Image courtesy of the St. Louis Jewish Light
The 50th anniversary of the St. Louis Jewish Light weekly newspaper is more than just a simcha (happy occasion); it’s an important point of reflection for a minority that has faced trials and triumphs from Town & Country to Tel Aviv. We asked the Light’s staff for the biggest news stories they’ve covered over the past 50 years. Here are their choices, in their words.
A sniper shooting at a local synagogue: A shooting outside Brith Sholom Kneseth Israel in Richmond Heights, which resulted in the death of 42-year-old Gerald Gordon, captured headlines in October 1977. Gordon had been one of 200 guests at the bar mitzvah service of Ricky Kalina on Oct. 8, 1977. At the trial for the sniper killing of Gordon more than 20 years later, neo-Nazi Joseph Paul Franklin told a St. Louis County courtroom how he wanted to kill as many Jews as possible and had traveled from state to state to do so. Franklin is currently on death row. In May 2010, editor Ellen Futterman revisited the incident, interviewing both Kalina and Franklin, among others, in an award-winning series on hate crimes.
The death of I.E. Millstone: The apparent suicide of 102-year-old philanthropist and business magnate I.E. Millstone in May 2009 shocked and saddened not only the St. Louis Jewish community, but also the secular community. Of the many contributions that Millstone made locally, he was perhaps best known for his bold vision to purchase 108 acres at Lindbergh Boulevard and Schuetz Road in the 1950s as the new location for the St. Louis Jewish Community Center. The campus bears his name.
A reporter’s conflict of interest: Donald Grant, the United Nations correspondent for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was regarded by the Jewish community as extremely anti-Israel in his coverage. In 1969, a St. Louis Jewish Light investigation revealed that Grant was married to the former Mary Frances Hagen, a correspondent for Look magazine who shared a desk at the U.N. with Grant. Hagen had been convicted of spying for Syria while in Israel and served time in an Israeli prison. She also had been the mistress of Syria’s ambassador to the U.N. Grant had not disclosed these facts to the Post-Dispatch. He was given early retirement and wrote charming stories about fishing in Doneen, Ireland, for the next several years.
Same sex commitment announcements: In April 2004, the paper's board of trustees decided by a narrow vote (9-7) to accept same-sex commitment announcements into its Simcha (celebration) section. At the time, the decision—which was groundbreaking among local publications and among Jewish publications nationally—was both heralded and deeply criticized in letters to the editor and commentaries. While same-sex announcements have been infrequent, the Light continues to run them as they are received.
A war in Israel: Editor Geoffrey Fisher was in Israel when the June 1967 Arab-Israeli Six Day War broke out. He telexed his stories directly from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. In October 1973, the Yom Kippur War caught Jews all over the world by surprise. The St. Louis Jewish community convened a rally in support of Israel, drawing 6,000 people. One of the Jewish Light’s founders, Al Fleishman, flew to Israel and telephoned copy back to the Light for publication.
A raid at Entebbe: On July 4, 1976, coinciding with the United States Bicentennial, the Israel Defense Forces staged a dramatic rescue of 103 passengers from an Air France jetliner that had been hijacked by both members of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the German radical Baader-Meinhof Gang. All of the passengers except for one were rescued. Milton Movitz, an active member of the St. Louis Jewish community and later president of the paper's board of trustees, happened to be in Israel in the days before, during, and after the rescue, and reported on the response in Israel, which was featured in a page-one story.
A peace treaty: In March 1979, editor-in-chief Bob Cohn was among 1,200 invited guests on the South Lawn of the White House to witness the signing of the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty by Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, witnessed by President Jimmy Carter, who negotiated the terms of the treaty. Cohn and photographer Mark Richman covered the event, which was headlined: “PEACE,” along with “Shalom” in Hebrew and “Salaam” in Arabic.
The Jewish community moves west: Some St. Louis Jews may remember thinking of the Jewish Community as revolving around Soldan High School and the Young Men’s Hebrew Association (YMHA), both on Union Boulevard, a few blocks north of Delmar. The YMHA would become the Jewish Community Center, and by the 1960s, it started a move west that was at the time criticized by some as moving too far from where St. Louis’ Jews live. By 1963, the JCC moved to new, more expansive grounds at the I.E. Millstone Jewish Community Campus in St. Louis County. However, the move was prescient, as much of the Jewish community would itself move west. While a vibrant part of the Jewish community still exists in University City, other substantial pockets of Jewish residents have taken root in areas like Olivette, Ladue, Creve Coeur, and Chesterfield (where the JCC opened a second facility in 1996).
