In 2005, two disengagements loomed large for Gordis. The first was Israel’s pullout from Gaza and eviction of the Jewish settlers it could no longer protect. The second separation was a more personal one: his daughter was drafted. With his children marching willingly into a future potentially devoid of peace, Gordis peers deeply into the soul of a country where the more people appear bound together, the more completely they’re torn apart.

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"To read Daniel Gordis' Coming Together, Coming Apart is to be engaged in an ongoing dialogue with one of Israel's most thoughtful observers. … His conversational narrative is irresistible."

---Alan Dershowitz
Professor of Law at Harvard

"It takes a writer of unparalleled sympathy, creativity, and hope – a writer like Daniel Gordis–to produce a narrative that lays bare the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and underscores the toll the conflict takes on every human being it touches."

“Whether describing a walk through Jerusalem in snow, a hike in the desert or a farewell family drive to the Gaza settlements, Gordis manages to capture the essential details that tell us the larger meaning of our Israeli lives. There is much irony in this book, and also anger… Those of us who share his passion are fortunate to be so well represented by this book.”

—Yossi Klein Halevi, Foreign Correspondent, The New Republic

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