About Us

Every book on this site started with a question one family asked itself more than forty years ago: how do you make sure the stories of the Jewish people and the State of Israel are never lost? Gefen Publishing House has spent four decades answering that question, one carefully made book at a time. Today we are Jerusalem's leading English-language publisher of books about Israel, Judaism, and Jewish history and culture, read by people around the world.

A Story That Begins on a Ship

In 1947, a twenty-year-old American merchant marine veteran named Murray Greenfield boarded a ship called the Hatikva. His mission, organized in secret by the Haganah, was to help smuggle Holocaust survivors past a British naval blockade and into Mandatory Palestine. The British intercepted the ship and sent Murray to a detention camp in Cyprus. He reached Palestine soon after and made it his home.

There he met Hana Lustigova, a young woman who had survived Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen, and who would go on to devote her life to Holocaust education and remembrance. They married and built a family in Israel. In 1973, Murray self-published a survival guide for new immigrants called How to Be an Oleh, in what was likely Israel's first self-publishing venture. Eight years later, in 1981, he and Hana turned that experiment into something permanent and founded Gefen Publishing House in Jerusalem, named for Gezunt Parnuseh Naches. (גפן - גזונט פרנוסה נחת)

Books by Our Founders

The mission of Gefen Publishing was always personal. Murray Greenfield told his own chapter of that story in The Jews' Secret Fleet, an account of the clandestine ships that carried Holocaust survivors past the British blockade and into the Jewish homeland. Hana Greenfield told hers in Fragments of Memory, her memoir of surviving Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen. Both books remain essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how the State of Israel came to be, and the people who lived through its founding.

Three Generations, One Mission

Gefen has stayed a family business ever since. Murray and Hana's sons, Dror and Ilan Greenfield, joined the family publishing and managed it together until the early passing of Dror in 2003. Ilan now serves as CEO and has guided the company through the rise of e-books, print-on-demand, and global online retail. A third generation, Ilan's son Binyamin, now helps lead Gefen's digital and technical side, carrying the founders' original mission into a new era of publishing. What started as one self-published book has grown into a catalog that passed 900 titles some years ago and keeps growing by roughly forty new front list titles every year.

Books for Every Part of Jewish Life

Our catalog covers the full range of Jewish and Israeli life: Bible commentary and Jewish thought, Zionist history and pre-state Israel, Holocaust memoirs and resistance literature, biographies of Israel's leaders and everyday heroes, children's books, Hebrew-language learning guides, cookbooks, and contemporary fiction. In recent years we have also published firsthand accounts and reflections from Israel's hardest days, including the books that emerged after the October 7th war. Wherever the Jewish story is being written, we want to be among the ones helping tell it.

Authors Who Shape the Conversation

Over more than four decades, Gefen has published work by some of the most recognized voices in Jewish and Israeli life, including Natan Sharansky, Ben-Zion Netanyahu, Moshe Arens, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Lihi Lapid, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the renowned artist Yaakov Agam, and Tuvia Tenenbom, alongside hundreds of scholars, rabbis, historians, and first-time authors with stories the world needed to hear. Gefen titles have also been recognized as finalists for the National Jewish Book Awards, one of the most respected honors in Jewish publishing.

Proudly Israeli, Reaching the World

israelbooks.com is Gefen's home storefront, run directly from our offices in Jerusalem and built for readers shopping from Israel, who can browse and pay in shekels. Our books also reach readers across North America and dozens of other countries through our own distribution and trusted partners. Wherever you are reading from, you are buying directly from the people who made the book happen.

Visit or Get in Touch

Gefen Publishing House, Ltd. 6 HaTsvi St., Jerusalem, 94386, Israel Phone (Israel): 02-538-0247 Email: israbook@gefenpublishing.com

Have a question about an order? Contact us here. Working on a manuscript of your own? We would love to see it. Learn how to submit your work.