Kenneth Spetner

Ken Spetner spent his adult life building Torah in St. Louis.¹ He came home from the Second World War, where as a young naval officer on a base with no Jewish chaplain he had led the Passover Seder for the sailors and counselled his fellow servicemen,²³ and set to work. His family remembers his battle cry: “We have to make St. Louis into a Torah community.”⁴

Over the next half century he led, funded or helped to found many of the institutions of Orthodox life in the city, and served Torah Judaism nationally as a director of Torah Umesorah, the Orthodox Union and the National Council of Young Israel.⁵ He made his living in life insurance, and gave much of it away.⁶

What he built

• Young Israel of St. Louis, which he served as president⁵
• St. Louis Rabbinical College, a yeshiva brought from Lakewood, which he supported, learned in and led as president⁷⁵
• Torah Academy High School for girls, which he helped establish and led for its first four years⁸
• Aish HaTorah St. Louis (1979), the first Aish branch outside Israel, which he brought to the city⁹
• Agudas Israel of St. Louis (1981), which he was the guiding force in establishing and funding¹⁰
• Torah Prep (1987), the school he helped found and named¹¹¹²
• The St. Louis Kollel (1991), whose scholars he was “the one behind” bringing to the city¹³

Read his story →

Sources

1. Gateways to Greatness (00:00), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

2. “Passover Seder for Navy personnel, Guantánamo City, Cuba, 1944 (photograph, with inscription on the reverse)”, Spetner family collection, 1944. ↩

3. Dare Something Worthy (06:18), Transamerica, 1994. ↩

4. Gateways to Greatness (22:36), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

5. Who's Who in American Jewry, 1980, Standard Who’s Who, 1980. (Internet Archive) ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. Dare Something Worthy (21:26), Transamerica, 1994. ↩

7. Gateways to Greatness (20:36), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

8. “What kind of a man sells for Occidental? (Occidental Life advertisement)”, Sports Illustrated, 27 November 1972. (Internet Archive) ↩

9. Rabbi Steven Burg, “Meet Me in St. Louis”, Aish, 19 June 2022. (archived) ↩

10. Dare Something Worthy (11:56), Transamerica, 1994. ↩

11. Dare Something Worthy (12:28), Transamerica, 1994. ↩

12. Gateways to Greatness (28:19), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

13. Gateways to Greatness (30:40), Spetner family, 2026. ↩