Category Archives: Jewish Holidays

By Robert J. Avrech | May 18, 2018

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

Also posted in Ann Miller, Art, Brigitte Bardot, Coleen Gray, Hollywood, Hollywood Stars, Hollywood Still Photography, Judaica, Judaism, Movie Posters, Movies, Myrna Loy, Painting, Photography, Rick McGinnis, Shavuot, Susan Hayward, True Hollywood Confessions | Tagged Ann Miller, Arthur Szyk, Brigitte Bardot, Coleen Gray, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Edward Hopper, Greta Garbo, Milton Avery, Myrna Loy, Norman Rockwell, Rick McGinnis, Susan Hayward, Vintage Cars | 7 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | March 1, 2018

Purim: The Deeply Anti-Progressive Jewish Holiday

Tweet Today is the holiday of Purim. It is no accident that in 2015, Benjamin Netanyahu referenced Purim when delivering his powerful address to the U.S. Senate in an unsuccessful bid to curb Obama’s legitimization of a nuclear Iran. Purim is an old ( 5th century B.C.E.) but painfully familiar story: A Jew-hater named Haman […]

Also posted in Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran, Judaism, Purim, Second Amendment, Torah | Tagged Benjamin Netanyahu, Book of Esther, Esther, Haman, King Ahasuerus, King David, Liberal Jews, Mordechai, Obama, Persia, Purim, Saul, Second Amendment, Torah | Leave a comment

By Robert J. Avrech | November 15, 2017

Hidden Hollywood: Seven Obscure Jewish Films

Tweet What’s a Jewish film? My definition is quite simple. It is a film that deals with Jewish subject matter. Thus, Woody Allen does not make Jewish films. In truth, Hollywood movies that do deal with Judaism are quite rare. Take a look at the subject headings in Netflix. There is no category for Jewish […]

Also posted in Hidden Hollywood, Hollywood, Hollywood Stars, Israel, Jewish Hollywood, Judaism, Kirk Douglas, Movie Posters, Movies | Tagged Al Jolson, Elissa Landy, Franchot Tone, Frank Capra, Hungry Hearts, Kirk Douglas, Straight is the Way, Symphony of Six Million, The Jazz Singer, The Juggler, The Yellow Ticket, The Younger Generation | 4 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | October 11, 2017

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

Tweet Once again Friday Photos appears on Wednesday due to the last days of Sukkot which begin tonight and then run into Shabbat. Enjoy!

Also posted in Alfred Hitchcock, Betty Grable, Friday Fotos, Hollywood, Hollywood Still Photography, Judaism, Movie Posters, Movies, Painting, Photography, Quotes, True Hollywood Confessions, Wisdom of Hollywood Screenwriters | Tagged Alfred Hitchcock, Allan Grant, Alternative Movie Posters, Bernard Picart, Betty Grable, Buster Keaton, Edward Hopper, Efrat, Eileen Gray, Eugene Robert Richee, Gail Patrick, Gene Kelly, Gerrit Dou, Hendrick Terbrugghen, Hoshana Rabbah, Louise Brooks, Morgan Auto, Picasso, Preston Sturges, Richard Avedon, Richard Burton, Rick McGinnis, Robert Doisneau, Simchat Torah, Sukkot, To Catch a Thief | 2 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | October 4, 2017

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

Tweet No, you have not fallen into a time warp. It is Wednesday. So: why Friday Photos today? The celebration of Succos starts tonight and continues into Shabbat. And because Orthodox Jews (that’s us) do not use electronics during these holidays you get Friday Photos early. We hope you enjoy this edition.

Also posted in Art, Brigitte Bardot, Cary Grant, Family, Friday Fotos, Hollywood, Hollywood Stars, Hollywood Still Photography, Judaism, Movie Posters, Movies, Myrna Loy, Photography, Quotes, Sandra Dee, Succos, True Hollywood Confessions, Wisdom of Hollywood Screenwriters | Tagged Alternative Movie Posters, Bernard Palissy, Cary Grant, Élisabeth Louise Vigée-Le Brun, Follow the Fleet, Ginger Rogers, Horst P. Horst, Marilyn Monroe, Myrna Loy, Sandra Dee, Shabbat, Succos | 6 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | May 26, 2017

