Author: David Rutman

We’ve just heard reports of another suicide by a young Israeli impacted by the Oct. 7 attack and the ensuing war. His name is added to the list of Nova survivors and frontline soldiers we’ve lost. The death of the Israeli soldier echoes the life of a young man I am pseudonymously calling Raphael, who […]

Jew-haters have forced the Jews into a defensive crouch that is redefining American Jewry and separating us from the country we helped found. It’s the nature of the fight. By focusing so many of our efforts on defending ourselves, we’re changing the image of Jews in America. Jews are now the people who are asking […]

By Anne Frank (as imagined had she survived the Holocaust) I was fifteen years old when the Nazis murdered me in Bergen-Belsen. They did not kill me because of anything I had done. They did not know my name, my thoughts, or my diary. They killed me because I was a Jew. I was one […]

“[A good deli] is like a barbershop with food; everyone knows each other by name and it’s just cozy,” Jeremy Kneller Hernandez, owner of Kneller’s Delicatessen & Appetizing in Tucson, Arizona, told the Journal. “When I have people in the deli here, who are literally hanging out all day eating breakfast and lunch and talking […]

Being singled out for hatred because you’re a Jew is the eternal trauma of the Jewish people. All Jewish calamities, from the pogroms to the Inquisition to the Holocaust to today’s alarming rise of antisemitism, trace back to that one idea: All I need to know to hate you is that you’re Jewish. The miracle […]

Jacki and Jeff Karsh are looking to plant the seeds for the future of Jewish journalism. The Los Angeles-based husband and wife have recently launched the Karsh Journalism Fellowship, a nationwide program that’s seeking 10 early and mid-career journalists who want to strengthen their reporting skills on Jewish issues, and, in turn, help tell the […]

The hatred of Jews, from time immemorial to the outlandish way it has resurfaced globally today, is truly breathtaking. What on earth could this infinitesimal population of Jews, and their tiny ancestral homeland, Israel, have possibly done to inspire such universally unflinching contempt? Many of the original justifications for why Jews are to be despised […]

President Trump likes to portray himself as a great dealmaker– a shrewd negotiator who knows how close the toughest deals. But in reality, he’s more of an impulsive man who craves power and attention and flies by the seat of his pants. And he’s meeting in Alaska today with a real shrewd negotiator in Russian […]

During Sukkot last year, Esti Kohen, then 10-years-old, decided to bake a cake for guests coming to her home in Pico-Robertson. She always loved it when her parents, the rabbi and rebbetzin at Young Sephardic Community Center, invited people over, and she wanted to be a welcoming host. But her good intentions suddenly turned tragic: […]

In April 1777, in the German city of Trier, Heschel HaLevi was born to a distinguished rabbinic family. His father and grandfather had served as the local rabbis, and his older brother would eventually step into that role. When he was a teenager, the French Revolutionary Army took control of Trier, and brought with it […]