Home to Stay: One American Family's Chronicle of Miracles and Struggles in Contemporary Israel [Paperback]

Daniel Gordis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 28, 2003

In the summer of 1998, Daniel Gordis and his family moved to Israel from Los Angeles. They planned to be there for a year, but a few months into their stay, Gordis and his wife decided to remain in Jerusalem permanently, confident that their children would be among the first generation of Israelis to grow up in peace.

Immediately after arriving in Israel, Daniel had started sending out e-mails about his life to friends and family abroad. These missives—passionate, thoughtful, beautifully written, and informative—began reaching a much broader readership than he’d ever envisioned, eventually being excerpted in The New York Times Magazine to much acclaim. An edited and finely crafted collection of his original e-mails, Home to Stay is a first-person, immediate account of Israel’s post-Oslo meltdown that cuts through the rhetoric and stridency of most dispatches from that country or from the international media. This is must reading for anyone who wants to get a firsthand, personal view of what it’s like for a family on the front lines of war.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

In the summer of 1998, Daniel Gordis and his family moved to Israel from Los Angeles. They planned to be there for a year, but a few months into their stay, Gordis and his wife decided to remain in Jerusalem permanently, confident that their children would be among the first generation of Israelis to grow up in peace.

Immediately after arriving in Israel, Daniel had started sending out e-mails about his life to friends and family abroad. These missives?passionate, thoughtful, beautifully written, and informative?began reaching a much broader readership than he?d ever envisioned, eventually being excerpted in The New York Times Magazine to much acclaim. An edited and finely crafted collection of his original e-mails, Home to Stay is a first-person, immediate account of Israel?s post-Oslo meltdown that cuts through the rhetoric and stridency of most dispatches from that country or from the international media. This is must reading for anyone who wants to get a firsthand, personal view of what it?s like for a family on the front lines of war.

About the Author

Daniel Gordis is the director of the Mandel Foundation’s Jerusalem Fellows Program. He was previously a vice president at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles and dean of its Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies. He is the author of three previous books: Becoming a Jewish Parent (Harmony, 1999), Does the World Need the Jews? (Scribner, 1997), and God Was Not in the Fire (Scribner, 1995).


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press; Updated edition (October 28, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400049598
• ISBN-13: 978-1400049592
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,169,039 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

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/

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars MUST READ!, August 29, 2004

By 

MChief576 (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Home to Stay: One American Family's Chronicle of Miracles and Struggles in Contemporary Israel (Paperback)

I wish there were words to describe how great this book was. It is so hard to find a book about everyday Israeli life. In fact, is there? I saw Rabbi Gordis speak in NYC in 2004, and bought the book after his great speech. When you read this book, you feel like you are actually living in Israel. He describes every emotion he and his family is going through, the good and the bad. He is a great observer of human nature, and good writer. A must read for those you yearn to learn about contemporary life in Israel

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and with extreme passion and love, March 29, 2004

By 

Maria Aparecida de Jesus "Maria de Dio" (Argentina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Home to Stay: One American Family's Chronicle of Miracles and Struggles in Contemporary Israel (Paperback)

Excellent real story with extreme passion, love and deep understanding. A MUST READ for everyone.
The Jewish State for the Jews, a people so scarified, so much exterminated all over the centuries, in Europe and especially in the Arab world, world that by the beginning of the 20th century decided to exterminate, destroy and kill every single Jews in their countries, destroying as a result communities of 2500 years, reason why these Jews came to Israel our beloved land and home.
Bravo for Daniel Gordis.
BRAVISSIMO !!!!!!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why exchange security and prosperity to live in Israel, March 29, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Home to Stay: One American Family's Chronicle of Miracles and Struggles in Contemporary Israel (Paperback)

I've read hundreds of books on Israel -- internal politics, religious strife, relationships with Palestinians, with neighbors in the Mid-East, with American Jews, with the US Congress, etc. This book covers these same issues, less academically but with a human face. The good and the bad. Gordis writes with passion, but not an agenda. An excellent read for anyone who cares about Israel, especially if you have ever considered living there -- or want to better understand why so many Jews have exchanged the security and prosperity they had in the diaspora for life in the Holy Land.