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

Also posted in Automobiles, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, Dorothy Lamour, Fashion, Friday Fotos, Hollywood, Hollywood Stars, Hollywood Still Photography, Judaica, Judaism, Movies, Myrna Loy, Photography, True Hollywood Confessions | Tagged Dorothy Lamour, Dovima, Erwin Blumenfeld, Irving Penn, John Holland Fountain Pen, Milton Green, Myrna Loy, Omer counter, Quirijn van Brekelenkam, Rick McGinnis, Rufus Hathaway, Vincent van Gogh, Vintage Cars | 8 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | May 19, 2017

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

Also posted in Art, Automobiles, Billy Wilder, Brigitte Bardot, Carole Lombard, Clark Gable, Fashion, Friday Fotos, Glamour, Hollywood, Hollywood Cars, Hollywood Stars, Hollywood Still Photography, Judaica, Judaism, Lizabeth Scott, Marilyn Monroe, Painting, Sidney Lumet, True Hollywood Confessions | Tagged Bathing Suits, Bikini, Brigitte Bardot, Charles Demuth, Classic Cars, Diana Dors, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Filippo Lippi, Georges Dambier, Howard Hodgkin, Ivy Nicholson, John Singer Sargent, Lizabeth Scott, Louis Réard, Marc Riboud, Marilyn Monroe | 3 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | May 12, 2017

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

Also posted in Art, Design, Hollywood, Hollywood Stars, Hollywood Still Photography, Joan Bennett, Judaica, Judaism, Painting, Photography, True Hollywood Confessions | Tagged Bert Hardy, Bugatti, Charles Bobinet, Cornelis Norbertus Gysbrechts, Fra Filippo Lippi, Gustave Serrurier-Bovy, Horology, Itzhak Luvaton, Jacob Ochtervelt, Joan Bennett, Lucille Ball, Morris Louis, Peter Keetman, Randall Knives, Rick McGinnis, Roman Art, Sabrina, Shirley Jones, Southworth and Hawes | 4 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | May 5, 2017

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

Also posted in Art, Bette Davis, Cary Grant, Family, Hollywood, Hollywood Cars, Hollywood Stars, Hollywood Still Photography, Judaica, Judaism, Kirk Douglas, Movie Posters, Painting, Photography, Photography, Los Angeles, Pico-Robertson, Photography, Signs, Quotes, Shirley Temple, True Hollywood Confessions | Tagged Antonio Leonelli, Arthur Dove, Bette Davis, Birger Sandzén, Charles Gates Sheldon, Clark Gable, Colt's Revolver, Counting the Omer, Jackie Chan, James Garner, Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen, Maerten van Heemskerck, Natalie Wood, Randall Knives, Rick McGinnis, Robert Doisneau, Robert Mangold, Rockwell Kent, Senta Berger, Shirley Jones | 8 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | April 13, 2017

Friday Photos: True Passover

Also posted in Eleanor Parker, Friday Fotos, Hollywood, Hollywood Stars, Israel, Jerusalem, Judaism, Passover | Tagged art, Judaica, Passover | 7 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | April 10, 2017

Passover 2017, The Problem of Freedom

Tweet Tonight begins the holiday of Passover in which Jews celebrate deliverance from Egyptian bondage. In order to escape the shackles of slavery, the vast machinery of the mighty Egyptian state had to be crushed. Those who wielded absolute power were reduced to nothingness. G-d did this not only to diminish the physical power of […]

Also posted in America, Islam Denial, Islamic State, Islamic Terror, IslamoNazis, Israel, Judaism, Passover | Tagged Democrat Fascists, Hagaddah, Holocaust, J Street, Jewish Voices for Peace, Passover, Slavery | 1 Response

By Robert J. Avrech | April 6, 2017

The Westworld Haggadah

Tweet by Jake Novak There’s a key moment in the Seder when the Haggadah informs us that all Jews must think of themselves as if they personally came out of bondage in Egypt. Talk about a tall order. Thank goodness, most of us live decidedly comfortable middle or upper middle class lives. Getting our heads […]

Also posted in Bible, Israel, Judaism, Passover | Tagged Exodux, Haggadah, Jacob, Job, Moses, Seder, Slavery, Talmud, Westworld | 1 Response

