קהילת יהודי סנט לואיז, מיסורי ארה"ב

Isidor Bush (Busch) (1822-1898), publisher and viticulturist, and American frontier pioneer, born in Prague, Czech Republic (then part of the Austrian Empire, later Czechoslovakia). Bush never attended school or college, but was educated by private teachers and Jewish scholars. He was introduced into the printing business as an employee in his father's plant in Vienna, Austra. Already when he was 15 years of age, he was intrumental in helping to set up an edition of the Talmud. He became the youngest publisher in Vienna. Eventually, the firm of Von Schmid & Bush became the largest Hebrew publishing house in the world.

In 1842 he initiated the "Jahrbuch fuer Israeliten", the first almanac by Jewish authors for a Jewish public. Together with I. S. Reggio he published the Hebrew-German "Bikkurei ha-Ittim ha-Hadashim" (one issue, Vienna, 1845), in which he emphasized the need to learn and use the Hebrew language.

Following the repression of the 1848 revolutions, Bush left the Austrian Empire and immigrated to the USA settling in New York in 1949. He founded a book store and publishred for three months "Israels Herald" (in German), the first American Jewish weekly.

Bush moved to St. Louis, where he opened a general store in partnership with his brother-in-law, Charles Taussig, and began to prosper. In 1857 founded the People's Savings Bank, and served as its president until 1863.

During the American Civil War, Bush was appointed aide to Unionist General John C. Frémont in 1861, serving with the rank of captain until 1862. Bush was named general agent of the St. Louis and Iron Mountain Railroad and held that position until 1868. In 1864 he was one of the St. Louis delegates to the Missouri Constitutional Convention, and served as a member of the State Board of Immigration from 1865 to 1877.

During the later years of his life he won wide recognition as a viticulturist, planting vineyards in Bushberg, in Jefferson County MO, a large tract of land on the immediate outskirts of St, Louis that he purchased in 1851. He published the Bushberg Catalogue, a manual on grape-growing that later on was translated into many languages. In 1870, Isador Bush created the firm of Isidor Bush & Co. – a wine and liquor business.

Bush was one of the founders of B'nei El Temple, in St. Louis, and of the Cleveland Orphan Asylum (1868). In 1873 he was elected grand president of the St. Louis lodge of the B'nai B'rith. Bush was an active member and vice-president (1882) of the Missouri Historical Society.

Bush died in St. Louis in 1898.

Gabor (Gabriel) Szego (1895-1985), mathematician, born in Kunhegyes, Hungary (then part of Austria-Hungary). He studied at the Universities of Budapest, Berlin, Goettingen and Vienna, the latter bestowing upon him a PhD degree in 1918.

He was lecturer on Mathematics at the University of Berlin from 1921 onwards; in 1925 he was named associate professor. From 1926 to 1934 he was full professor of mathematics at the University of Koenigsberg, Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russia). In 1934 Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, invited him to occupy its chair of mathematics. From 1938 on he was professor of mathematics at Stanford University, where he helped build up the department until his retirement in 1966.

In addition to numerous memoranda to the mathematical press, Szego published a German version of A. G. Webster's "Partial Differential Equations" ("Partielle Differncialgleichungen der mathematischen Physik"; 1930) and "Aufgaben und Lehrsaatze aus der Analysis" (with G. Polya, 2 vol., 1925).

Szego died in Palo Alto, California.

ריטה לוי-מונטלצ'יני (1909-2012), ניורולוגית, כלת פרס נובל לרפואה לשנת 1986, נולדה בטורינו, איטליה. סיימה את לימודיה באוניברסיטת טורינו והמשיכה לעבוד במקום. ב-1939, עם פרסום חוקי הגזע נאסר עליה להמשיך את מחקריה באוניברסיטה. היא המשיכה את מחקרה במעבדה מאולתרת בביתה. את תוצאות המחקר הזה פרסמה בבלגיה. ב-1947 עברה לאוניברסיטת וושינגטון בסנט לואיס, מיזורי, ועבדה בשיתוף עם פרופסור ויקטור המבורגר. ב-1977 שבה לאיטליה ומונתה לראש המחלקה לביולוגיה של התא במכון למחקר מדעי ברומא.

Ferdinand Isserman (1898-1972), Reform rabbi, born in Belgium, who immigrated to the United States with his family in 1906 and settled in Newark, New Jersey. He graduated from Central High School in Newark and then enrolled at Cincinnati's Hebrew Union College in 1914. While a rabbinic student at HUC, Isserman also attended the University of Cincinnati. He played on the university basketball team.

