Adeena Sussman – From Cooking to Connection

In this episode of Detours and Destinations, Rabbi David Ingber sits down with cookbook author, food writer, and culinary storyteller Adeena Sussman to explore a life shaped by food, migration, reinvention, and the search for belonging. Raised in a deeply communal Jewish home in Palo Alto and later immersed in New York’s food media world, Sussman spent decades helping chefs, celebrities, and publications translate flavor into narrative before ultimately finding her own voice through Israeli cooking and storytelling.

The conversation traces her journey from cookbook collaborations and food journalism to her life-changing move to Tel Aviv in 2015. Along the way, Sussman reflects on the Carmel Market as a creative and emotional home, on Israeli cuisine as a living mosaic shaped by migration and diaspora, and on the deeper meanings of hospitality, ritual, and nourishment.

Against the backdrop of October 7 and its aftermath, the episode explores how food becomes a language of resilience, consolation, and connection during moments of rupture and uncertainty. Through her bestselling books Sababa, Shabbat, and most recently ZARIZ, Sussman considers what it means to simplify, to feed others, and to create spaces of calm and joy in chaotic times.

Ultimately, this is a conversation about much more than cooking: it is about identity, home, memory, sensuality, Jewish life, and the emotional and spiritual power of gathering around a table.

This program is part of the Bronfman Center for Jewish Life.