Message From The Rabbi

Rabbi Spike Anderson

Sometimes, congregants will ask their rabbis “what are you reading these days…and is it any good?”  I’m always happy to share, and I’m also curious about what other people are reading that they love.

I’ve just finished an incredible book by Rabbi Delphine Horvileur titled Living with Our Dead: On Loss and Consolation.

Quite simply, this is one of the best books I’ve ever read.  I knew the author, Delphine Horvilleur, from our days at seminary (Hebrew Union College). We were friends, although not close.  I haven’t talked to her since ordination (almost 20 years ago). I always thought that she was the smartest among us. It amazed me that she was so incredibly articulate in a language that was not her native tongue (she is French), and clearly she had a command of integrating ancient text with modern poignancy even back then as a rabbinic student.   It was no surprise to me, a few years later, to find out that she was leading the Liberal Jewish Movement in France.  This is all to say that this book was written by a rabbi who has the talent and self-awareness to access not only her superb writing style, but intimacies of Jewish time, of national (French and Israeli) soul, and of her congregants’ lives and their deaths.  

The book is written like a series of short stories loosely connected on the theme of a rabbi’s role of memorializing, and accompanying, the dead.   Delphine intertwines Jewish text, folklore, and wisdom (often with brilliant contextualization and interpretation) along with tender parts of her own life’s story.   It is accessible.  It is smart.  Sometimes it is humorous.  It is profoundly deep.  And…because of its subject matter, it is universal (but with an unabashedly Jewish hue).

I have only two concerns about this book to voice.  The first is, although I am sure of its quality of writing, style, and subject- I’m not sure if everyone would find this book as compelling as I have.   My wife and I (reading it in parallel) can’t stop raving about it, but we are similar and in similar fields (I am a rabbi, and she is a hospital chaplain). I THINK that everyone would love it as much as I do, but I’m not sure.  My second critique (and I say this with total seriousness) is that Delphine has set the bar very, very high for what type of book, and writing, is possible.   I can only hope that we get more books of this quality from anyone.