Author: David Rutman

When Fiddler on the Roof was staged at The Soraya at CSUN, audiences encountered more than Sholom Aleichem’s beloved characters brought to life on stage. Alongside the production, the David Labkovski Project presented ‘Through the Eyes of David Labkovski: Sholom Aleichem and His Heroes,’ an exhibition that offered a visual journey into the shtetl world […]

Maya Vorobyov grew up in Ramle, Israel, a mixed city with both Jews and Arabs. Her parents were immigrants from the Soviet Union, and her grandparents were Holocaust survivors. After studying at Reichman University, she left home to work as The Jewish Agency’s Israel Fellow at the Hillel Foundation of Orange County, which is where […]

In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s horrific assassination, I posted on social media, like many others, that I was shattered by his murder while he was speaking on a campus. Kirk was a hero of the young right with millions of followers, appearing at universities across the country to debate the issues. I often disagreed […]

Celebrating its fifth anniversary, Our Big Kitchen Los Angeles (OBKLA) recently partnered with The A List, a top marketing firm, for a week of service dedicated to giving back. A List founder Ashlee Margolis, alongside UTA’s Jacob Fenton, Uzo Aduba, and Lisa Rinna, joined volunteers in preparing and distributing nourishing meals and baked goods for […]

In August, Our Big Kitchen Los Angeles — aka The Margaret Feder OBKLA — celebrated its fifth anniversary of providing meals, love, unity and community. The nonprofit welcomes volunteers in two-hour sessions to prepare fresh, kosher meals for those who are food insecure in Los Angeles. They are then distributed through a variety of partner […]

Recently, a rare occurrence took place at the Laugh Factory Comedy Club in Reno, Nevada.  I was booked alongside Avi Liberman and Howard Nave — a three-man lineup of funny Jews. In the late 1960s and ’70s, this was anything but rare. Time Magazine once estimated that 80% of stand-up comics back then were Jewish. […]

Growing up, Rabbi Bryan Borenstein loved baseball. He would play hours of catch each day with his dad and brothers, working on his pitching in the front yard and spending summers at the Baseball Development Center (the BDC). There, he was coached by college, minor league, and major league players. Dodgers players would drop by […]

The lazy days of summer’s end skipped the United Kingdom and Australia this year. Mass protests swept across the Western world. Tens of thousands gathered in U.K. cities such as London, Epping, Bristol, Birmingham, Falkirk, Gloucester, Newcastle and Essex, where the streets were decorated with Union Jack flags. There were smaller rallies in Scotland and […]

Bruce Weinstein’s eating philosophy is simple: cook, share food, enjoy. “Eat real ingredients. … It’ll make you feel better,” Weinstein told the Journal. “[You’ll be] easy to get along with and people will like you.” Weinstein is a food writer and author of 40 books, 38 of which are cookbooks. His latest, written with husband […]