Ken Spetner

Biography

His Life

How Ken Spetner spent his adult life building Torah in St. Louis, and supporting Torah Judaism far beyond it.

Ken Spetner’s son opens the family’s film about him with a single sentence: “My father, Ken Spetner, spent his adult life building Torah in St. Louis, Missouri.”1 What follows is the story behind that sentence, drawn from records of the time, from the family’s own papers and photographs, and from the recollections of the people who worked alongside him. Every statement is footnoted to its source.

Roots

Kenneth Spetner was born in St. Louis on 7 April 1921, the son of Abraham Isaac and Rose (Raskas) Spetner.2 He was the oldest of three brothers, Ken, Buddy and Lee.34

His mother’s parents, Sholom Yitzchok (Isaac) and Rivka Raskas, came to St. Louis from Kovno, Lithuania, in 1882. They were one of the rare immigrant families whose children remained observant in America, and they sent their two oldest sons, Yudel (Julius) and Louis, back to Europe to study at the Slabodka yeshiva.5

Ken’s father died in 1937, and his mother took over the family’s insurance agency, becoming the first female insurance broker in St. Louis.6 Ken, still a teenager, was taken under the wing of his uncle Yudel Raskas, who brought him to shul to say Kaddish and taught him how to live as an observant Jew. “He knew how to run a Pesach Seder. He knew how to do all these things,” his son recalled.7

At Soldan High School he was an Honor Society marshal and junior captain of the track team, graduating in June 1937.8 Keeping Shabbos had a price: when meets fell on Saturday, the observant boys were allowed to compete only if they walked to the stadium, which one participant remembered as about ten miles away, and home again. “But they did, and they participated.”9 Ken went on to run track for Saint Louis University,10 graduating in 1941 with a B.S. in commerce.2

An officer at Guantánamo

During the Second World War, Ken was commissioned in the Supply Corps of the U.S. Naval Reserve,11 graduating from the Harvard Naval Officers School in 1943.12 Expecting to be sent to the South Pacific, he was posted instead to the Naval Operating Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba,13 where he served for two and a half years.14

There was no Jewish chaplain on the base, but there were Jewish sailors.15 The chaplains who came through were mostly Reform.16 So the young officer who knew the rituals filled the gap himself. In 1944 he conducted the Passover Seder for Navy personnel in Guantánamo City;17 in 1946 he led the Purim celebration from the pulpit.18 As a 1994 tribute to him put it, “Not being a man of the cloth, Ensign Spetner nevertheless finds his calling. Seeing that he can make a difference, he unofficially offers counsel to his fellow servicemen.”19

One Friday afternoon a visiting chaplain arrived, and Ken, seeing tzitzis hanging in the officers’ quarters, said, “Ah, a real one.”20 It was Rabbi Herschel Schacter, an Army chaplain stationed in Puerto Rico and, according to the inscription on their photograph together, the only Orthodox chaplain to visit the base during Ken’s tour. The two remained friends for life.21

Ken left the Navy as a lieutenant in 1946,1811 with a Navy Letter of Commendation.2 At a time when the war severed many young Jewish men from their tradition, his son believed it made Ken “more committed to his Yiddishkeit.”22

Young Israel

Back in St. Louis, Ken found his place in Young Israel, a movement that gave young American Jews a shul, Shabbos and a taste of learning.23 Through it he became close to Irving Bunim, the lay leader who kept Young Israel on a Torah path,2425 and through it he met Rita Krumbein of Brooklyn.26 They were married on 30 March 19492 and raised five children in Young Israel of St. Louis,27 where in 1961 Rita and Ken co-chaired the shul’s Purim Carnival.28

Ken served as president of Young Israel of St. Louis,229 and nationally as a director of the National Council of Young Israel, which gave him its Shofar Award.2 He was clear about what the shul was for. “The doors of Young Israel are open to every Jew who wishes to join, regardless of his level of observance,” he wrote in 1959, but “the standard of the synagogue must be kept high, and … the individual be raised, if possible, to the level of the synagogue; not bring the synagogue down to the level of the individual.”30

The yeshiva

Ken was never one to settle.31 With the Green family, he was part of the core group of baalei batim who brought a yeshiva from Lakewood to St. Louis: Reb Aharon Kotler sent Rabbi Shmuel Faivelson with a handful of students to open it.32 A full-time yeshiva was so new to the city that one early student compared it to “Martians coming into St. Louis.”33

