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.
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.
I learned something new at our seder this year, and it had nothing to do with the story of the Exodus.\n\nI 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.\n
I can see why a Jewish day school would reject a Jewish child. It could be that the kid has special needs the school is not equipped to deal with, or the parents cannot afford the tuition, or the kid had poor grades in a previous school or simply has a bad attitude.
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.”\n\n
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.\n
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.
“How are we going to be as dedicated as these monsters?” was the line in the film that stuck with me. I was in a cramped synagogue, a few blocks from my house, where a standing room-only crowd had come to honor a Jew who had passed away in Jerusalem 30 days earlier.\n
Jews can’t sit still, especially when we see a member of the tribe royally mess up. A kosher slaughterhouse accused of grossly violating labor laws?
It’s one thing to go to a Jewish event, shmooze a little, meet the speaker, take a few notes and then write a column. But what do you do when you go to a Jewish event that lasts for 72 hours, has about 200 classes and activities, 150 speakers and 700 Jews buzzing in and out of each event until the wee hours?