David Suissa is Publisher & Editor-in-Chief of Tribe Media/Jewish Journal, where he has been writing a weekly column on the Jewish world since 2006. In 2015, he was awarded first prize for "Editorial Excellence" by the American Jewish Press Association. Prior to Tribe Media, David was founder and CEO of Suissa Miller Advertising, a marketing firm named “Agency of the Year” by USA Today. He sold his company in 2006 to devote himself full time to his first passion: Israel and the Jewish world. David was born in Casablanca, Morocco, grew up in Montreal, and now lives in Los Angeles with his five children.
Here in Pico-Robertson, many of us approach the month of Tishrei with a certain amount of ambivalence, if not culinary dread. Especially this year, when the holiday meals are back to back with Shabbat, we are bracing ourselves for 30 days with — I’m not kidding — at least 20 Thanksgiving-level meals, if you include the High Holy Days, the first and second holidays of Sukkot (eight meals right there) and the weekly Shabbat feasts.
Is Israel going in the right or the wrong direction? If the glass of Zionism is half full, is it in the process of being filled or depleted? And how do we even define the “right” direction? These are the kind of questions that have been going through my mind as I’ve been reflecting on my 30-day journey to the Holy Land.
In this land of a million arguments, it’s easy to get so exhausted by the back-and-forth that you just want to tune out and say, “Well, there are two sides to every argument, so you’re probably both right — or you’re both wrong.”
Few issues have generated as much heat in the Jewish world this year as the Rotem bill, which is now on hold pending furtherreview. Presumably, a key goal of the bill was to make it easier for the hundreds of thousands of Russians in Israel, who are not halachically Jewish, to convert to Judaism. There is sharp disagreement among critics of the bill over whether it would, in fact, accomplish that goal.
In many ways, Ron Jager is your typical religious settler who made aliyah from America to live out the Zionist dream. With a short beard, laser-sharp eyes and a sturdy frame, he looks the part of the diehard Zionist from the Bronx, where, in fact, he grew up. So how did this tough guy turn out to be a “kumbaya” promoter of Jewish-Palestinian cooperation in, of all places, the West Bank?
It’s a sign of how the peace movement has fizzled out in Israel that even the peace process itself rarely cites peace as the goal — it’s now the “two-state solution” that is the mantra. It’s as if everyone realizes that after decades of mutual hostility and mistrust, real peace between the Jews and Palestinians is simply too much to ask for without being laughed at.
Month after month, a few years ago, my little boy would nudge me. “Daddy, I want to try out for Kaplan,” he’d say. I knew Kaplan was a basketball program in the Hancock Park area, but I knew little else. My boy Noah was already playing for his Maimonides team in his school league, which meant practice every week and a game every Sunday — so why add a whole other layer of practice and games? It’s tough enough to juggle after-school activities for three busy kids; who needs another carpool headache to the other side of town?
The next mini-earthquake in the Orthodox community of Pico-Robertson will happen when someone decides to open a feminist Orthodox-style synagogue modeled after Shira Hadasha in Jerusalem. Pico-Robertson prides itself on having a robust Modern Orthodox community, and it does, with at least three major congregations and hundreds of families following the Modern Orthodox way, which attempts to marry Orthodox tradition with modernity.
If ever there were an Israeli who could lead Israel to peace with its Arab neighbors, it might be the Israeli diplomat I met the other day in the lobby of the Century Plaza Hotel. This is your classic Zionist. He stands tall and proud of his country, doesn’t ignore its faults, has a deep understanding of the issues from all sides and craves peace.
