Daniel Gordis

Daniel Gordis is Senior Vice President of the Shalem Center and a writer on Zionism, national identity, currents in Israel, Jewish identity in Israel and the Diaspora and biblical political thought.

He received his BA from Columbia University, his M.A. and Rabbinic Ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and his Ph.D from the University of Southern California.

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.

In 1998 he emigrated to Israel and in 2007 he joined the Shalem Center where he is currently senior vice president and the Koret Distinguished Fellow. Previously, he was vice president of the Mandel Foundation in Israel and director of its Leadership Institute.

His writing has appeared in magazines and newspapers including the New York Times, The New Republic, Moment, Tikkun, Azure, Commentary, and Conservative Judaism. Gordis also writes a regular column — “A Dose of Nuance” — for the Jerusalem Post. His book, Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War That May Never End (Wiley, 2009) was awarded the National Jewish Book Award. His next book on Israel, The Promise of Israel: Why Its Seemingly Greatest Weakness is Actually Its Greatest Strength, will be published by Wiley in August 2012. His biography of Israel’s sixth Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, will be published as part of the Nextbook series in partnership with Random House and will appear in Spring 2014..

Affiliations

• Shalem Center

Publications

• Pledges of Jewish Allegiance: Conversion, Law and Policy-Making in 19th and 20th Century Orthodox Responsa, with David Ellenson (Stanford University Press, 2012)
• Saving Israel: How the Jewish State Can Win a War That May Never End (Wiley, 2009)
• Coming Together, Coming Apart: A Memoir of Heartbreak and Promise in Israel (Wiley, 2006)
• Home to Stay: One American Family's Chronicle of Miracles and Struggles in Contemporary Israel (Random House, 2003)
• If a Place Can Make You Cry: Dispatches from an Anxious State (Crown/Random House, 2002)
• Does the World Need the Jews: Rethinking Chosenness and American Jewish Identity (Scribner, 1997)
• God Was Not in the Fire: The Search for a Spiritual Judaism (Scribner, 1995)