Rating: 
Summary: An extraordinary non-fiction thriller
Review: "The End of Days" is probably one of most extraordinary non-fiction thrillers I've ever read. Mr. Gorenberg's timely book is an intelligent, beautifully written revelation of the importance of the Temple Mount in modern politics and religion. The emotionally charged issue of the religious sovernignty of one of the world's most important religious site in the worlds most holy city is a big story with many different players each with a fascinating role. With much grace, humor and painstaking research Gorenberg explains, edifies and ties together all the real-life players in their struggle for power over a small piece of real estate that has the power to change the political climate of the Middle East . I loved this book and have been recommending it to anyone interested in the Middle East, or the religious fundamentalist movements or anyone who loves to read well-written and enlightning works that deal with current world issues. As the turmoil in the Middle East unfolds it 's great to read a book that made sense of the madness and offered insight into the motives of the principals in the present conflict.
Rating:
Summary: An extraordinary non-fiction thriller
Review: "The End of Days" is probably one of most extraordinary non-fiction thrillers I've ever read. Mr. Gorenberg's timely book is an intelligent, beautifully written revelation of the importance of the Temple Mount in modern politics and religion. The emotionally charged issue of the religious sovernignty of one of the world's most important religious site in the worlds most holy city is a big story with many different players each with a fascinating role. With much grace, humor and painstaking research Gorenberg explains, edifies and ties together all the real-life players in their struggle for power over a small piece of real estate that has the power to change the political climate of the Middle East . I loved this book and have been recommending it to anyone interested in the Middle East, or the religious fundamentalist movements or anyone who loves to read well-written and enlightning works that deal with current world issues. As the turmoil in the Middle East unfolds it 's great to read a book that made sense of the madness and offered insight into the motives of the principals in the present conflict.
Rating:
Summary: A MUST READ
Review: After four decades travelling in Israel and reading everything I could get my hands on about Israel and the Middle East conflict, I thought I knew my stuff pretty well. Then I read this book. It not only provided me with a wealth of information that I had never read before, but it opened a dozen new windows onto the complexity of what's going on in Jerusalem. It is smart. It is beautifully written - crisp, concise, insightful. And it is stunningly sensitive to the multitude of religious conflicts colliding in Jerusalem's ground zero. So whether you're a Christian looking for some insight into the Christian dimension to this conflict, a Jew interested in broadening his or her view of the Temple Mount, or a secular person just trying to figure out why peace seems such an impossibility, you will have a real treat in store for you. Frankly, this should be the first textbook in current Middle East politics 101 since Gorenberg takes you right into the heart of what is going on today.
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Book...Perhaps Released too Early
Review: Basically, I enjoyed End of Days and learned some by reading from it, although not as much as I hoped (someone who isn't as interested in the Middle East as I am might learn more).On the plus side, I thought that the author's discussion about why millenialism and conspiracy theories go hand in hand quite instructive. I also liked his metaphor of the Dome of the Rock as a fountain frozen in time. However, I found myself wishing that he had concentrated a little bit more on the actual violence that has taken place on and around the Temple Mount. Incidents like the 1990 riot and the 1969 incident where a mentally ill Australian torched the Dome are not gone into quite the depth that I would have liked. I also have to admit that some of the author's writing was confusing. Finally, I think it is quite a shame that the release of "End of Days" was not held up in order to give the author time to produce a chapter about the ongoing strife over the sanctuary. Oh, and I disagree with another reviewer's comment that this is the one book to read in order to understand the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict. A novice to the region would do much better to read Thomas Friedman's "From Beirut to Jerusalem" and David Shipler's "Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land."
