WINNER OF THE 2021 BABELIO PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION
“This is peak Horvilleur—impassioned, broad-minded, persuasive, funny, and unwilling to simplify for ease of use.”—Tablet Magazine
“Living with Our Dead is only 151 pages, but that number belies its wisdom and depth. Horvilleur’s work speaks to everyone, not just rabbis. Her writing is clear and, although her point of view is that of a rabbi, she also fulfils her aim as a storyteller, offering her readers a new way to view the world of death and dying. Living with Our Dead comes highly recommended for those who have mourned and those fortunate enough to not yet be touched by death.”—Rabbi Rachel Esserman, The Reporter
“These frank, humane essays are rooted in Jewish history and theology yet capture universal truths.”—Shelf Awareness
“Horvilleur, one of France’s only female rabbis and most certainly of the liberal ilk, provides questions rather than answers as a means to help us cope with the foreverness of dying....Leaning heavily on a spiritual secularism, she makes room for the unknown.”—Winnipeg Free Press
“Profound...Readers will find Living with our Dead full of pragmatic insights and moments they will recognize well from their experiences as mourners and comforters alike.”—Jewish Book Council
“Horvilleur shows how it is possible to find language even for that which seems indescribable. Her deep reflections on mortality remind us that ‘in death a place can be left for the living.’”—Kirkus Reviews
“Horvilleur so beautifully gives life to her dead that readers will feel they had known them personally...What better way to show the Hebrew relationship with death than to tell the stories and celebrate the lives of those who have passed?”—Library Journal
“Horvilleur has written an elegantly slim and majestically poetic book...in writing about death, she writes about the will to life as well.”—Religious News Service
“Without a doubt, one of the most beautiful and impressive books not only of the last year but of recent years.”—ABC (Spain)
“A radiant book that, without sentimentality, invites us to celebrate life.”—Le Monde
“Luminous.”—Infobae (Spain)
“One of today’s most original voices of contemporary European Judaism.”—Avvenire (Italy)
“A hymn to the healing power of storytelling and the written word.”—Le Figaro
“Moving…Delphine Horvilleur finds the right words to describe our time and its ghosts.”—ELLE Magazine (France)
“The French intellectual...presents a non-male perspective we need in mainstream Jewish literature."—Heyalma
The biggest problem with this audiobook is that it is likely to spark so many ideas that listeners may need to keep stopping it to think about them. From a Jewish perspective, Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur meditates on death through 11 particular deaths. Although she is a leader of the Liberal Jewish movement, she often includes traditional views in her discussions. No one is excluded from her thoughts because of their beliefs. Narrator Jenna Rose Stein performs the text as though she is feeling it deeply and personally. There are moments that sound almost as if she is stifling a sob, and the listener understands exactly why that might be. The moments of humor are equally effective. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
2024-02-10
A collection of essays meditating on the relationship between life and death.
As one of the only female rabbis in France, Horvilleur, the leader of the Liberal Jewish Movement of France, is accustomed to playing a part in the transition between life and death. “Yet as the years go by,” she writes, “it increasingly seems to me that the profession closest to mine has a name: storyteller.” In the 10 essays that make up her latest book, the author thrives in this role, interweaving biblical stories with those about the lives and deaths of ordinary people, including a woman who planned and attended her own funeral, and public figures such as Simone Veil. Though some of the pieces are fairly anemic, their loose ends getting lost in the complex combination of stories, they all aim to show how life and death are more closely related than we like to think. “Life makes its presence felt in the very moment that precedes our dying and until the end seems to be saying to death that there is a way of coexisting,” writes Horvilleur, reflecting on the first time she saw a dead body. “Perhaps this cohabitation doesn’t in fact need to wait for death. Throughout our existence, without our being aware of it, life and death continually hold hands and dance.” Drawing from her experiences as a secular rabbi, the author shares significant wisdom, illuminating well-known biblical stories and translating even the most difficult experiences of loss—e.g., the death of a child. “Death escapes words, precisely because it signals the end of speech,” Horvilleur writes. In these thought-provoking, occasionally disjointed essays, she shows how it is possible to find language even for that which seems indescribable.
Horvilleur's deep reflections on mortality remind us that “in death a place can be left for the living.
