zion celebrated the New Year, it also celebrated the arrival of a new rabbi. Rabbi Chaim Bogopulsky joined NHBZ in September as senior rabbi, succeeding Rabbi Ze’ev Smason, who retired after almost 25 years and continues to serve as the congregation’s rabbi emeritus.

“We are very excited to wel come Rabbi Bogopulsky and his entire family to St. Louis as NHBZ continues its mission to reach out and inspire all Jews. He is not only deeply knowl edgeable, but personable, warm, caring and open,” said NHBZ’s President, Kenny Bressler. Bogopulsky commented that “serving as a community rabbi offers me the opportunity to teach, motivate, elevate and inspire people to greater spiritual heights. Serving as a community rabbi also offers me the special opportunity to build very meaningful relationships with people of all ages and make a real meaning ful difference in their lives.”

NHBZ is a Modern Orthodox con gregation that welcomes Jews of all backgrounds and levels of obser vance. Bogopulsky shared that he was attracted to NHBZ because it “is uniquely a warm, diverse, and wel coming shul in beautiful St. Louis that would allow me to continue to do what I love—to teach Torah, build relationships, and help people through the challenges and vicissi tudes of life on a much greater scale, to a much larger audience.”

Bogopulsky, 38, joins NHBZ after serving as spiritual head of the Young Israel of North Bellmore, N.Y. for seven years. While there, he brought energy, warmth, passion, and new learning opportunities for individuals

at all levels of their Jewish journey. He created new and dynamic program ming, with a unique ability to care and be concerned for a wide variety of individuals.

Bogopulsky is also a licensed social worker who has provided individual, group, family and student-centered counseling. He received his Smicha (ordination) from Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, N.J., and received additional intensive training from the Young Israel Rabbinic Training Program, as well as the wellknown outreach training program, Ner LeElef Leadership Training Course.

Bogopulsky’s wife, Batya, works as a credentialed actuary. They have four children, Chava, Devora Leah, Nechama and Yakov, who range in age from 3 to 12 years old.

The congregation is planning an open house on Sunday, Nov. 20 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for the Jewish com munity to meet and welcome the entire Bogopulsky family.

Shaare Emeth will host Daniel Matt as Scholar-in-Residence

Join Congregation Shaare Emeth for two days of learning and conversation with Deutsch Scholar-in-Residence Daniel Matt, one of the leading teachers on different aspects of God and a leading authority on mysticism. Programs include:

• Raising the Sparks: Finding God in the Material World at 10 a.m. on Friday, Nov. 18

• Shekhinah: The Feminine Aspect of God (Kabbalat Shabbat Service) at 6 p.m. Nov. 18

• Shabbat Dinner and How Kabbalah Reimagines God at 7:15 p.m. Friday, Nov. 18

• The Mystical Meaning of Torah at 9 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 19

God and the Big Bang: Discovering Harmony Between Science and Spirituality at 4:15 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 19 Matt is a scholar of Kabbalah and the Zohar who has published over a dozen books, including “The Essential Kabbalah, Zohar: Annotated and Explained,” and “God and the Big Bang: Discovering Harmony between Science and Spirituality.”

Details and registration at sestl.co/kabbalah

JProStL plans retreat for staff

in 20s and 30s

PAUSE, a retreat for staff in their 20s and 30s who work at nonprofits throughout the St. Louis Jewish community will take place on Thursday, Dec. 1 from 8:30 a.m.- 4 p.m. in downtown St. Louis. PAUSE is sponsored by JProStL, the association for Jewish commu nity staff.

Yoshi Silverstein, founder and executive director of Mitsui Collective, will facilitate the retreat. Recently honored by the Covenant Foundation as an emerging leader in North America, Silverstein’s work seeks to nourish body and soul through embodied Jewish practice. As a Chinese-AshkenaziAmerican Jew, Silverstein is an active leader, advocate, and educator in the Jews of Color community and speaks regularly on diversi

ty, equity and inclusion.

The cost is $50 for the retreat. For more information and to register, go to www.jfed stl.org/events/pause2022/.

Jewish Mindfulness Center plans Chanukat HaNefesh weekend

From Friday, Dec. 9 to Sunday, Dec. 11, Rabbi Andrea Goldstein and the Jewish Mindfulness Center of St. Louis will present Chanukat HaNefesh/Dedicating our Spirits: A Weekend Dedicated to Practice, Learning, Hope and Joy. All experiences are free of charge and will take place in the Kehillah Center of Congregation Shaare Emeth. Some experiences require registration. For more information and registration, visit mindfulness.sestl.org/upcoming-programs/ or call Stacy at 314-569-0010. Events include:

• Prayer Lab – Friday, Dec. 9, 6 p.m.: Rabbi Goldstein, Lucy Greenbaum and the Prayer Lab musicians lead this non-tradi tional Shabbat service combining contempo rary readings, poetry, participatory music, interactive teachings, and time set aside for meditation and personal reflection. Consider bringing canned or boxed food that you would use to prepare a meal that is special to you. All items will be donated to the Harvey Kornblum Jewish Food Pantry.

• Torah Study Through the Lens of Mindfulness – Saturday, Dec. 10: 9 a.m. –Breakfast Nosh / 9:30 a.m. – Study Begins. No previous experience with text or mindfulness necessary.

• Reimagining God – Saturday, Dec. 10, 3-5:30 p.m.: Based on Rabbi Toba Spitzer’s book, “God is Here: Reimagining the Divine,” this session will look new and ancient meta phors for God, expanding our awareness of the Divine Presence in our lives. Time togeth er will include study, reflective practices and Havdalah. Copies of “God is Here” can be found in the Shaare Emeth Rubin Library, though knowledge of the book is not required to participate in the program. Registration required.

The Bogopulsky family

NEWSMAKERS

Newsmakers is a compilation of the Jewish community’s newsworthy professional and academic accomplishments. Submit your news to news@stljewishlight.org. Call 314-743-3669 for more information. Published the first edition of each month. Newsmakers is compiled by Elise Krug.

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Dalin Dental Associates received one of 10 2022 Family Business Awards from the St. Louis Business Journal Dr. Jeff Dalin is owner and is joined by his nephew, Dr. Daniel Goldberg, and son, Dr. Andy Dalin. The practice is located in Creve Coeur. All belong to Congregation B’nai Amoona.

Jennifer Rich-Thomas was the execu tive producer of the documentary “The Garcia Family,” working with director Emmett Williams It tells the story of Alex Garcia, who took sanctuary in a Maplewood Church to avoid deportation and how his family and community came together. The screening was part of the St. Louis International Film Festival. RichThomas attends Congregation Shaare Emeth.

Jayme Bertish has joined the Buddy Fund board, whose mission is to serve local at-risk youth by providing new sports and recreation equipment. A member of Shaare Emeth, Bertish is an enrollment and marketing support specialist with Media Cross.

Dylan Brown will be the camp director at Camp Indigo, a residential summer camp for youth entering second through

11th grades. Located just outside of St. Louis, the camp seeks to provide LGBTQ+ youth the chance to experience a commu nity of peers in a fun, exuberant, affirm ing environment. During the school year, Brown is a fourth- grade teacher in Austin, Texas.

Entrepreneur and fashion designer Phyllis Brasch Librach was honored at the 2022 Full Figured Industry Awards with a Lifetime Achievement Award. She is the founder and president of Sydney’s Closet, a company that focuses exclusively on creating wedding, evening, pageant, prom and party dresses for women ages

16 to 60 who wear sizes 14 to 40. Librach attends B’nai Amoona.

Dr. David H. Gutmann and Jonathan Kipnis, PhD are two of the four faculty members at Washington University

AGE

BY: DR BETH TEMPLIN, PT, DPT, GCS GERIATRIC PHYSICAL THERAPIST

ved one has within the last robably already know how life altering it can be Once you fall, your whole world changes Where you once felt comfortable and confident, you now start to doubt your abilities To avoid having another fall, you start to give up the things you love to do When this happens, you become less mobile, and your strength and independence start to decline You begin to lose your confidence and things like going for walks with your spouse, or just going out to the grocery store can become too much to handle

If you or a loved one are caught in this downward spiral and are looking to take control of your balance and regain your active lifestyle you re not alone

Even though it's normal to experience some declines as you age, it is NOT normal t o lose your balance and fall Fortunately, no matter what your age, physical therapy can help to improve your balance and make you more steady on your feet

If you're ready to live a life without the fear of falling, we can help Our Physical Therapy Team has helped hundreds of people right here in St Louis improve their balance and get back to doing the things they love

Unsure if Physical Therapy actually help you to improve your balance? Then I invite you to attend our upcoming FREE workshop “Better Balance"

During This Workshop You'll Learn:

Why you shouldn't accept falling as a normal part of aging The alarming cost of falling and how a prevention mindset is your greatest tool to stay safe

The 3 factors that cause falls and how to minimize your risk

The top 6 balance exercises you can do at home

When: Friday, Dec 2nd at 2:30pm

Where: 3809 Lemay Ferry Rd, 63125

*Attend in person or join us online from your home Call (314) 939 1377 to register Space is limited

I look forward to seeing you there Dr Beth

At HouseFit, we help adults 55+ maximize their independence and fitness, so they can continue to enjoy a full and active life

Dr. Ken Ludmerer, of the Washington University School of Medicine, has joined the Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital board.

TOP ROW: Dr. Ken Ludmerer, Dr. Jeff Dalin, Dr. Daniel Goldberg, Dr. Andy Dalin, Jennifer Rich-Thomas BOTTOM ROW: Jayme Bertish, Dylan Brown, Phyllis Brasch Librach, Dr. David H. Gutmann, Jonathan Kipnis, PhD Continues

School of Medicine elected to the National Academy of Medicine, a part of the National Academy of Sciences.

Gutmann is the Donald O. Schnuck Family Professor in the department of neurology and an international authority in neurofibromatosis (NF) cancer predis position syndromes. Gutmann is being recognized for his seminal contributions to the field of NF and related disorders.

Kipnis is the Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Distinguished Professor of Pathology & Immunology and a BJC investigator. He also is a professor of neurology, of neuro science and of neurosurgery. Kipnis is an internationally recognized scientific leader in how the nervous and immune systems interact neuro disorders. The founding director of the Center for Brain Immunology and Glia at Washington University, Kipnis has conducted ground breaking studies on how immune cells contribute to brain health and disease.

At the recent Interfaith Partnership of Greater St. Louis’ celebration, Journeys to Friendship, Leonard Frankel was honored with one of two 2022 Interfaith Achievement Awards to commemorate his years of service and activism in the St. Louis interfaith community. Frankel attends B’nai Amoona.

Marc Enger was honored by Habitat for Neighborhood Business (HNB); an orga nization that partners with local volunteer business experts to help restore economic vitality to under-served neighborhoods. He was honored for his contributions as a volunteer mentor and marketing director for HNB. A member of Congregation Temple Israel, Enger is the owner and fractional chief marketing officer at Propel Marketing Services.

Dr. Mauricio Lisker-Melman received the 2022 Distinguished Clinician Educator/Mentor Award from the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD). He was honored for his sustained scientific contributions to the field of liver disease and hepatology. A member of Traditional Congregation, Lisker-Melman is a professor of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine and the director of Hepatology at the John Cochran Veterans Administration Medical Center in St. Louis.

Marc Soble has joined Armstrong Teasdale as chief financial officer. In his role as CFO, he will identify opportunities and drive plans for continued growth and productivity. He will also work firmwide to assess risk and strategically plan for the firm’s future.

Area lawyers who have been chosen for inclusion in the 2023 edition of “The Best Lawyers in America” and/or “Missouri Super Lawyers 2022” publications are: Susan Bindler ( Haar & Woods), Rick Eisen (Growe, Eisen, Karlen, Eilerts), Alan Freed ( Paule, Camazine & Blumenthal), Norman Pressman (Goldstein & Pressman) , Wendi Pressman ( Lathrop GPM), Steven Schwartz (Brown & James) and Richard Tischler ( Riezman Berger).

TOP ROW: Leonard Frankel, Marc Enger, Marc Soble, Susan Bindler, Rick Eisen

BOTTOM ROW: Alan Freed, Norman Pressman, Wendi Pressman, Steven Schwartz, Richard Tischler

Dr. Mauricio Lisker-Melman

Schmooze: Being an art museum docent gives direction to her day

children’s theater. She directed a children’s theater group in St. Louis for two years called the Peter Pan Players and then ran Miss Judy’s nursery school at the Church of the Holy Communion, the Episcopalian church with the red door, in University City.

“I was supposed to be teaching children from the church, but not one showed up,” she remembered. “My brother, who was older than me, had a lot of friends with 3and 4-year-olds. So there I was at the Church of the Holy Communion teaching all these nice little Jewish children. It was like a fairytale.”

She stopped teaching when she decided to have a family but never lost her desire to volunteer and stay busy. For 10 years, along with the art museum, she was a docent at the Missouri Botanical Gardens and the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. She still paints with watercolors (“oils are too hard to clean up”), plays bridge regu

larly and knits. Since the pandemic, she’s knitted 12 afghan blankets for family and friends.

“Age is just a number” is one of her favorite expressions, and she’s living proof. Her daughter Joanne Iskiwitch says that at Clayton High, her mother was an acrobatic cheerleader.

“When she was close to 80, she told us she could do a cartwheel and stand on her head,” Iskiwitch said. “She went ahead and did it. She never ceases to amaze us.”

Of course, living into one’s 90s is not all cartwheels and headstands. She’s racked up her share of “dramatic surgeries,” as she calls them, including an exceedingly complicated procedure to remove a tumor on the adrenal gland. She prefers to focus on the positive but mentions that she is a breast cancer survivor, having undergone a lumpectomy, chemotherapy and radia tion.

“She always says to the doctor, ‘Just tell

me what to do and I’ll do it,’ ” Iskiwitch said. “She stays so positive, even in the face of adversity. She sees the glass more than half full, and she really tries to befriend everyone. I think she’s met half the city of Clayton on her walks. She’s the kind of person who never knows a strang er.”

Engaging with energy and heart

Garfinkel takes her docent work very seriously. On days she leads tours, she gets to the museum in plenty of time to meet the students at the door when they arrive. She explains that the process of becoming a docent takes a couple of years, though even now she is still expected to attend lec tures, tour new exhibitions and take class es to grow her knowledge.

Her ability to connect with youngsters is evident, as she encourages the children from St. Joseph’s to think hard about the

Stolpersteine: Preserved in pavement

Walking and polishing

Denny Greenberg also has a positive view of stolper steine. Her great-grandmother, great-aunt and great-uncle are memorialized in stolpersteine in Krefeld.

“We met the artist because he actually did the laying of my great-grandmother’s stone, and he likes people to walk on them because he says it polishes them,” said Greenberg, a member of Congregation B’nai Amoona. “People in the community also come and polish them and take care of them.”

