Thousands of people packed the Lewis & Clark Boat House parking lot along the Missouri River on Sunday for the sixth annual St. Charles Jewish Festival, a free event that has grown from a backyard barbecue into what organizers call the largest Jewish celebration in the region. Families ate kosher food, browsed a marketplace known as The Shuk, and listened to live music from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., all in a county that still has no brick-and-mortar synagogue.
The festival was hosted by the Chabad Jewish Center of St. Charles County, according to the Jewish Federation of St. Louis. Rabbi Chaim Landa, who co-directs the center with his wife Bassy Landa, visited Fox 2 News at 9 to discuss the event, telling the station about the festival's growth and touching on rising antisemitism, as reported by FOX 2. The couple founded the center in 2019 as an affiliate of Chabad of Greater St. Louis to give Jewish families west of the Missouri River a dedicated hub, per the St. Louis Jewish Light.
From a Backyard Cookout to a Regional Draw
The festival's scale is a relatively recent development. It started seven years ago as an informal barbecue for roughly 100 people before expanding into an annual event that now draws more than 4,000 attendees, the outlet reports. That growth tracks with a broader demographic shift: the paper notes the surge reflects an influx of Jewish families moving west of the Missouri River into St. Charles County.
An estimated 5,800 Jewish residents now live in the county, according to the 2024 Greater St. Louis Jewish Community Study released in March 2025 and cataloged by Berman Jewish DataBank. Notably, 41% of local Jewish households have at least one child living at home, a statistic that helps explain the festival's emphasis on family entertainment and its position as a cultural touchstone for young families settling in the exurbs.
No Synagogue, So the Community Gathers Elsewhere
Despite that growing population, St. Charles County contains no brick-and-mortar synagogue buildings, according to earlier Jewish Light reporting, which found that exurban growth driven by affordable housing and schools has outpaced the development of formal religious infrastructure. As a result, local Jewish residents rely heavily on community centers, home gatherings, and public festivals like Sunday's event for cultural and religious connection.
The Chabad Jewish Center has taken steps toward a permanent home. In 2022, the organization received a 9.6-acre property donation in O'Fallon, Missouri, at East Wabash Street and T.R. Hughes Boulevard, from the family of the late Leonard Kaplan, whose grandfather hosted the county's first synagogue gatherings in his home during the 1920s, according to ChabadInfo. In February, Landa was named associate director of Chabad of Greater St. Louis while keeping his role at the St. Charles center, formalizing an expanded role in guiding the region's growth; his parents founded Chabad of Greater St. Louis in 1981.
Celebration Amid Rising Concerns
Landa's comments on antisemitism during the Fox 2 segment came against a backdrop of documented increases in anti-Jewish incidents statewide. The Anti-Defamation League recorded 105 antisemitic incidents in Missouri during 2024, a record that mirrored a national surge to 9,354 total incidents, per the Jewish Federation of St. Louis. In August 2025, federal and local law enforcement launched a hate-crime investigation after a firebombing destroyed three vehicles alongside antisemitic graffiti in Clayton, prompting advocacy groups to offer a $30,000 reward; the suspect remained at large following the attack.
State lawmakers have also weighed in. In February, the Missouri House of Representatives passed House Bill 2061 by a 109-21 margin, requiring public K-12 schools and higher education institutions to integrate the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism into their conduct policies. The measure came amid a string of local bias incidents, including an April case in which taggers hit five cars with swastikas in a Benton Park alley in St. Louis.
Against that backdrop, Sunday's festival stood as both a joyful showcase of Jewish culture and a visible assertion of community presence in a county still building its institutional footprint. Landa previously spoke to Hoodline about community resilience during last year's commemorations marking one year since the October 7 attacks, underscoring a theme that has carried through much of his public messaging: that gathering openly, even amid security concerns, remains central to sustaining Jewish life west of the Missouri River.
