In the elegant silence of a narrow street near the River Seine, David Moyal takes a breath of fresh winter air and enters a noisy restaurant in the French capital. Inside Miznon, he is transported to another world, filled with the cacophony of Hebrew voices and Israeli music. A bustling new bistro that Moyal runs in the 4th arrondissement, Miznon is becoming hugely popular with Israelis and French Jews thanks to its Tel Aviv feel and audacious mission to pack Paris into a pita.

In the spirit of the season, let me hazard a prediction: 2014 will be the year that America’s Israel debate begins to pass the organized American Jewish community by. The first reason is the end of the American-dominated peace process. Despite John Kerry’s best efforts, the most likely scenario is that 2014 will be the year he fails.

Cuban Jewish leaders say they have visited a U.S. government subcontractor imprisoned on the island. A statement from Beth Shalom Temple says they met with Alan Gross, of Maryland, on Thursday. The visit came two days after Gross marked four years in custody, and on the last day of Hanukkah.

Jews across the world must ratchet up pressure on their governments to stand in the way of an impending "bad deal" on Iran's nuclear program, Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett wrote Saturday night. In a letter sent to AIPAC, Jewish Federations of North America, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Russian Jewish Congress, and other groups, and later posted on his Facebook page, Bennett said that "the Free World stands before a fork in the road."

How do Israelis who have moved to the United States and made their lives there ensure that their children - and their grandchildren – remain connected to their Israeli identity? That’s the question that Israeli-American community leaders, activists and educators - together with representatives of the State of Israel - were setting out to tackle Sunday as they gathered in New Jersey.

Two sensitive and potentially explosive issues have always clouded the relationship between the Jewish community in the United States and the State of Israel. The first relates to claims of “dual allegiance” to both Israel and the United States; the other concerns the pro-Israel, American “Jewish lobby.”

One morning in June, the owners of the African restaurant La Mamma in Warsaw found ugly and offensive graffiti near its entrance. Someone in the Muranow neighborhood, the site of the former Jewish ghetto, apparently did not like the restaurant, which is a meeting place for Nigerian immigrants. To make sure the eatery’s owner got the message, the offender painted a black man hanging from a rope and added the words, “chocolate daddy.”

Stands selling jewelry, embroidery and beer imported from Ethiopia lined the entrance to Tel Aviv’s Habima Theater on Friday, as people waited in line for about half an hour to buy the flat, lemony Ethiopian bread injera at the entrance to the Sigdiada, a festival celebrating the culture and folklore of Israel’s Ethiopian Jewish community.