By Robert J. Avrech | March 31, 2017

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

Also posted in Friday Fotos, Hollywood, Hollywood Stars, Hollywood Still Photography, Judaica, Judaism, Leonardo da Vinci, Movie Posters, Movies, Painting, Passover, Photography, Quotes, Screenwriting, Touch of Evil, True Hollywood Confessions | Tagged Barnett Newman, Carl Dreyer, Classic Cars, Day of Wrath, Francesca Woodman, Gertrude Käsebier, Harpo Marx, Kazuo Hasegawa, Kyôko Kagawa, Leonardo Da Vinci, Ludwig Yehuda Wolpert, Mina Avrech, Picasso, Randall Knives, Sean Scully, The Crucified Lovers, Touch of Evil, Vincent van Gogh | 10 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | March 24, 2017

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

Also posted in Art, Fashion, Friday Fotos, Judaica, Judaism, Movie Posters, Movies, Painting, Photography, Quotes | Tagged Ava Gardner, Cadillac, Classic Cars, David Niven, Elsa Lanchester, Frank Horvat, Helen Frankenthaler, Night of the Hunter, Packard Motor Car Company, Randall Knives, Rick McGinnis | 7 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | March 13, 2017

Purim: The Deeply Anti-Progressive Jewish Holiday

Tweet Yesterday was the holiday of Purim. And it was no accident that in 2015, Benjamin Netanyahu referenced Purim when delivering his powerful address to the U.S. Senate in an unsuccessful bid to curb Obama’s legitimization of a nuclear Iran. Purim is an old ( 5th century B.C.E.) but painfully familiar story: A Jew-hater named […]

Also posted in Art, Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran, Islamic Terror, IslamoNazis, Israel, Jew-haters, Jew-hatred, Politics, Purim | Tagged Esther, Haman, Mordechai, Purim | Leave a comment

By Robert J. Avrech | February 24, 2017

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

Also posted in Art, Design, Elizabeth Taylor, Family, Friday Fashion, Friday Fotos, Glamour, Great Dialogue, Great Movies, Hollywood, Hollywood Stars, Hollywood Still Photography, Judaica, Judaism, Marilyn Monroe, Movie Posters, Painting, Photography, Purim, Quotes, Screenwriting, True Hollywood Confessions | Tagged Alfred Eisenstaedt, Artemisia Gentileschi, Ava Gardner, Book of Esther, Brigitte Bardot, Carlo Dolci, Ed Ruscha, Ernst Haas, Esther Bubley, Florence Georgie, Gene Davis, Gun Crazy, Gustav Klimt, Hieronimo Custodis, Horst P. Horst, John Rawlings, Marsden Hartley, Rick McGinnis, Robert Redford, Samurai Armor, Smith and Wesson, Tiffany & Co, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Walt Disney | 7 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | December 30, 2016

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

Also posted in Chanukah, Design, Family, Hollywood, Hollywood Stars, Hollywood Still Photography, Judaica, Judaism, Photography, True Hollywood Confessions | Tagged Barbara Stanwyck, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, Diane Arbus, Dovima, Flesh and the Devil, Frank Lloyd Wright, Gabriel Metsu, Gaudi, Greta Garbo, John McLaughlin, Josef Hoffman, Julie Christie, Richard Avedon, Richard Diebenkorn, Rick McGinnis, Sam Fuller, Sean Scully, Vermeer, Winslow Homer, Zelig Segal | 8 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | December 25, 2016

Antiochus Obama

Tweet Ever since Obama was elected we have said that he is a classic leftist Jew-hater. Obama spent 20 years as a faithful member of Jeremiah Wright’s church because Wright, a proud and vocal Jew-hater, articulated everything Obama felt: hatred of America, hatred of Jews. Obama’s envoy in the UN, Samantha Power, has a history […]

Also posted in Chanukah, Iran, IslamoNazis, Israel, Jerusalem, Jew-haters, Jew-hatred | Tagged Antiochus, Israel, Obama, Samantha Power, UN | 5 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | September 19, 2016

