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Living and Grieving

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes, 14 seconds
The Fourth Yahrzeit Illuminates the Darkness!

God’s Light, the Soul of Humanity,
Illuminates the Darkness

Rituals often become another item on our to-do lists, rushed and stripped of their more profound significance. When we overlook their meaning and purpose, we hinder our ability to heal from loss and navigate the complexities of grief.

Life is a tapestry woven from both grief and joy, sadness and celebration. The morning after my wife’s funeral, I faced an important choice: to let my sorrow consume me or to embrace both grief and life fully. I decided to live intentionally, recognizing that my time is limited. Every moment became a precious gift, a reminder to cherish the present and to say “Amen” more often.

Through rituals, I’ve discovered a profound sense of gratitude for the incredible gift of another day to live fully. Each day is an opportunity to honor both my past and the joys that still await me as I walk into the future.

Jewish rituals do not align with the secular calendar. In the Gregorian calendar, the day my wife passed, May 3rd, stands as a poignant marker in my life. Yet, the story takes on another layer when viewed through the lens of the Hebrew calendar, a beautiful blend of lunar cycles and the solar year. This year, her Yahrzeit—an important day of remembrance—fell on May 19th. In honoring her memory, I lit a memorial candle at sundown the evening before, creating a moment to pause and reflect. I also stood for the Mourner’s Kaddish on Friday evening, May 23rd, immersing myself in a tradition that connects me to something larger than myself.

For many, especially those who have experienced the heartache of losing a loved one, these observances can feel overwhelming. It’s easy to see them as extensions of our sorrow, prolonging our grief. For me, though, it’s quite the opposite. The juxtaposition of public memorials on May 3rd and the Jewish calendar’s quieter, more spiritual observances empower me. Each experience serves its own purpose, enriching my journey of remembrance.

In this post, I’m excited to share an article I wrote previously and a new piece that reflects my ongoing journey of living and grieving beneath the glow of the Yahrzeit candle. This candle symbolizes that “the light of God is the soul of humanity,” a reminder of the flicker of hope that remains even in our darkest times.

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    Heart of a Stranger

    Read: February 2026

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    Heart of a Stranger

    by Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdahl

    In “Heart of a Stranger,” Angela Buchdahl shares her journey from feeling like an outsider to becoming an officiant. She describes her transformation from estrangement to belonging, ultimately emerging with a deep conviction that we are all connected to a larger whole and purpose. Her book serves as both a memoir and a spiritual guide for everyday living, addressing a need that many of us experience today. As the first Asian American ordained as a rabbi, she offers a compelling account of her evolution into one of the world’s most respected religious leaders.

    Angela Buchdahl was born in Seoul, the daughter of a Korean Buddhist mother and Jewish American father. Profoundly spiritual from a young age, by sixteen, she felt the first stirrings to become a rabbi. Despite the naysayers and periods of self-doubt—Would a mixed-race woman ever be seen as authentically Jewish or chosen to lead a congregation?—she stayed the course, which took her first to Yale, then to rabbinical school, and finally to the pulpit of one of the largest, most influential congregations in the world.

    Today, Angela Buchdahl inspires Jews and non-Jews alike with her invigorating, joyful approach to worship and her belief in the power of faith, gratitude, and responsibility for one another, regardless of religion. She does not shy away from difficult topics, from racism within the Jewish community and the sexism she confronted when she aspired to the top job, to rising antisemitism today. Buchdahl teaches how these challenges, which can make one feel like a stranger, can ultimately be the source of our greatest empathy and strength.

    While reading this book, I experienced a revival and deepening of my faith. “Heart of a Stranger,” “Man’s Search for Meaning,” “Judaism is About Love,” “Hostage,” and “The Amen Effect” are all cherished titles that I will reference and reread for years to come.

    Angela Buchdahl is the first Asian American rabbi. She serves as the Senior Rabbi of Central Synagogue in New York City, the first woman to lead this flagship congregation in its 185-year history. Under her leadership, Central has grown into one of the largest synagogues in the world, with live-stream viewers in more than 100 countries. She has led prayers in the White House for two U.S. presidents and has been featured on national news outlets, including Today, NPR, and The Wall Street Journal, to discuss the day’s moral issues.

    Rabbi Buchdahl and her husband live in New York City and have three children.

    Discover your next favorite book and dive into a world of curated, exciting reads by purchasing through my links. You’ll have access to a diverse selection of books that I’ve personally vetted to ensure quality and enjoyment. Additionally, by supporting these selections, you’ll help me continue to provide you with more personalized recommendations. I earn a small commission from your purchase, which allows me to buy and share even more books with you. Your support truly makes a difference!

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    Sea of Tranquility

    Read: September 2022

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    Sea of Tranquility

    by Emily St. John Mandel

    Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel has been on my reading list for months. I recommend the book without reservations. Sea of Tranquility is a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon three hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space. It was a page-turner from page one.