Denny and her husband, Carl, first went to Germany to see her family’s stolpersteine in 2019. They returned this summer. Greenberg now consciously looks for stolper steine when traveling. She said her trips to Krefeld have been particularly moving.

“It was very touching,” she said. “There were several stones, several ceremonies taking place. One was for my family, one for a homosexual person, one for a young child that had a disability who was killed because of that, another was for a resistance fighter. So there was a lot going on that day. What was interesting is, in this commu nity, the local historians work with high schools, and the students actually perform the dedication ceremony.”

Like the stone for Isidor Hirschfelder, Greenberg’s family stolpersteine is embedded in front of a storefront.

“My great-grandmother had a fabric busi ness,” she said. “She and the family lived above the business. When the Nazis came, they took it over and it became a Judenhäuser (a building where Jews were housed).

“I learned so much about my family from the historians, and I had the opportunity to talk to a lot of the people in the community, and most of them were not Jewish. Most of them were doing it because they found out members of their family were in the SS, and they didn’t want history to repeat itself, and they had the sense of collective guilt.”

A pilgrimage

In July, Marian Steen and 13 family mem bers traveled to Bensheim, Germany, to com memorate her grandmother Anna Hochstadter’s stolpersteine. The trip began when Steen received an email from a high school teacher.

“He was a history professor at my mother’s school, and he had all kinds of information about her,” Steen said. “He said they wanted to give her and her family a stolpersteine. He introduced us to the stu dent that he assigned our family to. This was a his tory project for his class in my mother’s school to celebrate 150 years of the school’s existence.”

Steen said the journey to Bensheim was well worth the effort. It deeply affected her and her family.

“The minute I heard about how sincere these people were and what their purpose was, I knew that we would all have to try and save our money and get over there,” she said. “After we got back, my youngest grandson, Liam, who is 12, wrote an

stories each painting tells. She also takes time and care to review each of their sketches.

“We love her. She has taught us so much,” said St. Joe’s fifth-grade teacher April Pieper. “She engages the kids with so much energy and heart.”

While not all the tours Garfinkel leads are successful — “I had one last week where the teacher wasn’t interested and the kids didn’t take their coats off” — most go very well, she’s happy to report. She prefers leading tours for grade-school chil dren over older students and adults.

“I’m a little more relaxed with people who are more my height,” she said with a sly smile, “though I’m noticing fifth-grad ers are a lot taller than they used to be.”

‘Thank

“One man drove us over to my mother’s home that she lived in and showed us the exact stolpersteine. They invit ed us to come into the house and be in the actual living quarters where my grandparents lived. I looked out the window that my mother must have looked out as a child. It was a pilgrimage. It was just an amazing thing.”

email to the history professor who started the whole thing and said,

you for letting me have a picture in my mind of these people who were my great-grandparents and my grandmother.’

Left: Anna Hoch stadter’s stolper steine in Ben sheim, Germany. Anna is the grand mother of Marian Steen, seen above, with husband Rick Knox.

Denny Greenberg and family in Krefeld, Germany after visiting her family members’ stolpersteine.

2022-2023 Ohr Chadash

Teen Page Staff

Editor-in-Chief: Molly Levine

Staff members: Alissa Barnholtz

Noam Buch

Benjamin Kruger

Maya Sagett

Daniel Shanker

Avital Vorobeychik

Ella Wertman

Advisor: Caroline Goldenberg

In the center of the Jewish world, the Western

Wall

connects rather than divides us

BY BENJAMIN KRUGER JUNIOR, PARKWAY CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL

There is something poetic about the wall. It exists as a border; a formidable obstacle to separate components. But as is often true about poetic instruments, this wall had another meaning. The dichotomy of the wall: the symbolic value of both sep aration and connection.

I rummaged through my bag to find my tallis. The dark blue cloth caught my eye and I grabbed it. As I draped the sacred cloth across my shoulders, I stopped for a moment and recalled using that same movement three years before. It was a much shorter and smaller Benjamin who stood on the bimah of his synagogue, anx iously holding his tallis in anticipation for his bar mitzvah. Despite his nerves, young Benjamin found comfort in his tallis.

Now, I stood in the holy land of Israel. In the Old City of Jerusalem — the absolute center of the Jewish world — standing in front of the Wailing Wall: the most sacred spot for Jews on the planet. And I knew with absolute conviction that the admira tion and respect that I held for my tallis on the day of my bar mitzvah had not changed to this day.

With pride I strolled up to the wall, bent my knees and rested my head on the ivy-covered rock. When I closed my eyes to recite the shemah, my connection to Judaism had never felt stronger.

An elderly man wrapped in tefillin stood

by the wall. He held his hand out in invita tion to me. He was a rabbi and asked if I wanted him to wrap my tefillin. I didn’t know the man. He looked different than me and spoke with a strange accent. But for some inexplicable reason I looked him in the eye and said, “Yes of course, thank you sir.”

I still remember how my voice shook when I said this: overwhelmed with the kindness, overwhelmed with the spiritual significance.

He looked at me with eyes that twin kled, and a splash of humor across his face. He said to me with a smile, “Don’t call me sir. Call me brother.”

Jewish identity has many names. Among many others it’s been called a race, an ethnicity, a nationality and a reli gion.

During the Holocaust the Nazi party considered Judaism to be a race. They used a person’s heritage, physical features and blood to determine if they were a Jew. This form of identification was used to sys tematically slaughter the Jewish people and is certainly not compatible with the way that I identify as Jewish.

Contrary to a popular and commonly taught idea, Judaism is not entirely con fined to being a religion. There is no spe cific belief that one must hold, nor is there a tradition that one must abide by to be considered Jewish. A Jew who worships G-d multiple times a day, keeps kosher and wears a kippah all day is no more Jewish than the Jew who eats cheese burgers and believes in no G-d at all.

If we are an ethnic ity, a distinction that has so often been used to persecute Jews, then conver sion to Judaism would not be possible so this is incorrect.

With regards to the state of Israel, Judaism is often conflated with Zionism. Regardless of the Jews beliefs or political affiliation, they are immediately associated with the Jewish state. Jews, both inside and outside of Israel approach support of Israel differently, to assume we all see it the same way is an incorrect oversimplification.

The Jewish identity has been treated many different ways. It’s been kicked and beaten, misunderstood and villainized. It has been tortured and persecuted, feared and distrusted. And at every moment of its existence, every joyous dance, every thoughtful prayer, and every song of wor ship, the endless threat of antisemitism lurks nearby. The Jewish identity has been marked and certainly bruised. But it’s

never been broken.

No wall can divide what is true about Judaism. No obstacle can stand between the Jewish people, nor can any barrier protect the Jews from external hatred. But at this moment the dichotomy of the wall becomes significant.

As I stood with my forehead pressed up against the aged holy stone, I knew Hashtiyya — the kissing of the heavens and the Earth. The synthesis of faith and knowledge. The blend of spirituality and reality.

And thus, the truth of Judaism becomes clear — connection. And for this truth, no social label can define or encompass Judaism. No, the rabbi was right.

The Jewish people are a family.

Ohr Chadash Teen Page writer Benjamin Kruger (above) writes about his recent visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

Kadimah students are “All In” at overnight bonding event

BY AVITAL VOROBEYCHIK SOPHOMORE, YESHIVAT KADIMAH HIGH SCHOOL

Students at Yeshivat Kadimah High School (known as Kadimah) took a bus on Sunday, Aug. 28 to Godfrey, Ill. for the school’s very first “all in” over night event.

This was a fantastic way for students to bond and a great start to the upcoming school year, con sidering there are only 22 stu dents at Kadimah. The overnight was run by Head of School Rabbi Shmuel Miller and Principal Itta Boyko, who also served as chap erones.

“As a small school, and with a 20% increase in Kadimah’s enrollment, we wanted to give an opportunity for our students to bond, appreciate their differenc

es, and more importantly, (learn) how much they have in com mon,” said Miller.

“It gave me time with the high schoolers one-on-one, to answer questions,” added Boyko. “It gave me an opportunity to know what is important to my high school ers.”

Given that the student popula tion at Kadimah grew signifi cantly this year, an overnight was the perfect way for classmates to connect and give new students a chance to see what the school is all about.

“It was really helpful because it was my first year, and I didn’t know anyone, so it was a really good start to my year,” said fresh man Tillie Houston.

Kadimah students participated in many team-building exercises and learning sessions throughout

the trip.

On the Sunday that they left, students met at the school for their first team building exercise. They not only had to plan what to prepare and eat for each meal, they also needed to figure out how much it would cost.

Why?

Because the Kadimah students received a budget of $500 to buy all of the food for the entirety of the overnight. The students were split into groups for every meal and bought the food for their group. They then drove together to the 8,000 square foot lodge, with nine bedrooms. The lodge included a lake, sauna and lifesize chess set.

Students brought an item on the trip that was very meaningful to them. They sat together, and each person went around and

discussed their item, and its sig nificance.

“This activity really helped me get to know all my new class mates better, and it was also interesting to hear all the funny and meaningful stories behind everyone’s meaningful item,” said sophomore Devorah Haspel.

Overall, the Kadimah over night was a great way for stu dents new and old to get to know each other. The experience offered a fun way to learn new things about each other and cre ated stronger bonds among class mates.

– are you Lilo Fauman’s granddaughter?’ ”

“My father and I took off into the forest. We heard the barking of the police dogs all night. We were not caught.” vvv

Horwitz was already familiar with her grandmother’s childhood and history. They had a close relationship, and Fauman was open with her family about her har rowing flight from Germany as a teenager. But holding the memoir and seeing the photos reminded Horwitz of her grand mother’s compelling description of those events.

“When Janet came across the material and read her memoir, she was so taken by it,” Horwitz said. “I read what Janet had given me, and I thought Lilo’s writing was really good because she was a natural sto ryteller. She was a very magnetic person ality. And this particular story, she had very clear memories of it.”

“Luckily we already had put in the necessary papers to leave Germany for America and only waited for our pass ports to arrive. They came with the emblem of J for Jews on them. All females were called ‘Sarah’ and all males ‘Israel.’ We didn’t care! We arrived in the land of freedom by ship, February seventh, nineteen-thirty-nine and I have had a great life ever since.”

eirloom Recipes

Connecting generations in the sweetest way

BY BILL MOTCHAN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH LIGHT

When Erin Wolfman May bakes a batch of mandel brot, she feels a special close ness to her great-grandmother Clara. That’s because she uses Clara Wolfman’s recipe. It’s just one in a collection of reci pes May cherishes.

“She was a fabulous cook, and I still use some of her recipes,” said May, communi cations director at Congregation Temple Israel. “I know some of them by heart. She was the best cook in the family, she kept kosher and kept the traditional, old school family recipes.”

Bernice, because, “Her writing speaks to me. I mean, that’s Mom, so it’s my history, and food has always been important to the Jewish community.”

Sherilyn Krell is a good cook, but she rarely strays from the recipes her mother, Eleanor Kean, handed down, including specific instructions for kamish bread. Her husband, Barry, favors his mother’s kamish bread recipe, so Sherilyn keeps that version on hand, too. Those recipes are also handwritten on index cards.

My mother, who died in January at the age of 100, was not a very good cook. When she and my father were newlyweds

ship was a bit shaky. My mom’s handwrit ing was calligraphy-grade perfect.

Family heirloom recipes

It’s fairly common for Jewish St. Louisans, especially baby boomers, to have a box full of recipes handed down through their families. Our parents didn’t have the internet when we were kids, and they couldn’t use Google to call up a reci pe on demand. Cookbooks were an option but, often, the foods we ate as kids were based on recipes our parents got from their parents.

Those recipes have become a cherished family heirloom, as valuable as a piece of diamond jewelry or fine china.

“My mother immigrated here after the Holocaust, she was a survivor,” said Margi Lenga Kahn, cooking instructor, food his Jewish Light contributing writ er. “She kept a file box with little frogs on

today.”

The handwritten index cards are mean ingful, especially if they have food stains. It means a parent or grandparent was in the kitchen holding the card and cooking for their family decades before.

“I use my mother’s recipes,” Wendy Wax said. “I have them because they were in her handwriting and a couple of them I make but I use a different recipe. Her blin tze recipe is in there and she spelled it wrong (blinse), and she would make them for us all the time. My husband doesn’t eat the cheese in them, so she always wrapped them up without cheese, which was just a crepe.

“It’s like a piece of her is still here. It’s sentimental because it’s in her handwrit ing. Would my daughter-in-laws want them? Probably not. One is a vegetarian

Erin May (left) and Sherilyn Krell (right), show off their recipe binders, filled with all their favorites passed down from their loved ones.

PHOTOS: BILL MOTCHAN

Heirloom Recipes

and, anyway, who makes blintzes anymore? You go buy the frozen ones at the grocery store. Since my husband doesn’t like the cheese, I buy him the blueberry ones.”

The recipes tend to be simple, with easy-to-find ingredi ents. That proved useful for Krell.

“When I got married in 1970, I couldn’t boil water, but my mother always said if you can read, you can cook, so I start ed reading all these cookbooks I got as gifts,” she said. “When my mother-in-law died, we added all her recipes to my collection, so that’s how I have her kamish bread recipe sitting here on my cabinet.”

Old World Jewish Ashkenazi food

A look through the many handwritten recipes kept by Jewish St. Louisans reveals a pattern. They use copious amounts of butter and sugar for sweets, and schmaltz for savory dishes. Noodle kugel shows up frequently, as do kasha and shells, potato latkes and bread dressing. This is not keto-friendly cooking.

“It’s Old World Jewish Ashkenazi food,” May said. “The women on my dad’s side of the family, they’re from New Jersey by way of Poland, so my experience growing up was these women with thick accents. I remember my grandmother walking into the room with her New Jersey accent. They were loud, and this is reminiscent of my childhood and connects me to being Jewish and connects me to my history before the Holocaust.”

The recipes sometimes reveal the economics of the time. Bill Livingston, a member of Congregation Shaare Emeth, keeps his grandmother’s recipe for gingerbread apple cake, which specifies getting day-old gin gerbread from the baker for 5 cents.

Bernice Singer passed down dozens of recipes to her daughter Barb, who knows the origin of each.

“She’d write down who pro vided the recipe on the card: Dorothy’s recipe, Gert’s recipe, Sylvia Rosen’s recipe,” Singer said. “I love the way she’d always give credit to whose recipe it was.”

Interpreting the recipes can be challenging at times because the instructions aren’t always specific. Some use a unique measurement tool, Kahn said.

“A lot of the recipes, the ones that came from the old country, they were written in a way that’s hard to under stand,” Kahn said. “For instance, a lot of the measure ments were done in the memorial Yahrzeit candle glasses. You wouldn’t say one cup, you’d say three glasses, and that’s how they measured their ingredients, not in mea suring cups.”

