Steve Leder

The national bestseller From the author of the bestselling More Beautiful Than Before comes an inspiring book about loss based on his most popular sermon.As the senior rabbi of one of the largest synagogues in the world, Steve Leder has learned over and over again the many ways death teaches us how to live and love more deeply by showing us not only what is gone but also the beauty of what remains.This inspiring and comforting book takes us on a journey through the experience of loss that is fundamental to everyone. Yet even after having sat beside thousands of deathbeds, Steve Leder the rabbi was not fully prepared for the loss of his own father. It was only then that Steve Leder the son truly learned how loss makes life beautiful by giving it meaning and touching us with love that we had not felt before.Enriched by Rabbi Leder's irreverence, vulnerability, and wicked sense of humor, this heartfelt narrative is filled with laughter and tears, the wisdom of millennia and modernity, and, most of all, an unfolding of the profound and simple truth that in loss we gain more than we ever imagined.

Every one of us sooner or later walks through hell. The hell of being hurt, the hell of hurting another. The hell of cancer, the hell of a reluctant, thunking shovel full of earth upon the casket of someone we deeply loved, the hell of betrayal, the hell of betraying, the hell of divorce, the hell of a kid in trouble . . . the hell of knowing that this year, like any year, may be our last.We all walk through hell. The point is not to come out empty-handed. . . . There is real and profound power in the suffering we endure if we transform that suffering into a more authentic, meaningful life.In the spirit of such classics as When Bad Things Happen to Good People, A Grief Observed, and When Things Fall Apart, More Beautiful Than Before : How Suffering Transforms Us examines the many ways we can transform physical, psychological, or emotional pain into a more beautiful and meaningful life.As the leader of Wilshire Boulevard Temple, one of America’s largest and most important congregations, located in the heart of Los Angeles, Rabbi Leder has witnessed a lot of "It’s my phone that rings when people’s bodies or lives fall apart," he writes. "The couch in my office is often drenched with tears." After 27 years of listening, comforting, and holding so many who suffered, he thought he understood pain and its challenges—but when it struck hard in his own life and brought him to his knees, a new understanding unfolded before him as he felt pain’s profound effects on his body, spirit, and soul.In this elegantly concise, beautifully written, and deeply inspiring book, Rabbi Leder guides us through pain’s stages of surviving, healing, and growing to help us all find meaning in our suffering. Drawing on his experience as a spiritual leader, the wisdom of ancient traditions, modern science, and stories from his own life and others’, he shows us that when we must endure, we can, and that there is a path for each of us that leads from pain to wisdom. "Pain cracks us open," he writes. "It breaks us. But in the breaking, there is a new kind of wholeness."This powerful book will inspire in us all a life worthy of our suffering; a life gentler, wiser, and more beautiful than before.

New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller!From the bestselling author of The Beauty of What Remains , a guide to writing a meaningful letter about your life.Writing an ethical will, a document that includes stories and reflections about your past, is an ancient tradition. It can include joy and regrets, and ultimately becomes both a way to remember a loved one who is gone and a primer on how to live a better, happier life. Beloved Rabbi Steve Leder has helped thousands of people to write their own ethical wills, and in this intimate book helps us write our own.Because our culture privileges the material over the spiritual, we sometimes forget that our words carry greater value than any physical thing we can bequeath to our loved ones. Rabbi Leder provides all the right questions and prompts, What was your most painful regret and how can your loved ones avoid repeating it? When was a time you led with your heart instead of your head? What did you learn from your biggest failure?Including examples of ethical wills from a broad range of voices—old and young, with and without children, famous and unknown— For You When I Am Gone inspires readers to examine their own lives and turn them into something beautiful and meaningful for generations to come.

A beautiful keepsake journal inspired by For You When I Am Gone to help you create your own ethical will.In For You When I Am Gone , Rabbi Steve Leder taught us how to write an ethical will, a letter to our loved ones that helps them understand what we have learned about how to live a meaningful life. Now, in this beautiful journal, Rabbi Leder provides prompts, exercises, and inspirational quotes to help us write our own ethical wills. As a helpful companion to the previous book or a complete stand-alone, this journal will show each of us how to create a lasting, meaningful legacy while enjoying the process of examining our lives.