Impossible Takes Longer

Seventy-five years after Israel's founding, Daniel Gordis asks whether the country has lived up to the hopes of those who built it. The founders of 1948 wanted more than a sovereign state. They also hoped to reshape Jewish existence itself. Gordis measures the country against the vision in Israel's Declaration of Independence and finds a mix of remarkable accomplishment and painful disappointment, a history of both human achievement and real suffering.

Gordis examines the reasons for the state's creation that are often overlooked, the growth of Jewish and Israeli culture, and the national economy, including its influential technology sector. He also takes up the long Israeli-Arab conflict, the distinct form of Judaism that has taken shape within the Jewish state, and the complicated bond between Israel and Jewish communities abroad, along with many other subjects.

Writing in a balanced register, Gordis aims to bring clarity and moderation to a debate that is often heated. He weighs Israel's achievements, faults, and built-in tensions, offering new ways of thinking about the country. The author, a two-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award for his earlier book on Israel, concludes that the Jewish state has succeeded in ways its founders could not have imagined.