More Beautiful Than Before: How Suffering Transforms Us

More Beautiful Than Before: How Suffering Transforms Us

by Steve Leder
More Beautiful Than Before: How Suffering Transforms Us

More Beautiful Than Before: How Suffering Transforms Us

by Steve Leder

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Overview

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 divorce, the hell of chronic pain. The hell of anxiety, depression, Alzheimer’s, a kid in trouble. The hell of a reluctant, thunking shovelful of earth upon the casket of someone we deeply loved. The point is not to come out of hell empty-handed. There is real and profound power in the pain we endure if we transform our suffering into a more authentic, meaningful life.

As the Senior Rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, one of America’s largest and most important congregations, Steve Leder witnesses a lot of pain: “It’s my phone that rings when people’s bodies or lives fall apart.“ In this deeply inspiring book, written in the spirit of such classics as When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Leder guides us through pain’s stages of surviving, healing, and finally growing. 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. This powerful book can inspire in us all a life worthy of our suffering; a life gentler, wiser, and more beautiful than before.

“So often I hear people quote Ernest Hemingway, who said, ‘The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places.’ That has always sounded more like Hemingway bravado than the truth to me. . . . I know that a broken marriage, a broken heart, a ruined reputation—none of those things grow stronger. But we can heal enough, we can somehow find our true selves again—or for the first time—and what we find really is often gentler and wiser and more beautiful than before. A second love. A second chance. Another way to walk forward.”

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781401953133
Publisher: Hay House Inc.
Publication date: 11/07/2017
Sold by: Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format: eBook
Pages: 272
Sales rank: 218,103
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

After receiving his degree in writing and graduating Cum Laude from Northwestern University, and time studying at Trinity College, Oxford University, Rabbi Steven Z. Leder received a Master's Degree in Hebrew Letters in 1986 and Rabbinical Ordination in 1987 from Hebrew Union College. He currently serves as the Senior Rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple, a prestigious synagogue in Los Angeles with two campuses and 2,400 families. Rabbi Leder is currently concluding his 225 million dollar campaign to develop the congregation's historic urban campus encompassing an entire city block. The campus is soon to include a new building by Pritzker Prize winning architect Rem Koolhaas.

In addition to his many duties at Wilshire Boulevard Temple Rabbi Leder taught Homiletics for 13 years at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles. He is a regular contributor and guest on The Today Show, writes regularly for TIME, Foxnews.com, Maria Shriver's Sunday Paper, contributed a chapter to Charles Barkley's book Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man?, and has published essays in Town and Country, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and the Los Angeles Jewish Journal where his Torah commentaries were read weekly by over 50,000 people. His sermon on capital punishment was included in an award winning episode of The West Wing. Rabbi Leder received the Louis Rappaport Award for Excellence in Commentary by the American Jewish Press Association and the Kovler Award from the Religious Action Center in Washington D.C. for his work in African American/Jewish dialogue and in 2012 presented twice at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

In the New York Times, William Safire called Rabbi Leder's first book The Extraordinary Nature of Ordinary Things "uplifting." Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein said he "is everything we search for in a modern wise man; learned, kind, funny, and non-judgmental, he offers remarkably healing guidance." 

Rabbi Leder's second book More Money Than God: Living a Rich Life Without Losing Your Soul received critical and media attention including feature articles in the New York Times, Town and Country and appearances on ABC's Politically Incorrect, NPR, and CBS This Morning. 

His third book More Beautiful Than Before; How Suffering Transforms Us was reached #4 on Amazon's overall best sellers list in its first week. It remains a best seller in several categories and has been translated into Korean and Chinese. More Beautiful Than Before has helped tens of thousands of people suffering from emotional or physical pain and continues to receive prestigious media attention including CBS This Morning, The Talk, The Steve Harvey Show, and four appearances on NBC's Today Show. He is now at work on his next book The Beauty of What Remains; What Death Teaches Us About Life, to be published by Penguin Random House in the spring of 2021.

Newsweek Magazine twice named him one of the ten most influential rabbis in America but most important to Steve is being Betsy's husband and Aaron and Hannah's dad. He is also a Jew who likes to fish. Go figure.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

Surviving

When You Must, You Can 3

The Prisoner Cannot Free Himself 15

An Intimate Invitation 31

Prayer 41

The House of Memory 51

An Invitation to Be Kind 57

Enough Is Enough 65

The Route of All Blessings 73

Healing

Like Love, Nature Will Heal You 81

I Am So Sorry 85

Hurt and Run 95

Stoop Low 109

Abracadabra 121

Life Is Long 131

Growing

Examine Your Life 145

Headstones 153

Be Uncomfortable 161

You Matter 167

Fix Something 175

The Melody of What Remains 187

Bibliography 189

Acknowledgments 193

About the Author 195

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