In summer 2010, rabbis led Nathan Hochman and his son Tyler into a small apartment in Sderot, Israel, belonging to a man who lost his leg in a Hamas attack but could not afford a functioning wheelchair.
It was one stop in a journey across Israel for Tyler’s bar mitzvah project of raising funds for wheelchair deliveries to Israel.
Nathan Hochman insisted they drive across Israel to deliver each wheelchair, so Tyler could witness the effort required to change someone’s life — and one mitzvah’s impact on an entire community.
“We have this idea that if you save even one life, you’ve saved a whole world,” Hochman said. “Tikkun olam, repairing the world, is not something you say idly. You actually have to go out and do it, and it’s hard work, but it’s not an optional exercise. It’s an obligation.”
Hochman said this philosophy influenced him to become a public servant. As a California federal prosecutor, he helped convict gangs and environmental criminals before serving as Assistant Attorney General and overseeing the U.S. Justice Department’s Tax Division.
“If you take those Jewish lessons seriously — that you have an obligation to give back, that giving back is a form of justice, and that you can focus on helping one person at a time — it gives you good grounding on what you can do with your life,” Hochman said.
Now, he is running to replace George Gascón as District Attorney of Los Angeles County: the country’s largest local prosecutorial office.
With less than two weeks until the election, Mark Karlan, a professor at UCLA’s law school and Anderson School of Management, said his vote for Hochman comes as support for stability amid a growing public safety crisis.
“Having a solid, strong capable district attorney is essential,” Karlan said. “He (Hochman) has the right temperament to do the right thing.”
From 2020 to 2023 — during D.A. Gascón’s term — annual California Justice Department crime statistics cited rises in violent crime by 12%, property crimes by 20% and shoplifting by 133%. Repairing this, Hochman said, requires “the hard middle” — promoting justice and accountability based on each case’s facts rather than sweeping ideologies.
“We need to do the hard work of looking at the defendant and their history, the crime committed and its impact on the victim,” Hochman said. “You can’t pretend like Gascón does that the crime didn’t get committed.”
Debates about public safety come as antisemitism has skyrocketed in Los Angeles since Hamas attacked Israel last October. The Jewish Journal recently reported several of Gascón’s Jewish Deputy D.A.s suing his office for discriminating against Jewish staff and neglecting antisemitic hate crimes.
Gascón’s campaign did not respond to the Jewish Journal’s request for comment.
Hochman said D.A.s must differentiate constitutionally protected speech and punishable crimes — and enforce the latter.
“If you want to stand on a street corner in front of the federal building and shout the most pro-Hamas, antisemitic things, the First Amendment allows you to do it,” Hochman said. “If you want to shut down a freeway or the airport, engage in vandalism on a college campus or harm people outside of a synagogue, that is where the D.A. has to be proactive.”
In two weeks, Hochman said Angelenos will need to vote to protect the county — just like he has.
“A lot of people have voted with their feet and just plain out left L.A.,” Hochman said. “I refuse to leave and not fight for what I love.”
