Home to Stay One American Family's Chronicle of Miracles and Struggles in Contemporary Israel

In the summer of 1998, Daniel Gordis, his wife, and three children moved from Los Angeles to Israel. Their plan was to stay for a year, but that year brought a steady escalation in Jewish-Palestinian tensions. They decided to follow their hearts and make Jerusalem their new permanent home anyway. After arriving in Israel, Gordis began sending e-mails about his family's experiences to friends and family abroad. Those missives--passionate, thoughtful, informative, and beautifully written--were forwarded thousands of times from recipient and eventually found their way to the pages of "The New York Times Magazine. This book tells the story of a family that must reconcile their love of Israel with the horror of living in a country at war. It is a brave plea for hope in a time when the idea of a lasting peace seems elusive at best.

Daniel Gordis is the director of the Mandel Foundation’s Jerusalem Fellows Program. He was previously a vice president at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles and dean of its Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies. He is the author of three previous books: Becoming a Jewish Parent (Harmony, 1999), Does the World Need the Jews? (Scribner, 1997), and God Was Not in the Fire (Scribner, 1995).<br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>