Grief expert David Kessler talks with Rabbi Steve Leder

Hey, everyone. We had some technical difficulties, but we're here.

I realized I was gonna watch this. I always double check this with a. A phone. And all of a sudden I'm like, oh, I need a charger. So I have a charger coming. So just to make sure I can see everyone. All right. We have Rabbi Leader with us tonight. Hi, Rabbi. Glad you're here.

Thank you. Very happy to be here with you.

Thank you for living through all the technical difficulties on both our ends. But we stuck with it, and we're here.

You talked me down. Well done.

And, you know, I think. I mean, once in a while, it's very funny. I'll be. You may have had this experience, too. Someone is.

The projector isn't working or that this isn't working at a live talk. And everyone's like, their hair's on fire. And I joke about. I deal in death and grief. And, you know, if the projector doesn't work, we'll all live. Right.

That's right. Situations, as I heard often growing up. It's not Auschwitz.

It's not Auschwitz, exactly.

So I'm glad people are coming here. They're signing on. Let's say hello to people as they come on.

All right. I can see us here. It's funny. I. I see people are going to go, hey, I need a charger.

Real life videos. All right. Jennifer says hello from Alaska.

I know who that is.

You do? Wonderful.

Yes.

Diane from Virginia. It'd be funny if literally, you say after everyone's name.

Julie. Hi, Julie. Jolene from Phoenix. Sharon's here. John's from Massachusetts. Janet from New Mexico. Joy from pa, Jennifer from New Jersey. Welcome, everyone. I'm so glad you're all here and you stuck with us. I'll give people a few extra minutes because I know when I come on late, it's like, wait, where is he? What happened? Is it not going on? So I'll give folks some time to find us. I found my charger, so life is all good. Karen's here from Illinois. Dolores is here from Los Angeles. I know Dolores, so I guess where she is. Deborah's from NoHo. Jacqueline's from Denver. Hey there. Marcia from Pa. Welcome. So glad you're here. Ivy from New York. Terry from Nova Scotia. So if you're new and this is your first time coming on, these are sessions that we set up. I set up after COVID 19, stay at home. And it was really around. People's grief groups were canceled. People then found out that they couldn't see their loved One who was dying then they couldn't have a ritual or memorial afterwards.

This was a way for us to virtually connect. And I didn't just want it to be my voice because there's so many different voices that I wanted to bring you different voices. So I'm so excited to have your voice joining us tonight. So if you want, you can engage, you can say hello. I say some people sit in the front row and ask a lot of questions. Other people sit in the back. Just like grief, there's no right way to do it. So let's. First of all, we're all here because someone we love has died. Some of you are newly bereaved. Some of you have been brief for a while. For some of you, it's been many years. And that pain sort of unites us. So I'd love it if we could just take a moment and have some silence in honor of those who have died. So if you join me in that real quick.

Thank you so much.

Kimberly's here from St. Louis. Connie's from New Orleans. Destiny from Washington. Kathy from the Bay Area.

Let's see. Laura from Canada. Hi. Garrett. Hi. Janine from New Jersey. Wonderful. Nice to see you all. Patricia from New York. Nice to see you all coming on.

So I'm so honored and thrilled to have you here, and I would love if you would just sort of share what your experience in this world has been around grief and loss. Personally, professionally, wherever you may want to go with that, it's sort of.

Well, personally and professionally is exactly the way I would frame it. Obviously, as, you know, rabbi of one of the largest synagogues in the world.

As a professional, I have, frankly, a staggering amount of experience with death. I have officiated at over a thousand funerals and. And therefore held the hands, you know, of hundreds of. Of dying people and. And, you know, held. Held the hands of many thousands of mourners and been through every. Pretty much every imaginable difficult death you could conceive of. You know, the death of babies and young children and young parents and victims of murder and victims of suicide. And on and on it goes. So I have an extraordinary amount of experience in that way. But as you so correctly framed it, David, that's a professional form of experience. I'm a compassionate professional, but I. I do have to be professional in those moments. I have to structure people's chaos, which is what I think religion does at its best. It. It structures the chaos.

I had a.

