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Dispatches
From The Front

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SAJE kickoff speaker Rabbi Daniel Gordis writes
movingly about his family's decision to stay in
Israel while the intifada rages.

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I

I

n the summer of 1998, Rabbi
Daniel Gordis, then dean of the
University of Judaism, his wife
Elisheva and their three chil-
dren left Los Angeles for Jerusalem.
Rabbi Gordis had received a fellow-
ship at the Mandel Institute, and he
and his wife hoped that spending a
year in Israel would
"give our kids a
chance to learn some
Hebrew and to expe-
rience a culture very
different from the
one they were grow-
ing up in in West Los
Angeles."
But as their year in
Jerusalem was draw-
ing to a close, the
family decided to
"pack it in" and try to
make a life in Israel.
To share his fami-
ly's experiences,
Rabbi Gordis began
sending e-mail mes-
sages to family and
friends in the United
States describing life
on the streets of Jerusalem.
In those first months he wrote of his
family's joy in being Jews in a Jewish
land, from their first Shabbat service
conducted entirely in Hebrew to their
walk home on Yom Kippur serenaded
by a dozen shofars.
And he wrote of the hope many
Israelis felt in May 1999 when Labor's
Ehud Barak was elected prime minis-
ter: "[Barak] will most likely form a
government and make a peace. We are
overjoyed."
Then the Camp David peace talks
fell apart and the peace process
derailed. In September 2000, the ter-

Jennifer Anderson Siger is a freelance
writer in Macon, Ga.

ror bombings started — the second
Palestinian intifada was under way.
Still, the Gordis family remained;
Israel was now home, for better or for
worse. And Rabbi Gordis continued
writing.
His e-mails were read and forwarded
across the Internet and even excerpted
in the New York Times Magazine.
Now they have been gathered and
published in an eloquent new book, If

a Place Can Make
You Cry: Dispatches
From an Anxious
State (Crown
Publishers; $24), a
volume which pro-
vides insight into
why so many
Disapora Jews care
so passionately
about Israel, and
why, as*Rabbi
Gordis writes,
"Israel is not just a
place — it's a
story."
Rabbi Gordis
will speak about
his experiences at a
kickoff event for
this year's SAGE
(Seminars for
Adult Education) program Wednesday,
Feb. 5, at the Jewish Community
Center in West Bloomfield.

Life Turned Upside Down

In a recent interview, speaking about
his family's life in Israel before and
after the intifada began, Rabbi Gordis
said, "I think I am more sober than I
was then and, the truth is, it's hard to
remember what life was like back
then.
"It's hard to remember what it was
like to sit outside a cafe and not ask
yourself if it's better to move inside,
because at least at the door there's a
security guard with a metal detector.
"You think those things all the time
now. I don't remember what it was

