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

256 Pages·2012·0.92 MB·English

by  Daniel Gordis

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T H E
P RO M I S E
O F I S R A E L
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Also by Daniel Gordis
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The Search for a Spiritual Judaism
Does the World Need the Jews?
Rethinking Chosenness and American Jewish Identity
Becoming a Jewish Parent:
How to Explore Spirituality and Tradition with Your Children
If a Place Can Make You Cry:
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Home to Stay:
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of Miracles and Struggles in Contemporary Israel
Coming Together, Coming Apart:
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Saving Israel:
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That May Never End
Pledges of Jewish Allegiance:
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in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Orthodox Responsa
(coauthored with David Ellenson)
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THE
PROMISE
OF ISRAEL
Why Its Seemingly Greatest
Weakness Is Actually
Its Greatest Strength
DANIEL GORDIS
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Copyright © 2012 by Daniel Gordis. All rights reserved
Cover design: Erica Halivni
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Gordis, Daniel.
The promise of Israel : why its seemingly greatest weakness is actually its greatest strength /
by Daniel Gordis.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-118-00375-6 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-22177-8 (ebk);
ISBN 978-1-118-23547-8 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-26028-9 (ebk)
1. Israel—Politics and government—21st century. 2. National characteristics,
Israeli. 3. Zionism. 4. Arab-Israeli confl ict—1993—Infl uence. I. Title.
DS128.2.G66 2012
956.94—dc23
2011053472
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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For
Ada and Menahem Ben Sasson
and the children we share,
Talia and Avishay Ben Sasson-Gordis
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Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said:
“This is my own, my native Land”?
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned
As home his footsteps he hath turned, . . .
From wandering on a foreign strand?
Walter Scott
The Lay of the Last Minstrel
August 1804
We have not yet lost our hope
Of being a free people, in our land
“Hatikva,” 1878
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