A new set of insights when my own father died. My father suffered from Alzheimer's for a decade. And so he died so slowly over a decade. And you know that people with Alzheimer's in a way die twice, you lose them twice, you lose the person they were and then they physically die. So my father died about 18 months ago.

And it did cause me to experience and rethink and reimagine death and grief in ways that despite my vast experience, I had never imagined or thought of before. It's one thing to help people through something, it's another thing to go through it yourself.

And so I would say that my experience over the past 18 months.

Has surpassed my experience of the prior 33 years as a rabbi in terms of getting to the essence and the truth of death and grief and loss and moving forward. And finally, I would say also moving in a kind of circular fashion, which is what we all know grief actually is. It's much more circular than forward.

Or more like the tide that ebbs and flows. So I feel both of these. And in a way.

The past 18 months have really changed the way I approach people and families and death and grief and mourning. I don't think I did a bad job before, but I, I, I was doing a semi enlightened job before and I know much more now. And I'm, I'm a different kind of rabbi. I'm a different kind of man, I'm a different kind of husband, I'm a different kind of father because of the experience of my own father's death. And we can get into my relationship with him, but complex would be a fair way to describe it.

Can you tell us his first name?

Yeah, Leonard. Although most people call them Lenny.

I like to, I, you know, I like to use people's names. I always say your loved ones sort of more than a loss. Yeah, they're your dad and they're Lenny and.

Yeah, Lenny Leader.

So, you know, you and I have something in common about that. We're actually going to be doing another talk together in a few months at ucla. So this is sort of the precursor of that talk.

You and I have that in common in the sense that.

Been doing grief work for 40 years and it's almost like you know how to work with people in an earthquake. You sort of know, I need to get them water, I need to get them food, I need to make sure their self, their shelter is safe, I need to give them a hug. But it's also different than being in the earthquake.

Correct.

And you know, for me, my younger son died a few years ago and it was the same Experience where it's like, oh, yeah, I had no idea.

Right. I was wrong to have said this in the past, and I will never say it again. Yes.

And, you know, I just. There was something there. There is a sense of, like, you know, if you see someone with 100 bricks on them, your job is to rescue them and get the hundred bricks off of them. But there's no way you can know what it's like to have 100 bricks on your chest until there's 100 bricks on your chest.

Yes.

And you're not sure if you're going to keep breathing.

Yes. And I'm able to approach these situations now with a degree of authenticity that, frankly, I lacked before, through no fault of my own.

Right. And I think that.

That is something that just comes from life and how, you know, how we do it. It's interesting. I.

I was talking to.

Someone, you know, in this field, and I was telling them these stories, and they said, but you didn't know that. How could you know how bad it was? And I said, you know, I didn't, but it was just so shocking, and it was so painful. And I was trying to describe the pain, and they kept sticking with, but you couldn't have known. You couldn't have known. And I finally said, I'm trying to describe to you how the pain is not really talk about, should I or shouldn't I have. No. And it was sort of in a moment where I was trying to get an expert in to see my pain, not just us discussing it, you know, and that's very easy for us to sort of discuss your pain versus see your pain.

Yes, yes. And for those of us who are healers.

You know, who are in the business of rushing toward a fire and rushing into a fire and rushing to soothe people, it. It takes a great deal. For us, at least I'll speak only for myself. It took a great deal for me to. To stand still for a moment and just feel. And. And, you know, I always have this duality of roles, even within my own family, where I'm both the son and I'm the brother and I'm the child, but I'm also the rabbi. Even though, for example, in the. In the case of my father, there. There was their own rabbi. I grew up in Minneapolis, and the, you know, the rabbi of their synagogue handled things, whatever that means, but I was still in charge in a way. And so there's this duality of roles, too. I imagine physicians feel this also, you know, when they're facing the death of someone they deeply love. So I've. There's a. There's a cognitive dissonance that comes from being a professional in the world of death and experiencing death yourself. And there's a cognitive dissonance that I felt. I can only imagine that you did as well.

