The December Project: An Extraordinary Rabbi and a Skeptical Seeker Take Aim at Our Greatest Mystery

This work is the fruit of a series of weekly conversations conducted over two years between the 60-something journalist and writer Davidson (Loose Change) and the pioneering 85-year-old neo-Hasidic/Jewish Renewal rabbi, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. Besides touching on topics like aging well, facing mortality, and dying, Davidson provides a biographical sketch of Schachter-Shalomi—from his narrow escape from the Holocaust through the influence of the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe on his life and thought to his encounters with such influential non-Jewish figures as the Catholic monk Thomas Merton. In their meetings, Zalman makes insightful observations from his personal struggles and spiritual journey, and poses striking questions to the author. Fortunately, Davidson and Schacter-Shalomi don’t elide the most difficult aspects of aging, including physical pain and memory loss (a topic close to Davidson, whose mother suffers from Alzheimer’s). Davidson ends with 12 exercises—from taking a “gratitude walk” to feeling free to “kvetch to God”—designed to help readers achieve a Zalman-like, hard-earned equanimity in the last stage of their lives. For boomers who wish to devote serious attention to questions of meaning as they experience ineluctable aging, this book of intense, personal conversations leavened with profound insights is an excellent place to begin. (Apr.)