Healing from Despair - by Elie Kaplan Spitz (Paperback)

About the Book

Through healing, brokenness can become a source of hope and blessing. This wise and helpful guide traces the path of suffering from despair to depression to desperation to the turning point where suffering can be transformed into blessing.

Book Synopsis

The suffering that brings you to despair and even desperation can--with healing--become a source of hope, purpose and blessing.

Are you:
Feeling anxious?
Feeling depressed because of the loss of health, a relationship or a job?
Grieving the loss of a loved one?
Grieving loss by a suicide?
Feeling hopeless?
Concerned about a friend who has suicidal thoughts?

This wise and helpful guide explores the nature of personal suffering and brokenness and the potential for personal crisis as a source of strength and renewal instead of despair and death. Examining the personal journeys of biblical and historical figures such as Moses, Maimonides, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Buber--as well as the author's own personal experience with despair--it looks at brokenness as an inescapable element of the human condition. It traces the path of suffering from despair to depression to desperation to the turning point--healing--when first-hand knowledge of suffering can be transformed into blessing.

Review Quotes

"A deft blend of the personal and the theological, a book to lift souls and even to save lives."
--Rabbi Harold Kushner, author, When Bad Things Happen to Good People

"Wisdom of the heart and of the head.... A book for those who struggle with depression, and for those who live with those who struggle with depression. In short, for many, many of us."
--Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, author, A Code of Jewish Ethics and Jewish Literacy

"Rich with honesty and wisdom.... Gets to the heart of the human experience of prolonged despair and the possibilities for healing. Gentle, learned and insightful ... provides kind and solid company for anyone seeking guidance, perspective and hope when the world comes crashing in."
--Rabbi Nancy Flam, cofounder, National Center for Jewish Healing; codirector, Programs, Institute for Jewish Spirituality