A rabbi argues that Jewish assimilation in America has undermined Jewish identity and urges Jews to return to the substance and wealth of Jewish tradition. By the author of God Was Not in the Fire. 20,000 first printing."
Dr. Daniel Gordis is Senior Vice President of the Shalem Center, where he is also a Senior Fellow. The author of numerous books on Jewish thought and currents in Israel, Dr. Gordis was the founding dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism, the first rabbinical college on the West Coast of the United States. Dr. Gordis joined Shalem in 2007 to help found Israel's first liberal arts college, after spending nine years as vice president of the Mandel Foundation in Israel and director of its Leadership Institute.
Since moving to Israel in 1998, Dr. Gordis has written and lectured throughout the world on Israeli society and the challenges facing the Jewish state. His writing has appeared in magazines and newspapers including the New York Times, the New Republic, the New York Times Magazine, Moment, Tikkun, and Conservative Judaism. His latest book, Saving Israel: How the Jewish State Can Win a Way That May Never End was published by Wiley in March 2009.
Dr. Gordis is presently at work on two new books. A volume about 19th and 20th century rabbinic responsa on conversion, which he is writing together with Rabbi David Ellenson of the Hebrew Union College, is tentatively entitled For the Sake of Heaven: Conversion, Law and Politics in the Modern World of Jewish Orthodoxy. And another book, on Zionism and its contributions to human freedom and vitality worldwide, is tentatively called Israel's Promise: How Zionism Can Help Preserve the Nation-State and Human Freedom, is also now being written.
Dr. Gordis received his B.A. from Columbia College (Magna Cum Laude), a Masters Degree and Rabbinic Ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California.
He blogs at http://danielgordis.org/