Ken, though he had not been raised in that world, became deeply attached to it. He learned there himself, and when the yeshiva desperately needed money he announced publicly that he was giving $50,000, at a time when a house in St. Louis cost about $35,000.34 Its fundraising was run out of his office.35 He sat on the board of the St. Louis Rabbinical College, raised its funds,36 and served as its president.237 Its rosh yeshiva in later years was Rabbi Yitzchok Kleiman.38

A high school for girls

When his daughter finished elementary school, there was no Jewish high school for girls in St. Louis. “When something needs to be done, he goes out and does it, no matter what the odds are against it working,” she said. “My father went out and founded a school.”39 Ken helped establish the Torah Academy High School for girls and was its president for its first four years.36

Aish HaTorah

Ken’s home was always open to people finding their way to observance, many of whom came to his table as repeat guests.40 After the Six-Day War, as a movement of return grew in Israel, he had an idea: bring some of the young people doing outreach there to St. Louis. “It was always about, we have to make St. Louis into a Torah community,” his son recalled. “That was always his battle cry.”41

In 1978 he reached out to Rabbi Noach Weinberg’s Aish HaTorah in Jerusalem for help in stemming assimilation and intermarriage in his hometown.42 That year the young Rabbi Kalman Packouz and his wife spent a Shabbos at Ken’s home, and Rabbi Weinberg was urged to open a branch in St. Louis.43 Ken travelled to Israel, met the organisation’s leaders, personally coordinated the funding, including his own donations, and brought over two rabbis to start the program.44 He also seized on an offer from Arie Dulzin, chairman of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization, to partner with the Sochnut to seed it.45

Aish St. Louis opened in 1979,45 the first Aish HaTorah branch outside Israel.46 Aish’s leadership still calls him “the legendary lay leader” who brought Aish to St. Louis.46

A beis midrash, a school and a kollel

Ken covered the budget of Midwest NCSY and raised funds to keep it secure, according to one of the people who benefited from it; hundreds of young people became observant through it.47 He was a director of the Orthodox Union, NCSY’s parent organisation, and received its National Youth Leadership Award.248

As Aish brought new people to observance, they needed somewhere to keep growing. Agudas Israel of St. Louis was founded in 1981 as a beis midrash first and a shul second,4950 and Ken was the guiding force in establishing and funding it.51

In 1987, when families were leaving St. Louis for the Jewish education their children needed elsewhere, Ken stepped forward again: “Ken’s a future builder,” said one colleague, and he put “a lot of time and effort, money, concerns” into a new school.52 That school was Torah Prep, founded in 1987.53 When its founders came to him, then in his upper sixties, he was “at the edge of his seat, excited about it … he’s going at this with full power,” and it was Ken who suggested its name.54 When Ken died, his family asked that memorial contributions go to it.4

When the St. Louis Rabbinical College closed in 1991,55 the St. Louis Kollel was founded with four young scholars.56 One of its founders credits Ken as “the one behind” bringing its scholars to St. Louis, a mission his son Jonathan carried on.57 In 1993 Ken was still thanking its supporters and describing the “explosive growth” of Torah institutions in the city.58

Beyond St. Louis

Ken’s work took him far beyond his city. He was a director of Torah Umesorah, the national day-school movement, which honoured him with its Amudim Award;225 and he received the Avodas Hakodesh Award of Agudath Israel of America.2 He was “often summoned by Agudath Israel of America,” attending meetings with world leaders and speaking out on critical issues; “from Israel to the White House, he has given advice to leading dignitaries, clergy, and political leaders.”59 At Agudath Israel of America’s 54th national convention he was presented with a plaque, and in 1985 he addressed its convention in Rye, New York.6061

Around the end of 1979 he was photographed in Israel with prime minister Menachem Begin, defence minister Ezer Weizman and Rabbi Nota Schiller, dean of Ohr Somayach.62 In 1993 Chinuch Atzmai honoured him at its dinner in New York,63 and in 1998 he served on the organising committee of Am Echad, alongside Rabbi Moshe Sherer of Agudath Israel of America.64

A home and a heart

A young man new to observance, with nowhere to go for Shabbos in St. Louis, was approached at Young Israel by Ken: “You’re invited to my house every Shabbos, every Yom Tov, whatever you need.” Decades later he still kept Ken’s picture on his wall.65

