Author: David Rutman

These past few weeks, I have watched commencement ceremonies at both universities and high schools. The featured content is either the commencement address or valedictorian speech. Sadly, the audience holds its breath from start to finish, wondering if the seemingly pre-approved words will be political, racist, polarizing, and offensive. My own daughter is graduating from […]

You may have already stumbled upon the headline: The world does not particularly like Israel, and to be precise, the world likes Israel less today than it did a year ago, though even then it was not exactly a passionate romance. We learn this depressing data point from a recent Pew Research Center poll that […]

Who really killed JFK? “JFK,” Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie, ignited a firestorm. Was it the Russians, the Cubans, the Mafia, the CIA? In 1993, author and journalist Gerald Ponser released “Case Closed” in which he concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin and there was no conspiracy. Stone’s film was the catalyst for […]

The closing line of the graduate student address at Sarah Lawrence College’s 98th Commencement on May 8 was “Free Palestine.” It was not an aside. It was the final beat of remarks delivered from the institutional podium by a student the College had selected, platformed, and presented to the assembled community as the voice of […]

Someone should really have a serious conversation with the chieftains of the Democratic Party. It’s high time for a pulse check—a true heart-to-heart. Are the events of the past few months really what they had in mind? Perhaps circumstances simply got away from them. A few candidates are demonstrably out of step with the Democratic […]

A graduate of Ohr Somayach Monsey, Oxford University, Jagiellonian University and the University of Oregon, Rabbi Yonah Bookstein’s scholarly bona fides are beyond reproach. And as a student, he relocated to Poland in the ‘90s with a number of aims in mind, with the Holocaust on top of the list. “When I got back to […]

Community outreach has long been important to Rabbi Yonah Bookstein. But sitting in his modest upper-story office on Pico Boulevard, the founder of Pico Shul offers no hint of his extensive background. How does the rabbi see his career? “I’m at an amazing point,” he said. “I have been in Jewish communal work for more […]

On a construction site in Pan Pacific Park, where exposed beams and unfinished pathways are rapidly giving way to a bold new vision, two descendants of Holocaust survivors stood side-by-side, looking at what will soon become the Goldrich Cultural Center, a major expansion of Holocaust Museum LA. Overlooking the park and just steps from The […]

On Sunday, May 31, a record 50,000 people marched in the Israel Day Parade in New York. Of those, 40 were Shlichim (Israeli emissaries) from The Jewish Agency for Israel. They were part of a joint float organized with the World Zionist Organization and American Zionist Movement. “The Shlichim are a living bridge to the […]