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 one of the great mysteries of the Jewish tradition. Every year, Jews around the world gather around a seder table to retell the story of our people\’s liberation from slavery. You can read a thousand articles, talk to a thousand rabbis, and they\’ll all say the same thing: At the Passover seder, we retell the story of the Exodus.\n\nThere\’s only one problem with this statement: It\’s not really true.
The conversation was joyful and funny, but something was bothering me. I couldn\’t stop thinking about the poached eggs.\n\nWe had all ordered our breakfasts at the same time. I got my Irish oatmeal, my daughter got her bagel and cream cheese, but the poached eggs? It seemed like they would never come. Every time a server would come near our table, I would arch my neck to see if they were carrying the poached eggs. Waiter after waiter walked by, only to deliver food to other patrons.
If anybody will ever earn the respect of the warring parties of the Middle East and of the rest of the world, it will be a black American president with a Muslim name, a sense of universal fairness, and the courage to speak the truth as he sees it. As someone who is deeply pained by how the world continues to malign the state of Israel, I have the audacity to hope that such a change will be good for the Jews.\n\n
What blew me away about the synagogue wasn\’t the painting on the wall of the old Moroccan rebbe Meier Baal Ness, which I had never seen anywhere else — not even in Sephardic synagogues — and which brought back memories of going on pilgrimages with my family as a child in Morocco.
It was a week to be reminded that miracles do happen, in foxholes, baseball dugouts and even synagogues.\n
If there\’s one question I\’ve heard a thousand times from Jews all over, it is this: Why is Israel so bad at PR? I know that when Jews ask me that question, they\’re also saying, \”Suissa, you\’re in the business, can\’t you do something?\”\n
One of the bonuses of living in exile is that you can see Israeli society more clearly, one lunch, party, speech or cappuccino at a time. When I\’m in the Holy Land, I lose myself in a noisy, beautiful, hectic, joyful and soulful blur.It\’s as if I\’m inside a boat in a stormy sea. Here in the Diaspora, Israel comes at you in neat little waves. Over the past month, I\’ve had encounters with four passionate Israelis, and each, in their own way, has helped me make sense of the craziness of what it is to live the Zionist dream.\n
A fascinating debate has broken out among certain members of the community regarding the appropriateness of publicizing people\’s personal e-mails. A week ago, this paper went public with some incendiary e-mails from a rabbi who was trying to discourage women — who were considered non-Jewish according to the Orthodox tradition — from crashing his singles parties and dating Jewish men.\n
I got to know a quirky, passionate Los Angeles native who never dreamed he\’d become a counsel to skin merchants nationwide and the reviled bête noir of neighborhood groups everywhere.