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Daniel Gordis
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Impossible Takes Longer
75 Years After its Creation
Has Israel Fulfilled Its Founders' Dreams?
Sunday, May 7 at 11:00 am MT, 1:00 pm ET;
6:00 pm GMT; 8:00 pm Israel
Koret Distinguished Fellow
Shalem College
Jerusalem
National Jewish Book Award Winner. TWICE!
This program has been generously underwritten by
Drs. Halley Faust and Eve Cohen.
Photo of Daniel Gordis by Yoram Reshef Studios
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Buy the Book In 1948, Israel’s founders had in mind much more than creating a state. They sought not mere sovereignty but also the creation of a “national home for the Jewish people,” where Jewish life would be transformed and where a “new Jew” would take root. Did they succeed? The state they created, says Daniel Gordis, is “the most hated nation in the world but also the most beloved,” a place of extraordinary success and maddening disappointment, a story of both unprecedented human triumph and great suffering.
Now, as the country marks its 75th anniversary, Gordis asks: Has Israel fulfilled the dreams of its founders? Using the country’s Declaration of Independence as his measure, he provides a thorough, balanced perspective on the ways in which the Israel of today exceeds the country’s original aspirations and also how it has fallen short. In a deft and multifaceted assessment, he discusses the often-overlooked reasons for Israel’s creation, the flourishing of Jewish and Israeli culture, Israel’s economy and its transformative tech sector, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the distinctly Israeli form of Judaism that has emerged in the Jewish state, Israel’s complex relationship with the Diaspora, and much more.
Gordis offers new angles of thinking about Israel that bring moderation and clarity to the prevailing discourse. And through weighing Israel’s successes, critiquing its failures, and acknowledging its inherent contradictions, he ultimately suggests that—in ways its founders could not have foreseen—the Jewish state is a success far beyond anything they could have imagined.
Daniel Gordis is a two-time National Jewish Book Award winner. His new book, Impossible Takes Longer, will be published to coincide with Israel’s 75th anniversary. Gordis offers a nuanced and thoughtful examination of Israel’s past, present, and future—providing an even-handed view of the ways in which Israel has succeeded, and also in the ways in which it has fallen short of the goals put forth by its founders nearly a century ago.
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