This is a wonderful, realistic book on how to deal with loss in a meaningful way, acknowleding that faith may come and go...and that is OK. Rabbi Wolpe shares his innermost thoughts and fears, drawing upon his own life and it's losses. Having lost my beloved 12 year old son to brain cancer 4 years ago, this book will be a welcome addition to my ever growing library of pieces of literature that will somehow be there to help me make sense of my life---and most importantly, my son's life. Thank you, Rabbi Wolpe.

From the viewpoint of forty years as a liberal Christian minister, reading Rabbi David Wolpe's MAKNG LOSS MATTER was a pleasant journey. Generally speaking, Christians believe in a future existence beyond death, while Jews do not. Wolpe leaves a door open when he writes, "The soft insistent voice of something more whispers in our ear. Can this be all?" Wolpe's open heart and lucid prose touched me time and time again. I have underlined many of his thoughs such as, "I am a rabbi because there is in me, as there is in you, a child, a child that knows that somewhere we not alone, that this world is bathed in miracles, and that for every pain there is beauty, for every loss there is love, and for every waste there is wonder." All members of the human race can be lifted by his beautiful lines such as, "Refusing to succumb to despair is the greatest act of faith. We may despair for a moment. Darkness seems ascendant. We cry out. But stirring is the certainty that the pain of a particuar loss is a sign of having loved. Where the capacity to love has been, it can be again." Not just for Jews, his book speaks to all who suffer or rejoice.

First I checked it out of the library serendipitously; then I had to own it and purchased my own copy from Amazon. Within a week I had referred it to a number of people whose lives it touched. There is no one who doesn't need this book. It is 21st century wisdom with the depth of ancient sages and vast scope of religous tradition behind it. Wolpe understands life. He crafts sentences that go to the core of the matter of loss and life and difficulty and human nature. Though I am not Jewish, I relished getting out my Old Testament and re-reading the stories of Abraham, Jacob, Job and others after reading Making Loss Matter. As one who has an interest in things spiritual and God-based all her life, I find this book among the best I have ever read and cannot recommend it highly enough--to ANYONE who is human.