And my thought at that time was I wanted to write a note to every person saying I had no idea how bad your pain was, especially every parent I counseled. Did you have something you thought when it hit your world of, like, oh, if I could say to every griever, if I could go back and go so well.

So listen, you know, you and I, before we went live, were talking about how nice it is not to have to be hawking your book in a conversation like this. So I'm going to tell you something, but not to hawk the book, because it isn't even. It isn't even out.

You know, I tell people just, you know, we always talk about the books later, but if it comes up and it makes sense, please do.

And. And, you know, I'm not being entrepreneurial here, because the book doesn't. It isn't out yet, But I have written a new book which. The manuscript, the final, final draft was just accepted last week. Talk about 100 bricks off my back.

Congratulations.

Thank you. And the. The book is my apology.

It is setting. It is my attempt to set the record straight on death and grief as a result of what I learned because of my father's decline and death and my own grief. So the book is called the Beauty of what Remains. It won't be out till January, but to answer your question, yes, I had to write a book to set the record straight. I had to write a book to say I thought it was A. It's B. I am sorry. I was wrong. You know, that's essentially what this book is about. The deeper truth that was revealed to me through my own pain and loss.

Can you give us a nugget of what that truth or what a truth is from that?

Well, there are many.

One, I will just tell you one that relates directly to grief. I used to say to people all the time who were in, you know, the initial phases of. Of loss and just searing pain. I would look parents in the eyes and say to them, I would have said this to you, David.

It won't always hurt so much. I promise you. The most honest thing I can say to you, the most truthful thing I can say is that it won't always hurt this much. It gets better. I don't say that anymore, because when it hurts, it always hurts as much as what I say now instead of, it won't always hurt so much is it won't always hurt so often. And that may seem like a small change to you, but that's a. That is an indication of just one of the many truths that I had to really discover for the first time and rethink some of the sort of pat answers I was giving to people before. So, you know, that's a small example. My views of the afterlife changed after my father's death significantly, because I discover him in ways that I never could have imagined I would have discovered and felt him before it happened today. I actually officiated at a funeral this morning, which, as you know, under Covid restrictions, is a very surreal and strange and unsatisfying experience compared to a regular funeral. But as. And I was. I was a little down about it. And as I was driving home from the cemetery, I was shuffling songs on my ipod, on my phone, and a bluegrass version of youf Are My Sunshine came up, which was my father's favorite song that he would sing to us when we were small children and one of the few really warm memories I have of my childhood. And there he was. You know, I was driving home from the cemetery, and there was my dad. And so my views of the afterlife have changed quite profoundly as a result of my own experience.

And, you know, my. My views of what it's like to bury someone with whom you had a dysfunctional relationship have changed pretty significantly. My own.

Thinking about being a father has changed very significantly. So my. My father continues to teach. I continue to learn from him, even though his body is no longer with us. So I actually. And you know what it's like to write a book. I know you've written many of them. It's a torturous process. I mean, Ernest Hemingway said, writing is easy. You just sit down and open a vein. You know, it's horrible.

And for me, it was necessary as a way of setting the record straight after I experienced death in a more visceral and powerful way.

Right.

It's interesting. I wrote a book called Visions, Trips, and Crowded Rooms about who and what you see before you die. And it's interesting. Some of my friends who were rabbis would go, I believe it, but we don't believe in the afterlife. And I would go, what do you mean? I believe it, but we don't believe. And it was always this duality of.

So, you know, listen, there's a. I'll. I'll tell you another example. I. This is, this is what I mean by cognitive dissonance in the mind and heart of a rabbi. Because you, you're stuck between what the tradition demands of us and what, you know, real life demands of us and a 2000 year old tradition that doesn't always fit. So I'll give you another example. Judaism, as you may or may not know, is completely categorically opposed to active euthanasia. Categorically. Passive euthanasia is allowed. Active euthanasia is forbidden, period, under all circumstances. And yet I.

Famous story about the hammer. And if you tell the hammer to be quiet and the person dies, there's a passive. Right, Right.

That's removing something that's not hastening death. Right. So passive euthanasia is allowed, you can remove, but you, but you can't hasten unnaturally a person's death. Now square that circle with me being asked many times since the Compassionate Care act and since the Right to Die act has passed in California, being called to a bedside and being asked by someone who's suffering, rabbi, can I take the pills?