Food memories and traditions

Will the tradition of passing down recipes diminish with changing tastes and healthy eating trends? Perhaps not, because the note cards have such an intrinsic value.

“How could I throw this away?” Singer asked. “These are my family history, a family food tree.”

“I will always treasure these,” Lewis said. “Seeing my mother’s handwritten recipes from years gone by makes me feel like she is with me though she has

Marilen Pitler, a member of United Hebrew Congregation, doesn’t have any recipes from her mother or grandmother, but she is a grandmother and she has a special challah recipe she was taught

“I scanned the card I typed over 50 years ago and gave the original to my granddaughter in Florida,” she said. “Several years ago, I was visiting her during Thanksgiving, and we made the challah together. It was even better than the day I first made it. In fact, my three kids would feign illness to stay home on a Friday morning just to be able to make their own mini-chal lahs. My Florida granddaughter has held on to my recipe card, making more of the delicious challah long after I returned to St. Louis.”

Sherilyn Krell holding Kamish bread, her mother Eleanor’s recipe. Eleanor is seen in the framed photograph, along with her handwritten recipe.

PHOTO: BILL MOTCHAN

Bernice

(above)

From us to you: Jewish Light staff’s family favorites

As you likely gleaned from Bill Motchan’s story (pages 1B and 2B), many of us have cherished family recipes that have been passed down through the generations. In addition, some of us have created recipes, either from scratch or by tweaking, which we now serve to our families and (hopeful ly) will be passed down to our children and grandchildren.

What follows are some heirloom recipes from Jewish Light staffers that we’d like to share with readers. We chose ones appro priate for Thanksgiving and/or Hanukkah meals though each can be enjoyed any time of year.

Grandma Esther’s Kosher Chicken Soup

(Submitted by Jewish Light CEO Betsy Schmidt)

Thank goodness my sister Karen had the sense to sit in Grandma Esther’s kitchen before she died to write down the ingredients and steps to this soup. Grandma never measured or wrote things down – she just innately knew how to make the best food in the world. She would make this most Friday nights when she would have the entire family (usually about 20 people) to her small two-bedroom apartment on Delmar.

Karen and I would argue what the secret to its excellence is – she says using a kosher chicken, while to me it’s the addition of parsnip and omission of dill. Either way no other soup has ever tasted this good to any of us!

INGREDIENTS:

1 whole chicken (best if kosher, or a capon if available, or 3-4 chicken breasts with skin)

3-5 yellow onions

5-6 stalks of celery, cut into 2-inch pieces

5-6 carrots, cut into 2-inch pieces 1 tsp. chicken bouillon (optional)

1 parsnip peeled

Garlic powder

Kosher salt and pepper

DIRECTIONS:

In a large pot place chicken, cover with water, bring to a boil.

While boiling add, celery, onions and carrots. Boil for about 15 minutes. Turn to slow simmer for 30 minutes.

Add salt and pepper to taste. Add chicken bouillon for color if needed.

Turn heat to warming temp. and strain soup. Leave chicken, but throw away or put back veggies that you want in your soup (carrots, etc.).

Return broth to soup pot and warm, adding parsnip and garlic powder to taste. This is the secret to Grandma’s delicious taste!

Keep on low for about 30 minutes, add salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy as is, with noodles, or matzah balls.

MORE ONLINE

Additional recipes

Pretzel Jell-O

(Submitted by Stacy Smart, the Jewish Light’s Director of Business Development and Communications)

Whenever my parents host a holiday, I make sure that this is included in the menu. When I was around 10 years old, I hosted a Shabbat family dinner for a Sunday school project and made a special request for Pretzel Jell-O.

The funniest thing is… While this is something that I have loved forever, it is a dish that I cannot make because it never turns out quite right. For some reason, the layers never really “layer” – so this is something that my mom can only make and do it correctly.

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups pretzels, crushed

¾ cup butter, melted

2 T sugar

1 (8 oz. package) cream cheese

1 (8 oz.) container frozen whipped topping

¾ cup sugar

1 ½ cups boiling water

2 (3 oz.) packages strawberry Jell-O

2 (10 oz.) packages frozen strawberries

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Mix crushed pretzels with melted butter and 2 tbs. sugar. Press mixture into the bottom of a

9 x 13 casserole dish and bake until set (about 8-10 minutes) Remove from oven and cool completely. NOTE: Do Not use a glass dish. It may crack under the high heat.

Mix together cream cheese, ¾ cup sugar and whipped topping in a large bowl until smooth.

Spread over cooled crust, making sure to spread completely to the edges.

Dissolve Jell-O in boiling water and mix in frozen strawberries.

Allow to set until the Jell-O and strawberry mixture has slightly thickened.

Pour over the cream cheese mixture. Chill until firm. Enjoy!

Granny Rose’s Kasha Varnishkes

(Submitted by Editor-in-Chief Ellen Futterman)

My Granny Rose was a brilliant cook, especially of any recipe that called for schmaltz (rendered chicken fat).

Every Hanukkah, she would prepare one of our family’s favorite Jewish comfort foods, better known as kasha (buckwheat groats) with varnishke, (Yiddish for small bow-shaped noodles). The way she “passed down” her recipes was to have my brother and me be her “helpers” and watch as she cooked.

I made Granny’s kasha varnishkes for years for my family, until recently, when my 24-yearold son asked if I was “going to make the dish that looks like sand?”

INGREDIENTS:

3 large onions

4-5 tbsp. butter or chicken fat (or canola oil, I usually blend butter and oil)

1 large egg, slightly beaten

1 cup medium or coarse kasha (I prefer medium)

2 cups chicken broth

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

3/4 pound small (farfalle) bow tie-shaped noodles

Fresh parsley (optional)

DIRECTIONS:

Sauté onions in butter or chicken fat in a deep frying pan until golden. Set aside.

Beat the egg in a small mixing bowl and stir in the kasha. Mix, making sure all the grains are evenly coated. Put the kasha in the same frying pan as you used to cook the onions, set over a high heat. Flatten and break up the eggcoated kasha with back of a fork or wooden spoon for a couple of minutes or until the kasha kernels are brownish and mostly separate.

Add chicken broth to the frying pan and bring to a boil. Add the onions, salt and pepper to taste, cover tightly, and cook over low heat, steaming the kasha and onions mixture for 10 minutes.

Sadye

Bernstein’s

World-Famous Moth Ball Cookies

(Submitted by Jewish Light Account Executive Elaine Wernick)

Grandma Sadye called these “moth balls” for a simple reason – that’s what they look like. My mother used Crisco in this recipe because we kept kosher and that would make them pareve. These were my dad’s favorite. They just melt in your mouth … yum yum yum.

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup Crisco or butter

21/4 cups flour

¼ tsp salt 1 tsp. vanilla

½ cup powdered sugar

3/4 cup finely chopped nuts

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix Crisco (or butter) with flour. Mix with fork.

Add other ingredients.

Squeeze batter in hand and roll into small balls.

Bake 350-degree oven for about 15 minutes. Immediately roll in powdered sugar.

As that is cooking, bring a large pot of water to a boil. Boil the bowtie noodles according to the directions on the package. Drain.

Take cover off the kasha to make sure it is cooked to tender, and the liquid is absorbed. If not, cook for a few more minutes.

Combine kasha/onion mixture with bowtie noodles. Add salt and pepper to taste, sprinkle with freshly chopped parsley.

Serves 6.

Betsy Schmidt

Granny Rose’s Kasha Varnishkes

Ellen Futterman

Elaine Wernick

Stacy Smart

Bibi’s autobiography is fascinating, timely read

ROBERT A. COHN EDITOR-IN-CHIEF EMERITUS

Mark Twain’s famous response to the premature publication of his obituary — “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated” accurately describes the political career of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving prime minister, who led his conservative-na tionalist Likud Party alliance to a clear victory in the Nov. 8 election and won a third term as prime minister.

The Likud Party and its ultra-Orthodox and far right allies is ahead of his rivals, including the odd coalition of diverse parties, made up of left, right, centrist and even Arab-Islamist factions, who are united in their dislike and distrust of Netanyahu. If his Likud-led coalition wins at least 64 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, he will once again head Israel’s government. Yair Lapid, the interim prime minister, called Netanyahu to con cede the election and wish him well.

On the eve of Israel’s fifth election in just under four years, Netanyahu, com monly known by his childhood nickname of Bibi, published his autobiography: “Bibi, My Story,” a smoothly written, well-researched tome that gives a detailed chronicle of his remarkable career.

Bibi is praised lavishly by his admirers, but even his detractors admire his adroit handling of domestic and foreign affairs.

Bibi is more savvy than his immediate successor, the rightist Naftali Bennett or the centrist Lapid, the interim head of the caretaker government. Itamar BenGvir, described as an extreme national ist, and Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionists, are strongly against negotiating a two-state solution with the Palestinians.

Thomas Friedman, longtime foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times, lamented that the ultra-nationalist and Haredi partners in Bibi’s coalition has “ended Israel as we have known it.” Bibi said in interviews with Judy Woodruff and Fareed Zakaria on PBS last week.

In the interviews and his book, Bibi deploys his verbal skills, speaking and writing in perfect English, American style, which he learned at American high school and later at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

His parents, Benzion and Cara Netanyahu, both ardent Zionists, had a strong influence on Bibi and his brother Yonathan “Yoni” Netanyahu, who was killed by Palestinians and German ter rorists during the daring rescue of 104 passengers at Entebbe on July 4,1976.

Bibi’s father was a leading Israeli schol ar and author of a multi-volume history of Sephardic Jewry. Benzion lived to the age of 104, and his hardline position on terri tories influenced Bibi in his long career.

Bibi, 73, was prime minis ter of Israel from 1996 to 1999, and 2009 to 2021.

From 1967 to 1972, he served as a soldier in an elite special forces unit of the Israel Defense Forces. He served as Ambassador to the United Nations, where he argued forceful ly against the nuclear arms deal with, Iran, say ing it would “pave the way” for Iran to enrich its uranium to weapons grade.

Netanyahu highly praised former President Donald Trump for mov ing the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and for back ing the Abraham Accords — peace deals with Israel Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Sudan.

Netanyahu states in his book that he has his sights on Oman as another Arab state to join the Abraham Accords.

Netanyahu has also had a long and

mostly positive relationship with President Joe Biden, from his many years as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Vice President. Last week, Biden called Netanyahu to congrat ulate him on his victory.

Bibi is an almost physi cal embodiment of the state of Israel. On the back cover of the book is a black and white photo of Bibi as a tough young IDF soldier, weapon firmly in his hands. By contrast on the front cover is a color photo of Bibi with every silver hair in place.

Bibi is armed and ready to defend Israel militarily on the battlefield and to use his intellect and ver bal skills at the negotiat ing table.

Bibi’s book is not only a fascinating memoir of a skilled and complex leader; it is a detailed guide to Israeli history, politics and diplo macy by a skilled master of his craft. Once again, Netanyahu has earned his nickname “The Magician” for his ability to return to power over and over again. His new autobiography has been pub lished just in time.

As leaves fall, let’s look at the tree in arts and culture

BY NANCY KRANZBERG SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH LIGHT

Is there a prettier time of year than autumn, when trees light the landscape with a kaleidoscope of color? Sure, their leaves eventually fall off, signaling the start of shorter days and cooler tempera tures. But before the last leaf is gone, let’s consider trees and their significance in culture and the arts.

Trees are often symbols of life in litera ture, music and all the arts. There is the tree of life with its symbolic roots, trunk and crown. In “The Best Is Yet to Come,” Frank Sinatra sings, “Out of the tree of life, I just picked me a plum/You came along, and things stated to hum.”

Books have been written on specific

trees and their mystical and mythological meanings in life and religion.

Many artists throughout the years have used trees in their works as symbols. Olive trees were used in many of Van Gogh’s works as well as the paintings of Salvadore Dali. And the fig trees in paintings of Adam and Eve represent lust and fertility.

Trees are the most explicit symbol of growth, seasonal death, revival and renewal. Trees have been part of folklore. Nowadays a tree for some ethnic groups is a totem of a remote ancestor or tribe.

Trees have had significant meaning in literature, especially in Christian litera ture. The tree of knowledge is mentioned repeatedly, and I found an article online that mentioned eight trees and their spiri tual meaning. There are books galore dis

For more of Nancy Kranzberg’s commen tary, listen to KWMU (90.7) St. Louis on the Air the first Friday of each month at approx imately 12:50 p.m. She also hosts a weekly Arts Interview podcast for KDHX (88.1), available at artsinterview.kdhxtra.org.

cussing trees and their meaning.

An example of the tree as a religious or spiritual symbol is shown as Siddhartha embarks on a soul-searching journey while sitting under the pipal tree now known as the Bodhi Tree. He has many revelations while sitting under this tree.

MOCRA (Museum of Contemporary

Religious Art) on the St. Louis University campus just had an exhibition that fea tured Lesley Dill’s work entitled “Dream World of the Forest.” Dill is fascinated by the wilderness as a physical and psychic landscape. She grew up in the shadowed Adirondacks and Maine woods. These works reminded me of the eerie trees in “The Wizard of Oz.”

And there were trees galore at the cur rent exhibition at Laumeier Sculpture Park entitled, “Forest Through the Trees.” Curator Dana Turkovic explained, “For years I have been surrounded by trees in the park and looked at the trees surround ing the art. I decided to create a show, including artists from around the world, who represented trees as a subject rather than an object.” These trees were not the background but the forefront of the work.

My two favorite works from the show were by Andrew Millner of St. Louis and Miler Lagos of Colombia. For Lagos, the tree is an expression of knowledge, time and the perfection of nature’s design. To recreate the tree’s concentric rings in this work, Lagos unfolded, stacked and layered thousands of pages to create the cross-sec tion of a tree, examining the complex association between business and nature,

Millner, like a botanist, catalogues actual plants and trees by painstakingly recreating them with a digital stylus pen, transferring the plants and trees into the computer by drawing their contours as simple outlines. From his thousands of botanical drawings, he has developed an extensive archive of plant imagery that he sources to create com positions that investigate the relationship between art and nature, questioning our role in the natural world and human-made world of manicured landscapes.

Trees are incredibly complex but can’t do everything. For example, as the song from the musical “Paint Your Wagon” says, “I talk to the trees, but they don’t lis ten to me.”

“Bibi: My Story” by Benjamin Netanyahu, Simon & Schuster, 724 pages, $35

NANCY KRANZBERG

Spielberg takes

BY NATE BLOOM SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH LIGHT

“The Calling,” an eight-episode series, began streaming on Peacock on Nov. 10. It is loosely based on “The Missing File,” a novel (2013) by Israeli DROR MISHANI, 47. The central character of “The Calling” is NYPD detective Avraham Avraham. He is a special investigator in Crown Heights, a Brooklyn neighborhood where many Hasidic Jews live.

