More Beautiful Than Before: How Suffering Transforms Us

Author: Steve Leder Category: Self-help, Spirituality ISBN: 9788119554423 Binding: Paperback Dimensions: 7x5 inches Number of Pages: 224

Every one of us sooner or later walks through hell. The hell of being hurt. The hell of hurting another. The hell of cancer, the hell of divorce, the hell of chronic pain. The hell of a reluctant, thunking shovelful of earth upon the casket of someone we deeply loved. The point is not to come out of hell empty-handed. There is real and profound power in the pain we endure if we transform our suffering into a more authentic, meaningful life.

As the Senior Rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, one of America’s largest and most important congregations, Steve Leder witnesses a lot of pain: “It’s my phone that rings when people’s bodies or lives fall apart.” In this deeply inspiring book, written in the spirit of such classics as When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Leder guides us through pain’s stages of surviving, healing, and finally growing. Drawing on his experience as a spiritual leader, the wisdom of ancient traditions, modern science, and stories from his own life and others’, he shows us that when we must endure, we can, and that there is a path for each of us that leads from pain to wisdom.

Reviews: 

“This powerful book…is filled not with theory, but with time-tested wisdom that can only come from years of experience helping people…. Don’t just read it, buy a copy for a friend.“

– Pastor Rick Warren, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Purpose Driven Life

“The lessons Leder teaches are: acknowledge what is occurring, confront it honestly and own it, and then move on. Survive, heal, grow. And if you can do that, Leder says, you will emerge from the experience transformed…. That is the gift More Beautiful Than Before offers us.”

– Forbes


Steve Leder

Rabbi Steven Z. Leder is the Senior Rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles and the author of such critically acclaimed books as The Extraordinary Nature of Ordinary Things and More Money Than God: Living a Rich Life Without Losing Your Soul. He is a graduate of Northwestern University; studied at Trinity College, Oxford; and was ordained at the Hebrew Union College. He is a recipient of the American Jewish Press Association's Louis Rappaport Award for Excellence in Commentary and the Religious Action Center's Kovler Award. Newsweek magazine named him one of the ten most influential rabbis in America. Rabbi Leder lives with his family in Los Angeles.

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