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Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Can We Argue Without Fighting?

By David Suissa

If you want to ruin a Shabbat meal in my neighborhood of Pico-Robertson these days, just say one word: Obama. Within minutes, one of two things is likely to happen. If everyone around the table is anti-Obama, you’ll get a grown-up version of a verbal piñata, with people taking turns bopping the man who is “selling America and Israel down the river.”

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Israel PR 2.0

By David Suissa

Over the past few days, several people who read my column last week (“Dayenu Moments”) have asked me what I think Israel should do to counteract its worsening image.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Dayenu Moments

By David Suissa

I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but it seems like there’s been an unusually high number of “dayenu moments” for the Jewish people over the past few months.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Chipping In

By David Suissa

A tragic death from cancer in the Jewish community last month made me reflect on a flaw in President Obama’s health care reform plan.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Happy New Book

By David Suissa

One thing that’s often bothered me about Rosh Hashanah is that so much of it is focused on the self. The way I see it, we’re already pretty obsessed with ourselves — do we really need more of that?

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Soap Opera

By David Suissa

Carie Delmar was vacillating between two words: stain and shame. She couldn’t decide whether the city’s upcoming spring celebration of renowned composer and anti-Semite Richard Wagner (called Ring Festival LA) represents a “stain” on the festival or, worse, a mark of “shame” on the city and the festival’s organizers.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

A minyan grows up (sort of)

By David Suissa

If I wanted to start a minyan, I think the last thing I’d call it would be a “happy minyan.” Seriously, how can you live up to that ideal every week? How can you not get exhausted by the constant pressure to deliver “happy”?

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Face of a Crisis

By David Suissa

Rhoda Weisman never figured she’d be a victim of the economic crisis that has rocked the Jewish world over the past year. After all, her specialty was identifying and nurturing the kind of leaders who would thrive in such crises; who would, in her words, “create new paradigms.”

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Stopping Iran

By David Suissa

There is no issue of greater concern to Israel supporters than the threat of a nuclear Iran that could destroy Israel “in a few minutes,” as Ambassador Michael Oren recently put it.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Rivka’s Special Need

By David Suissa

When I asked Michael Held what was “different” about Rivka Bracha Menkes, he had trouble answering. It wasn’t as severe as Down syndrome or autism or cerebral palsy, he said. It was more in the general category of “developmental disabilities,” or “special needs.”

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Moving

By David Suissa

After three years of living in the ’hood, and with a mixture of sadness and excitement, I’m moving to the ’wood — Beverlywood, a more residential and quieter section on the “Upper West Side” of Pico-Robertson.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Cleaning Up

By David Suissa

Here in Pico-Robertson, I often come across people who dream of building things, like a new Jewish center, a new kosher restaurant, a new kind of shul and so on.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

The Wall

By David Suissa

There are few places on earth that move Jews like the Western Wall in Jerusalem. After my visit this summer, I think I’ve discovered why this ancient structure has such a magical hold on us.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

War and Peace

By David Suissa

For the first time in my life, I was surrounded by Jews and I felt fear. Not too much, mind you, but just enough to give me the chills.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Rembaum’s Unity

By David Suissa

I was raised Orthodox, I’m a member of several Orthodox communities and I’ve hung out with Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews most of my adult life. Still, I’ve always had this love affair the Conservative movement.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

One in a Million

By David Suissa

There are certain stories that are difficult for me to write about. I sit there on the phone, and I have no clue what to ask. I meet the person, and I small-talk nervously.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Dear President Obama

By David Suissa

Now that you have brought your can-do spirit and sense of optimism to that most intractable of conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians, I thought I’d share a few words of caution.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

The Torah of Potholes

By David Suissa

Scott Krieger wasn’t always an Orthodox Jew. Before getting “turned on” to Torah observance in the early 1980s — after attending a summer program run by Dennis Prager at Brandeis-Bardin Institute — he was your basic casual Jew who would attend synagogue two or three times a year.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Wolman of Valor

By David Suissa

Lesley Wolman was having trouble breathing.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

The Missing Class

By David Suissa

I have an idea that I think could really improve Jewish education. It’s so simple and obvious that I wasn’t going to write about it, since I figure everyone’s already thought of it. The idea came to me after a rabbi told me about his dream of broadcasting, on the Internet, a weekly class on Judaism designed for the huge number of Jewish kids who aren’t getting a Jewish education.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Leaning Sideways

By David Suissa

I learned something new at our seder this year, and it had nothing to do with the story of the Exodus.

I was ready for a seder full of questions. I had done my homework, gone to classes, read essays and books. I prepared questions that I would ask the kids, questions that would encourage them to ask their own questions. Like my friend Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller impressed on us at one of our Torah salons, a seder is like a mini-Beit Midrash, a table of learning, debating and understanding.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Bring a Suitcase to Seder

By David Suissa

I had no idea I would be attending a seder the other day when I went to The Jewish Federation building to hear Rabbi Ed Feinstein talk about “The Ethics of Exodus.”

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Mind-State Solution

By David Suissa

I’m not sure, but I think I have a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or at least another way of looking at it. It hit me the other day after I broke bread at Pat’s Restaurant with some people connected to Americans for Peace Now, a leftist Jewish organization that actively promotes the two-state solution.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Music Man

By David Suissa

If you want to upset a Jewish musician who makes Jewish music, just call him a Jewish musician who makes Jewish music. Like it or not, the term “Jewish music” is not flattering to Jewish musicians. It’s got connotations of old-time schmaltz, of Zionist choirs singing “Heveinu Shalom Aleichem,” of fringe music written for a very specific — and very small — audience.