JEFF WILBUSCH, 34, plays Avraham. Wilbusch (nee Iftach Wilbuschewitz) was born and raised in Israel in a Hasidic fam ily (he has 13 siblings!). He’s best known for playing Moishe Lefkovitch, a lead char acter, in the hit Netflix series “Unorthodox.” BEN SHENKMAN, 54, a veteran character actor, has a supporting role as a rabbi.

vvv

After years of items in the Jewish and general media about STEVEN SPIELBERG’s film “kind of” about his life — “The Fabelmans” — arrives in theaters on Nov. 23. The film was directed and co-written by Spielberg ( TONY KUSHNER, 66, was the other co-writer).

Here’s the brief official description: “Growing up in post-World War II era Arizona, from age 7 to 18, a [Jewish] young man named Sammy Fabelman dis covers a shattering family secret and explores how the power of films can help him see the truth.”

GABRIEL LABELLE

Sammy Fabelman (the Steven-like charac ter), is the son of (Jewish) character actor ROB LABELLE , 60 (no info yet on Gabriel’s mother).

Gabriel, a Canadian, was picked out of 2,000 actors invited to audition for the Sammy role. In a seems to say he identifies as Jewish. Vulture writes: “Labelle and Spielberg con nected over the experience of growing up as the lone Jewish kid at school, wonder ing whether certain classmates were being hateful or trying to be funny and didn’t have that empathy.”

Other Jewish actors with big parts include SETH ROGEN ily friend of the Fabelmans who Sammy calls “Uncle Benny”; as Sammy’s great uncle; and BERLIN, 71, as Sammy’s paternal grand mother. By the way, Berlin’s mother, the great ELAINE MAY, 90, is still “very much alive” in every sense. Non-Jewish actors play Sammy’s mother and father (Michelle Williams and Paul Dano, respectively).

Without spoiling things, let me say this: there was a devastating family secret that happened in the real Spielberg family. To my great surprise, Spielberg spilled the beans on the secret in a Nov. 6 interview with “CBS Sunday Morning.” The inter view is posted on YouTube. It’s entitled “Steven Spielberg on The Fabelmans: A Happy Beginning.”

My advice: Don’t watch the CBS inter view or read detailed critics’ reviews if you want to learn the “secret” from a film showing. Do watch it after for the surpris ing whole story. vvv

Something completely different and fun: “Weird: The Al Yanovic Story,” an original film, began streaming on the Roku chan nel on Nov. 4. Al Yankovic, of course, is the wacky comedic musician who writes and performs parody versions of hit songs. “Weird” is not a real biography of Yankovic. It’s a fictional comedic romp. Many erroneously think that “Weird Al” is Jewish because his last name sounds “vaguely” Jewish. Ironically, DANIEL RADCLIFFE, 33, who is Jewish, plays Yankovic (Radcliffe’s mother is Jewish. The secular actor identifies as Jewish).

The supporting cast includes EVAN RACHEL WOOD, 35, as Madonna; JACK

down memory lane in new film

so detailed that, within weeks, Weinstein was fired by his production company and stripped of his membership in the Motion Picture Academy (which awards the Oscars). Their reporting greatly helped launch the “me too” movement.

Not surprisingly, Kantor and Twohey shared the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. In 2019, they wrote a book, enti tled “She Said,” about the Weinstein inves tigation. When “She Said” came out, I quoted something Kantor, now 47, said in 2017: “I grew up around people with num bers on their arms—my grandparents are Holocaust survivors. It led me to think about the big questions we often ask in investigative journalism: ‘How could something like this have gone on? What allowed this to happen?’”

BLACK , 53, as Wolfman Jack, the late radio DJ; AKIVA SCHAEFFER ,44, as Alice Cooper; and Jorma Taccone (not Jewish) as Pee-Wee Herman (aka PAUL REUBENS, 70). vvv

“She Said,” is a dramatic film (opens

Nov. 18) about JODI KANTOR and Megan Twohey, the New York Times reporters who broke the story that big-time movie producer HARVEY WEINSTEIN, now 70, was a serial sexual harasser (and, as of 2020, a convicted rapist).

Their 2017 investigative reporting was

Zoe Kazan, who isn’t Jewish, plays Kantor. This is her second Jewish role in the last few years, but I won’t kvetch: Zoe’s grandfather, the late Elia Kazan, directed “Gentlemen’s Agreement” (1947), the first blockbuster film about American antisemitism. (The movie won the best pic Oscar and Kazan got the best director Oscar.)

Gabriel LaBelle stars in ‘The Fabelmans.’ PHOTO COURTESY OF UNIVERSAL PICTURES

I love normal parents. Let me tell you why.

A sports season just ended for one of my kids. This time it was high school soccer. With several seniors on the team, there’s the sad realization that the roster will be different next fall.

That’s the thing with kids growing up -they’ll all move on at some point, like after graduation. Sure, the ones who are good friends will stay close, while others will drift in and out of each other’s lives. They’ll head off to different colleges, career paths, or the military and likely will cross paths again.

What about the grown-ups? Seniors graduating means several parents we love sitting with at games will not be back in the stands with us. Bummer. And this was the year that all the parents were normal. No matter your kids’ chosen activity, you’re stuck with the parents.

Before kids, we had plans with our own friends, but once we had children those tiny people were our focus. As parents of little ones, we have to go along and stay during playdates or time at the park, and what starts as cordial small talk some times goes deeper. You might make plans for the whole family to get together, or plan to sign up for the same kiddie class. And if you’re really lucky, an actual friend ship might blossom. Jeff and I met some of our very closest friends from a playgroup we were randomly asked to be part of when our oldest was just a few months old.

As the kids get older, they can hang out with their friends on their own, without us having to stay. You might still be involved with the other parents for things like car pool or to check if it’s really OK for your kid to sleepover. So you’re still kind of stuck with these parents, and you just hope they are normal.

It’s not always the case. You can’t click with everybody. Something awkward could happen like the kids not being friends anymore, or realizing you dated one of their dads years ago.

For the most part, our experience with fellow sports parents has been great. One season we had some snooty moms who had no interest in being friendly. Another year we had a parent who got kicked out for yelling at an umpire… more than once.

This year we lucked out with parents who took the time to learn the players’ names and jersey numbers and cheered them on with heartfelt gusto. They texted the parents of an

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injured teammate to check in. They arranged dinner or drinks after a game and opened it up to the crowd. And some where in that camaraderie, actual friend ships blossomed.

We had parents of older players wel come parents of younger players with wide open arms. We had parents of

Monthly columnist Amy Fenster Brown is married to Jeff and has two teenage sons, Davis and Leo. She volunteers for several Jewish notfor-profit groups. Fenster Brown is an Emmy Award-winning TV news writer and counts time with family and friends, talking and eating peanut butter among her hobbies.

injured players stuck on the bench still come to games to support the team. We even had parents who supported one mom who got into a verbal altercation with an opposing team’s mom and might have also written this article.

Now that fall soccer season 2022 has come to a close, I will truly miss what we, the parents, had in the stands. I’ll see some of them at other school events, run into them at the grocery store and text them if I ever run into the opposing team’s mom who was kind of mean to me and heard all kinds of colorful words leave my lips.

Some actual friendships have blos somed. Our bleacher crew will change, as it does every year. But this year seems to sting a little bit more, probably because all the parents were normal.

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AMY FENSTER BROWN

From left, Kevin and Ann Murray, Amy Fenster Brown and Jeff Brown

HEALTHWATCH

Healthwatch is a monthly feature focusing on a health- or fitness-related topic with a Jewish angle. The feature is published the second edition of each month. Have a suggestion for a potential Healthwatch subject? Email news@stljewishlight.org.

It’s not too early to plan for next summer’s sleep-away camp

BY RICHARD LAZAROFF

Winter is almost upon us. Most kids have moved most of their after-school

indoor soccer parks or perhaps the living room with a musical instrument. Next summer seems a long way off, but now is a good time to start planning and looking for open hous es that sleep-away camps will be holding at schools and places of worship.

Perhaps as a child, you attended a sleepaway camp. If so, I imagine I do not have to persuade you to send your own children as they approach their preteen years.

If you didn’t attend as a child, you might assume that parents who did send their kids away were just trying to get rid of them for the summer so they could enjoy some free time. Perhaps they wished they could have sent their kids but were unable to afford it, as these opportunities are expensive.

Attending a sleep-away camp presents children with unlimited opportunities for personal growth. Many parents remark on how after even just a few weeks away, they hardly recognize their own child.

Sometimes the children develop a new skill or interest or even better, table man ners. But more importantly, it is often an internal developmental asset such as integrity, empathy for others, responsibili ty, friendship skills, self-esteem, personal power or an optimistic view of their future.

We all wish for our children to develop self-confidence. What better way than to test themselves and their emerging value system without a hovering, helicoptering parent nearby.

When attending an away camp for the first time, many kids prefer to go with at least one buddy. That’s fine. But making new friends is often the best part of camp. In my case, I am fortunate to have main tained lifelong friendships with several guys I met at camp despite living in other cities.

Most summer camps have activities to which city kids have little exposure. Camps that are on or near a lake may offer canoeing, sailing and fishing. Inland camps might offer archery, riflery and campouts combined with wilderness skills. Specialty camps emphasize music, theater and specific sports. These can rep resent a great opportunity to further develop a specific interest but might also mark a significant departure from any of the skills a child has been pursuing at home.

If I have a concern about the modern camp experience, it would be about efforts made to document a child’s experience.

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Many of the camps send parents a virtual play-by-play account — daily pictures, vid eos, etc. — of what the kids are doing each day. I’m old-fashioned; I’d rather see all of the camp’s efforts and resources be devot ed to the face-to-face time they have with

our

The Future of Senior Living

BROUGHT TO YOU THIS WEEK BY:

“I just can’t imagine any place I’d like more.”

—John Drew

“I was comfortable in my home in the Central West End and really had no desire to move. But now that I’m here, I have a new lease on life that I wasn’t even looking for—truly a pleasant surprise.”

children.

I would recommend doing the research to find a good match for your child and

then trust the camp director’s philosophy for your child’s personal growth while at camp.

Dr. Richard Lazaroff is a retired pediatrician who practiced in St. Louis County for nearly 40 years. Married for 42 years, he is the father of two and grandfather of four and the author of “Some Assembly Required, A Guide to Savvy Parenting.”

PHOTO: STOCK.ADOBE.COM

OPINIONS

D’VAR TORAH — CHAYEI SARAH

ABOUT THE OPINIONS SECTION

Making meaning through midrash

BY RABBI RACHEL K. BEARMAN

This week’s Torah Portion, Chayei Sarah, introduces us to Isaac and Rebecca’s love story. I have always been interested in Isaac and Rebecca’s relation ship, and a few years ago, I used the medi um of midrash to dive more deeply into their story. Midrash is a genre of sacred literature which includes thousands of years of stories written about biblical fig ures and events. To create a midrash, you just need to ask a question about the bibli cal text and then provide your own answer.

In addition to writing my own, original midrashim (online at www.rabbirachel bearman.com/blog), I am the co-creator and co-author, along with Rabbi Paul Kipnes, of Midrashic Monologues (www. midrashicmonologues.com), a project ded icated to using midrash to excavate the voices of biblical figures who have been forgotten or silenced.

I find that writing and reading mid rashim allows me to see our ancient ancestors as more complex, and full human beings. The Torah captures moments in our ancestors’ lives, but it’s incredibly freeing and exciting to think of the stories and people that might have existed in the background of the moments that we’ve read about so many times.

I wrote the following midrash, “How Do You Know,” for Midrashic Monologues. It comes from my asking and answering

MARTY ROCHESTER

these questions:

• What was Isaac and Rebecca’s rela tionship really like? And, how did it change over the years that they were together?

• How did they think about the events that are captured in this week’s Torah por tion?

• How did the love that began in Chayei Sarah shape their relationships with their sons, Jacob and Esau?

• What kind of interactions can I imag ine that will build on (without contradict ing) the stories about them that were pre served in the Torah?

“How Do You Know” is written from Rebecca’s perspective. I hope that you enjoy reading this midrash and that it inspires you to ask your own questions and imagine your own answers.

How Do You Know: A Midrashic Monologue

It happened when we gathered for our evening meal.

I was ladling stew into everyone’s bowls when I realized that Jacob and Esau were having one of their “twin conversations,” silently communicating with narrowed eyes and fluid eyebrows.

I looked at Isaac and saw him watching our boys with an amused smile on his face. He met my gaze, and we grinned at one another, knowing that our evening

would be entertaining at the very least. Finally, Esau sighed and turned to us. I wondered if he had won or lost the silent conversation.

“Abba... Ima,” Esau began seriously. I matched his tone, “Yes, my son?”

“We wanted to ask you a question.”

“Of course. Ask anything that you like. Your father and I will do our best to give you an answer.”

At this, Esau looked back at his brother. Jacob nodded enthusiastically in response to his telepathic question. Esau seemed to be gathering his courage as he turned back to us. When he opened his mouth to speak, the words tumbled out, wrapped around one another.

“Howdoyouknowwhotomarry?

Isaac tried to calm him, “Once more, Esau. This time, a little slower, please.”

Our firstborn took a deep breath and said slowly, “How do you know who to marry?”

Isaac sat back a little. I recognized the mirth dancing in his eyes, and I knew that he was working very hard to stop himself from laughing at the earnest and somewhat pugnacious expression on both boys’ faces. “What an interesting question,” he said. “Can I ask what made you think of it?”

This time, it was Jacob who answered. “Well, we’re nearly men now,” he said. “And, it seems like something we should know.”

Isaac squeezed my hand, expressing camaraderie, joy, and humor. I knew that

The systematic decline of our schools

BY MARTY ROCHESTER

In 2002, I wrote “Class Warfare: Besieged Schools, Bewildered Parents, Betrayed Kids, and the Attack on Excellence,” in which I documented the decline of standards and the dumb ing-down of K-12 education in America. Twenty years later, things have only gotten worse.

A CBS News report on Oct. 12 noted that “scores on the ACT college admis sions test . . . hit their lowest point in more than 30 years . . . The class of 2022’s aver age ACT composite score was 19.8 out of 36, marking the first time since 1991 that the average score was below 20. What’s more, an increasing number of high school students failed to meet any of the subject-area benchmarks [in English, sci ence and math].”

Subsequently, it was reported that the latest reading and math proficiency scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests also plummeted to unprece dented levels.

The declining academic performance of schools cannot be blamed solely on widely reported problems associated with virtual learning and other fallout from the recent COVID pandemic. No, the latest alarming statistics reflect longer-term, deep-seated problems in our education systems which have become aggravated with each pass ing year.

