| Acknowledgments | xi |
| Foreword | xv |
| Preface | xix |
| Introduction: Jewish Insights on Death | 3 |
Part 1 | Answers | 21 |
1. | What I Have Learned from Illness | 23 |
| To Wake Up in the Hospital Early in the Morning | 24 |
| Coronary Connections: From a Hospital, Some Secrets of the Heart Revealed | 24 |
| A Wake-up Call | 33 |
| In Praise of Denial | 35 |
| A Small Miracle Happened Here | 37 |
| Charlie and the Angel of Death | 40 |
2. | When Death Arrives | 48 |
| Like Removing a Hair from Milk | 49 |
| Rabbi Salanter's Last Night | 49 |
| Prelude | 50 |
| The Power of Music at the End | 51 |
| Should We Tell the Patient the Truth? | 57 |
| Let Them Know What You Want | 59 |
| The Traditional Vidui | 61 |
| Kayla's Prayer | 62 |
| Saying Goodbye | 68 |
| Letting Go | 73 |
| A Prayer for Health-Care Providers to Offer When a Patient Dies | 78 |
3. | Hevra Kadisha: The Holy Society | 81 |
| A Sacred Duty | 82 |
| The Burial Society | 83 |
| How Tradition Brought One Community to Life | 92 |
| Bubby's Last Gift | 101 |
4. | The Burial | 108 |
| What Rabban Gamliel Did | 108 |
| The Funeral of Franz Josef | 109 |
| Suggestions to Those Who Plan My Funeral | 110 |
| A Rabbi's Ethical Will | 113 |
| No Burden Too Heavy | 118 |
| Keri'ah: The Tearing of the Garment | 121 |
| Why Bury? | 124 |
| How We Bury | 126 |
| Why No Viewing | 127 |
| Why in Tachrichim? | 127 |
| Why Stones Instead of Flowers? | 128 |
| Ha-Makom Yenahem: The Place Gives Comfort | 130 |
5. | Shivah | 141 |
| The First Meal | 142 |
| The Therapeutic Function of Shivah | 142 |
| Who's the Host? Who's the Guest? | 151 |
| The Art of Making a Shivah Call | 152 |
| The Shivah Minyan | 157 |
| Covering Mirrors | 161 |
| Why Psalm 49? | 161 |
| Knitting Up the Tear | 163 |
6. | Kaddish | 168 |
| When Death Comes | 168 |
| A Commentary on the Kaddish | 169 |
| Going to Shul | 172 |
| A Year of Grieving, A Year of Growing | 174 |
| Saying Kaddish: The Making of a "Regular," | 177 |
7. | The Year and After | 183 |
| The Law Sets the Limits | 184 |
| The Five Stages of Grief | 184 |
| Shloshim: The First Thirty Days After Burial | 186 |
| A Way to Mark Shloshim | 191 |
| Yizkor: The Unending Conversation | 194 |
| I Am Older Now: A Yahrzeit Candle Lit at Home | 198 |
| After the Year, What? | 200 |
| Diary of a Young Widow: A Work in Progress | 207 |
| In Many Houses | 219 |
| Name | 220 |
Part 2 | Questions | 221 |
8. | Is Euthanasia Permitted? | 223 |
| Laws Concerning One in a Dying Condition | 224 |
| Rabbi Yehudah's Handmaiden | 224 |
| The Maggid Rediscovers Music | 225 |
| I Want a Choice | 225 |
| Final Entrance | 229 |
| Long-Term Dignity | 233 |
| On Choosing the Hour of Our Death | 237 |
| Death with Dignity vs. Euthanasia | 244 |
| Not Through Yet | 257 |
9. | How Shall We Mourn the Stillborn? | 260 |
| A Yizkor Prayer for Stillborn and Infant Deaths | 261 |
| I Lost a Child But Did Not Mourn Her | 262 |
| Neonatal Death | 265 |
| Baby Brother's Gone to Heaven | 268 |
| Three Responses to Miscarriage | 271 |
| Faith Learns to Fill a Need | 277 |
10. | How Does One Survive the Loss of Children? | 280 |
| The Story of Rabbi Meir and Beruriah | 283 |
| Plutarch to His Wife After the Loss of Their Child | 284 |
| Not on Merit, But on Mazal | 284 |
| We Will Get Better, We Must Get Better | 285 |
| On Being the Kaddish | 297 |
| Firepower in Mitzvot | 304 |
11. | Do We Believe in an Afterlife? | 309 |
| In the World-to-Come | 311 |
| The Birth | 311 |
| The Ship | 313 |
| Is There Life After Death? | 313 |
| Permission to Believe | 328 |
| The Here and the Hereafter | 335 |
| The Fate of the Soul | 338 |
| Love As Strong As Death | 348 |
| Where Does It End? | 352 |
12. | What Do We Need Death For? | 354 |
| Contributors | 361 |
| Permissions Acknowledgments | 369 |