Impossible Takes Longer
75 Years After Its Creation, Has Israel Fulfilled Its Founders' Dreams?
- 304 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Impossible Takes Longer
75 Years After Its Creation, Has Israel Fulfilled Its Founders' Dreams?
About This Book
WINNER OF THE RABBI SACKS BOOK PRIZE
A nuanced examination of the Israel's past, present, and future, after reaching its seventy-fifth anniversary and enduring its most challenging year ever, from the two-time National Jewish Book Awardâwinning author of Israel. Revised and updated throughout for the paperback edition.
In 1948, Israel's founders sought a "national home for the Jewish people, " where Jewish life would be transformed. The state they ultimately made, says Daniel Gordis, is a place of extraordinary success and maddening disappointment, a story of both unprecedented human triumph and great suffering.
When it marked its seventy-fifth anniversary, Israel was in the throes of a judicial reform crisis, its most dangerous internal rupture ever. Then, with the October 7th War, it was attacked from the outside and plunged into existential uncertainty. In light of those first seventy-five years and the events of 2023 that shook the country to its core, Gordis asks: Has Israel fulfilled the dreams of its founders?
Using Israel's Declaration of Independence, Gordis measures Israel's achievements, critiques its failures, and acknowledges its inherent contradictionsâultimately suggesting that, though it has often fallen short, the Jewish state is a success far beyond anything its founders could have imagined.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Epigraphs
- Contents
- Preface: A Jewish National Liberation Movement
- Israelâs Declaration of Independence
- Part I: âI Broke the Bars of Your Yokeâ
- Part II: âMust the Sword Devour Forever?â
- Part III: âAs Envisioned by the Prophetsâ
- Part IV: âThe Jewish Stateâ or âThe State of the Jewsâ?
- Afterword
- Conclusion: âHalf Dust, Half Heavenâ
- Authorâs Note
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Index
- Photo Section
- About the Author
- Also by Daniel Gordis
- Copyright
- About the Publisher