In my “Class Warfare” book, I noted that the traditional expectation in life, includ ing schooling, was “no pain, no gain.” That is, whether exercising one’s body or mind,

one was more likely to achieve positive results the more effort one invested in the activity. I went on to say that this maxim, by 2000, had been changed to “if it ain’t fun, it can’t be done.” That is, under the increasing dominance of progressive edu cation, it was assumed that too much strenuous effort was counterproductive and, thus, demands had to be relaxed.

What I described in 2000 was just the tip of the iceberg. All across America, over the next 20 years, we witnessed in most schools reduced homework, shorter term papers, fewer books assigned, and other attempts to lighten the load on students. These trends are well-documented and undeni able, even as educators have tried to dis guise dumbing-down with high-sounding slogans such as “less is more” and “empow ering” students through “critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration.”

By 2022, we have now reached a new nadir in education-lite. The lowering of expectations in our schools has reached new heights. Why do I say this?

As one example, many schools, includ ing some of the very best in our region and state — I will not name them here lest they suffer embarrassment — have relaxed grading standards even beyond the out-ofcontrol grade inflation that already exists. All you need to do is read Joe Feldman’s “Grading for Equity,” which is assigned reading for hundreds of teachers and is cited as the basis for the changes these schools are making.

Among the changes being instituted: • Even if a student turns in no work whatsoever, the teacher can no longer

assign a grade of zero but must give a grade of at least 50 points. You get 50 points for doing nothing.

• The teacher can no longer penalize a student for failing to turn in homework.

• The teacher can no longer penalize a student for failing to turn in a paper on time; deadlines do not matter.

• The teacher must allow students mul tiple opportunities to redo work, whether to retake a test or rewrite a paper, without penalty.

Interestingly, Feldman on the one hand argues that we need to adopt “bias-resis tant” grading that overcomes what he claims is the “implicit bias” white teachers have that Black students cannot meet high academic expectations, yet on the other hand he explicitly premises his entire grad ing philosophy on the assumption that minorities cannot be expected to turn work in on time and meet other normal expecta tions. It is Feldman who would appear to be engaging in racism here, in making sweep ing generalizations about the deficits minorities bring to the classroom.

Critics have rightly raised concerns. Jay Mathews, one of the nation’s leading edu cation writers, has called “grading for equity” a “formula for disaster” and “a dumb plan” that “will hurt the neediest kids” the most ( Washington Post, Dec. 26, 2021).

First, even if Feldman were right in his assumptions about minorities, why should we allow the bottom — the low achievers — to drive the curriculum and grading regimen in a school district? Second, if you allow multiple chances to redo work,

this would be a moment I would always remember — sitting together with my hus band as our boys, who had only just cele brated their 12th birthday, asked us for the answers that they thought men needed to know.

I cleared my throat and said, “Boys, I’m glad that you are thinking about this. Choosing the right partner is one of the most important things a person can do in their lives. You are right, you will soon be men, and it makes my heart happy to know that you are already considering this life-changing decision.”

I watched as our boys, tall and gangly with youth, puffed up at my praise. I won dered for the millionth time about the men they would become someday.

I nudged Isaac with my shoulder, indi cating that it was his turn to talk.

“Jacob, Esau, I met your mother when I was in a very dark place. My father and I had become estranged. My mother had passed away. I felt very alone in this world.”

Now I squeezed my husband’s handremembering the shadows that had been

what incentive is there for a student — white or Black — to make the maximum effort to do one’s best work and get it right the first time? Third, if you do not penalize students for meeting deadlines or failing to turn in homework, how do you cultivate the good habits and practices that students will be expected to demonstrate once they enter the real world of work?

Many teachers understand these prob lems and have raised these very concerns, but are nonetheless being dragged along to adopt these changes by progressive administrators and clueless school boards obsessed with misplaced “equity and diversity” concerns or utopian ideas about education.

I should add that higher education is also succumbing somewhat to these same impulses (e.g., the elimination of SAT exams by many college admissions offic es) but is not nearly as far along as K-12 in lowering standards.

The history of education in the United States is not a happy story. Almost nowhere in the country can one find examples today where academic stan dards and demands are actually being raised. Until parents and professionals call for higher, tougher expectations, we will continue to see the declining performance of our

schools.

J. Martin Rochester, Curators’ Distin guished Teaching Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Mis souri-St. Louis, is the author of 10 books on international and American politics.

Viewpoints expressed in letters, commentaries, cartoons and other opinion pieces reflect those of the writer or artist, and not those of the Light. We welcome submissions of letters and commentaries to: news@stljewishlight.org

Rabbi Rachel K. Bearman is Associate Rabbi at Congrega tion Shaare Emeth and a member of the St. Louis Rabbinical and Cantorial Asso ciation, which coordi nates the d’var Torah for the Jewish Light.

Comedian Dave Chappelle courageously calls out antisemitism — and ADL is still upset about it

BY EDWARD “COACH” WEINHAUS

Jews grouped together to form the state of Israel. They (we) run the place. It is not crazy to think or say that.

It is “delusional” to even think that “the Jews run Hollywood” even if there are “a lot of Jews there…I mean a lot.” And crazi er to say it.

That’s according to Dave Chappelle, who although denouncing antisemitism in toto faces the ire of wrong-headed critics for his “Saturday Night Live” monologue on Nov. 13.

What the ADL (and others) are upset about is their own perception as to why he denounces antisemitism. While question ing his motives, they show utter disrespect for Chappelle’s bravery.

Chappelle began his monologue with a perfectly formed response to his critics, who had not yet known to retrieve their proverbial knives. “I denounce antisemi tism in all its forms, and I stand with my friends in the Jewish community,” he said, reading from a slip of paper.

It’s sad we live in a world where Chappelle felt the need to preface a series of jokes about the mental illness or stupid ity (his words not mine) of one or more famous people (by the way, “Black people” -- again, his words not mine) by sopping to

what are the inevitable labels of antisemi tism.

But sop he did. Then, he let his audience and the rest of the world in on the joke he was telling:

“And that, Kanye, is how you buy your self some time.” Of course he was refer ring to Kanye West’s antisemitic remarks that began last month on Instagram and Twitter.

West’s downfall, whether attributable to purported mental illness or antisemitism, was the topic for which Chappelle sought and received laughs.

That’s. His. Job.

In so doing, he said: “I’ve been to Hollywood. And I don’t want y’all to get mad at me, I’m just telling you this is just what I saw. It’s a lot of Jews. Like a lot. (laughs) But that doesn’t mean anything, you know what I mean? There’s [sic] a lot of Black people in Ferguson, Missouri. It doesn’t mean we run the place. (laughs)”

The final comment that tied the mono logue (as it relates to Jews) together allows Chappelle’s critics to expose their own views — not Chappelle’s.

He highlights the trope of Jewish-runanything-except-Israel:

“I would see if you had some kind of issue, you might go out to Hollywood, you might start connecting some kind of lines,

and you could maybe adopt the delusion that the Jews run show business. It’s not a crazy thing to think. But it’s a crazy thing to say out loud in a climate like this.”

Chappelle acknowledged three main ideas for which we should be very grateful: • It is “delusional [to think] that Jews run show business.”

• The person who holds these ideas probably already “had some kind of issue.”

• Talking like that is “crazy…in a cli mate like this.”

He calls even the ancient antisemitic trope of Jewish control “delusional.” A result of mental illness.

Chappelle has the right to speak about being the target of speech police. Even if the topic is Jews. Chappelle has been the target of modern speech police so many times, for so many reasons, for offending so many people, his anticipation of criti cism was prescient. That he would need to

denounce antisemitism to discuss, openly, the topic of antisemitism is precisely his point. He used to be able to just tell jokes.

Jews are a part of modern American culture. Our actions matter, including our reactions to being a topic of discussion.

Jews weren’t offended by comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s Jewish jokes and criticisms.

Jews weren’t offended locally on Oct. 14, 2009, when West News Magazine pub lished an opinion piece extolling the vir tues of West County religious Jews in trou bled moral times.

Jews, in a fit of pique about being merely a topic of discussion, have an opportunity to reflect on what our response to Chappelle says about us as a people. Especially given Chappelle’s own leader ship in free expression.

If we cannot support Chappelle’s sincere search for discussing truth that relates to Jews and antisemitism, we are going to have a tough time when real enemies come for us.

What Chappelle’s critics truly wanted was his denouncement of antisemitism to come as a result of their critique. His crit ics care more about their power than his sincere beliefs plying his trade and fully, and steadfastly denouncing antisemitism. We are better than that.

Ukraine backs antisemitism at United Nations while pressuring Israel for arms

BY JONATHAN S. TOBIN JNS

It was just another day at the United Nations. But, instead of its usual business being simply more evidence of the way the virus of antisemitism has injected itself into just about everything that within its purview, it recently supplied us with an additional insight. A vote in one of the General Assembly’s committees provided proof that the idealization of the embattled government of Ukraine is somewhat dis connected from reality.

The world body’s Special Political and Decolonization Committee convened on Friday to debate whether the G.A. should ask the International Court of Justice to provide an opinion on the “legal status of the occupation.”

This was a reference to Israel’s presence in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, with the ludicrous inclusion of Gaza, where no Jew has lived since 2005.

The endeavor was part of the strategy that the Palestinian Authority has been implementing since it torpedoed a peace initiative during the Barack Obama presi dency.

It was another Palestinian effort aimed at delegitimizing Israel in much the same manner that the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry has done. The point is to weaponize the insti tutions of the international community to brand Israel a pariah “apartheid state,” and then to use the court at The Hague to implement sanctions on it.

The U.N. is widely and rightly dispar aged in both the United States and Israel as a source of incitement against the West and a perversion of its founders’ intent in the aftermath of World War II. But it is also generally dismissed as a meaningless talking shop with no connection to reality.

In this sense, both Americans and Israelis tend to underestimate the damage that the Palestinian campaign to use inter national law to isolate the Jewish state can do once its bureaucratic apparatus is put to work on behalf of this anti-Zionist and

antisemitic cause.

Just as important, it creates a diplomatic playing field in which the antisemitic invective is normalized to the point that it’s hard for nations to refuse to join in with the mob and take a courageous stand beside Israel.

This is where Ukraine comes in.

For the last several months, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been spending a disproportionate amount of time and effort trying to pressure Israel into sending his country arms to help it repel a Russian invasion.

Israel has condemned the illegal attack, sent Ukraine large amounts of humanitar ian aid and taken in refugees. It has also shared intelligence with its military about the drones that Iran has sold to Russia. But it refuses to supply Zelenskyy with weap ons for a number of good reasons.

Moscow, which has forces in Syria, has allowed neighboring Israel to act against Iranian and other terrorist forces there with impunity. Furthermore, there is still a large Jewish population in Russia that is now, in effect, hostage to the authoritarian whims of President Vladimir Putin.

But Ukraine and its many noisy support ers throughout the world have dismissed Israel’s justified concerns about being dragged into a war in which it has no direct interest, and treated it as if it were uniquely cynical for its refusal to do Kyiv’s bidding.

The fact that Ukraine was caught up in Democratic Party attempts to impeach for mer President Donald Trump is part of the reason its cause is viewed with special favor. By the same token, though Putin is a despicable tyrant, the fact that many Americans still believe the big lie that it stole the 2016 presidential election for Trump has revived a spirit of hatred for Russia that is reminiscent of right-wingers during the depths of the Cold War.

Part of their justification rests on depict ing Ukraine as a citadel of Western democracy.

Ukraine has bravely defended itself against Russian aggression, and for that

its forces deserve the world’s sympathy and admiration. But, as is the case with other post-Soviet republics in the region, its corruption runs deep.

Though its people clearly deserve the right to the self-determination that Russia wishes to deny, in practice, Zelenskyy’s government isn’t any more tolerant of dis sent than Putin’s.

Others have revived old arguments about Russia’s being a deadly menace to the NATO alliance—as if the Berlin Wall were still standing and the massive armies of the now-defunct Warsaw Pact remained on the alert in East Germany, ready to invade Western Europe on Moscow’s orders. The fact that the diminished mili taries of the Russian Federation have been easily defeated in Ukraine doesn’t seem to stop people from speaking as if it were the Soviet Union at the height of its evil pow ers.

By the same token, the same voices eager to escalate the war in Ukraine, rath er than work for a settlement, dismiss the possibility that Russia would use its one truly scary asset—nuclear weapons—and flirt with what even President Joe Biden has characterized as the possibility of “Armageddon.”

Still, Ukraine’s pleas for Israeli help would be more reasonable if Kyiv were actually a friend of the Jewish state. Let’s ignore his lies about Ukrainians standing with Jews during the Holocaust, as opposed to what they actually did, which was to aid the Nazis in their slaughter.

Let’s set aside, as well, the fact that Ukrainian nationalism, historically, has been closely connected to antisemitism. Instead, let’s just focus on the attitude of the modern Ukrainian republic, and spe cifically Zelenskyy’s government, toward Israel.

This brings us to last week’s U.N. vote— 98 nations in favor, 17 opposed and 52 abstentions—for referral to the International Court of Justice.

The 17 “nos” consisted of Israel, Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Guatemala, Hungary,

Italy, Liberia, Lithuania, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and the United States.

Among those voting in favor was Ukraine.

This is, of course, far from the first time that Ukraine has sided with the mob of haters at the U.N. attacking Israel. It has consistently done so since becoming inde pendent 30 years ago, including just last month, when it joined others in a demand that Israel unilaterally renounce its right to nuclear weapons.

One would think that, at a time when it is seeking help from Israel, Ukraine might at least abstain on votes aimed at isolating and destroying the Jewish state. But such is the hypocrisy and arrogance of the Zelenskyy government that it had no com punction about both voting against Israel and simultaneously trying to strong-arm it into handing over its most valued and scarce weapons, integral to its self-de fense, like Iron Dome batteries.

This says a lot about how off base many of those who speak as if Ukraine were a Jeffersonian democracy and a bastion of decency are while trying to persuade American taxpayers to go on funding a war, which has no end in sight, to the tune of tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dol lars.

But it is also a reminder of how the U.N.’s toxic environment acts to enable the worst instincts of so many governments around the world. It allows those with foul motives, tainted by antisemitism, to work together under the false banner of human rights.

Rather than ignore or downplay it, Israelis should be taking the U.N. threat seriously. And Americans should be work ing to defund the body, rather than sup porting, facilitating and standing aloof from its worst excesses, as the Biden administration continues to do.

Edward “Coach” Weinhaus is a Creve Coeur resident who runs provocagent. com — a Hollywood entertainment law practice. He is a member of Tpheris Israel Chevra Kadisha.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him on Twitter at: @ jonathans_tobin.

