Author: David Rutman

Trendsetting Rabbi Laura Geller – the first rabbi to give birth and the first to lead a major metropolitan synagogue – retired from Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills a decade ago, but she has been busy ever since, teaching, speaking and writing books. Raised in the Boston suburb of Brookline, Mass., she grew up in […]

Hollywood loves makeovers. New hair. New teeth. New accent. Sometimes even a new birthday. And if all else fails — change your name. When Mili Avital arrived in America in the early 1990s, she received the standard Hollywood welcome package. “Your name is too foreign.” “Your accent is too Israeli.” “Maybe audiences would connect better […]

JD Vance’s appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” was disturbing but not surprising. To be clear, Vance said what the thought he needed to make sure he gets President Donald Trump’s endorsement for the 2028 presidential election. Trump has a habit of encouraging employees to have competing ideas and see who the public likes better. […]

On Jul. 8, 2026 former White House chief of staff, once Chicago Mayor, and possible Democratic presidential candidate Rahm Emanuel gave a speech at Tel Aviv University about U.S.-Israel relations. He did not hold back. Emanuel begins by stating that he understands why Israelis might dismiss criticism from outside. Palestinian leaders, after all, have refused offer after […]

On May 10, 1951, more than 20,000 people packed New York’s Madison Square Garden to hear Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, make an extraordinary appeal. The young State of Israel was less than three years old, struggling to absorb hundreds of thousands of immigrants while building its economy from the ground up. Ben-Gurion was […]

To stop or not to stop at a Kristallnacht monument? That is the question (at least for all German tour guides giving city walking tours to non-Jewish foreign exchange students). I was about to start a “study abroad” semester at the Technical University of Dortmund. After arriving, I learned that a city walking tour was […]

Habits die hard. In the fight against antisemitism, we’ve always assumed that it’s bad enough to label something or someone “antisemitic.” After all, just as racism is taboo, so is antisemitism. The problem is that an emotion is not an action. Hating Jews is an emotion. And just like any emotion or any label, it […]

Movie audiences everywhere await the premier of Christopher Nolan’s star-studded summer blockbuster, “The Odyssey,” featuring Matt Damon. Meanwhile, another movie, “Citizen Vigilante,” helmed by a largely unknown German director and starring Armie Hammer, who suffered the cancellation consequences of #MeToo, failed to get a commercial release. Nonetheless, “Citizen Vigilante” tops Amazon’s VOD streaming list at […]

As many expect Maine Democratic Senate Graham Platner to withdraw from the race after a rape accusation by Jenny Raciot, many Jews are wondering: Why wasn’t his Nazi tattoo (that he had changed after nearly 20 years) enough for people to not want him to win, in looking at not only Maine residents but Democrats […]

US-European tensions at the Ankara NATO summit highlight the tectonic changes in the US global posture. America First may be the most misunderstood doctrine in modern American foreign policy. A lot of people, including plenty of Republicans, hear it as isolationism, a signal that the United States plans to pull back from the world. Democrats […]