When a refugee from Hungary, Henry Grossberg, arrived speaking little English, Ken found him work, enrolled his children in school, and later helped him obtain a licence to open a nursing home.66 In 1961 Ken was at the groundbreaking of the first Delmar Gardens nursing home, shovel in hand, with Henry and Barbara Grossberg behind him.67 Rita ran her own free loan fund for people in need.68 Friends joked that Ken tithed in reverse: that he kept ten percent of what he earned and gave away the rest.69

His work

Ken made his living in life insurance. He was an agent for Travelers from 1949 to 1960, and from 1961 a general agent for Occidental Life (later Transamerica).2 He qualified for the Million Dollar Round Table every year from 195336 and won many of his company’s top honours.70 His rule for the business was simple: “Never look at how much you will make on a case. Do what’s best for the client and you’ll always make a nice living.”6

His son saw the connection: Ken was “the quintessential life insurance salesman. He never gave up,” and it was that perseverance that allowed him to bring Torah to St. Louis.71

Jerusalem

Ken and Rita retired to Jerusalem, where he wrote a book-length account of building Torah in St. Louis. It remains an unpublished manuscript.72 He kept learning: in June 2000 he celebrated the completion of Meseches Shabbos at a siyum in Har Nof.73 With his brother Lee he placed a plaque in the Zichron Moshe synagogue in memory of their grandparents, Shalom Yitzchak and Shifra Rivka Raskas; their grandfather had served there as gabbai in the 1920s and 1930s.74 Rita passed away before him.4 Ken died on 12 September 2005 and was buried in Jerusalem.4

“Without Ken Spetner,” said one friend in 1994, “this community would be literally a desert.”75

Sources

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

  2. Who's Who in American Jewry, 1980, Standard Who’s Who, 1980. (Internet Archive) ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11

  3. Dare Something Worthy (03:15), Transamerica, 1994. ↩

  4. “Spetner, Kenneth (death notice)”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 13 September 2005. (archived) ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  5. Dr. Yitzchok Levine, “Glimpses Into American Jewish History, Part 23: Louis Raskas of St. Louis (1888–1974)”, The Jewish Press. (archived) ↩

  6. “About Spetner”, Spetner Associates, 23 June 2020. (archived) ↩ ↩2

  7. Gateways to Greatness (07:23), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

  8. “The Scrip, June 1937”, Soldan High School, St. Louis, June 1937. (archived) ↩

  9. Dare Something Worthy (04:36), Transamerica, 1994. ↩

  10. “The Archive, 1939”, Saint Louis University, 1939. (Internet Archive) ↩

  11. “Register of Commissioned and Warrant Officers of the United States Naval Reserve, 1 April 1953 (NAVPERS 15,009)”, U.S. Navy, Bureau of Naval Personnel, 1 April 1953. (Internet Archive) ↩ ↩2

  12. “Ensign Ken Spetner on graduation from the Harvard Naval Officers School, 1943 (photograph, with inscription on the reverse)”, Spetner family collection, 1943. Held by the Spetner family. ↩

  13. Dare Something Worthy (05:42), Transamerica, 1994. ↩

  14. K. Spetner, Officer-in-Charge, “‘Goodbye’: Supply Department memorandum, U.S. Naval Operating Base, Guantánamo Bay”, Spetner family collection, 29 March 1946. Held by the Spetner family. ↩

  15. Gateways to Greatness (07:03), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

  16. Gateways to Greatness (08:04), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

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

  18. “Lt. Ken Spetner at the pulpit, Purim, Guantánamo Bay, 16 March 1946 (photograph, with inscription on the reverse)”, Spetner family collection, 16 March 1946. ↩ ↩2

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

  20. Gateways to Greatness (08:24), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

  21. “Ken Spetner with Rabbi Herschel Schacter at Guantánamo Bay, 1944 (photograph, with inscription on the reverse)”, Spetner family collection, 1944. ↩

  22. Gateways to Greatness (06:43), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

  23. Gateways to Greatness (10:09), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

  24. Gateways to Greatness (10:30), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

  25. “Torah Umesorah dinner: Moses Feuerstein, Ken Spetner and Irving M. Bunim (photograph, with inscription on the reverse)”, Spetner family collection, 1964. ↩ ↩2

  26. Gateways to Greatness (10:50), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

  27. Gateways to Greatness (11:11), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

  28. “Young Israel of St. Louis Purim Carnival, Rita and Ken Spetner co-chairmen (photograph, with inscription on the reverse)”, Spetner family collection, 19 March 1961. Held by the Spetner family. ↩