DAVID E. J. ADELSTEIN, November 1, 2022

Beloved husband of Harriet Noveson Adelstein; dear father of Cheryl Adelstein (Daniel Davison), Michael Adelstein, and Wendy Adelstein; dear grandfather of Hannah and Mara Davison; dear son of the late Hyman Adelstein (late Bea) and the late Esther Adelstein; dear twin brother of Diane Molasky (late Fred); dear brother-inlaw of Judy Koshner (late Edward); dear stepbrother of  Sanford Rudman (Judy) and the late Phyllis Manesberg (late Al); dear uncle of many special nieces and nephews, cousin and friend.

Dave was born and spent his entire life in St. Louis, Missouri.  He grew up in the “old neighborhood” in North St. Louis City, where everyone called him Davy and was one of the last graduates of Blewett High School.  As a youth, he participated in AZA, and throughout his life he was active with Bnai Brith.  For nearly the past sixty years, he has resided with his wife in their home near Creve Coeur.

David was first and foremost a loving husband and father.  Affectionately known as Daddy Dave and Poppi he loved his time with his family and always kept track of everyone’s coming and goings.  A close second to being a father, Dave was an athlete and a huge sport fan.  In high school he played baseball and basketball at the old YMHA on Delmar at Union.  He attended Washington University as Physical Education major, and was a star player for the Washington University Bears.

It was his athletic ability and his smarts that kept him off the front line in when he served in the army during the Korean Conflict.  Trained in infantry, he reported that he could type and play baseball, and he spent his time in Korean as a company clerk in a medic unit and playing ball on an Army team.  He played baseball and then softball in the Bnai Brith Leagues into his mid60.  He bowled into his mid-70’s and played golf into his mid-80’s.  He loved to watch sports, and

was a Cardinal fanatic.  He reported once sneaking out of Yom Kippur services to see the Cardinal’s play a World Series day game and getting back in time for Break the Fast.

Professionally, Dave was a commercial credit manager for more than 30 years, working for Broadstreet’s  Clothing, Lowy Enterprises and Lee Kaufman & Company.

Dave will be remembered for his kindness, his sense of humor, his wit, always being on time and his love of dessert, especially chocolate.

A graveside funeral service was held at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery, 650 White Road, Thursday, November 3, 2022. Memorial contributions preferred to Harvey Kornblum Jewish Food Pantry and Central Reform Congregation

Please visit bergermemorialchapel.com for more information. Berger Memorial Service

FRANCINE EISENBERG BROCKMAN passed away on November 6, 2022 surrounded by her loved ones. Preceded in death by her husband, Barry Brockman. Proud mother of David (Julie) Brockman of Lincoln, Nebraska, and Deedee Spivak of Tampa, Florida. Grandmother of Haleigh (Matthew) Carlson, Courtney Brockman, Alexis (Michael) Warriner, and Brian Spivak. Sister of Sheila (Gilbert) Dolgin, and great grandmother, aunt and cousins to many others.

Francine lived in St. Louis, MO for 75 years before moving to Lincoln, NE for the last several years of her life. She attended University City High School and graduated in 1960. Francine enjoyed a full life with her children , grandchildren and great grandchildren.

A funeral service was held at Berger Memorial Chapel, Thursday November 10.

Berger Memorial Service

CAROL ANN BLINDER

Long time philanthropist and community leader Carol Ann Blinder, 84, died on 11/5/2022 after a month-long battle.

Dear wife of the late Dr. Max Blinder; dear mother and mother-in-law of Robin (David) Chervitz, Dr. Kevin J. (Carol) Blinder and the late Dr. Karin Joy (Dr. Steven) Gubin; dear grandmother of Zachary (fiancée Becca Weisel) Chervitz, Mandi (Michael) Panayiotou, and Jordi Chervitz; Cassidy (Eric) Goldberg, Carly and Cody Gubin; Samantha, Brittany, Ben and Ryan Blinder; dear great grandmother of Vivienne and Felicity Panayiotou; dear sister of Sidney (Toby) Brenner, the late Shirley Goldberg and the late Dorothy Mariam; dear sister-in-law of Eve (Herman) Leibovich and the late Sylvia (late Arthur) Cohen; dear aunt, cousin and friend to many.

Carol was born and raised in St Louis.  She attended Soldan High School and met the love of her life Max at a young age.  She raised three children and then found her true calling of community involvement and leadership.  When she wasn’t working at Annex Two to support her clothing addiction, she was becoming involved in the community surrounding her.  She co-chaired the Jewish Book Festival two times, was the inaugural chair of the Jewish Film Festival and was a past president of the J Associates.  She also served on the JCC Board.   Her last official office was a Council member at the Brookdale Senior Living Center.

Carol never met a stranger and was known and beloved by all.  She shall be missed.

A funeral service was held Sunday, November 13, 2022 at United Hebrew Congregation, 13788 Conway Rd. 63017. Interment followed at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery, 650 White Road. Memorial contributions preferred to the Karin Blinder Gubin Memorial Fund, Jewish Foundation of Memphis, 6560 Poplar Avenue, Germantown, TN 38138, https://jfm.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/ create?funit_id=1921

Please visit bergermemorialchapel.com for more information. Berger Memorial Service

RANDEE BETT CHASEN CITURS, November 11, 2022

Beloved wife of Kevin Citurs for 23 years. Dear daughter of Faith and the late Kenneth Chasen. Beloved daughter-in-law of Karl and the late Freda Citurs. Loving sister of Robert (Deborah) Chasen and Lee Chasen. Dear sister-in-law of Kirk (Debi) Citurs and the late Kent Citurs. Cherished aunt of Kallen and Paige Citurs, Kenny, Kevin, Andrew and Lindsay Chasen and the late Hollie Chasen. Niece of Iris and the late Mel Chasen and Bruce (Debbie) Jaffee. Dear niece, cousin and friend to many more.

Randee was a licensed clinical social worker and spent many years working for St. Anthony’s Medical Center Psychiatric Division and later worked in the managed care division of MEDCO/Magellan. She liked to say that she was “bi-coastal” having been born in Whittier, CA, making her an original “California Girl”, but also enjoying many happy visits with her grandparents in New York, where her parents were originally from. She was a huge fan of New York style pizza and would search out the best wherever she was.

Family was very important to Randee, and although she had no children of her own, her nieces and nephews became her “children”, and she doted over them. She endured many medical challenges the last nine years of her life, but through it all, her husband Kevin was her rock. Together, they never gave up and were always hopeful. She will be missed by all who knew and loved her.

Funeral service Wednesday, November 16, 1:00pm at Rindskopf-Roth Funeral Chapel, 5216 Delmar Blvd. Visitation with Randee’s family

beginning at 12:30pm until time of service. Private family interment in Scranton, Iowa. In lieu of flowers, contributions in her memory may be made to Easterseals Midwest, 11933 Westline Industrial Drive, St. Louis, MO, 63146 or to Operation Smile, 3641 Faculty Boulevard, Virginia Beach, VA, 23453.

BERNICE DAVIDSON, November 7, 2022

Beloved wife of the late Sidney Aaron Davidson; dear mother and mother-in-law of Iris Deitch (Sanford), Denise Davidson and Natalie Buettner; dear grandmother of Nicholas Deitch (Sarah), Samantha and Kimberly Buettner; dear great-grandmother of Charlie, Teddy and Molly Deitch; dear sister of the late Harriet Bierman and the late Robert Kaplan; beloved daughter of the late Julius and late Ida Kaplan.

Through the years, Bernice enjoyed the STL Cardinals and even got a 95th birthday card from Tony La Russa, playing mahjong, making her own gefilte fish, going to dinner with the Hilltop girls and cooking for her family.  In addition, let’s not forget her weekly hair appointment with Matt.  Everyone being together at holidays/celebrations meant the world to her.  Bernice will be greatly missed by all who had the pleasure of knowing her.

A graveside service was held Wednesday, November 9 at Beth Hamedrosh Hagodol Cemetery, 9125 Ladue Rd. Memorial contributions to the Harvey Kornblum Jewish Food Pantry or to Evelyn’s House. Please visit bergermemorialchapel.com for more information. Berger Memorial Service

ROSELLEN “ROSIE” FEINSTEIN, December 3, 1947 – November 11, 2022

Beloved wife of Mark J. Feinstein for 55 years.  Dear mother of Eric (Vickie) Feinstein and Michael (Erin) Feinstein.  Loving grandmother of David, Abigail, Shaina, Jonah and Morgan Feinstein.  Beloved sister and sister-in-law of Betti Blumoff, Marianne (Owen) Christiansen, Eileen (David) Evans and the late Harvey (Marilyn) Blumoff.  Cherished aunt of Todd (Kara) Blumoff, Neal (Beth) DuBro, Brian (Sunny Beddow) Christiansen, Becky (Rick) Griffin, Emily (Victor) Menchaca and Lauren DuBro.  Beloved daughter of the late David and DeVera Blumoff.  Dear cousin and friend.

Rosie was an avid reader, reading over 150 books a year.  She looked forward to playing Mahjong with her friends each week, and she loved to travel, taking trips throughout the US, Canada and Europe.

Rosie had a long professional career, starting as a civilian working for the U.S. Navy.  She then spent 27 years in the education field teaching computer classes for Lucky Lane and working as a para-professional in the Ladue School District.  Her final job was as a supervisor for the State of Missouri Department of Social Services.

After having her right leg amputated, Rosie spent the next ten years assisting other amputee patients in understanding the lifestyle changes involved with losing a limb.  Her efforts in helping others earned her the Amputee Empowerment Partners Award for “Volunteer of the 2013 Year.”

A graveside service was held Monday, November 14, 2022 at United Hebrew Cemetery, 7855 Canton Avenue. Live stream available at  www.rindskopfroth.com. In lieu of flowers, contributions in Rosie’s memory may be made to Evelyn’s House, The BJC Foundation for Hospice, P.O. Box 790369, St. Louis, MO, 63179 or to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, 1972 Innerbelt Business Center Drive, St. Louis, MO, 63114 or to the charity of your choice.  Out of concern for everyone’s health and safety, the family will be holding a private Shiva.

A Rindskopf-Roth Service

Families may submit an obituary for a loved one through the funeral home they work with or by using a form on the Jewish Light’s website: stljewishlight.org/submit-obituary

RENEE ELAYNE HERMAN, November 2, 2022

Beloved daughter of the late Sadie and Martin Herman.  Dear sister of the late Bernard Harvey Herman.  Dear aunt, cousin and friend.

Renee graduated from University City High School.  Though she had no vocal training or theatrical experience, she auditioned for the Muny Opera in St. Louis and was hired for the 1998 Muny Opera summer season.  She moved to New York and went on to perform with the New York City Opera. After retiring, she returned to St. Louis and lived at the Crown Center for Senior Living.

Graveside services were held Sunday, November 6, 11:00 AM at United Hebrew Cemetery, 7855 Canton Avenue. Contributions in Renee’s memory may be made to the Crown Center for Senior Living, 8350 Delcrest Drive, St. Louis, MO, 63124 (www.crowncenterstl.org) or to the Humane Society of Missouri, 1201 Macklind Avenue, St. Louis, MO, 63110 (www. hsmo.org).

A Rindskopf-Roth Service

FRANCES MEGEFF KAHN, November 9, 2022

Beloved wife of the late Melvin D. Kahn; dear mother and mother-in-law of Pamela Rubin (Ron); dear grandmother of Julie Liberman (Jay) and Todd Rubin; dear great-grandmother of Sally Liberman and Ray Liberman; dear daughter of the late Pearl and the late Al Megeff; dear sister of the late Sally Samson (the late Sam); dear sister-in-law of the late Irvin Kahn (the late Eleanor); dear aunt, cousin, and friend to many.

Frances was a beloved teacher who cherished her career in education. She also loved all dogs. The family wishes to thank Fran’s beloved caregivers from Home Helpers. A private graveside funeral service will be held at Montefiore Cemetery in Cincinnati. Memorial contributions preferred to Guide Dogs for the Blind, 350 Los Ranchitos Road, San Rafael, CA 94903 or to the charity of your choice. Please visit bergermemorialchapel.com for more information. Berger Memorial Service

JOYCE ROTHENBERG KOHN died in St. Louis, MO on Oct 22, 2022 at age 93.

She was born in Ft. Madison, IA to parents Max and Cecelia Rothenberg, who operated The Parisian in downtown Ft. Madison for 35 years. She graduated from public high school and continued to live in Ft. Madison for a few years after her marriage to Stanley Kohn, who worked at The Parisian and preceded her in death. Her brother, Harvey David Rothenberg, also preceded her in death.

Joyce returned to Ft. Madison for many high school reunions to renew contacts with childhood friends.

She is survived by her two sons, Gordon and Russell (Gale) Kohn and two grandchildren Stanley (Shannon) and Crystal Kohn of St. Louis along with two great-grandchildren Aiden and Avery Kohn.

A Celebration of Joyce’s Life will be held on Saturday, November 19 at 1 PM at the Ethical Society of St. Louis, 9001 Clayton Rd, St. Louis, MO 63117. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the Ethical Society of St. Louis, or another charity close to your heart. Please visit bergermemorialchapel.com for more information. Berger Memorial Service

THOMAS VICTOR LEVIN II, October 31, 2022

Beloved husband of the late Kay Rothman Levin for 47 years. Loving son of the late Zalie and Belle Levin and Son-in-law of the late Sara and Nathaniel Rothman. Dear brother of Robert (Susan) Levin and brother-in-law of Jules Rothman. Loving uncle, cousin and friend.

Tom has a long career as a Community banker and volunteering with the Civil Defense. Private family service. No home visitation. Memorial contributions preferred to the Harvey Kornblum Jewish Food Pantry, 10950 Schuetz Road, St. Louis, MO 63146.

A Rindskopf-Roth Service

Adelstein, David E. J. Blinder, Carol Ann

Brockman, Francine Eisenberg

Chasen-Citurs, Randee Bett

Davidson, Bernice Feinstein, Rosellen “Rosie”

Herman, Renee Elayne

Kahn, Frances Megeff

BURT NEWMAN

Kohn, Joyce Rothenberg Levin II, Thomas Victor

Newman, Burt Nieberg, Geraldine

Sanders, Lew Sidney Sandler, Oreon L. Silverstein, Karen Stein, Bernard (Nardie)

Tucker, R. Thomas “Tom”

past July, Missouri State Representatives Ian Mackey and Adam Schwadron presented Burt with a Missouri House Resolution, honoring his lifetime achievements, particularly his devotion to Holocaust education. We will always remember his delight in the small ceremony they created for him along with the staff of his memory care residence, Parc Provence.

Burt was also known for his photography hobby, filling his family and friends’ homes with his large western landscapes, and urban architectural focused photographs.

Burt will be remembered for his love of traveling the United States and Europe, his sense of humor, lunches with his high school and college friends, but most of all his devotion to family.  Nothing meant more to him than family dinner with his wife, children and grandchildren and was their biggest cheerleader, as their larger-than-life patriarch.