Rating:
Summary: An urgent plea for relativism and humility
Review: Deciphering the signs pointing to all-out war in the Middle East is the passionate purpose of this book, which analyzes the motivations of fundamentalist and evangelical Christians who support Israel in its struggles against the Palestinians in general and in its often violent disputes over the Temple Mount in particular because their literal interpretations of Scriptural passages lead them to believe that these current events represent enactments of the "Endtime" in which the Messiah will reappear and perform the Final Judgment. A decidedly unbenign corollary of such beliefs, of course, is the expectation that the majority of Jews will be killed during the ensuing Armageddon, and that only the few who convert in time will join the ranks of true believers who enter the Kingdom of Heaven. In tracing these volatile beliefs, summarized under the rubric of "dispensational premillennialism," along with the parallel convictions of Jewish messianists and the unswerving commitments of Muslims to the defense of the sacred precincts on the Mount, Gershom Gorenberg contrasts the literalism with which a "political arrangement over thirty-five acres," the area of the Temple Mount, "is described as a cosmological defeat of light by darkness" - i.e., an accommodation preventing the destroyed Temple's rebuilding, an essential precondition to fulfillment of the Doomsday scripts of both Christian and Jewish fundamentalists - with the moderate evangelicals' rejection of the Crusades as a betrayal of Jesus, who "saw the image of God in every person he met." The author alternates passages of philosophical reflection with folksy descriptions of meetings with rabbis, ministers, scientists, politicians, and philosophers, and even with an analogy of the current crisis in the Middle East to the 1993 conflagration in Waco, Texas, which he interprets as a salient and pertinent example not only of the importance of understanding symbols in any dialogue or confrontation between adherents of different religions or cultures but also of the inevitable consequences of failing to heed or to speak one's interlocutor's symbolic language.
Rating:
Summary: The One Book To Read on Religion Violence & the Middle East
Review: Gershom Gorenberg's THE END OF DAYS is a stunning achievement. It concisely depicts how one small landmass in Jerusalem is ground zero for the end-times dreams and fears of three world religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. With eerie ease, Gorenberg brings people who think the world is about to end so close they seem like one's next door neighbors. He deftly portrays how American and Israeli politicians and religious leaders court the support of radical religious subgroups while ignoring how their actions fuel apocalyptic violence. No one has ever presented people awash with apocalyptic fever more credibly. Extremely well-written and absorbing, this book will be keenly appreciated by thoughtful and aware people throughout America and the Middle East. Brenda E. Brasher, Ph.D., Co-Chair, New Religious Movements Group, American Academy of Religion author of Godly Women: Fundamentalism and Female Power AND Give Me That Online Religion.
Rating: 
Summary: Insight Clouded by Bitterness
Review: Gorenberg brings to the surface issues of great concern in our time: namely, religious fundamentalism, Middle East politics, and the Temple Mount. He raises legitimate concerns about the ill-placed fervor of some fundamentalists, but his bitter tone unnecessarily clouds his approach. He uses arrogant cynicism when compassion would be much more effective. The effect of his writing is to downplay the role of faith and truth in these issues. It seems that Gorenberg is riding the pendulum too far in an opposite direction.
Rating:
Summary: Is This ALL There Is??
Review: Gorenberg lays them all in the dust. What an indictment of American Protestant churches (the Catholics are amillennial!),those who so carelessly subscribe to the folklore of dispensationalist premil mythology. The bible,when not ritually alluded to, does NOT come close to any such messianic or millennial 'delivery system' as trumpeted by this display of unregenerate eschatological pomp and circumstance. Gorenberg is optimally unbiased, an highly skilled profiler, if you will, and seems tongue-in-cheek most often with briliant characterizations of the three camps of small 'r' religious man. Bible-believing, born again Christians should be rather embarassed that they have encountered no more spiritual insight concerning their coming Redeemer - who now comes ONLY as God - than to think that 'our thoughts are His thoughts and His ways parallel to ours'. Please see DISPENSATIONALISM: A Biblical Examination (2002) ISBN 1-59129-441-x Amazon.com, to glimpse the operations of the mind of faith. This understanding, for instance, rejects the extra-biblical construct of a "catching away" of the saved ones as some prelude to a millennial era. The scripture firmly says " to FIRST (f-i-r-s-t) gather the unregenerate together (separate out), leaving behind those confessing the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior. All the three faiths at the Temple Mount acknowledge and subscribe to Jesus - the Man. The remmant are enabled to translate the bible knowledge as unequivocally declaring the MAN WITHOUT SIN and unconquered by death, to be ALL that we ever can handle of the True God and eternal life.
