"The one thing we don't talk about here is what type of country we are creating," says Shalem Center senior vice president and senior fellow Daniel Gordis, with conviction.

Danial Gordis. "I suggest that we begin to ask ourselves questions that have nothing to do with our enemies, and everything to do with ourselves."
Photo: Maya Spitzer

Indeed, asserts Gordis - the author of Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War that May Never End, his latest of seven books on Jewish thought and life in Israel - "So focused have we been with resolving the conflict with the Palestinians that we have neglected to pay proper heed to issues no less critical for our survival."

They may even be more so, says Gordis, former director of the Mandel Foundation's Leadership Institute in Jerusalem, who joined Shalem in 2007 to help establish the country's first liberal arts college.

Gordis, 49, made aliya from Los Angeles in 1998 with his wife and three children. A rabbi, he says he prefers being referred to as "traditional," rather than "Orthodox" ("I shy away from those labels"). And he firmly believes that it is not only possible to make room for "passionate discourse" about the nature of Israeli society and statehood, but imperative. Otherwise, he warns, Israel will be little more than a "Hebrew-speaking version" of America or Europe, whose citizens cannot articulate what it is they are doing here, or where they are headed. If that happens, he adds, "our enemies will have won."

"The goal of the book," he explains, "is not to prescribe precisely what we ought to do, but rather to initiate a conversation - to raise the question of the issues we would debating if we were not constantly fretting over peace."

What he suggests, then, is to "put peace aside."

"When the Palestinians give us quiet," he says, "we'll have quiet. When they don't, we'll defend ourselves. And though we can't ever give up yearning for peace, we mustn't allow our yearning for it to paralyze us. Nor can we put our lives on hold."

In your article, "When Mistakes Are Worth Making" [July 2008, on his blog, called "Dispatches from an Anxious State" - www.danielgordis.org], you defended the prisoner exchange for abducted - and murdered - soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, as well as the disengagement from Gaza, on the grounds that, though perhaps not strategically wise, they were good for Israel's soul. On the other hand, in your book, you describe the difference between the positive atmosphere in this country following the Six Day War and the very different one of today. How do these two views not contradict one another?

I felt that the prisoner exchange highlighted something incredibly powerful and positive about the Israeli soul. And though many in the security establishment felt that it was not strategically wise, because it made us vulnerable to the sort of blackmail we're being subjected to now with Gilad Schalit, I thought it was an extraordinary testimony to the ability of the Israeli soul to somehow trump strategy, and to reembrace our ongoing commitment to each and every one of the young men who defend this country, bringing them home no matter what, and giving peace to their families.

I'm not saying that it was smart, or even that it was the choice that should have been made. That's why I called it a "mistake worth making."

As far as disengagement is concerned, in retrospect, there's no question that it was a mistake, in terms of Israel's security and defense. But I hesitate to call it an out-and-out mistake - without in any way minimizing the horrible human cost to the families who were uprooted - because I think we learned something we could only have learned by doing it. What no one can reasonably deny now is that the Right was right.

As someone who used to be left of center, I always believed that the Palestinians wanted the same things we did - that they sought two states for two peoples; that they wanted a country just like we did; that they wished for their children and grandchildren to flourish, just like we did. Disengagement proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was wrong - tragically wrong, but wrong nonetheless. Because what they had was an opportunity to begin to build some sort of autonomy. And it became clear that this is not what they had, or have, in mind. They are much more intent on destroying us than they are on building themselves. They're much more committed to our not having a future than to their having one.

Surely someone like you knows the Bible and the history of the Jewish people. Why did it take certain very current events in this country to teach you about something that seems to be a recurring theme since biblical times? What caused you to have faith in an idea that, given all that has occurred previously, would have been hard to trust?

First of all, I'm an American, who came to Israel at the age of 40. I was raised - in a suburban, Jewish, democratic, liberal, optimistic family - to believe that, at the end of the day, all conflicts are resolvable, and that all people basically want the same things for themselves and their children.

Secondly, the Jewish experience is not monolithic. So, though the biblical account certainly contains its share of resentment and hatred of the Jews, it also dares to dream of a different day.

Third, the American-Jewish experience has shown that you can leave a country where you were hated, and come to a new place where you will be embraced. Had my grandfather wanted to go to Columbia University, he might well not have been admitted because of his Jewishness. When my father wanted to go to Columbia, he got in, but there were unspoken limits on the number of Jews accepted. By the time I went to Columbia, it was 35 percent-40% Jewish. So, yes, there is the biblical experience - and warning. But there's also one's personal experience. And my personal experience gave me hope that, just as resistance to Jews had dissipated in America, the same might happen here. It hasn't.

Contemporary Israeli history seems to have the opposite shift. You write about the euphoria after the Six Day War, and about the gradual decline in that sense of victory and safety. So, from the country that conducted the Entebbe raid in 1976, Israel in 2009 is a state that exchanges terrorists for kidnapped IDF soldiers.