OREON L. SANDLER, November 8, 2022

Beloved husband of the late Thelma J. Sandler; loving partner of Carol Russell; dear father of Lesli Cattan (Robert), Ilene Sandler (Eric Loucks), and Bennett Sandler (Monica Brané); dear grandfather of Danielle (Diego Diaz), Noah, Sofia, Anabel, Madeleine, Elijah, and Calvin; dear great-grandfather of 10-week old Matias Diaz; dear son of the late Adele and the late Benjamin Sandler; dear brother of the late Sondra Rotenberg (the late Eugene) and Howard Sandler; dear brotherin-law of Dennis Lutsky (Judie); dear uncle, cousin, and friend. He was deeply loved.

Beloved husband of Stacey Newman; dear father and father-in-law of Drew Newman (Margo), Ben Newman (Ami), and Sophie Newman Legenzoff (Zach); Zeyde to Isaac, Kennedy, Maya and Josh; dear brother of Rita Worth (Barry); son of the late Marcel and the late Bessie Newman. Dear uncle, cousin, friend to many.

Burt Newman passed away peacefully in his sleep on November 5, 2022 surrounded by loved ones, while listening to songs by his idol and friend, Carole King.

Born in St. Louis to German and Russian immigrant parents, Burt graduated from University City High School, class of 1964.

He went on to the University of Missouri for both undergraduate and law school, becoming the first in his family to graduate college. He moved back to St. Louis to begin his law career, often relishing that he never lived far from where he was born, a true St. Louisan who never passed up an Imo’s pizza or a White Castle slider and could not accurately pronounce the name of Highway Forty.

He met his wife Stacey almost 34 years ago on a blind date through an ad in the Riverfront Times. Family was his lifeline and soon they added daughter Sophie, who was the glue to the bustling sports-oriented blended household of teenage sons, Drew and Ben.

An accomplished attorney in St. Louis for five decades, Burt was known for his numerous pro bono cases on behalf of the Missouri ACLU, serving as general counsel for the St. Louis chapter for several years

His passionate advocacy for social justice included arguing several landmark constitutional cases in the Missouri State Supreme Court and testifying numerous times in the Missouri legislature on voting rights, sometimes in front of the House Elections committee, with his wife, Hon. Stacey Newman as ranking member.  In 2003 Burt was named one of the top ten lawyers in Missouri by the Missouri Lawyers Weekly, after his successful challenge of the state’s concealed weapon statute, an honor that he cherished.

One of his proudest moments ever was being arrested as a Mizzou law student following the Kent State University riots in 1970 during the Vietnam War, with his photo being led away by police making the front page of the Columbia Missourian newspaper.

Burt especially delighted in teaching and mentoring others, including as an adjunct professor at the Washington University School of Law for ten years.  He loved teaching advanced trial practice of civil jury cases to third year law students and each year treated them to happy hour at his home after completing their practice trial final.

After retirement from his law practice, Burt devoted hours to the St. Louis Holocaust Museum, telling his family’s story, as a 2nd generation Holocaust survivor, speaking as often as he could to student and faith groups.  He believed strongly in “never again” and with his cousin Ellen Mandel wrote a family history, “Sophie’s Prophecy,” so the story of their grandmother’s survival of Nazi Germany could be passed down for generations to come.  This

Burt left a huge contribution of “tikkun olam” (repairing the world) and taught his family to always take care of each other, which his grandmother Oma Sophie Neumann stressed after losing much of her family in the Holocaust. Burt believed strongly in the power of family and in Oma Sophie’s original words from her short 1959 memoir, “to live better and more courageous lives as Jews in America”.

Funeral services were held at Central Reform Congregation, 5020 Waterman Blvd, Wednesday, November 9, 2022 followed by a graveside service at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery, 650 White Road.

Memorial contributions preferred to St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum. Please visit  bergermemorialchapel.com for more information. Berger Memorial Service

GERALDINE NIEBERG, October 21, 2022, Memphis, TN, 92 Yrs

Beloved mother of Steven (Rachel) Boss, Alene (Stuart) Davidson and Dr. Scott Nieberg (Chris)

Dear Grandmother of Jacob (Robyn) Boss, Rebecca (Andrew) Severin, Samantha (Adam) Armstrong, Amanda (Aaron) Holbrook

Beloved Great-Grandmother of Ariyel Severin, Emma Severin, Grant Armstrong, Ian Armstrong, Silas Holbrook

Dear Aunt, Cousin and Friend.

Contributions can be made to the St. Louis Jewish Book Festival, Leukemia/Lymphoma Society or a charity of your choice.

LEW SIDNEY SANDERS, November 6, 2022

Beloved husband of Janice Stone Sanders; dear father and father-in-law of Lisa Sayegh (Victor), Andrea Williams (Brad) and Michael Sanders (Jami); dear grandfather of Jake Palmer, Nick Palmer and Brodie Palmer, Teagan Raftery, Brooke Williams, Mikayla and Lucas Sanders; dear brother of David Kalin; dear brother-in-law, uncle, cousin and friend.

A graveside service was held Thursday, November 10th at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery 650 White Road.

Visit bergermemorialchapel.com for more information. Berger Memorial Service

A graveside service was held Friday, November 11 at Beth Hamedrosh Hagodol Cemetery, 9125 Ladue Road. Memorial contributions preferred to the Michael J. Fox Foundation. P lease visit bergermemorialchapel.com for more information. Berger Memorial Service

KAREN SILVERSTEIN passed away peacefully after a courageous battle with ovarian cancer on November 11, 2022, in the San Francisco Bay Area, surrounded by her family.

Beloved wife of Greg Huber for 31 years, and loving mother of Lucas and Natalie Huber. Dear sister and sisterin-law of Jill (Jerome Dobson) Silverstein and Gail Huber. Beloved daughter of the late Merle “Ruffy” and Marcelyn “Marcee” Silverstein. Dear daughter-in-law of Geneva Huber. Loving aunt to Morris and Lizzy Mills, and dear cousin and friend.

Karen was an Emmy award-winning documentary filmmaker.  She dedicated her life to telling stories and giving a voice to those who often were not heard. Her award-winning film, Gefilte Fish, was screened all over the world. She spent many years as an editor and producer at WGBH, and at a host of other public television stations, creating everything from history and science programs to children’s television, such as the series  Zoom, Arthur and Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman. Beyond her passion for filmmaking, Karen was a loving dog mom to Taro, Stella, and (the late) Scruffy. She was a loving friend to many and her unique way with words and humor will keep generations in stitches. She was an outsized personality, a life force, and, in a word, “lovable”.

Memorial service Thursday, November 17, 10:00a.m. at Congregation Temple Israel, 1 Rabbi Alvan D. Rubin Drive. Visitation with Karen’s family beginning at 9:00a.m. until time of service.  Live stream available at www.ti-stl.org/ watch. In lieu of flowers, the family requests memorial gifts be made in Karen’s memory to support ovarian cancer research to the UCSF Foundation, P.O. Box 45339, San Francisco, CA 94145. Please make checks payable to the UCSF Foundation and write “in memory of Karen Silverstein” in the memo line.

A Rindskopf-Roth Service

BERNARD (NARDIE) STEIN, age 91, passed away peacefully on November 7, 2022 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Nardie was a much loved and respected spouse, father, grandfather, friend, mentor and leader. He spent his childhood in Fort Smith, Arkansas, graduated from Washington University in 1953 and then served as a cryptographer at the U.S. Army Far East Headquarters in Japan. In 1955, he began his long career at Camp Nebagamon in Northern Wisconsin.

Nardie and his wife, Sally Lorber Stein, directed Camp Nebagamon from 1960 to 1990. Nardie was known for his kindness, integrity, wit, competence, values impact, and wideranging friendships among generations of Nebagamon families from more than 50 cities and 15 countries.

For most of their 67 years of marriage, Nardie and Sally lived in Clayton, Missouri, as well as in Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin each summer. In 2018, they moved to The Waters on 50th in Minneapolis.

Nardie often expressed his happiness and gratitude for his good fortune in life. At his 70th birthday celebration, he described himself as the WLG (“World’s Luckiest Guy”). He is survived by his beloved partner, Sally Lorber Stein;their children, Jane Stein Kerr (Euan), Ted Stein (Perrin), Jessica Stein Diamond (Scott);and their grandchildren, Sarah Kerr, Malcolm Kerr (Anna Hess), Elena, Benno and Nat Stein, and Ian and Daisy Diamond.

He is the brother of the late Jean (Stein) Bloch and the son of the late Jennings and Jeannette Stein. Nardie’s life was further enriched by his enduring friendships with German relatives his parents brought out of Nazi Germany and helped to resettle in Fort Smith.

In addition to his leadership roles with the American Camping Association and mentoring many colleagues in the camping

community, Nardie served for 50 years on the board of Sherwood Forest, a camp near St Louis that serves children from low-income households and under-resourced communities. He also loved his volunteer work with Reading is Fundamental (RIF) in the St. Louis Schools. He and Sally co-chaired the Camp Nebagamon Scholarship Fund for 50 years.

A memorial service will be held in Saint Paul at Mount Zion Temple, 1300 Summit Ave, St Paul, MN 55105 on Friday, November 18 at 10:00 am. All are welcome. You can also watch via livestream at https://mzion.org/pray/ live-streaming/ Memorial donations may be made to the Camp Nebagamon Scholarship Fund (CNSF), Camperships for Nebagamon (CFN), the Camp Nebagamon Foundation, or the charity of your choice.

• CNSF, founded in 1947, helps children and teens affected by poverty and disability attend non-profit camps that specialize in meeting their needs. https://cncharities. org/cnsf/support/online/

• CFN, founded in 1995, provides funding for children who could not otherwise afford to attend Camp Nebagamon (or a girls’ camp in Wisconsin). https://cncharities.org/cfn/support/online/

• The Camp Nebagamon Foundation, founded in 2021, purchased Camp Nebagamon in 2022 and will ensure the preservation of the institution and land to which Nardie devoted his career. https://www.campnebagamonfoundation.org/get-involved Hodroff-Epstein Memorial Chapel, 612-871-1234, www. hodroffepstein.com

R. THOMAS “TOM” TUCKER, November 8, 2022

Loving husband for 61 years of Elaine Tucker; Beloved father of Michael Tucker, Kenneth Tucker (Stefanie), Dr. Steven Tucker (Asa), and Joseph Tucker (Lia Huddart); Caring grandfather of Carson, Kyle, Quinn, Charlotte, Nathaniel, Hilary and Jake Tucker; dear brother-in-law of Louis Susman (Margie); Loving uncle of Tom DeWoskin (Kathy), Susie Kalishman (Neal), Jim DeWoskin (Marydale), Sally Susman (Robin Cantor), and William Susman (Emily). His close relationships and friendships with Barbara and Mark Rosen, Bud and Dale Pessin, and Tammy Tedeschi were an integral part of his life.

Tom graduated from University City High School and graduated in Engineering from Purdue University. After honorably serving in the Army where he proudly worked with Van Brum on rockets, he joined his father in the family business where he helped the company grow. Tom was very proud to form a new company, Expo Management, where he managed national trade shows.

Aside from his family, Tom’s great love was wine – collecting since his 20s. He had a renowned wine cellar and was sought by many for advice and guidance on the subject of wine.

Retired in 2013, he and Elaine moved from their cherished home to the Park Tower Condominiums where he loved being a member of their board. Tom was loved by all who knew him and will be missed by all!

A funeral service was held Sunday, November 13 at the Mausoleum at New Mt. Sinai Cemetery, 8430 Gravois. Memorial contributions preferred to the charity of your choice.

Berger Memorial Service American Flag symbol denotes a United States military veteran.

D’var Torah: ‘How Do You Know’ — A Midrashic Monologue

of a puzzle.

etched into his face, the deep pain and grief that he had carried in the stoop of his shoulders.

He smiled at me reassuringly and con tinued, “When your mother came into my life, she brought light with her. I knew that I should marry her because she made me feel that life was joyful and full of pos sibilities.”

The boys nodded their heads, looking as if they were filing away information for future use, and then turned to me.

I smiled and began my answer to their question, “I didn’t know your Abba when I agreed to be his wife. I was at the well in my village when I met Abba’s servant, Eliezer. He had been sent to find your Abba a suitable wife and was bursting with stories about his master. Eliezer and I must have sat by that well for half a day, talking about Isaac.” I smiled at my hus band, thinking that I had been lucky because Eliezer had spoken the truth.

“Eliezer told me about a kind young man who had lived a difficult life and whose heart was bruised but not broken. After speaking with him for hours, I realized that your Abba and I were matching pieces

“Your Abba had been left without a family, while mine was large and ever expanding.

He can see clearly what people are feel ing, while I, all too often, get stuck on the practicalities.

He is sometimes reluctant to make deci sions, while I always trust my instincts.

He is not afraid to share his heart, while I worry about being hurt.

He is sometimes shy and retiring, while I am always happy in large crowds.

“You see, boys, we fit one another. My experiences had shaped me into the per son your Abba needed, and his experienc es had made him into the one I was look ing for. Once I realized that, it was easy to agree to be your Abba’s wife, and so I did. I ran home, packed everything I needed, said goodbye to my family, and followed Eliezer to meet my new husband.”

Jacob looked thoughtful as he asked, “Were you worried that you wouldn’t like him when you saw him for the first time?”

“A little,” I replied, “But he turned out to be exactly the person I had been promised.”

I leaned toward the boys and whispered conspiratorially, “Plus, he was very hand

some. The first time I saw him, he was walking in the field, and I knew he was the one for me.”

Esau smirked and said, “He was so handsome that you knew right away?” He turned to his father and teased, “Wow, Abba! What happened to you since then?!”

I laughed and looked at my husband, saying, “Hmmm… maybe I’m mistaken. Were you as handsome as I remember you being?”

Isaac tried to look stern and indignant, two things that he could never quite accomplish, before replying, “Boys, I’ll have you know that I was so handsome that the first time your Ima saw me, she fell right off her camel.”

Both boys turned to me with open mouths and wide eyes.

I put my head on Isaac’s shoulder, think ing of that long-ago meeting, “I can only pray that God gives you both a sign that is as clear as the one I received that day.”

Isaac nodded and said, “Esau, Jacob, we hope that you will choose people who will be true partners to you, who will bring bal ance to your lives and make you feel like the world is full of possibilities.”

Both boys nodded seriously, as if accept ing a formal instruction.

For a moment, the four of us sat in con templative quiet, enjoying dreams of the future, but then our thoughts were inter rupted by Jacob’s stomach rumbling.

I laughed and said, “Unless either of you is hoping to become betrothed this evening, I think we should bless our meal and enjoy it. Jacob and Esau, since you have remind ed us tonight that you are both almost men, why don’t you offer the blessing?”

After another, quick, silent conversation, Jacob began,

“We thank You, Holy One, for the deli cious food that we will eat tonight.

