David Suissa

6 days ago | jewishjournal.com | David Suissa

We all know the drill at Passover: we gather around Seder tables to celebrate the greatest gift known to humanity—sheer, unbridled human freedom. Freedom is the elixir of life. Given how scarce it’s been throughout human history, with oppression being the rule, it shouldn’t surprise us that the Passover story of liberation from bondage has captured the world’s imagination. In the Jewish world, no matter how religiously observant or unobservant one is, “going to a seder” is on every Jew’s lips.

1 week ago | jewishjournal.com | David Suissa

The Democratic party has hit the abyss. As Shane Goldmacher wrote this week in The New York Times, “[the party’s] standing has plunged to startling new lows — 27 percent approval in a recent NBC News poll, the weakest in surveys dating to 1990.”This is not a nasty MAGA opinion; it’s a sober, factual assessment from a paper who’d love nothing more than to see a Democratic president in the White House.

1 week ago | jewishjournal.com | David Suissa

Elias Rodriguez could have yelled words like “genocide” and “apartheid” after he murdered two young Israelis in Washington last week. Instead, he uttered the “Free, free Palestine” chant that has inundated college campuses and city streets since the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023. Why did he go for “free Palestine” rather than more lethal accusations? After all, if he was hoping to justify his monstrous act, shouldn’t he try to make Israel look like a genocidal monster?

2 weeks ago | jewishjournal.com | David Suissa

Jews love to think in centuries and millennia. These exceptionally long stretches of time, after all, have shaped the Jewish identity. We waited 19 centuries to return home to Zion; we received our holy Torah 3,300 years ago at Sinai; this coming Rosh Hashanah, while the world will still be in 2025, we’ll be celebrating the year 5786. Here in Los Angeles, it’s a big deal when a new restaurant stays open for five years. Jews have stayed open for five thousand years and counting.

3 weeks ago | jewishjournal.com | David Suissa

You expect a comedian to make you laugh. If it’s a superstar like Seinfeld or Chapelle, you expect to really, really laugh. And if a serious bit occasionally comes up, it’s usually as a set-up for a killer joke. The point is always the joke. There’s an implicit contract between the comic on stage and the folks who shlepped to the show: You’re here to make us laugh, and we’re here to laugh. Because laughing is such a fantastic thing, we’re all grateful for this contract.