    With the delay of Artemis I, I have been thinking a lot about the Sea of Tranquility, the original lunar landing site. Sea of Tranquility reminded me of the days of my youth when we believed that NASA would colonize the moon as it is in the novel.

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    The Goodreads summary provides a good overview,

    Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal—an experience that shocks him to his core.

    Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She’s traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive’s bestselling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

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    The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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    Demon Copperhead: A Novel

    Read: December 2022

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    Demon Copperhead: A Novel

    by Barbara Kingsolver

    Demon Copperhead: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver is a must-read page-turner! Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenage single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.

    With more knowledge about the devastation of an economy that works for a few and the opioid crisis, I felt as if I was reading about people I knew. Although the book focuses on the impact on boys, it also details the devastation that girls experience.

    If Jan had read Demon Copperhead, she would have encouraged me to read it. It reminds us of the work we must do to repair the world.

    As a widow, it was a reminder of the long road that we must all take even after we have hit bottom.

    WNYC’s All of it hosted an interview with Barbara Kingsolver in which she speaks about Demon Copperhead and her writing.

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    The Goodreads summary provides an overview.

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    The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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    Four Spirits

    Read: July 2021

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    Four Spirits

    by Sena Jeter Naslund

    Four Spirits by Sena Jeter Naslund is a book that I could not put down. It is a page-turner. The title is from the four girls killed at Sunday School in Birmingham. When that happened in 1963, I was only a few years older and the impact brought home to me that we lived in a broken world that required repair. Like Stella Silver in the novel, my life changed as a result of the bombing. 

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    Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar

    Read: December 2025

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    Maggie, or A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar

    by Katie Yee

    In the style of Jenny Offill and inspired by Nora Ephron‘s humorous and poignant writing on heartbreak and womanhood, “Maggie, or A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar” by Katie Yee is a masterclass in transforming personal tragedy into bold comedy. This debut novel has been recognized as a New York Times Notable Book and in Time’s list of 100 Must-Read Books of 2025, along with features in many other publications.

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    Katie Yee is a writer based in Brooklyn. She has received fellowships from the Center for Fiction, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and Kundiman. Her work has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, No Tokens, The Believer, Washington Square Review, Triangle House, Epiphany, and Literary Hub. During the day, she works at the Brooklyn Museum, and at night, she writes—often under the watchful eye of her judgmental rescue dog, Ollie.

    Discover your next favorite book and dive into a world of curated, exciting reads by purchasing through my links. You’ll have access to a diverse selection of books that I’ve personally vetted to ensure quality and enjoyment. Additionally, by supporting these selections, you’ll help me continue to provide you with more personalized recommendations. I earn a small commission from your purchase, which allows me to buy and share even more books with you. Your support truly makes a difference!

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    Autobiography of Cotton

    Read: February 2026

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    Autobiography of Cotton

    by Cristina Rivera Garza

    In 1934, a young José Revueltas traveled to Tamaulipas to support the cotton workers’ strike in Estación Camarón, which would later serve as the foundation for his landmark novel, Human Mourning. In her groundbreaking novel Autobiography of Cotton, Cristina Rivera Garza recounts her grandparents’ journey from mining towns to those same cotton fields. Her narrative intersects with Revueltas’s life and offers a vivid and evocative account of the history of cotton cultivation along the Mexico-U.S. border.

    Through archival research and personal narrative, Rivera Garza explores how cotton transformed the borderlands by recounting the story of the cotton workers’ strike. She reveals how cycles of deprivation and environmental destruction continue to affect generations. Rivera Garza skillfully creates a new kind of border novel that illustrates how a fragile landscape drastically changed her grandparents’ lives and the territories they helped to develop. In this intimate fictionalization, Autobiography of Cotton offers a rich social history that encompasses agricultural colonization, labor activism, environmental degradation, and cross-border migration.

    I recommend “Autobiography of Cotton,” but readers should be patient as the book shifts back and forth in time. Everything becomes clear as you continue reading.

    Cristina Rivera Garza is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Liliana’s Invincible Summer. A MacArthur Fellow, she is the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Chair and founder of the University of Houston’s PhD in Creative Writing in Spanish.

    Christina MacSweeney is the award-winning literary translator of works by Julián Herbert, Valeria Luiselli, and Elvira Navarro. She received the 2024 Sundial Literary Translation Award for her translation of Verónica Gerber Bicecci‘s The Company.

    Discover your next favorite book and dive into a world of curated, exciting reads by purchasing through my links. You’ll have access to a diverse selection of books that I’ve personally vetted to ensure quality and enjoyment. Additionally, by supporting these selections, you’ll help me continue to provide you with more personalized recommendations. I earn a small commission from your purchase, which allows me to buy and share even more books with you. Your support truly makes a difference!

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