Dr. Daniel Gordis is Senior Vice President and the Koret Distinguished Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem.  He writes a regular column — “A Dose of Nuance” — for the Jerusalem Post, and is a regular contributor to the New York Times, in print and on-line.  The author of numerous books on Jewish thought and currents in Israel, and a recent winner of the National Jewish Book Award, Dr. 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.  Dr. Gordis joined Shalem in 2007 to help found Israel’s first liberal arts college, after spending nine years as vice president of the Mandel Foundation in Israel and director of its Leadership Institute.

Gordis is widely cited on matters pertaining to Israel. Professor Alan Dershowitz has called him “one of Israel’s most thoughtful observers,” while Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic has written, “If you asked me, ‘of all the people you know, who cares the most about the physical, moral and spiritual health of Israel?’ I would put the commentator and scholar Daniel Gordis at the top of the list.”  Leonard Fein has written that Gordis is “perhaps the single most popular speaker on Israel to American Jewish audiences.”

Since moving to Israel in 1998, Dr. Gordis has written and lectured throughout the world on Israeli society and the challenges facing the Jewish state. His writing has appeared in magazines and newspapers including the New York Times, the New Republic, the New York Times Magazine, Moment, Tikkun, Azure, Commentary Magazine, Foreign Affairs and Conservative Judaism. His latest book on the Middle East, Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War That May Never End was published by Wiley in March 2009, and was subsequently awarded the 2009 National Jewish Book Award.

Dr. Gordis’ most recent book, co-authored with Dr. David Ellenson of the Hebrew Union College, is entitled Pledges of Jewish Allegiance: Conversion, Law, and Policy-Making in 19^th and 20^thCentury Orthodox Responsa, and was released by Stanford University Press in December 2011.  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 books to date are

• The Promise of Israel:  Why Its Seemingly Greatest Weakness Is Actually Its Greatest Strength (Wiley, 2012)
• Pledges of Jewish Allegiance: Conversion, Law, and Policy-Making in 19^th and 20^thCentury Orthodox Responsa (with David Ellenson, Stanford University Press, 2012)
• Saving Israel: How the Jewish People 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)
• Becoming a Jewish Parent: How to Explore Spirituality and Tradition with Your Children (Random House, 1999)
• 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)

Dr. Gordis received his B.A. from Columbia College (Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa), a Masters Degree and Rabbinic Ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California.

He and his wife, Elisheva, live in Jerusalem.  They are the parents of a married daughter and two sons.

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