Gershom Gorenberg

Gorenberg was born and raised in California.[1] He earned a B.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1976, then came to Israel as a college student and decided to stay after finding that he felt at home there.[1] From 1977 to 1980, he attended the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies and Yeshivat Hamivtar.[1] He later completed an M.A. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1985.[1] The same biographical entry lists Jerusalem as his home and says that he is married with three children.[1]

By 1983, while working toward his M.A., Gorenberg was employed as an editor and writer at the Jerusalem Post, where he remained through 1990.[1] Encyclopedia.com's career chronology subsequently lists him as a founding editor, senior editor, and columnist at the Jerusalem Report beginning in 1990, although its narrative separately says that he cofounded the magazine in 1983.[1] He has also been identified as an associate of Boston University's Center for Millennial Studies.[1]

Over the course of his career, he contributed articles to the New Republic, Ha'aretz, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and Mother Jones, among other outlets.[1] His poetry appeared in Prairie Schooner, New York Quarterly, California Quarterly, and Beloit Poetry Journal.[1]

In 2025, his commentary appeared in The Atlantic. A Congressional Research Service report cited his May 2025 article "The Two Extremists Driving Israel's Policy" in a discussion of ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir.[2] A July 2025 Israeli media review summarized his analysis of Israel's military strikes on Iran, in which he argued that celebration was premature because Iran remained an enemy, the damage to its nuclear facilities was uncertain, and the continuing Gaza war meant that Israel had not returned to genuine peace.[3]

In 1996, Gorenberg joined other members of the Jerusalem Report staff in writing Shalom, Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin, which received the National Jewish Book Award.[1] He also edited Seventy Facets: A Commentary on the Torah from the Pages of the "Jerusalem Report" that year.[1]

His first solo book, The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount (2000), examines religious conflicts over the Temple Mount from the perspectives of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, set against the broader context of Jerusalem's contested status.[1] Critical reception was mixed: one reviewer found it engaging but argued that it oversimplified the conflict by grounding it too narrowly in apocalyptic fear, while another praised the writing but said it missed an opportunity to develop the connection between politics and religion more fully.[1]

The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967–1977 was published by Times Books in 2006.[4][5] Drawing on newly available documents and interviews with senior figures, the book reconstructs the decade following the Six-Day War.[1] It covers the establishment of the first postwar Jewish communities in territories captured in 1967, including the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria.[6] As summarized by a Jewish Virtual Library reviewer, Gorenberg argues that settlement developed without a clear initial government plan and emerged "accidentally," in part because of Labor leaders' political weakness. On the government's handling of Hebron, the book says that "more than deciding on settlement, the government drifted into permitting it."[6]

A Congressional Research Service report recommends The Accidental Empire as a source on the history of Israeli settlements and their impact on Israeli society.[5] Reviewer Jonathan D. Tepperman called it a groundbreaking reassessment, while historian Tom Segev criticized its concentration on the first decade and its treatment of non-ideological settlers who came later.[1]

The Unmaking of Israel was published by Harper in 2011. The National Library of Israel catalog lists it as a 325-page first edition and describes it as arguing that Israeli policies undermine both the country's democracy and its character as a Jewish state.[7] The book discusses separating religion and state and forging a shared civil identity for Jews and Arabs, and includes chapters titled "Remember the Altalena," "Children of the Hills," and "The Reestablishment of Israel."[7] Gorenberg described the book as a warning about dangers to Israel's future, arguing that religious extremism and government actions that undermine the rule of law put Israel's democratic aspirations at risk, while also maintaining that Israel's early years represented a real, if flawed, democracy.[8]

His fourth book, War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East, was published by PublicAffairs in 2021.[9] The project represented a deliberate departure: in an interview, Gorenberg said he wanted to move on from settlements and occupied territories and find a new subject that would allow him to learn.[10] The Times of Israel reported that the book resulted from more than seven years of research, reporting, and writing, including work with archival papers that had not previously been seen by the public.[10] A Jerusalem Post review says he visited Bletchley and El Alamein and compared intelligence records from archives in several European and American capitals.[9] Gorenberg said the project made him "fall in love with archival research."[10] Its central historical argument holds that the British-led Allied victory at El Alamein, rather than the actions of Jewish forces, was decisive in preventing a Nazi advance into Palestine—a conclusion he acknowledged runs against a myth that developed in Israel.[10]

Gorenberg has written extensively on the intersection of religion and Israeli politics. Having studied Evangelical views of Israel for years, he urged caution about accepting conservative Evangelical support for Israel, arguing that it rests on a "double-edged theological position" combining claims about divine promises to Jews with end-times beliefs that envision Jews either dying or accepting Jesus.[11] He advocated maintaining a polite distance from the Christian right, even when its policy positions align with Israeli interests, summarizing his approach with the maxim "Respect him and suspect him."[11]

A 1998 Globes roundup of the Hebrew press summarized comments Gorenberg had published in Ha'aretz about the centre-left religious-Zionist movement Meimad as it prepared to compete as a political party.[12] It reported his argument that mainstream left-wing parties had become bastions of militant secularism where religious people with moderate political views felt unwelcome, making Meimad a politically justifiable option whose appeal would depend on its platform.[12]

Gorenberg's work has received both institutional recognition and sustained criticism. Shalom, Friend received the National Jewish Book Award, while a Congressional Research Service report lists The Accidental Empire for further reading on the history of settlements and their impact on Israeli society.[1][5] Reviews have praised that book as a groundbreaking reassessment while disputing its scope and interpretive framing.[1][13]

The reception of Gorenberg's work has not been uniform. A Jewish Virtual Library review of The Accidental Empire described him as a vocal opponent of settlements and argued that this shapes his narrative: the reviewer contended that the book gives insufficient attention to Arab actions and attitudes, addresses the Oslo period only briefly, and leaves the impression that settlements were the primary obstacle to peace.[6] These assessments represent the reviewer's position rather than a scholarly consensus.

The Jewish Review of Books offered a similarly double-edged evaluation, noting that while Gorenberg criticizes oversimplified accounts that divide the settlement debate into neat political stereotypes, the reviewer argued that his own book appears to accept one such narrative and that his investigations may have begun with his conclusions already formed.[13] The review also characterized his framework in The Accidental Empire as relying on concepts such as "colonialism" and "empire" to interpret the settlement movement's history.[13]