Robert J. Avrech: Emmy Award winning screenwriter. Religious Zionist. Republican. Movie fanatic. Gun owner. Helplessly and hopelessly in love with my wife since age nine.

Judaica

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

February 8, 2019 by Robert J. Avrech 10 Comments

“I was a million-to-one shot, the least likely to succeed. I wasn’t low man on the totem pole, I was under the totem pole, in a sewer, tied to a sack.”
—Tony Curtis, (b. Bernard Schwartz) on his chances of making it in Hollywood.

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

February 1, 2019 by Robert J. Avrech 16 Comments

Greta Garbo, 1931, photo by Clarence Sinclair Bull
“I don’t like to talk to people because I can’t express myself satisfactorily. I don’t say the things I mean.”
—Greta Garbo

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

January 4, 2019 by Robert J. Avrech 2 Comments

“I can do everything with ease on the stage, whereas in real life I feel too big and clumsy. So I didn’t choose acting. It chose me.”
—Ingrid Bergman

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

December 28, 2018 by Robert J. Avrech 6 Comments

“Another thing I had to cure myself of was the desire for adulation, and the approbation of my fellow man. It started when I was a small boy and played football at school. If I did well they cheered me. If I fumbled I was booed. It became very important to me to be liked. It’s the same in the theater, the applause and the laughter give you courage and the excitement to go on. I thought it was absolutely necessary in order to be happy. Now I know how it can change, just like that. They can be applauding you one moment, and booing you the next. The thing to know is that you have done a good job, then it doesn’t hurt to be criticized.”
—Cary Grant

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

December 14, 2018 by Robert J. Avrech 1 Comment

“Being an actress is like living in a show window. It’s the price you pay.”
—Madeleine Carroll

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.

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)