Seventy-five years ago, on the 5th of Iyar, David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Rachel Cohen, Moshe Sharett and 30 other activists and leaders who had carefully laid the foundations of a 20th-century Jewish community in Palestine gathered in the Tel Aviv Art Museum to declare the establishment of the State of Israel. They weren’t so much claiming sovereignty over a piece of land or establishing an ordinary country. They were resurrecting a homeland that the Jewish people had lost nearly two millennia earlier.
At its 75th birthday, one of the country’s most prolific writers and intellectuals now asks whether “the most hated country in the world” has fulfilled the dreams and expectations of its founders.
While Dr. Daniel Gordis does not shy away from examining Israel’s failures and missteps, in his new book, Impossible Takes Longer, he argues with nuance and force that the country has accomplished more than Ben-Gurion could ever have imagined.
Please join us to hear his eloquent argument about where Israel has fallen short and the many ways – from the cultural to the economic to the technological – the country has exceeded all aspiration.
Author of eight books, including two winners of the National Jewish Book Award, Dr. Daniel Gordis, who made aliyah from California 25 years ago, is the Koret Distinguished Fellow at Jerusalem’s Shalem College, which he helped found. He will be in conversation with Abigail Pogrebin, writer, journalist, Tablet magazine podcast host.