And then you're in this situation where the rabbi should say, no, but Steve Leder, the human being, should say yes.

And I say yes. But it is a dissonance that you have to find a way to overcome. And this is, I think, what your rabbi friends are talking about when they say, well, we don't believe in the afterlife, but I do believe in the afterlife. Well, I, I just, I leave off the first qualifier. I do, I do believe in it. Because I've heard too many stories to the contrary. And I have, I've heard you are my sunshine too many times when I've needed it. And I've, you know, the other day on my walk, I stole some fruit off of a, off of a neighbor's tree, which is exactly, you know, they have a little plum tree. And I grabbed a couple plums. It was hanging over the sidewalk. It wasn't exactly stealing, but it wasn't my tree either. It's exactly what my father would have done. Exactly. You know, nothing made him happier than free fruit. So I, I thought of him and he was there with me. And I was him and he was me, and we are each other. So it may sound like a small and trivial example, but it doesn't feel that way. And so I, I think every one of us who's religious sometimes has to decide, you know, who we really are.

Right.

And to what degree we will allow that to inform us when our heart and soul say something Else.

Right.

So, you know, one thing I'm fascinated with. I'm sure it's part of your new book. It's my last book. Is the idea that.

Some of us.

Never bounce back after a loss, after a tragedy. Some of us.

Survive it.

And my last work was about. And some of us bounce back stronger.

I'm always curious about the. Those who just don't have the ability.

And I think that's the place where I spend a lot of my time wrestling with people, is when the idea of living again.

Seems a far distance, that's unreachable or living a life worth living.

Yeah.

After a loss.

And, you know, I. You know, obviously, you know rituals. I know rituals. I. I often say to people, you know, in the days when we wore black for a year.

There wasn't a mandatory, you got to take your black off. Today you could wear your black a little longer. But there was an inherent, a year is up.

You can have permission. You can begin to re. Engage. There's not a marker in our modern life that says it's actually okay to you for you to re engage again.

So a lot of people get stuck in that, whether it's. They think they're being disloyal or the pain's too great or whatever it may be.

What do you say to those people? How do you help them?

And I. One of the deep truths of moving forward is it does require some degree of betrayal. Let's be honest. To move forward with your life is at some level a betrayal of the loved one who is no longer.

And I think naming it and saying it is very important because it helps people understand where they are and why they feel so conflicted. Yes, it is a form of betrayal.

And it's a form of betrayal that your loved one most likely would have understood and even encouraged. But it feels a little bit like betrayal, because it is a little bit of a betrayal to move forward, to say, well, actually, I can go forward in life without this person. This person was not everything, despite how broken I was and still am. So for certain people, David, I think we have to validate that feeling because that, in truth, is what it is. You know, I've buried children in a coffin the size of a shoebox, and five years later, I see their parents at the movies eating popcorn and laughing. And in a way, that's as it should be, and in a way, that is not as it should be. And both.

Both ends of that spectrum, I think, need to be recognized. When I say to people, you must betray to some degree in order to move forward. That's true, in a sense. It gives them permission. That's the first thing. The other thing I would say to you is that.

I would want to know more about what this person was like before the death, not just after the death. You know, there's that Heinrich Heine had this old joke about the Jews. He said the Jews are like everyone else, just more so. Which I think is such a great, you know, analysis. I have found that death really doesn't give people, generally give people a new personality. It makes everyone and everything more so. So if you were a person who had a hard time getting up after being knocked down and before this loss, you're going to have a hard time getting up after being knocked down after this loss. If you're a person who is generally cheerful and optimistic about the future and able to move forward despite disappointments before you're going to be able to do it after death really doesn't give anyone in my experience a completely new personality or way of thinking. Seeing the world. You know, there's this old saying in the Talmud. We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are. I think that's very insightful. We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are. And so sometimes.

