Rabbi Daniel Gordis

Rabbi 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 If a Place Can Make You Cry (Crown 2002), Becoming a Jewish Parent (Harmony, 1999), Does the World Need the Jews? (Scribner, 1997) and God Was Not in the Fire (Scribner, 1995).

In the summer of 1998, Daniel Gordis and his family moved to Israel from Los Angeles. They planned to be there for a year, but a few months into their stay, Gordis and his wife decided to live in Jerusalem permanently, confident that their children would be among the first generation of Israelis to grow up in peace.