Against the Dying of the Light: A Parent's Story of Love, Loss and Hope - Softcover

Fein, Leonard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1580231977 ISBN 13: 9781580231978

Publisher: Jewish Lights, 2004

Synopsis

How a father's struggle to understand his daughter’s sudden death becomes an inspiring exploration of life.

The sudden death of a child. A personal tragedy beyond description. The permanent presence of an absence. What can come from it? Raw wisdom and defiant hope.

Leonard Fein probes life’s painful injustices in this remarkable personal story. He exposes emotional truths that are revealed when we’re forced to confront one of the toughest questions there is: How can we pick up the pieces of our lives and go on to laugh and to love in the aftermath of grievous loss?

Ruthlessly honest, lyrical and wise, Against the Dying of the Light takes the experience of loss beyond the confines of the personal, illuminating the universal meaning and the hope that can be found in the details of grief.

About this title

Review:

Leonard Fein struggled with some of the deepest and most difficult questions of faith while mourning the death of his daughter Nomi, who suffered a heart attack at age 30. "I understood from the start that the act of writing was a way both to keep her alive and to accept the fact of her death. And I needed to do both," he explains in the first paragraph of Against the Dying of the Light. Fein, a veteran Jewish social activist, teacher (at M.I.T. and Harvard), and writer, recognized in his daughter's early childhood that she was "among the most interesting people I'd ever known." In case you missed the point of that statement, he reiterates: "'People,' not 'kids.'" Among the most striking things about this book is Fein's ability to see his daughter as a whole person--empathic, intelligent, and generous, and yet sometimes haughty and defensive. The first part of this book is a memoir, describing his relationship with Nomi. The second part is a meditation on the significance of life and death, and the experience of mourning. The conclusion synthesizes memoir and meditation in the form of a letter to Nomi's daughter Liat, who was an infant when her mother died. Fein also writes that his daughter's death taught him a new emotion: "The terror: I can no longer take my children's lives for granted." But the central lesson of this letter is that, although bad things do happen to good people, every person is obliged make a difference in the project of helping to heal a broken world. --Michael Joseph Gross

From the Inside Flap:

The sudden death of a child. A personal tragedy beyond description. The permanent presence of an absence.

What can come from it? Raw wisdom and defiant hope.

Leonard Fein probes life’s painful injustices in this remarkable personal story. He exposes emotional truths that are revealed when we’re forced to confront one of the toughest questions there is: How can we pick up the pieces of our lives and go on to laugh and to love in the aftermath of grievous loss?

Ruthlessly honest, lyrical and wise, Against the Dying of the Light takes the experience of loss beyond the confines of the personal, illuminating the universal meaning and the hope that can be found in the details of grief.

About this edition

• Publisher: Jewish Lights
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1580231977
• ISBN 13: 9781580231978
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176