The. Sometimes people can't really re. Engage because they weren't really engaged beforehand. They just don't have that way of being in the world. And, and sometimes, you know, people will say something like, you know, I just don't feel like going out. I don't feel like this. I don't feel like that. Said, well, what were you like before Joe died? They said, well, pretty much the same. I said, well, then why would we expect you to be radically different now? So it's mostly about giving people permission to be frankly who they are now. I'm not talking about serious clinical depression and, you know, ideating suicide and things like that. I mean, there are extremes in this. We're speaking in general terms here, but. But generally people face death the same way they face life.

But, you know, I'll tell you. And it goes back to. It proves your other point about we sort of see life through our eyes.

If I was to say that to someone in grief, not early in grief, but if someone's talking to me at three, five years and they say, you know, there's no living after my loved one died.

And I said, you know, did you see yourself as living fully before?

Most of the time? They would say, absolutely this death destroyed me. And their husband, wife, or sister is sitting next to them going, exactly. You know, there's something about that.

I sometimes wonder if it goes back to the grief needs to be witnessed, that if I don't feel like the grief and maybe even my wounds before that have been properly seen and healed, there is no way for me to sort of go into the rest of my life.

Without taking care of that and then being witnessed and heard.

Look, I agree with you.

Pain.

Pain has. In my. In my view, there's a progression. You. You first. It. It has three stages. Surviving, healing, and growing. And you cannot get to one stage. You cannot leapfrog over a stage. Okay, so are they surviving, surviving, healing, and growing? And if someone isn't growing, it's because they're still healing. And if they're not healing, it's because they're still struggling just to survive in the midst of the pain. And that might be a helpful way to sort of chart people in their trajectory, by the way. I think this is true of all pain, not just the pain of death. I think it's true of all pain. It's a common denominator that first you have to survive, then you have to have the time and the help and the capacity to heal and really heal, and only then.

Can you manifest some growth. And, you know, I would also say to that person who you're counseling, three or five years later, I can't. Life is over. I would ask, well, what have you been doing the past three or four or five years? It looks like living to me, you know.

So I would. I would push a little bit on that.

Well, and, yeah, that is part of the work. You know, sometimes I'll say to people when they go, you don't understand. Everything stopped. Everything stopped. David, I'll go. When you go home, I want you to look at your toenails. Despite this enormous tragedy.

Yeah.

Not everything is stopped. I bet you're still clipping toenails. Yeah. Hideous. That is an example.

I'll bet you've laughed in the past three years. I'll bet you enjoyed a piece of chocolate in the past three years. You know, I'll. I'll bet you've enjoyed friendship and. And a movie and whatever in the past three years. You know, it's. You're not as. You're not as dead inside as you may feel in this moment that you're.

Speaking to me, but it's hard to acknowledge the living part.

Yeah.

So someone says, could you please define healing for us at least in your three stage concept.

Yeah. Well, I would say healing is in. If we're talking about grief, I would say it is the slow re engagement with life itself.

It's the. It's the kind of breaking out of the cocoon and, and re entering. Re engaging.

If it's a physical injury, maybe it's easier to understand this if we talk about it as if it was a physical injury. Right. You're in a terrible car accident, which actually happened to me five years ago. You first have to survive, and then whatever they have to do to you to help you survive, you need a good long time to literally physically heal. Those wounds have to close and those bones have to regrow and heal. And it's only then frank. And that takes some effort. By the way. Physical therapy, grief groups, your faith, your family, your friends. A good psychiatrist rescued me in many ways after my car accident. And.

I hate to be sort of like Justice Potter Stewart when he was asked to define obscenity by the Supreme Court. He said, I can't define it, but I know when I see it. I would say I can't quite define healing for you, but I know when I see it. I know when I feel.

Is when you are strong enough to re. Engage and to begin to think about the experience that you have been through in ways that change your life for the better. Going forward.

If you're just tuning in, I see some people have come in a little late. We're talking with Rabbi Steve Leiter. He's a rabbi here in Los Angeles. Newsweek has named him one of the ten most influential rabbis in America. The Wilshire Boulevard Temple here in Los Angeles is one of the biggest temples, I would imagine, in the world.

And an amazing author. You've got books out. You've got books coming out or a book coming out. So I appreciate you being here.