Jews and Guns

Tweet Before our son Ariel Chaim ZT”L passed away in 2003 at the age of twenty-two, he and I spent a good deal of time discussing the Second Amendment, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Ariel was amazed that so many American Jews–overwhelmingly liberal and secular–aligned themselves with the advocates of gun control, in reality a […]

Also posted in Ariel Chaim Avrech, Gun Control, Israel Defense Forces, Jew Without A Gun, Jews & Guns, Judaism, Second Amendment, Talmud, Torah | Tagged Judaism, Liberal Jews, Talmud, Torah | 9 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | July 22, 2016

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

Also posted in Art, Design, Eve Arden, Family, Friday Fotos, Glamour, Great Dialogue, Hedy Lamarr, Hollywood, Hollywood Stars, Hollywood Still Photography, Israel, Jewish Hollywood, Jewish Photography, Judaism, Painting, Photography, Quotes, True Hollywood Confessions | Tagged Agnes Martin, De Stijl, design, Ed Ruscha, Etrog, Eve Arden, Fernando Taborda, Furniture, Gerrit Rietveld, Hedy Lamarr, James M. Cain, James Nares, Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, Louis Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, Mary Nolan, Mildred Pierce, Moira Dryer, Naum Gabo, Paulette Goddard, Piet Cohen, Robert Capa, Robert Doisneau, Robert Riggs, Sam Francis, Susan Hayward, William Klein | 19 Responses

How I Married Karen

The new book
by Robert J. Avrech

Available in All Major Book Stores

Adobe Digital Edition's version is available through the Lulu store!
About Me
Robert J. Avrech
Los Angeles, California
I'm an Emmy Award winning screenwriter. I'm also an observant Jew, a religious Zionist, a conservative Republican, and a member of the NRA. I've been writing and producing in Hollywood for over twenty-five years. But the focus of my life is my family: my radiant wife, Karen—with whom I have been in love with since I was nine years-old—and my two daughters, who, thankfully, look like Karen. Not too long ago, we had three children. But our son, Ariel, died at the age of twenty-two from cancer. We miss him terribly. We think about him practically every minute of every day. People tell us that time heals, but Karen and I know this is not true. Time grinds away doing its terrible work. Ariel is gone. Yet absence becomes presence.

Ariel Chaim Avrech, ZT'L, May His Righteous Memory be a Blessing.
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Annual Ariel Avrech
Memorial Lectures
Young Israel of Century City
NOTE: Click on video titles inside the thumbnail images, below, to open that video in YouTube

Fifteenth: June 10, 2018
Jackie Danicki: “Confessions of a Convert: A Humbling, Joyful Journey to Judaism.”

Blog Post | Audio: (94 MB)

Fourteenth: June 11, 2017
Daniel Greenfield: “Fighting Anti-Semitism and Defending Israel in the Age of BDS.”

Blog Post | Audio: (100 MB)

Thirteenth: May 22, 2016Ben Shapiro: “How You Can Save Israel”

Blog Post | Audio: (70 MB)

Twelfth: June 7, 2015
Larry Elder: “The New Black Anti-Semitism”

Blog Post | Audio: (100 MB)

Eleventh: June 8, 2014
Michael Medved: “Shifting Alliances: Why Liberals No Longer Reliably Support Israel — And Conservatives Do.”

Blog Post | Audio: (97MB)

Tenth: June 9, 2013
David Horowitz: “The War Against Judaism on the University Campus.”

Blog Post | Audio: (16MB)

Ninth: June 3, 2012
Joel B. Pollak: “The Mainstream Media’s Betrayal of Israel.”

Blog Post | Audio: (15MB)

Eighth: June 5, 2011
Yossi Klein Halevi: “What is Expected of a Survivor People: Lessons My Father Taught Me.”

Blog Post | Audio: (18MB)

Seventh: June 13, 2010
Dennis Prager: “Happiness is a Mitzvah, Not an Emotion.”

Blog Post | Audio: (80MB)

Sixth: June 21, 2009
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky: “Conformity in Jewish Life: Vice, Virtue or Affectation?”

Blog Post | Audio: (64MB)

Fifth: June 15, 2008
Rabbi Dr. Gil S. Perl: “What Was the Rosh Yeshiva Reading: Intellectual Openness in 19th Century Lithuania.”

Blog Post | Audio: (70MB)
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