And we thank You for our family and the chance to be together.”

Esau jumped in, completing Jacob’s thoughts, “Thank you for our parents and for mak ing them so right for one another.

We hope that when we find our own partners someday, we’ll know for sure that they’re the right ones for us.”

Jacob snickered before concluding, “Holy One, please don’t knock us off any camels though. We promise we’ll be pay ing attention.”

At my raised eyebrow, both boys hastily concluded, “And we say together, Amen.”

Amy Shapiro, daughter of Cindy and Lon Shapiro of St. Louis, and Jake Weinstein, son of Suzy and Steve Weinstein of St. Louis, have announced their engagement.

Amy is the granddaughter of the late Arleen and the late Floyd Emert, and the late Ruth and the late Jack Shapiro, all of St. Louis.

Jake is the grandson of Dolores and the late Fred Weinstein of St. Louis, and Eva and the late Maury Rydell of Overland Park, Kan. A September 2023 wedding is planned. The future bride and groom are pictured with their mini labradoodle, Rex.

Olivia Frances Berger, daughter of Meredith and Joe Berger, became a bat mitzvah Oct. 29, 2022 at Congregation Shaare Emeth.

Olivia is the granddaughter of Elaine and Marc Tenzer of St. Louis, Kristie and Don Skor of Middlebury, Vt., and Ann and Sheldon Berger of Dayton, Ohio. Olivia has one younger sister, Zoe, who is 9.

A seventh-grade student at Ladue Middle School, Olivia’s interests and activities include playing field hockey, lacrosse and soccer, and attending Blue Star Camps in North Carolina.

IN MEMORY OF

BURT NEWMAN

“Our sincerest condonlences to friends and family.”

- The staff and board at the St Louis Jewish Light -

“I will remember your passion for a good debate and your love of family.”

- Ellen Futterman -

CAROL BLINDER

“Carol will be missed by many, with me at the top of the list.”

- Ken Fendelman -

IN HONOR OF

KALEY AND AARON GERSHMAN

“ In honor of your new life together.”

- Jerome & Hedy Gershman -

BILL MOTCHAN

“Thanks, Bill for the beautiful article honoring my 2nd Bat Mitzvah along with the B’nei Mitzvah of my friends, Lester Goldman and Rabbi Neal Rose. We will treaure the articles and pictures you captured.”

B’Shalom, - Beverly Chervitz -

Thanks to the generous support of the Harvey Kornblum Foundation, members of the St. Louis Jewish community can submit simcha announcements for free. Submit an announce ment for your family’s recent simcha (birth, bar/bat mitzvah, engagement, wedding or major anniversary):

stljewishlight.org/simchas

BAT MITZVAH: OLIVIA BERGER

PHOTO COURTESY OF REBEKAH ELSASSER

PHOTO: SPOONFUL OF SUGAR PHOTOGRAPHY

CHAI LIGHTS

FRI. & SAT. | NOV. 18-20

page 8A.

SATURDAY | NOV. 19

The return of NHBZ Synaplex Shabbat & Lunch

Bring your entire family to enjoy pro grams for all ages. Regular services begin at 8:30 a.m. in the main sanctuary. “Soul Build ing” (an alternative learning program) with Rabbi Avi Feigenbaum begins at 10:15 a.m. in the lower level. Youth programming also starts at 10 a.m. Babysitting is provided for younger children.

Then, join one of these sessions with guest speakers at around 11 a.m.:

1. “U.S.-Israel Relations After the Mid term Elections” led by Nathan Cohen, St. Louis Council AIPAC co-chair

2. “Chesed (Loving Kindness): Why It Is an Essential Jewish Trait” led by Rabbi Chaim Bogopulsky of NHBZ

3. “Passing the Torch: The Transition from Avraham to Yitzchak” led by Rabbi Chesky Freund of the St. Louis Kollel

There will be a free kiddush lunch for all around noon. All events are free and open to the public. No reservations are required. For more information, call 314-991-2100.

SUNDAY | NOV. 20

15th Annual Blumenthal Memorial Concert

The annual Blumenthal Memorial Con cert, performed by pianist Fred Blumenthal and Cantor Linda Blumenthal, will take place at 2 p.m. both in person at Congregation B’nai Amoona and streamed live at www. bnaiamoona.com. This concert is free to attend with a suggested donation of $18 going to Mitzvah Corps at B’nai Amoona.

Jewish War Veterans meeting

Jewish War Veterans Post 644 meetings take place via Zoom at 10 a.m. the third Sunday each month. For more information, contact Post 644 Commander Ellis Frohman at 636-519-7512.

Kolot Thanksgiving cooking program at B’nai Amoona

The women of our Kolot Rosh Chodesh group are invited to a special Thanksgiving themed evening of cooking at Congregation B’nai Amoona at 7 p.m.

NHBZ meet and greet Rabbi Chaim Bogopulsky

NHBZ invites all members of the St. Louis Jewish community to meet and greet our new Rabbi Chaim Bogopulsky and his family from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Refreshments will be served. No RSVPs are required. For more information, call 314-991-2100.

See related news brief on page 8A.

Gathering for gratitude

Everyone is invited to join together in a communal expression of gratitude from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Congregation Shaare Emeth as we gather to help those in need. Our ser vice projects will benefit Peter and Paul and the residents of Doorways, Room at the Inn, Oak Hill Elementary School, the Humane Society, Lasagna Love, Hope Clinic, and Ronald McDonald House. Registration is required by Nov. 17 at sestl.co/gratitude.

MONDAY | NOV. 21

Mamas in Pajamas: Lessons for ladies from the Torah

Learn something meaningful and inspiring

from the weekly Torah portion with Mimi David at 8:30 p.m. in the comfort of your home. Go to zoom.us/j/9699246316 or dial in to 312-626-6799 and enter meeting ID 9699246316.

TUESDAY | NOV. 22

Home DIY with Coffee Talk featuring Howard Katzman

If you’ve had nagging questions about your home or condo and didn’t know who to ask without paying a high fee for a service call, this month’s Coffee Talk, at 8:30 a.m., is perfect for you. Howard Katzman has been in the construction industry for over 40 years in metro Atlanta and can provide answers to your home renovation and repair questions in a clear and concise way. He owned and managed a custom home reno vation firm for 20-plus years and since has been on the consulting side, helping home owners and builders make homes more comfortable and energy efficient. Visit https://bit.ly/Nov22CT to register. For more info, email Chrissy Bellizzi at CBellizzi@ ncjwstl.org or call 314.993.5181.

SUNDAY | NOV. 27

NHBZ all-you-can eat pizza night

Mark your calendar from 5-7 p.m. to enjoy a dine-in buffet of delicious kosher pizza, pasta, salad, garlic bread plus a dessert and beverage. There are even movies for your kids. Prices are $15 for adults, $7 for kids ages 4-10, and free for kids ages 3 and under. The pizza cheese is Cholov Yisroel and pareve crusts are available upon request. Charge cards are accepted. For more information, call 314-991-2100.

TUESDAY | NOV. 29

Tech Tutor: Computer lab helper

Having trouble understanding how to use Facebook? Would you like to see how Zoom works? From 2-4 p.m., Tech Tutors will pro vide a Chromebook and a coach for one-onone training to give you the skills you need to accomplish your goals. Tech Tutor is support ed by a grant from the Women’s Auxiliary Foundation for Jewish Aged. Register for this free Mirowitz Center program by visiting http://bit.ly/Register_MirowitzCenter or email skemppainen@mirowitzcenter.org.

WEDNESDAY | NOV. 30

For better or for purse

You don’t have to be a fashionista to appreciate beautiful purses, handbags and pocketbooks. Anna Maria Lehrke is sharing the “Abbie White Collection” of antique eve ning bags at a special in-person exhibit at the Mirowitz Center from 1 to 3 p.m. Enjoy her stylish collection of over 200 antique and vintage evening bags. Register for this free Mirowitz Center program by visiting

NOV

Local Jewish organizations and congregations can submit calendar items to news@ stljewishlight.org. All items received by 5 p.m. the Friday before the publication date will be considered for that edition.

733-9813, or email skemppainen@mirow itzcenter.org.

WEDNESDAY | DEC. 7

How Jews helped make Missouri

Join Professor Mara Cohen Ioannides of Missouri State University and a St. Louis Jew ish Book Festival author, from 2-3:15 p.m., as she highlights Missouri’s rich Jewish history. Cohen Ioannides’ book, “Jews of Missouri: An Ornament to Israel,” was recently published. Following the talk, St. Louisan and Past Board Chair of Jewish Federation, Nancy Siwak, will share how her family maintained a Jewish identity growing up Jewish in rural Sullivan. Register for this free, online Mirowitz Center program by visiting http://bit.ly/Register_ MirowitzCenter or email skemppainen@ mirowitzcenter.org.

http://bit.ly/Register_MirowitzCenter or email skemppainen@mirowitzcenter.org.

THURSDAY | DEC. 1

JProStL plans PAUSE retreat for staff in 20s and 30s

See related news brief on page 8A.

STARTING | DEC. 1

New Jewish Theatre’s ‘Jerry’s Girls’ celebrates women in theater

The New Jewish Theatre continues its sea son with “Jerry’s Girls,” a Jerry Herman musi cal revue from Dec. 1 to 18. The musical brings together composer/lyricist Jerry Her man’s “greatest hits,” from “Mame” to “Milk and Honey,” “Hello Dolly!” to “La Cage Aux Folles.” Performances are Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 4 and 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m. at the J’s Wool Studio Theatre, 2 Millstone Campus Dr. Individual tickets $49$54. Tickets are available by phone at 314442-3283 or at newjewishtheatre.org.

See related news brief on page 8A.

FRIDAY | DEC. 2

NHBZ Shabbat dinner

Join family and friends in an evening of spirited ruach and fun at NHBZ’s Shabbat dinner. Services begin at 4:20 p.m. followed by a dinner at approximately 5:15 p.m. Chef Norma Rubin will be preparing this special Shabbat meal. Prices are: $25 for adults; $12 for children (4-10 years old); free for chil dren ages 3 and under. RSVP by November 18 by calling 314-991-2100 or by sending an e-mail to office@nhbz.org.

SATURDAY | DEC. 3

Mini minyan at B’nai Amoona

Beginning at 10:15 a.m., young children and their families are invited to B’nai Amoo na for a morning of singing and activities in celebration of Shabbat. Following Mini Min yan, we will join with the rest of the congre gation for a special kid-friendly kiddush.

TUESDAY | DEC. 6

St. Louis Cardinals: A new chapter

The St. Louis Cardinals will begin a new chapter in the upcoming season now that baseball greats Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina have taken their final bows. Join vet eran sports journalist Rob Rains from 10-11 a.m. as he reflects on their extraordinary careers and examines where the Cardinals are heading without the two potential Hall of Famers. This in-person program is provided in conjunction with FEL (Friends Enjoying Life), an organization supported by the Mirowitz Center. Register online at http:// bit.ly/Register_MirowitzCenter, call 314-

THURSDAY | DEC. 8

St. Louis author to discuss book

Join retired pediatrician Dr. Richard Laza roff from 2-3 p.m. as he discusses his sec ond book, “Illumination,” which tells the fic tional account of four generations of Jews. It shines a bright light on immigration and the subsequent challenges faced by many American Jewish families, including secular assimilation and success, antisemitism, and spiritual grounding in today’s hyper-con nected world. Register for this free, online Mirowitz Center program by visiting http:// bit.ly/Register_MirowitzCenter or email skemppainen@mirowitzcenter.org.

FRIDAY | DEC. 9

‘On the Record’ with Bob Cohn

On the second Friday of every other month, join On the Record hosted by Bob Cohn, editor-in-chief emeritus of the Jewish Light, to discuss films, plays, articles, and books on issues of concern to our communi ty from 11 a.m. to noon. This online program is provided in conjunction with FEL (Friends Enjoying Life), an organization supported by the Mirowitz Center. Register for this free, online Mirowitz Center program by visiting http://bit.ly/Register_MirowitzCenter or email skemppainen@mirowitzcenter.org.

FRI.-SUN. | DEC. 9-11

Jewish Mindfulness Center plans Chanukat HaNefesh

See related news brief on page 8A.

SATURDAY | DEC. 10

From ‘Pray to Play: Adult’s Night Out’ at B’nai Amoona

The next event in B’nai Amoona’s yearlong fundraiser welcomes adults to a special Havdalah and birthday celebration in honor of the Linda Rotskoff Early Childhood Center turning 50 years old. At 6:30 p.m. enjoy cocktails, appetizers and cake. Honorary co-chairs Harvey Greenstein and Linda Rotskoff will light the candles. There will also be an opportunity to view and purchase art created by preschoolers at the Linda Rotskoff Early Childhood Center.

TUESDAY | DEC. 13

Blood drive at Kol Rinah

Tzedek Team has partnered with Impact Life for a blood drive at Kol Rinah. Schedule your appointment to donate a unit of blood and save up to three lives. Masks and appointments are required for all donors. Kosher snacks will be provided. Donors must be healthy, weigh at least 110lbs, and be 17 or older (16 with a signed parent/ guardian consent). Hosted by Kol Rinah’s Tzedek Committee. Sign up at https://login.

Shaare Emeth welcomes Daniel Matt as scholar-in-residence See related news brief on

Professor Mara Cohen Ioannides of Missouri State University will speak Dec. 7 about her book on Missouri’s Jewish history.

THE ST. LOUIS KAPLAN FELDMAN HOLOCAUST MUSEUM GRAND REOPENING

The St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum officially reopened to the public Nov. 2, following a 2½-year, $25 million renovation and expansion. Dignitaries and members of the public heard re marks from local leaders and toured the museum’s new 36,000 square foot space.

For a gallery of images from the opening, visit stljewishlight.org/multimedia.

SP TLIGHT

PHOTOS FROM RECENT JEWISH COMMUNITY EVENTS

SUBMIT A PHOTO: Have a photo of a recent Jewish community event you would like to submit? Email the image and a suggested caption to news@stljewishlight.org.

GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY

VIEW MORE ONLINE: stljewishlight.org/multimedia

ALL PHOTOS: BILL MOTCHAN

Above, Carol Staenberg, the newly-appointed Board Chair of the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum, speaks at the museum’s reopening event Nov. 2. At right, Cheryle Feldman Atkin speaks, flanked by Sara Atkin, David Kaplan and Gloria Kaplan Feldman.

Above, from left, Gerry Greiman, Gloria Kaplan Feldman and and State Sen. Jill Schupp.

At the opening, Holocaust Survivor Rachel Miller greets Andrew Rehfeld, former Jewish Federation of St. Louis president and CEO.

Daniel Reich, former education director at the Holocaust Museum, greets Vida “Sister” Gold man Prince, who has been a longtime volunteer and leader at the museum.

Dignitaries and museum leaders listen to the remarks at the opening event.