You know, it's interesting as I look at some of the comments, kind of literally like we said, and I would imagine whether it's this group or whether it's your congregation, there's people who. Their reaction, Rabbi, is, you know what? Oh, absolutely. I move forward after my daughter died in a way that honors her. And there's, you know, someone else going, can never live again.

I would imagine part of that work. So I'll just break it down to your congregation. I would imagine if you hear that person over there can never live again.

Do they have to come see you or do you ever approach them and go, so you can't. What's the story here?

Well, to be frank with you and I know you're.

It's a large congregation, so it's an unfair question.

The order of magnitude in a congregation like mine is so enormous that I, I'm lucky, frankly, to stay ahead of what's coming at me without more. However. However, I do have a set of protocols in place where I check in with people regularly after a funeral. One week, 30 days, you know, I always check on them on the anniversary of the death. I'm going to be reading your dad's name next week. I'm thinking about you, that kind of thing. So if there is trouble out there to be found, I'll generally find it. But, but that does not preclude certain people suffering alone, unnoticed by me. That happens, I'm sure. Look, the, the. This death is for many people, like an amputation and.

There'S a missing piece forever. And it's also, you know, if you've ever known any amputees, there's. It becomes a phantom limb where it's there, but it isn't there. And there's nothing really we can do but validate and recognize that pain.

But look.

I'll tell you, I have a friend in Boston, an amazing, amazing guy named Ronnie Friedman, who's a rabbi whose 30 year old son committed suicide. And.

I asked him afterwards, what did you learn being on the other side.

Of, you know, not being the rabbi, but being the dad? He said, well, I'll tell you, it might surprise you, but one of the things that bothered me the most was when people said to me, I can't imagine how you're feeling. He said, that's bullshit. Every parent imagines the death of his or her child, whether it's when they're born or whether it's when you hand them the car keys and they're late coming home. Every one of us imagines the death of a child. So he said, what helped me was when people said, I can only imagine how you're feeling. I can't feel what you're feeling, but I can imagine how you're feeling. I've had that fear myself. And the best we can do, I think, is, is help people understand they're not abnormal and they're not crazy. They're human, right? And we ache. We ache. That is what it means to be a human being. We ache.

Right? I had the opposite. When people said to me, after my son died, I can't imagine, I would go, you actually don't have to imagine anything you want to know, I'm right here. I got the details. Just Ask.

Right.

Claire. Says here I had a song in my heart before my mother died, but that song is not there anymore. I know what I'd say to Claire, but I'm curious what you'd say to Claire.

Is there another song?

It's interesting.

Can we find a different song? Another song? Your mother was beautiful in life. Can she be beautiful in death? Also? Can we find a different song?

Mine would be a variation on that. Mine would be. That was the song for your mother. And that song will always exist for your mother. Is there a song for Claire?

That's right.

Like there should be a Claire song and a mom song and maybe a dad song and.

That's right.

You shouldn't live a life that you don't have a song yourself.

Look, David, you know personally that we ought not die because children die. I. I don't in any universe see how two deaths are better than one. I. I can't see it. We cannot die because children die. We cannot die because parents die. We have to use death to live more fully. And I know how cliche that sounds, but it also happens to be a very powerful truth.

Right.

And easier said than done. Just FYI, now that I've been down that road.

That's right.

You know, much, much easier said than done. And that's very true. But, you know, that idea of how to find that life again. Luckily.

I had a son who was very proud of me and proud of my work. And I can go back to my goodness. What would he want? I mean, he would not want. You know, not everyone has that clarity. Not everyone had a grown child, so it is much tougher. Doris, a rabbi. Nine months ago, a tragic death took our alley driving in a driving boat accident. Her ashes are out in Santa Barbara by the Channel Islands. So no funeral. No sitting Shiva. No funeral and friends together. So surreal. Thank you for being here and talking about it these days. I mean, let's talk about rituals for a moment. First of all, Judaism has some great rituals. By the way, if you're not Jewish, feel free to steal any of these rituals.

Plenty of room on the bus.

Rituals. What?

