"Powerful, moving, and evocative."—Jonathan Sarna, author of The American Jewish Experience
"Equal parts stunning and wrenching—pours vividly and unsparingly from the depths of a broken heart. Every word echoes with anguish, yet this is so much more than a story of loss—it is an unequivocal affirmation of the triumph of love over death. Anyone who has lost, anyone who has loved, will identify with the piercing humanity. One is left feeling called to love more deeply and to live more fully—to grasp every moment of life with gratitude and presence. This is a book that changes you forever. It must."—Rabbi Sharon Brous, spiritual leader of IKAR and panelist for Newsweek and The Washington Post’s “On Faith”
Description
In March 2007, Leah Fishbane, a promising young graduate student in the prime of her life, was struck down suddenly with a undiagnosed brain tumor. In this deeply evocative memoir, written during the dark time of the first year following Leah’s death, her husband Eitan gives voice to the overwhelming power of grief and to the deep love that underlies such pain. He tells the story of his efforts to be a good father to his grieving four–year–old child and of his discovery of himself as a parent in ways he had not known before. Along this path, Fishbane asks fundamental questions about the meaning of death and life, about the place of God and faith in the experience of tragedy, reflecting on what it means to live with loss. The result is a poetic testament that will resonate with countless mourners and their loved ones. In giving honest expression to emotions that are at once particular and universal, Shadows in Winter offers a luminous window of comfort and hope to those battling the devastation of loss.
About the Author
Eitan Fishbane is assistant professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, specializing in kabbalah and mysticism. He is the author of As Light Before Dawn: The Inner World of a Medieval Kabbalist and Jewish Mysticism and the Spiritual Life: Classical Texts, Contemporary Reflections.
November 2011