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Congregation Agudath Israel - The Voice

March 2003

Book Review
Reviewed by: Jason A. Miller, Rabbinic Intern

If a Place Can Make you Cry: Dispatches from an Anxious State

By Daniel Gordis (Crown, 2002)

As my fellow Seminary students and I boarded buses outside Ben Gurion Airport in
January, we were welcomed with blue and white carnations and a two-man band playing Hava
Nagilla. In those first few hours, we were thanked for our courage and devotion for visiting
Israel at such a daunting time. That was the type of welcome we received. That is, until five
minutes after we finished eating our first dinner in Israel later that evening. Rabbi Daniel Gordis
took to the podium and, in pulling no punches, told us that he disagreed with the type of
welcome we received. After all, he noted, his family and the millions of others living in Israel
do not receive such a reception each morning when they wake up and start their days living
amidst the bombs and the terror. When Gordis told his children about our attitudes to Israel and
the sense of courage possessed by many of my colleagues because they’d come for a visit, his
son said out of the blue, “Thank you for bringing me here. Thanks for saving me.”

In 1998, Gordis and his family came to Jerusalem to spend the year while he was on
sabbatical from his position of dean of the rabbinical school at the University of Judaism in Los
Angeles. Things were good and relatively calm in Israel during that post-peace process time,
and the Gordis family fell in love with the daily life in Israel. In fact, they commented to friends
and family how their young children were actually safer on their own in Jerusalem than they
would have been in L.A. After that idyllic sabbatical year, Gordis decided “to make a go of it”
and relocate permanently to Jerusalem, making aliyah with the family. The entire time, Gordis
documented this adventure in his regular e-mail missives to friends and family. The talented
writer’s correspondence took on a life of its own, circulated around the globe, published in the
New York Times magazine, and now compiled into a book.

It was not until I completed Gordis’ book that I got the double meaning of his subtitle, for
it is not merely the Jewish State that is anxiety-ridden during these trying times. The book
begins with Gordis’ reaction as a new Israeli to the devastation of September 11 and his feelings
during a visit to Ground Zero. However, the book is generally a story about children, and Gordis
makes mention of this point. He is a gifted storyteller who discusses his children’s maturation in
this confusing place of daily turmoil. He unabashedly reveals his children’s unanswerable
questions and tries to explain their unimaginable ability to cope like so many other Israeli
children living amidst the raging fear.

While so many others have been unsuccessful, Gordis seems to be able to put his finger
on the pulse of the Jewish State, effectively explaining the love affair with Israel that makes up
so many Jews’ lives. In If a Place Can Make You Cry, he criticizes Israeli policies and
documents his humanitarian work on behalf of the Palestinians, but makes clear his belief that
one should be able to criticize a country while still loving it, and without demonizing it or
negating its right to exist. There are many chilling moments as Gordis recounts his children’s
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reactions to life in Israel, as when he is posed with the challenge by his son, “Why did you bring
me here to die?” Indeed, this in-depth account of one family’s aliyah adventure through the
medium of an ongoing e-mail journal and insightful prose from a gifted writer sheds much light
on the situation affecting our people. To be a fly on the Gordis family’s walls of Jerusalem, one
need only read this book.

Sign up to receive Gordis’ dispatches from an anxious state by e-mail at www.danielgordis.org