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Impossible takes longer : 75 years after its creation, has Israel fulfilled its founders' dreams? / Daniel Gordis.

by Gordis, Daniel, author.

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New York : Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2023]

Jews -- Civilization.

Arab-Israeli conflict.

Palestinian Arabs -- Politics and government.

Israel -- History.

Israel -- Civilization.

9780063239449 (hardback) :

9780063239487 (trade paperback)

xxxvii, 345 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm

A Jewish National Liberation Movement -- Israel's declaration of independence -- "We Hereby Declare" : First, Existence -- "We Shall Still See Goodness" : Healing Jewish Heartbreak -- "Grounded in Our National Culture" : Restoring a Nation -- "Lest the Sword Fall from Our Hands" : Jews Defend Themselves -- "The Day of Vengeance Will Come" : Wars with Neighboring States -- "Liberation" or "Nakba" : Palestinians, Land, Legitimacy -- "I'm for Jewish Democracy" : Ethnic Democracy and its Discontents -- "Do What Is Just and Right" : the "Other" in Israeli Society -- "A Life of Honest Toil" : from Food Rationing to Tech Powerhouse -- "Trust in the Rock of Israel" : Judaism in the State of the Jews -- "From the Four Corners of the Earth" : Israel and the Diaspora -- "The World Shall Fill with Bounty" : Israel and Humankind -- "Half Dust, Half Heaven."

"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"--

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