In 1922, Isserman was ordained as a rabbi and became an assistant rabbi in Philadelphia. He then moved to Toronto, Canada, in 1925 to become the rabbi at Toronto Hebrew Congregation. While in Toronto, Isserman arranged Canada’s first pulpit exchange between a rabbi and a Christian minister. In 1929, he became the rabbi of Temple Israel in St. Louis, USA, and retained the position until 1963. During his tenure at Temple Israel, Isserman was one of the most prominent rabbis in the United States.

In 1932, Isserman gave the opening prayer at the Republican National Convention, which nominated incumbent President Herbert Hoover. Prior to World War II, Isserman took three fact-finding missions to Nazi Germany (in 1933, 1935, and 1937), and learned of the existence of concentration camps. Upon his return to the United States, Isserman warned Americans of the evils of Nazism, but few people believed that the camps indeed existed. During World War II he served with the American Red Cross.

During his career, Isserman encouraged interfaith understanding and Jewish involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. For some years he was vice-chairman of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

Saul Zaentz (1921-2013), an independent film producer who adapted literary works for the screen and won best-picture Academy Awards for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Amadeus” and “The English Patient”, born in Passaic, New Jersey USA, one of five children of Morris and Goldie Zaentz, Jewish refugees from a shtetl in eastern Poland.

Zaentz ran away from home at 15, sold peanuts at ballgames in St. Louis, made a little money gambling and traveled around the USA, hitchhiking and riding freight trains. He enlisted in the army in World War II and served in Africa, Europe and the Pacific. After the war he studied at Rutgers University, worked on a chicken farm and took a business course in St. Louis. He settled in San Francisco in 1950 and began working for a record distributor. In 1955 he was hired as a salesman by Fantasy Records, a label whose roster included the jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, the poet Allen Ginsberg and the comedian Lenny Bruce. He also managed tours for Duke Ellington, Stan Getz and others.

Zaentz was over 50 when he began making films, after having already made a fortune in the music business from the success of the rock group Creedence Clearwater Revival and the acquisition of a formidable jazz catalog. In a business driven by celebrity stars and box-office profits, he staked his reputation and his money on serious, intelligent films, often based on offbeat prizewinning books or plays, featuring rising stars and relatively untested directors passionate about the collaboration.

His major hits (each a decade apart), “Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975), “Amadeus” (1984) and “The English Patient” (1996), won 22 Oscars for his actors, actresses, directors and other contributors. And on Oscar night in 1997, Zaentz won the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for lifetime achievement and his third best-picture award. It crowned a career and an evening of triumph, with nine Academy Awards conferred on “The English Patient”. Zaentz financed his own pictures when possible to retain creative control, selected his own stars and directors, and shot on location to capture the beauties of an African desert, a ruined Tuscan monastery or the jungles of Central America. Colleagues said he did not interfere with his artists’ work.

Bernard Illowy (1812-1871), rabbi, born in Kolin, he was ordained by Moshe Sofer in Pressburg (now Bratislava, Slovakia), studied Hebrew at the rabbinical school in Padua and got his doctorate at the University of Budapest. Fluent in various languages, he taught languages at the College of Znaim (Znojmo). In 1848 Illowy delivered revolutionary addresses to the forces passing through Kolin as a result of which he was deprived of rabbinic office and moved to the United States, where he was the only Orthodox rabbi with a doctorate. He served in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Syracuse, Baltimore, New Orleans and Cincinnati. He strongly opposed the dominant Reform movement.

ולדימיר גולשמן (1893- 1972), מנצח. נולד בפריס, צרפת. ב-1919 ייסד את סדרת הקונצרטים שנקראה על-שמו, וניצח עליהם במשך שנים אחדות. הוא התרכז במלחינים הצרפתים בני תקופתו – הונגר ,מיו, פולנק ואחרים. בשנות העשרים פעל כמנצח אורח של תזמורות מרכזיות הן באירופה והן באמריקה. בתחילת שנות השלושים מונה למנצח של התזמורת הסימפונית של סנט.לואיס, ומילא תפקיד זה במשך עשרים שנים. בשנים 1961-1958 היה מנהל מוסיקלי של התזמורת של טולסה, ובשנים 1970-1964 היה מנהל התזמורת של דנוור. ניצח על שתי נגינות בכורה בולטות: בלט מכני מאת ג'ורג' אנתייל, ב-1926, והקונצ'רטו לכינור ולתזמורת מאת אריך וולפגאנג קורנגולד, ב-1947. נפטר בניו-יורק.