Rating:
Summary: End of Reason
Review: Gorenberg's book is certainly interesting and thought provoking. Although, while reading it, I couldn't help but feel I was reviewing a National Geographic article on some primitive tribe on the Amazon, not the great online bookseller, the river. Such was Gorenberg's rendering of the madness of the fundamentalists. Gorenberg is, first and foremost, a journalist; and his style is, naturally, journalistic. It makes for lively and interesting reading, but there is really little analysis and virtually no synthesis in the overall presentation.
One of the more interesting and important aspects that Gorenberg does develop well is the odd alliance of America's Christian Zionist movement with the Israeli religious right. Why is this alliance odd? Well, understanding of classic Christianity reveals that it is fundamentally at odds with Judaism, which is not a Biblical faith at all, but rather allegiance to the Talmudic Pharisees, the Kabbalah, and the Babylonian Talmud. This aspect is dramatically exposed in the support of misguided "Christian" zealots, such as Irvin Baxter, who support the terrorist founded and oriented Temple Mount Faithful movement of Gershom Solomon. Solomon's predecessor was, of course, Stanley Goldfoot, who was responsible for the King David Hotel terrorist bombing and the assassination of Count Bernadotte. Baxter supports said terrorist organization by influencing his misled radio and "ministry" followers to send money to various causes that further the insidious work of the terrorist "faithful". It is interesting to note, as Gorenberg insightfully observes, that Baxter has made rather a career of exciting his sleep walking followers to anticipate the imminent "End of Days" all the while sending emergency funds to his "ministry", such that news of the end can be promulgated with dispatch. If such reasoning appeals to you, perhaps you will really enjoy Gorenberg's book and Baxter's rather silly radio show.
Gorenberg ends his book by reciting a rabbinic story relative to the murder of Abel by his brother, Cain. This is a fitting end to his book, as it leaves to Talmudic jurisprudence and dialectic the guilt or innocense of Cain. In the end, it is not the Word of God that matters to such as Gorenberg and Baxter. It is the guile of the rabbis. The book ends not with a bang, but with a whimper.
Rating:
Summary: End of Reason
Review: Gorenberg's book is certainly interesting and thought provoking. Although, while reading it, I couldn't help but feel I was reviewing a National Geographic article on some primitive tribe on the Amazon, not the great online bookseller, the river. Such was Gorenberg's rendering of the madness of the fundamentalists. Gorenberg is, first and foremost, a journalist; and his style is, naturally, journalistic. It makes for lively and interesting reading, but there is really little analysis and virtually no synthesis in the overall presentation. One of the more interesting and important aspects that Gorenberg does develop well is the odd alliance of America's Christian Zionist movement with the Israeli religious right. Why is this alliance odd? Well, understanding of classic Christianity reveals that it is fundamentally at odds with Judaism, which is not a Biblical faith at all, but rather allegiance to the Talmudic Pharisees, the Kabbalah, and the Babylonian Talmud. This aspect is dramatically exposed in the support of misguided "Christian" zealots, such as Irvin Baxter, who support the terrorist founded and oriented Temple Mount Faithful movement of Gershom Soloman. Soloman's predecessor was, of course, Stanley Goldfoot, who was responsible for the King David Hotel terrorist bombing and the assassination of Count Bernadotte. Baxter supports said terrorist organization by influencing his misled radio and "ministry" followers to send money to various causes that further the insidious work of the terrorist "faithful". It is interesting to note, as Gorenberg insightfully observes, that Baxter has made rather a career of exciting his sleep walking followers to anticipate the imminent "End of Days" all the while sending emergency funds to his "ministry", such that news of the end can be promulgated with dispatch. If such reasoning appeals to you, perhaps you will really enjoy Gorenberg's book and Baxter's rather silly radio show. Gorenberg ends his book by reciting a rabbinic story relative to the murder of Abel by his brother, Cain. This is a fitting end to his book, as it leaves to Talmudic jurisprudence and dialectic the guilt or innocense of Cain. In the end, it is not the Word of God that matters to such as Gorenberg and Baxter. It is the guile of the rabbis. The book ends not with a bang, but with a whimper.
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