Delphine Horvilleur is a leading figure in France’s Liberal Jewish Movement and one of only five women rabbis in that country. She describes the role of a rabbi as being multifaceted. It involves officiating, accompanying, teaching, translating texts, and—significantly—storytelling, communicating so that listeners hearing the story for the first time are provided with “unique keys to unlock the meaning for themselves.” Her book is a collection of eleven stories of loss, mourning, and consolation. The details of some narratives have been altered, but in a few cases families have agreed to faithful-to-reality accounts. Traditional Jewish stories and legends are woven into some of the chapters.

In the book’s opening pages Horvilleur emphasizes the degree to which life and death are inter-braided. They “continually hold hands and dance.” The author was briefly a medical student in Jerusalem and recalls learning in her embryogenesis course that many organs in our body are formed through the death of some of the original constituents. For example, the hand first develops in the shape of a palm. Later, individual fingers appear when the cells that originally joined them undergo apoptosis, programmed cell death. Therefore, the bodies we know are essentially created by the death of elements that once composed them. Cancers, on the other hand, defy death: malignant cells multiply, refuse to die, and turn into tumours.

Horvilleur acknowledges that though life and death are entwined, there are Jewish customs and superstitions to protect people from death, which is envisioned as the angel Azrael, who walks the streets and waits near the homes of those he intends to strike with his sword. One inventive strategy Jewish families use to ward him off is to change the first name of someone who has fallen ill. In her life as a rabbi, the author herself says she has rituals to limit death’s presence in her life. For instance, she never goes straight home after a funeral, but creates a boundary between death and her house by stopping at a shop or café.

The stories of individuals at whose funerals she has officiated form most of the bones of her book; its flesh consists of Jewish traditions and beliefs about death. This is a rich and stimulating work, and while I’ll highlight a few of the individual stories, for the most part I’m going to touch on general points the author makes, as well as on customs that I wasn’t familiar with.

Funerals, Horvilleur writes, are not essentially for the dead, but to assist those left behind in getting through an ordeal and “staying alive”. Honouring the dead, then, is best done by showing concern for the possibility of those who loved them being able to continue. Of one woman’s obsession with planning her funeral down to the last detail, the author notes that such a desire for control is “often tantamount to not wanting to prepare for it [death] . . . refusing to admit what our disappearance signifies: a renunciation of control over what happens to us, an acceptance that life belongs to the living.” The author suggests that funeral rituals should show respect for the wishes of the dead but accommodate the needs of the living. I don’t think she’d disagree with the idea that leaving some things about the ceremony up to the survivors might even be a gift to them.

For me, one of the most compelling stories in the book concerns the death of a child, Isaac, and the eight-year-old brother he’s left behind. Horvilleur has been asked to speak to the boy, and she discovers he’s intensely distressed because he needs to know where to search for his brother. The boy’s parents have confusingly told him that Isaac has gone into the sky, but also that he is to buried. In situations like this, the author says, she sometimes feels envious of colleagues whose religious traditions have the language of reassuring certitude. Judaism does not. The Torah does not speak of life after death; instead, the patriarchs are said to have been “gathered unto their people.” The holy book also rather mysteriously states that the dead descend into Sheol. While this is sometimes defined as the Hebrew underworld, Horvilleur points out that the root of the word “Sheol” means “the question”. She therefore concludes that “after our death, each of us falls into the question and leaves others without an answer.”

According to the author, there are many traces of foreign influences on Jewish thought. So, while the dualist idea of body and soul is absent from the Torah, in later texts rabbis have borrowed elements from Hellenic philosophy, affirming that the body returns to dust but the soul returns to God. Today, Ecclesiastes 12:7 is commonly pronounced at every Jewish burial: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”

I really loved Horvilleur’s remarks on relevant Hebrew words. Another observation she makes in connection with Isaac’s story is that though we have terms for some who are left behind—widow, widower, and orphan—in most languages there isn’t a word to designate a person who has lost a child. Hebrew has one: “shakol”—a botanical term, which refers to a vine or branch from which the fruit has been harvested.

When a Jew dies, a candle is placed near the body to signify the presence of the soul and the brightness of the life that has gone. The body is washed and dressed in a white tunic, representing the garment worn by the high priest in the Temple of Jerusalem 2000 years ago, then placed in a shroud which is completely sewn up at the extremities to seal the deceased’s departure. On the day of his or her burial, each person is treated as a high priest.

Horvilleur suggests that the (white-sheeted) form of a ghost is that of a figure whose funeral vestments were incompletely sewn or not stitched up at all. The phantom has not able to leave the world, but has partially slipped out of its shroud. The Hebrew term for ghost is “rouach refaim”, which means “released spirit”.

Flowers and wreaths are usually absent at Jewish funerals. There is a strong sense that death is not meant to be embellished or made the object of fascination. Likewise, the ceremony itself is to be sober and minimalist. In Jewish culture, cremation is strictly forbidden, as it is regarded as “an act of extreme violence” and disrespect to the remains of the dead, which are to be returned to the earth. The dispersal of ashes deprives those left behind of a necessary gathering place. Horvilleur says that while Orthodox rabbis categorically refuse to officiate at ceremonies for those who choose cremation, liberal rabbis like herself will sometimes consent if they are aware that the family had a serious discussion about the matter (seemingly before the death of the loved one). When families visit the graves of their dead, they do not place flowers but small emblematic stones. Long ago, the dead were buried at roadsides or in fields; the stones marked tomb sites for travellers. The tradition of laying stones on graves—as symbols of the strength of memory—has persisted.

Besides the stories I’ve already mentioned about Isaac’s brother and the funeral-obsessed woman, the author tells about the lives of some Holocaust survivors (including the famous French health minister Simone Veil, the celebrated screen writer Marceline Loridan, and the author’s own grandmother, Sarah). She writes about an atheist psychoanalyst/writer killed in the Charlie Hebdo attack, her own dear friend (who died young of a brain tumour), and even about the Hebrew prophet Moses. The 1994 Hebron massacre and the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin are also addressed. Not surprisingly perhaps, Horvilleur weighs in on the Jewish understanding of the nature of God, secularism and political themes, including the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. It should be noted, though, that this work predates the current conflict.

I got a great deal out of this fascinating book. However, I occasionally found some of the author’s explanations opaque. Other times I needed more context. For example, I wondered when and why the author was in Israel. I understand she temporarily embraced Zionism, but the details around these and other things are scant. Even so, I value this book and recommend it to anyone interested in Jewish beliefs, history, and customs or in the subject of death itself.

I loved Living With Our Dead. I've taken quite a few classes in anthropology and psychology that surround death/dying/living with loss and this was a beautiful book that touches on all three. I felt that the message of truly living with our dead rather than dying along side them was a message that I desperately needed. We focus so much on death being an end in our culture that we don't see it as a continuation of life.