Daniel Gordis | |
|---|---|
 Daniel Gordis, 2018 | |
| Born | July 5, 1959 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Education | Columbia University (BA) Jewish Theological Seminary of America (MA) University of Southern California (PhD) |
| Occupation(s) | Author and columnist |
| Employer | Shalem College |
| Parent |
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| Relatives | Robert Gordis (grandfather) |
| Awards | National Jewish Book Award (2009, 2016) |
Daniel Gordis (born 1959) is an American-born Israeli author and speaker, who is best known as a passionate advocate of Israel. He is Koret Distinguished Fellow at Shalem College in Jerusalem, where he previously also served as Senior Vice President and Chair of the Core Curriculum, until his retirement from those positions. The author of a dozen books on Judaism and Israel, and twice awarded the National Jewish Book Award (including Book of the Year for his history of Israel), The Forward has called Gordis "one of the most influential Israel analysts around." Gordis is also the author of the blog and podcast, Israel from the Inside, which is published on Substack.
Gordis was born on July 5, 1959, in New York City, and was raised in Baltimore where he attended public high school. His father was Leon Gordis, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. His mother, Hadassah Gordis, was a clinical social worker. His grandfather was Rabbi Robert Gordis,[1] a noted biblical scholar and one of the leaders of the Conservative Movement. His uncle (his mother's brother) was Professor Gerson D. Cohen, who served as Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Gordis himself was once recognized as a leading Conservative rabbi, but is no longer publicly associated with that movement.
Gordis earned a bachelor's degree from Columbia University in 1981. He then received a master's degree and rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. Gordis and his wife moved to California in 1984, and while there, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. He immigrated to Israel in 1998.[2]
Gordis was the founding dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism, the first rabbinical school on the West Coast of the United States.[2]
From 1998 to 2007, he worked at the Mandel Foundation and the Mandel Leadership Institute in Jerusalem. He joined the Shalem Center in 2007 as Senior Vice President and Koret Distinguished Fellow at Shalem College.[3]
In 2007, after nine years as vice president of the Mandel Foundation and director of its Leadership Institute, Gordis joined the Shalem Center to join the team founding Israel's first liberal arts college.[2]
Gordis has written for The New York Times, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, Moment, Tikkun, the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz and Conservative Judaism. He is now a regular columnist for the Jerusalem Post, for which he writes a regular column called "A Dose of Nuance," and for Bloomberg View.
In 2016, Gordis won the Jewish Book of the Year from the Jewish Book Council for Israel: A Concise History Of A Nation Reborn.[4]
Gordis has been harshly critical of American Jews who criticize Israeli government policies, sometimes publicly accusing them of either betraying Israel and the Jewish people (as in the case of Rabbi Sharon Brous[5]), having insufficient love for Israel (Rabbi Jill Jacobs[6]) or being a traitor to the Jewish people (Peter Beinart[7]). He has also extended this assessment to rabbinical seminaries and their students.[8]
The book won the 2008 National Jewish Book Award under the Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice category.[9]
The book has been called by UK-based freelance writer and critic Stephen Daisely "the gold standard text in Begin studies".[10] Critics beg to disagree, such as Samuel Thrope who writes "The book is a paragon of overweening pride: smug, self-satisfied, convinced of its own conclusions, and disdainful of its presumed critics" and that the "black-and-white picture of [Ben-Gurion and Begin] is a caricature that does not do justice to either figure."[11]
Gordis participated in the documentary film Indestructible about a man suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, in which he discussed theological explanations for human suffering.[12][13]
