Published on the country's seventy-fifth anniversary comes a nuanced and thoughtful examination
of Israel's past present and future from the two-time National Jewish Book Award?winning
author of Israel 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 seventy-fifth
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.
