Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War That May Never End

by Daniel Gordis

Overview

Is Israel worth saving, and if so, how do we secure its future?

The Jewish State must end, say its enemies, from intellectuals like Tony Judt to hate-filled demagogues like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Even average Israelis are wondering if they wouldn't be better off somewhere else and whether they ought to persevere. Daniel Gordis is confident his fellow Jews can renew their faith in the cause, and in Saving Israel, he outlines how.

• 2009 National Jewish Book Award winner
• Addresses the most pressing issues faced by Israel-and American Jews-today, without recycling the same old arguments
• Lays to rest some of the most pernicious myths about Israel, including: Jews could thrive without Israel; Israeli Arabs just want equality, and Palestinians just want their own state; peace will come, if Israel will just do the right things
• "Morally powerful . . . from a writer whose reflections are consistently as intellectually impressive as they are moving. . . . Gordis addresses the exigencies of our time with the urgency they overridingly demand, and with the depth of feeling they inspire."-Cynthia Ozick

Gordis has written many popular personal essays and memoirs in the past, but Saving Israel is a full-throated call to arms. Never has the case for defending-no, celebrating-the existence of Israel been so clear, so passionate, or so worthy of wholehearted support.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780470643907
Publisher:	TURNER PUB CO
Publication date:	09/01/2010
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Daniel Gordis is Senior Vice President and a Senior Fellow of the Shalem Center. A columnist for the Jerusalem Post, he has also written for the New York Times, Tikkun, the Forward, and the New York Times Magazine. His books include Coming Together, Coming Apart and If a Place Can Make You Cry.

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Table of Contents

Israel, Post Euphoria.

ONE The State That Reinvented Hope.

TWO Jews Making Jewish Decisions.

THREE The First War, All Over Again.

FOUR A Nation That Dwells Alone.

FIVE The Next Six Million.

SIX Israeli Arabs in a Jewish State.

SEVEN The Withering of Zionist Passion.

EIGHT More than Just a Hebrew-Speaking America.

NINE Israel's Arabs, Israel's Conundrum.

TEN Creating the New Jew.

ELEVEN The Wars That Must Be Waged.

TWELVE The Jewish State and the State of the Jews.

Because Israel Is Not Just a State.

Acknowledgments.

Notes.

Index.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Few books can combine the sweep of Israel's complex and extraordinary history with personal insight and passion. Saving Israel accomplishes this and more, it educates and inspires it readers while furnishing them with well-grounded hope for the future. Daniel Gordis has written an essential text for students, scholars, journalists--anyone concerned with the survival of the Jewish State.
--Michael Oren, Bestselling author of Six Days of War and Power, Faith and Fantasy: American in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present

Daniel Gordis's morally powerful Saving Israel, from a writer whose reflections are consistently as intellectually impressive as they are moving, engages in an acutely necessary argument: that sovereignty has significantly changed the Jewish condition by influencing how we think. Gordis addresses the exigencies of our time with the urgency they overridingly demand, and with the depth of feeling they inspire.
--Cynthia Ozick

Daniel Gordis' Saving Israel is an important book. Bold in his willingness to be forthright and politically incorrect, Gordis sets forth propositions which are difficult for many to accept, such as the fact that Israel's existence is more important than peace and that Israel can never be a copy of the American style liberal democracy. For, as he notes, what is at stake is not merely a state, but the only Jewish State in 2000 years, and the very future of the Jews worldwide, including those who do not live in that State. Hopefully, Saving Israel will inspire constructive discussion and analysis of core issues that Israelis, Jews everywhere, (and the entire West) have studiously avoided for far too long.
--Natan Sharansky, Former Soviet dissident and Israeli Cabinet Minister; author of Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy

Daniel Gordis has written a book about the future of Israel that is both heart-wrenching and heart-warming. His has consistently been, these past few years, one of the most engaging voices to have emerged from this time of trial for the Jewish state, and it is impossible not to be moved by his plea for hope in the land whose very existence should be a living symbol of hope.
--Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth

One of Israel’s most thoughtful observers – An American who made Israel his home, despite its imperfections and dangers.
--Alan Dershowitz, author of The Case for Israel