When Life Hurts: A Book of Hope

When Life Hurts: A Book of Hope

Drawing on his own experience of losing everything he owned in a wildfire, a rabbi reflects on the challenge of coping with tragedy Rabbi Dosick, spiritual guide of the Elijah Minyan in San Diego, and his wife, a spiritual psychotherapist, lost everything they owned in a house fire. Here Dosick offers his spiritual journey through grief toward final acceptance, hoping that readers will crawl inside his hurt, face their own traumas, and emerge on the other side of pain. Unfortunately, the journey is seldom so deep; not until the last few chapters does he get to the meat of his theory on evil, why it happens, and where God is in all this. As he admits, Dosick intellectualized the tragedy for a long time, not allowing himself to feel the grief, and sometimes it shows. For example, he resolves the difference between his wife's way of mourning and his own with a surface solution?that they respect each other's way of dealing with loss. His analyses of the place of material possessions in our lives and our connection to God are not revolutionary, but his journey in getting to these points is worth reading for those experiencing a loss. However, if you have to read only one book on the subject, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's classic On Death and Dying (LJ 7/69) or Harold Kushner's When Bad Things Happen to Good People (LJ 9/1/81) still have more punch and depth.?Susan E. Burdick, MLS, Reading, PA Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.