  29. “American Synagogue Directory”, 1963. (Internet Archive) ↩

  30. Kenneth Spetner, “Letter to the editor”, National Jewish Post & Opinion, 23 October 1959. (Internet Archive) ↩

  31. Gateways to Greatness (12:32), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

  32. Gateways to Greatness (13:53), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

  33. Gateways to Greatness (16:34), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

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

  35. Gateways to Greatness (17:34), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

  36. “What kind of a man sells for Occidental? (Occidental Life advertisement)”, Sports Illustrated, 27 November 1972. (Internet Archive) ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  37. “Education Directory, Higher Education 1975–76: changes in chief executive officers”, U.S. Office of Education, 1976. (Internet Archive) ↩

  38. “Rav Yitzchok Kleiman zt”l”, Matzav, 2012. (archived) ↩

  39. Dare Something Worthy (13:15), Transamerica, 1994. ↩

  40. Gateways to Greatness (21:36), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

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

  42. Judy Waldman, “A Shul With A Story: Aish HaTorah St. Louis – Changing The World, One Jew At A Time”, The Jewish Press, 23 February 2020. (archived) ↩

  43. Rabbi Shraga Simmons, “Rabbi Kalman Packouz zt”l: Giant of Kindness and Innovation”, Aish, 20 November 2019. (archived) ↩

  44. Dare Something Worthy (11:19), Transamerica, 1994. ↩

  45. Mordechai Simon, “Aish HaTorah’s early roots”, St. Louis Jewish Light, 28 May 2009. (archived) ↩ ↩2

  46. Rabbi Steven Burg, “Meet Me in St. Louis”, Aish, 19 June 2022. (archived) ↩ ↩2

  47. Gateways to Greatness (24:38), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

  48. “Presentation of the UOJCA National Youth Leadership Award to Kenneth Spetner (photograph)”, Spetner family collection. ↩

  49. Gateways to Greatness (25:58), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

  50. “About Us”, Agudas Israel of St. Louis. (archived) ↩

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

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

  53. “Who We Are”, Torah Prep School. (archived) ↩

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

  55. Gateways to Greatness (29:40), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

  56. “Our Story”, St. Louis Kollel. (archived) ↩

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

  58. Kenneth Spetner, “Letter acknowledging a contribution to the St. Louis Kollel”, Spetner family collection, 28 July 1993. Held by the Spetner family. ↩

  59. Dare Something Worthy (13:46), Transamerica, 1994. ↩

  60. “Ken Spetner at the 54th National Convention of Agudath Israel of America (photograph)”, Spetner family collection. ↩

  61. “Ken Spetner addressing the convention of Agudath Israel of America, Rye, N.Y., 1985 (photograph, with inscription on the reverse)”, Spetner family collection, 1985. ↩

  62. Seth Mandell, “About 500 full-time students study with Ohr Somayach”, The Canadian Jewish News, 3 January 1980, p. 6. (Internet Archive) ↩

  63. “Chinuch Atzmai dinner, New York, 1993, at which Ken Spetner was honoured (photograph, with inscription on the reverse)”, Spetner family collection, 1993. ↩

  64. “Am Echad organizing committee”, The Jerusalem Post, 22 May 1998, p. 24. (Internet Archive) ↩

  65. Gateways to Greatness (25:18), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

  66. Dare Something Worthy (15:28), Transamerica, 1994. ↩

  67. “Groundbreaking for the first Delmar Gardens nursing home, University City, 1961 (photograph, with inscription on the reverse)”, Spetner family collection, 1961. Held by the Spetner family. ↩

  68. Dare Something Worthy (19:57), Transamerica, 1994. ↩

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

  70. Dare Something Worthy (16:35), Transamerica, 1994. ↩

  71. Gateways to Greatness (31:20), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

  72. Gateways to Greatness (00:21), Spetner family, 2026. ↩

  73. “Siyum on Meseches Shabbos, Har Nof, Jerusalem, 7 June 2000 (photograph, with inscription on the reverse)”, Spetner family collection, 7 June 2000. ↩

  74. “Presenting a plaque in memory of Shalom Yitzchak and Shifra Rivka Raskas, Zichron Moshe Synagogue, Jerusalem (photograph, with inscription on the reverse)”, Spetner family collection. ↩

  75. Dare Something Worthy (20:56), Transamerica, 1994. ↩