Plenty of room on the bus. Come on.

Yeah, they're. They're the. The rituals. You know, this. You know, some of them. Like, everyone, like, you know, it's something. Whenever I say a ritual, someone will go, well, that's not Jewish. Or. I don't even. There's like a million of them. One of them that meant so much to me was shoveling dirt into the grave.

Yes.

With the shovel backwards.

Yeah. Upside down?

Yeah, upside down. Can you tell people what that's about?

Sure. It's about many things. Let me. Let me mention some of them. First of all, we bury our own. Right. We don't leave to strangers the obligation and the honor, frankly, of burying our loved ones. That's the first thing.

It also, I think anybody with any kind of background in psychology will tell you it also helps with the letting go of the physical to have yourself participated in the burial. It pierces some of the surreal denial that we're in when we're in those first few days of the loss.

And now the upside down shovel is a custom that shows that we're doing this with reluctance, that no one does this happily or speedily or with any kind of enthusiasm or glee. Right. It's a recognition that the world is upside down and backwards and wrong in that moment. You're also, by the way, supposed to always put in an odd number of shovelfuls to show the kind of capricious nature of life and death. So there are layers upon layers of meaning in these rituals, some symbolic and some. Some actual. But those are the. Those are a few for people to. To know about. I think, in terms of specifically the placing of earth in the gravesite. And that sound that. That thunk of earth on wood.

Is. Is an important, painful but important part of moving from surviving to healing.

Right. That was. You know, it's just. It's always been so moving to me to do that. Would you mind if we take a few questions here in a moment?

Not at all.

Anyone has questions, please put them in. We have time to take a couple.

Yeah.

By the way, that means if you write seven paragraphs, you're going to see. We'll be off the air by the time. Just put in your question because I want to have time to get to some of them. What do you think these days? You know, it's interesting. My book came out literally six months before the pandemic. And I had written that I was seeing a pattern of people who were having trouble with grief.

And just. They would all say they're stuck. And as I ask, you know, how did your loved one die? Tell me what happened. There was a pattern. I would get to tell me about the funeral. We didn't have one. It was so inconvenient. You know, they were back east. We were busy with this project. We were going to do it in three months, but someone else died. It seems so silly.

Yeah.

And I go, well, where's their remains? Well, you know, their ashes are in the closet. We don't know what to do. And there's something I would see about if you miss the ritual.

It has an impact on the grief.

Yes.

And. But now we're in a world where that was a few people who by choice.

Yes.

Couldn't figure out how to do it. Now we're in this world where the rituals have been ripped from people.

Yes.

So talk to me about. What do you think that's going to be like?

Well, I'm in the middle of it. I've done many, many funerals in the past four months, all of them with these COVID 19 restrictions, which are in Los Angeles County. At least.

10 or less in attendance.

Right.

Graveside only masks and social distancing. No passing of the shovel from one person to another.

Either we put out 10 individual shovels, or people use their bare hands tearing the. What we call the kriya ribbon, this. This mourning ribbon that people wear, this black ribbon. I can't tear it for them any longer. They have to tear it themselves, you know, so. And you're not surrounded by family and friends, nobody can hug you.

Right.

In a word, it's terrible because it's so. I won't say it's entirely unhelpful because it is some sense of closure, but it is not nearly as helpful as our normal.

Right.

Normal burial and mourning practices are, you know, in terms of the people who. Who would kind of forego that in the first place. You asked me about, you know, what are some of the truths that I. I talk about in this new book, and one of them, there's a whole chapter called in death as in life. And. And that's a whole chapter about the fact that in my experience at least, which I do think is substantial enough for it to be called valid or a pattern. People face death exactly the way they face life. The dying face dying the way they face living. And. And those of us left behind face a person's death the same way we faced life. So those people couldn't get it together to have a funeral, or didn't care enough to get on a plane or have the ashes in the closet. That's how they were in life, too. You know, their priorities were, you know, different than most.

Right.

In life. So they're going to be the same in death. So that. That kind of behavior doesn't surprise me much. But you're quite rightly identifying a situation now where people who do want to engage fully just are forbidden to do so.

