If A Place Can Make You Cry: Dispatches From an Anxious State is an important documentary, and should be read in these days of confusion, sorrow, and diminished hope for peace in the land many of us hold dear.

Daniel Gordis, an American from Los Angeles, who moved to Jerusalem in 1998 with his wife and three kids, puts a face on daily life in Israel. Gordis immediately began sending out e-mails about his and his family's new life to friends and family abroad. These missives, passionate, thoughtful, beautifully written, and informative, are collected here in a book form. He cuts through the rhetoric and stridency we so often hear, and tells the story of a family trying to reconcile their love of Israel and their right to be there with the complicated issues that arise from the situation.

Dr. Gordis makes no secret of his political views, left leaning and liberal. Surprisingly, his depiction of the life in terror stricken land, and his analysis of the different attitudes of the left and right wing idealists in Israel is balanced and thought provoking. Most touching are Gordis' conveyance of his internal struggle between the inherent need to "protect" his family and his Zionist ideals.

Dr. Daniel Gordis is Senior Vice President of the Shalem Center, where he is also a Senior Fellow. The author of numerous books on Jewish thought and currents in Israel, 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.

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