The Promise of Israel: Why Its Seemingly Greatest Weakness Is Actually Its Greatest Strength [Hardcover]

Daniel Gordis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2012 | ISBN-10: 1118003756 | ISBN-13: 978-1118003756 | Edition: 1

Why Israel's greatest weakness is its greatest strength, and what its supporters and enemies can learn from its success

Israel's critics in the West insist that no country founded on a single religion or culture can stay democratic and prosperous—but they're wrong. In The Promise of Israel, Daniel Gordis points out that Israel has defied that conventional wisdom. It has provided its citizens infinitely greater liberty and prosperity than anyone expected, faring far better than any other young nation. Israel's "magic" is a unique blend of democracy and tradition, of unabashed particularism coupled to intellectual and cultural openness. Given Israel's success, it would make sense for many other countries, from Rwanda to Afghanistan and even Iran, to look at how they've done it. In fact, rather than seeking to destroy Israel, the Palestinians would serve their own best interests by trying to copy it.

• Takes many of the most compelling arguments against Israel and turns them completely on their heads, undoing liberals with a more liberal argument and the religious with a more devout argument
• Puts forth an idea that is as convincing as it is shocking—that Iran's clerics and the Taliban should want to be more like Israel
• Written by Daniel Gordis, the author of the National Jewish Book Award winner, Saving Israel
• Daniel Gordis has been called "one of Israel's most thoughtful observers" (Alan Dershowitz) and "a writer whose reflections are consistently as intellectually impressive as they are moving" (Cynthia Ozick)

Certain to generate controversy and debate, The Promise of Israel is one of the most interesting and original books about Israel in years.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

What Israel's critics in the West really object to is that it is a country expressly devoted to the future of a single people—the Jewish people. In an increasingly universal world, in which differences between cultures, religions, and national traditions are either denied or papered over, Israel's critics insist that there is something backward about a country devoted to the flourishing of a particular people. But they're wrong. Rather than relentlessly assailing Israel, Daniel Gordis argues, the international community should see Israel's model as key to the future of culture and freedom.

The Promise of Israel makes and proves several audacious claims. Noting that Arabs in Israel serve on the Supreme Court and as government ministers and that Israel boasts more democratically elected Islamic officials than all of the other non-Islamic nations in the world combined, Gordis contends that this has been accomplished not in spite of Israel's commitment to the success of the Jewish people, but because of it.

More surprisingly, Gordis insists that instead of being so commonly maligned, Israel ought to be seen as a beacon among nations, a remarkably successful state that has persevered despite its having been at war ever since it was established. Not only should other countries admire this model, they should emulate it. Gordis invites you to imagine how much freer, safer, and more prosperous Egyptians and Syrians would be if a deep-rooted reverence for their past and culture were combined with democratic freedoms and an abiding respect for minority rights. He argues persuasively that a people's awareness and love of its distinctive culture and unique history need not mire them in the past. It can gird them with the confidence that they have something unique to contribute to the world and with the guidance and direction they need to shape a better future.

While The Promise of Israel may well be the most interesting and original book on Israel and the Middle East in years, it is also more than that. It offers the vision of a new and different approach to democracy and freedom for all of a nation's people—one that supports a strong cultural and religious center while protecting and supporting the beliefs and traditions of minorities. That is an export of which any nation would be proud.

From the Back Cover

Praise for Daniel Gordis and The Promise of Israel

"If you asked me, 'Of all the people you know, who cares the most about the physical, moral, and spiritual health of Israel?' I would put the commentator and scholar Daniel Gordis at the top of the list."
—Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic

"A writer whose reflections are consistently as intellectually impressive as they are moving."
—Cynthia Ozick

"Many of us assume that to be truly free, we must abandon the groups into which we were born and the identities we have inherited. But as Daniel Gordis demonstrates in his book, The Promise of Israel, the State of Israel's remarkable history is proof that identity and freedom can coexist, that it is identity that makes genuine freedom possible. A powerful and sure-to-be-controversial work, The Promise of Israel presents a dramatic new way of thinking about both the very purpose of Israel as well as about its contributions to human beings everywhere."
—Natan Sharansky, former Soviet prisoner of conscience and human rights activist, current Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency

"In this incredibly original and consistently provocative presentation, Daniel Gordis makes the case why Israel should and must matter to Jews and non-Jews alike, and to every country that aspires to prosperity and even more importantly, to freedom."
—Joseph Telushkin, author of Jewish Literacy and A Code of Jewish Ethics

"This beautifully composed saga magnificently illustrates the historic truth that wherever Jews have gone in history, we have always followed our own way, forever belonging to and contributing mightily to world civilization and yet remaining distinct from it."
—Yehuda Avner, author of The Prime Ministers

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (August 1, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1118003756
• ISBN-13: 978-1118003756
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 0.9 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #425,007 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dr. Daniel Gordis is Senior Vice President and Koret Distinguished Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. 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 book, Saving Israel: How the Jewish State Can Win a Way That May Never End, received the 2009 National Jewish Book Award.

Gordis' newest book, The Promise of Israel: Why Its Seemingly Greatest Weakness is Actually its Greatest Strength, was published by Wiley in August 2012. He is now writing a biography of Menachem Begin for the prestigious Nextbook series, which will appear in Spring 2014.

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/

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Gordis Brings Passion and Persuasion to His New Book August 21, 2012

By Sally Abrams

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This review was originally posted on TCJewfolk.com

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

So begins the iconic song written by John Lennon in 1971. A generation later it is still sung earnestly by those who believe that the best way forward is a kind of post-national, citizen-of-the-world universalism.
Not so fast, asserts Dr. Daniel Gordis, Senior Vice President and Koret Distinguished Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, and author of The Promise of Israel: Why It's Seemingly Greatest Weakness is Actually It's Greatest Strength.

With characteristic intellectual rigor and original thinking, Gordis proposes that human beings live richer and more meaningful lives in the nation-state, where the majority of its citizens share a common history, language, culture and sense of purpose. When coupled with democratic freedoms and protection of minority rights, such countries preserve both human diversity and freedom.....

Gordis writes:

"Human diversity will be protected most by an amalgam of countries, each of which exists for the flourishing of a particular people, culture, way of life and history and, at the same time, engages in an open and ongoing dialogue with other cultures and civilizations."

Gordis argues persuasively that Israel has fallen out of favor precisely because it runs against the current of universalism that has taken hold. After World War II, Europe lost its taste for nationalism at the very time that having a country of their own was of paramount importance to Jews. The establishment of the Jewish national home, Israel's deep belief in itself, and its success against all odds have served as fertile sources of resentment among those who think that the nation-state has run its course.

Recent history provides powerful support for Gordis' arguments: the breakup of Yugoslavia into ethnic states, and the formation of some fifteen ethnic-based countries following the collapse of the Soviet Union all defy the notion that the nation-state is finished. Rather than malign the plucky little Jewish state, Gordis asserts that Israel offers a compelling model which others, especially the Palestinians, should emulate.

Gordis is candid about Israel's flaws and its obligation to fully integrate the Arab minority. "Our own sovereignty must be an opportunity to assist others in their quest, not to subvert them...Some appreciable measure of what statehood has done for the Jews must also extend to the substantial minorities who live in its midst." Gordis is adamant that Israel's minorities should have every opportunity to flourish.

The most moving and personal passages in the book describe the deep sense of belonging that is part of life in Israel, and that, in Gordis' view, is unparalleled. From a casual encounter with a punk-looking, multi-pierced salesclerk at music store to the nationwide celebration upon Gilad Shalit's release from captivity, each anecdote resonates with a sense of shared history, culture, and meaning.

Gordis is concerned about a distancing between diaspora Jews and Israel, especially among young American Jews. While frustration with the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians is a cause of this shift in attitude, Gordis suggests that something more is at work- a sense among young Jews that they simply don't need Israel any longer. According to Gordis, nothing could be further from the truth. The ease that Jewish Americans enjoy is directly due to the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state.

"What Israel has done is to change the existential condition of Jews everywhere, even in the United States. Without the state of Israel, the self-confidence and sense of belonging that American Jews now take for granted would quickly disappear."

