Using the traditional Passover seder and its text, the Haggadah, as a template, From Illness to Exodus explores illness and healing—the narrow space, and the way out.
From Illness to Exodus invites the ill person and healer alike to address hard questions with compassion, curiosity, and a mature faith
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Is it enough to say the right thing without feeling it – or to say the wrong thing with the right emotion? Do I have a God complex or impostor syndrome? How do I avoid the extremes and practice with both humility and confidence?
Make today different from all other days – what will you do to achieve this? What stories do we tell about our bad habits to justify them to ourselves? How might we reframe them to make them holier?
When you think about modern plagues, do you think of them as outside forces that are affecting you, punishment for societal ills, or things that you’re doing that harm others?
3,000 years of Jewish wisdom, 3,000 people seeking healing, and one nice Jewish doctor with messy, curly hair trying to use one to make sense of the other. Take two stone tablets and call me in the morning?
Pesach is coming. For those who celebrate, the approach of a Passover seder means a frenzy of cleaning, schlepping, and cooking – and can be the least spiritual thing we do all year. Don’t let that happen to you this year. As I begin to get out and speak about my new book, From Illness to Exodus, I’m trying to refocus on the lessons of the holiday, and the things I learned about doing my job as a doctor, and about my inevitable role as a patient, while writing it.
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Being sick, especially being chronically ill, can feel like being trapped in a narrow place, with no way out. Even professional healers can feel trapped, not knowing how to lift that person up. One of the oldest stories in the world, the exodus, is a tale of escaping that kind of trap. For the past five-plus years, I have been working on a book that uses the story of the exodus to help understand illness and healing—the narrow space, and the way out. At long last, the book is finished, and not a moment too soon. In this hour where everything seems to be closing in on us – personally, professionally, societally – I hope I can provide some road map of the way through.
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Everyone in Florin heard the scream.
In S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, known to most Americans as William Goldman’s The Princess Bride, the evil Prince Humperdinck tortures the hero, Westley, to an agonizing end. At the moment of his passing, he lets forth a death scream that can be heard across the city and into the countryside. No one knows what it is – except for one man. Inigo Montoya, the Spanish master swordsman whose father was slain before his eyes when Inigo was only six.
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