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.
It’s not every day that Orthodox Jews gather in a synagogue to learn about happiness. But on a recent Sunday morning at Young Israel of Century City, a standing-\nroom-only crowd came for precisely that. The event was the seventh annual Ariel Avrech Memorial Lecture, and the speaker was author, radio host and happiness guru Dennis Prager.
It’s painful to watch liberal lovers of Israel feel so isolated. I’m thinking especially of people like my friend Rabbi Sharon Brous, who wrote about her disappointment with many in the pro-Israel community after last week’s rally in front of the Israeli Consulate.
I love Peter Beinart. The last time we had breakfast, in Washington, D.C., about a year and a half ago, our conversation got so lively that I think someone asked us to quiet down. We don’t see eye to eye on everything, but I’ve been moved by his compelling logic and sense of fairness in the many opinion pieces he has written over the years.
It was a week where I overdosed on words. Rarely do I recall being inundated with so many words as in the aftermath of the flotilla crisis. Everybody had an opinion and\na half. How else can we express our emotions — whether they be outrage, exasperation, anger or love — than through words? Even powerful images that “spoke for themselves” came attached with explanations and commentary.
Martin Sherman is a hard man to figure out. Is he a street-smart Zionist or a liberal academic? Sherman, who is just finishing his stint as a Schusterman Visiting Scholar of Israel Studies at University of Southern California and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), looks like your classic scholar. He has a doctoral degree in political science and international relations from Tel Aviv University, where he has been teaching since the late 1980s.
The biggest PR fiasco in Israeli history would never have happened had somebody up high in Israel pressed the “play” button.
“Prayer can be utterly boring,” Rabbi Elazar Muskin said to a gathering in his own house of prayer, Young Israel of Century City. Muskin was the last of three rabbis to speak on the subject last Shabbat afternoon, after Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of B’nai David-Judea Congregation and Rabbi Kalman Topp of Beth Jacob Congregation.
How could a frail, 83-year-old Holocaust survivor battling leukemia have a deeper understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than some of the great minds of the Jewish world? I asked myself that question last Friday night, while listening to my good friend Eva Brown, a Holocaust survivor who’s a regular guest at our Shabbat table.
What does a builder do when he’s told he can no longer build? I asked that question of Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, co-founder and chief rabbi of the settlement of Efrat,\nwho was in town last week as a guest of Beth Jacob Congregation. Riskin’s settlement is currently under the 10-month construction freeze announced a few months ago by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.\n