That a thriving Jewish homeland has dramatically altered the condition of Jewish people is a fact that many Jews have lost sight of--or simply never realized. Gordis warns: "American Jewish life as it now exists would not survive the loss of Israel."

Because he believes that Israel offers a model that the international community can learn from, he feels that a different kind of dialogue is now in order. "A new conversation, reframed in terms of what Israel does for Jewish flourishing and how it models a profound conception of the life well lived to humanity at large, is long overdue." This represents a paradigm shift from traditional hasbara or exclusive focus on the conflict between Israel and her Arab neighbors.

Gordis concludes with his own version of "Imagine", very different from Lennon's universalist call:

"Imagine that the Palestinians have the courage to create a country in which Islam and the West, meet, in which Muslim tradition and democratic liberal values are in dialogue in the public square, just as Israel has done for Judaism and the West. Imagine a world in which Palestine does for the Palestinians what Israel has done for the Jews."

Gordis' beautifully written, extensively researched, and fully annotated new book, is a must-read for anyone who loves Israel and imagines a better future for everyone in the region.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A must read September 27, 2012

By Ma Ingalls

Format:Hardcover

Four star by Daniel Gordis

"We have not yet lost our hope of being a free people in a free land." Hatikva

The Promise of Israel answers the impending question surrounding the concept of a nation-state for Jews. David Gordis is devoted and dedicated to a vision: helping others understand why Jews should continue to stake claim to Israel as their homeland. In this book, Mr. Gordis expresses his heart for his people, the Jews. This book lays out the strengths of Israel and its motive to accept and accommodate others unlike other people groups represented in the region.

As a student of the Bible, I liked Mr. Gordis' thoughts on the Tower of Babel explaining God's desire for different tribes and man's attempt to build one culture, one language, and one world order. The Promise of Israel acknowledges truth, emphasises the importance of heritage to a people, and insists others look over all the facts before drawing conclusions on the issue.

P. 92-100 are especially well-written. On p. 92 Gordis increases the readers understanding of the Jews noting Carter's remarks in 1977. President Carter states his impression of Israel noting it was Israel and the Jewish people who took in refugees from Vietnam when no one else would. Begin, Prime Minister of Israel at the time, states that it is because of the experiences of his people, their trials, their hardships, and their struggles that Jews can understand the circumstances of other refugees noting an incident involving 900 Jews weeks before World War II.

On p. 93, Gordis goes on to draw out the similarities between the sufferings of Jews and Africans, both cultures experiencing slavery and deliverance within their cultural history. For both cultures, there was a time they did not have sense of where they came from and no sense of identity. Along that same point, on p. 97 Gordis argues the importance of national history to identity. He quotes Thomas Bender proposing an end to histories being taught in schools. That way of writing and teaching history has exhausted itself..Bender goes on ..ignoring bordering..[a history] that argues for the transnational natures of national histories. As we have heard today..a warning... we are living in dire times.

The Promise of Israel is a remarkable read not to be ignored. Not today as the Prime Minister speaks before the United Nations. Not during this season of Rosh Hashannah and especially in this moment of fasting, meditation, reflection, and atonement during Yom Kippur.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Truly thought provoking August 21, 2012

By J.Kalman

Format:Hardcover

Daniel Gordis lays down a challenge to start thinking about what Israel actually is as opposed to how it has come to be viewed by many people. He defies the conventional (and somewhat lazy thinking) that characterises the evolution of modern 'liberal' thought regarding Israel and Palestine, and by extension the Arab world . Modern western thought has come to see universalism as a panacea for many ills but at a cost. Daniel Gordis posits that national identification is a positive trait and does not detract from a responsibility to treat all people properly and fairly. He does not hide from the failings that he sees in Israel but also asks why the Palestinians and their supporters don't seek to emulate the open debate and intellectual rigour that Israel encourages rather than espousing the subjugation of thought and free debate that is required in order to develop a vibrant, democratic nation such that Palestinians claim to seek to establish.
This is an important addition to the discussion of not just Israel but the nature of the Middle East and should be read.