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.
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.
In one of the oldest synagogues in Los Angeles, Congregation Mogen David, located on the western edge of the Pico-Robertson neighborhood, the rabbis have created their own version of \”Saturday Night Live.\”\n\nDuring the winter months, from 7-8 p.m. every Saturday night, children and their fathers are invited to learn Torah together. Small rectangular tables are arranged in a large hall, and on many of those tables you will see a father learning with his child. I was one of those fathers recently, and I was there to learn with my 8-year-old son Noah.
If the great Maimonides ever came back to life and found himself in Los Angeles, chances are he\’d look for a house on a small street called Detroit, between Oakwood Avenue and Beverly Boulevard, one block west of La Brea Avenue. There are no holier streets in Los Angeles.\n\nThis little discovery happened thanks to my 10-year-old daughter, Mia, who informed me recently that she had volunteered me to be a driver for her upcoming class outing. Little did I know what kind of class outing it would be: a minitour of a very Jewish neighborhood — not my neighborhood of Pico-Robertson, but the neighborhood of Hancock Park.