Editor’s Note
Today would have been Jonathan Siskin’s 77th birthday, and I find myself thinking of him with deep fondness. Our friendship spanned decades, beginning in the mid-1980s when I met him at a press party in New York City. I was a young editor at my first national magazine, and he pitched me a cruise story. The rest, as the cliché goes, is history.
Jonathan continued to write for me throughout the years and across many of the magazines I launched or led. When I co-founded Organic Spa magazine, I was happy to dub him our “Editor of Land & Sea.” There was truly no one quite like Jonathan—brilliant (sometimes to his own detriment), wickedly witty, kind, and wildly creative. He filled notebook after notebook with collages, poems, and meandering reflections. A gentle gentleman, I will never forget his smile.
After witnessing the horrors of 9/11 from his apartment window, something in Jonathan shifted. He carried that day with him in a way few understood.
His younger brother Joshua recently reached out to share the sad news that Jonathan passed away this past December. With Joshua’s permission, I share his moving tribute here.—Mary Bemis
Jonathan Siskin (1948-2024)
Jonathan Siskin was an award-winning travel writer and radio broadcaster whose reports were heard worldwide on the Armed Forces Radio Network. His credits included work as an editor at Travel Holiday, American Holiday, and Life magazines, as well as cruise editor at JAX-FAX Travel Marketing Magazine, cruise editor and roving reporter at www.55-Alive.com, editor of land and sea at Organic Spa Magazine, and columnist at TTGBusiness.com. His work was syndicated in newspapers from coast to coast and widely published in consumer and trade magazines, as well as online. He contributed to several guidebooks, including Fodor’s and Frommer’s.
Jonathan’s travels took him to 125 countries on seven continents, as well as all 50 states, and he sailed on more than 100 cruise ships to destinations from Antarctica to Zanzibar—though the Caribbean remained his favored destination. He held a BA in Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MA in Psychology from the New School for Social Research. He lived in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York, and also lived and worked overseas in Australia and Israel. From his apartment balcony in Battery Park City, he witnessed the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11. You can view a video he made of that experience here.
Jonathan Siskin was a unique personality in the world of travel writers. He had a noticeable tendency to withdraw from people in general, but at social gatherings—when in the right mood—he could be the life of the party. His observations on the passing scene could be cutting and curmudgeonly, yet he saw through façades like no one else. Still, his acerbic fusillades never made their way into his writing, which was always light and uplifting. He was a brilliant writer but lacked self-promotion skills and did not achieve the notoriety he craved and deserved.
Underneath it all, Jonathan was the gentlest soul who ever drew breath. He was prone to nostalgia—and sentimentality, too. Jonathan did not really belong in this world. He believed the cards were perpetually stacked against him, and perhaps he was right. From adolescence on, he suffered from depression, which grew increasingly acute in his later years and was significantly affected by what he witnessed on 9/11.
He spent the final year of his life in Jerusalem, where he enjoyed weekly visits from family members and was fortunate to have a personal attendant with whom he developed a special bond. At his funeral, one of the veteran staff at his residence—which housed others with mental health challenges—remarked that depression and other disorders of the mind are mysteries that defy explanation. It was a fitting epitaph for Jonathan: a mystery man whom no one could rightfully claim to understand.