Random House / Crown Hardcover
1-4000-4613-0
October 2002
In the summer of 1998, Daniel Gordis and his family moved to Israel from Los Angeles. Immediately after arriving in Israel, Daniel had started sending out e-mails about his and his family’s life to friends and family abroad. These missives – passionate, thoughtful, beautifully written, and informative were excerpted in The New York Times Magazine to much acclaim. An edited and finely crafted collection of his original e-mails, If a Place Can Make You Cry tells the story of a family that must cope with the sudden realization that they took their children from a serene and secure neighborhood in Los Angeles to an Israel not at peace but mired in war. This is the chronicle of a loss of innocence. Ultimately, through Gordis’s eyes, Israel, with all its beauty, madness, violence, and history, comes to life in a way we’ve never quite seen before.

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“A work that dazzles with its nuance as it winds up to sock you in the gut.”
— Kirkus (Starred Review)

“Gordis is a provocative and penetrating observer, and his writings perfectly capture the complex conundrum of a soul in the tense present, yearning for a state of eternity.”
— Publisher’s Weekly