Impossible Takes longer

75 Years After Its Creation, Has Israel Fulfilled its Founders�� Dreams?

Has Israel lived up to its founders�� vision? Published on the country��s 75^th�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 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 75^th�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, but also the ways in which it has fallen short. In a deft and multifaceted assessment of Israel, 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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