Journey to Heaven, Is it The Next World?

by Batya Medad

It has taken me a long time to read Leila Leah Bronner’s Journey to Heaven, but that’s my fault, not hers.  Most of my weekday reading is either on the computer or for my Bible studies.

I was very anxious to get started on Bronner’s book, because I’m very curious about The Next World,  our “life” after death.  It’s not my specialty.  From my limited knowledge I’ve been under the impression that the next world is when we pay the real price for our sins and get proper rewards for our good.  I was looking for some confirmation.

Journey to Heaven isn’t that sort of book.  Bronner’s book is more academic than spiritual or emotional.  She brings all sorts of texts, not all are Jewish, to explain what happens after death according to Judaism.  I suggest watching these two youtube videos to hear what Bronner has to say.  She really is fascinating.

Bronner’s book is very

Review of Kedushat Levi

by S. Vale, rabbi and storyteller

Kedushat Levi

I first much mention a bias here (of mine) in the spirit of full disclosure: Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, Z”L (to remember him is a blessing), the original 19th century author of this great commentary on the Torah (Five Books of Moses), Kedushat Levi (aka “Kedushas Levi”), is an important teacher and master for me. I love his teachings, the stories about him (some of which the editor includes at the back of this 3 volume commentary! That alone makes sure, for me, of giving it an extra star, regardless of what my base rating would be!). In common parlance, I guess you could say, I am a fan. But much more than that, I feel like I am a student of this teacher who died more than two hundred years before I was born.

And I and many others have been waiting for a complete translation of this work into English for years (there have been excerpts of it in works such as the superb, God at the Center by Rabbi David Blumenthal and The Life of a Hasidic Master by my beloved teacher, Rabbi Samuel Dressner, may he rest in shalom and always remembered for a blessing. But until now no complete translation).