Author: David Rutman

Twenty-seven headstones at the Home of Peace Jewish Cemetery in Bakersfield were knocked down on Tuesday, September 30. Some of the headstones in the historic Union Cemetery date back to the 1920s. Rabbi Jonathan Klein, who has been serving as the rabbi of Temple Beth El for the past five years, said he believes the […]

On October 5, 2025, in Tel Aviv, I sat in a theater for the Israeli premiere of One Day in October, the upcoming HBO Max miniseries about October 7. It was two days before the second anniversary of that horrific day — a day that is not just history to me, but memory. That Saturday, my […]

Since 2020, the Western world has been on a covered-face fetish. The pandemic made the N95 mask an indispensable artifact of the coronavirus—more important an accessory than the iPhone. We came to accept that protecting our respiratory systems meant forfeiting our facial identities. Soon faces were masked for infections of a different sort. Viruses migrated […]

Batya Ungar-Sargon wore a Magen David necklace as she hosted the first episode of her weekly NewsNation show “Batya!” on Sept. 20. Before the debut, she told The Journal “It’s to remind me and my viewers who I am as a Jew,” One the show, Ungar-Sargon told guest Megyn Kelly she was one of her […]

Actress Rita Zohar didn’t have to search far for her role as a Holocaust survivor in Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, “Eleanor the Great.” She is a Holocaust survivor herself. Though Zohar did not experience the horrors of the war directly — she was only four-and-a-half months old when her family was liberated from the concentration camp […]

When President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented a new ceasefire and hostage-release plan on Sept. 29, The New York Times reported that hostage families called the deal a “historic turning point.” Yehuda Cohen, father of hostage Nimrod Cohen, did not share that description. “Okay. First of all, I wouldn’t call it […]

A sukkah was nearly selected as the symbol of America. On July 4, 1776, the day the Declaration of Independence was adopted, the Second Continental Congress appointed a committee to design a seal for the United States. John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were chosen for the task.  Franklin, amidst the early brainstorming sessions, […]

It was impossible not to feel hopeful as the most powerful man in the world waxed dreamily about solving a conflict he says is “thousands of years old” and aiming for nothing less than “eternal peace in the Middle East.” What is noteworthy about Trump’s plan, which got the support and input of Prime Minister […]