ROB ESHMAN is publisher and editor-in-chief of TRIBE Media Corp./Jewish Journal. Email him at robe@jewishjournal.com. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter @foodaism and @RobEshman.
When the thousands of delegates, journalists and observers drive to the United Nations this September for the General Assembly, I’d like to suggest that on their way they swing by the intersection of 10th Avenue and 35th Street.
It was Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal who finally convinced me to buy the Nissan Leaf. Almost a year ago, I heard about the car — an all-electric production vehicle that would deliver 100 miles per charge, had all the room of a Prius and cost, after $16,000 in government rebates and subsidies, less than a cheap Kia. I immediately logged on to the Nissan Web site and plunked down a $99 deposit.
Every week, an e-mail circulates among hundreds of Jews in Los Angeles calling for my immediate firing. The subject line of a recent one was, “The L.A. Jewish paper needs a new Editor-in-Chief.” I know when this happens, because the author is always kind enough to copy me on the campaign. The author is usually one of a group of people who reads my editorials, or another essay or headline in the paper and decides that the fate of the State of Israel depends on ridding the Jewish community of what another anti-me organizer called my “über-left anti-Israel perspective.”
I was a Jewish school skeptic. When it was time to send our first child, our son, to school, my wife, a rabbi, insisted it be a Jewish school. I wondered, like a lot of parents, whether the quality of the education would be so superior to the local public school, or a similarly priced private school. I worried that he wouldn’t get the diverse social exposure pubic school provided. I doubted a school that divides its day between Jewish and general studies could excel at either.
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