And, you know, I do the best I can I'm there. I do the intake. We call it an intake. When I sit with a family and we tell stories and we put together the eulogies and service, I do it all by Zoom. I'm there at the cemetery, and we do Zoom Shivas, which I have to say are more satisfying than I thought they would be, partly because it enables people from all over the world to participate who couldn't physically be there if the Shiva was in a home. So it's not a complete, unmitigated, you know, loss.

Right.

There are some. There are some gains. I will also tell you, I think it's less exhausting for the mourners because they're not dealing with two or 300 people, you know, you know, crowding around them, who don't know how to behave at a Shiva.

You.

You know, the rules for how to behave at a Shiva are very clear, but most people don't know them. And so they misbehave at the Shiva. They turn it into a cocktail party, which is the antithesis of what it should be.

So there. It's. It's not only a loss. I would say it's a net loss, the environment we're in now, but it's not. It's not without a few gains. And I tell people this. This is just my way. And I know it's yours as well. You just have to name these things. I tell people, look, this is not great. We're going to do the best we can. But, yeah, you're. You're being robbed here. And. And I'm going to. I'm going to make it as good as I can, but our hands are tied, and we just have to accept that. I lay it on the line and.

You know, people don't understand there's rules at these things for a reason.

That's right.

You know.

An example, someone on here was sharing how they had a.

A Zoom funeral. And I appreciated it, as other people did. When you're at your loved one's funeral and you see everyone there.

Yeah.

Or you get up and speak. It just melts your heart.

Yes.

And people have told me they look out on a Zoom funeral. Someone's in a tank top, someone's at their desk stapling stuff.

Yep.

And I tell people a Zoom funeral should be no different than another funeral. You need to dress up. You don't. You can get away with shorts on the bottom, but you need to look like you're at a funeral.

Yeah.

And mainly not because anyone's judging you, because you don't Want to be a distraction from the loss.

Well, and you don't want to be perceived, rightly or wrongly, as being insensitive.

Right.

And I think showing up to a funeral in a tank top is insensitive.

I mean, I put on a collared shirt for you today, David, for goodness sake.

And I put one on for you.

Patricia says, is it selfish to not attend my mother's funeral? After her last weeks and her last breath? I couldn't pull myself to go to the burial. I spoke to my rabbi, who said it was okay if I go directly to the Shiva. Although I knew of all the rituals of the burial.

I got an answer for that.

I. I would say, you know, there's.

Number one, it's done.

It's done. So. And I don't want to be in the business of second guessing other rabbis, but I can only say what I would have said with that phone call is there's an old Yiddish expression which is, when you must, you can. And I would say you can because you should. But it's done. And look, I am sure she'll be able to live with it. There are many ways to honor a parent who's died, and attending a funeral is only one of them. Let's look for some others. But most people who say they can't, in my experience, and by the way, it's frequent, I often pull into my parking space at the cemetery. I reach the widow, I put my arms around her, and she says to me, rabbi, I can't. I just can't do this. And I look her square in the eyes and say, yes, you can. You're going to put one foot in front of the other today. Until it's over, I'm going to be by your side. Let's go. And they always do. So I would say that most often when someone says they can't, they actually can.

Okay, let's do one last one. Orna, my son in the last 10 years lived in Santa Barbara. There is no Jewish cemetery in Santa Barbara. I feel kind of wrong that he is not in a strict Jewish cemetery. What do you think about that? That's her saying that, you know.

Well, first of all, even the Jewish cemeteries in Los Angeles are not strict Jewish cemeteries. Kosher is, I think, what she means. I mean, there are cemeteries where non Jews are buried, where people who, you know, have tattoos and piercings. I mean, I don't think there's. There are not many kosher cemeteries left in America. So I'm not sure what she means exactly. And frankly, I Don't think the nature of the cemetery is very important. I've done funerals at Forest Lawn where there are all kinds of people there. And, you know, Jewish tradition does de emphasize the moment death occurs. We begin to de emphasize the importance of the body. The body becomes an empty vessel. And anyone who's seen a dead body knows that is so clearly not the person. There is so much more to us than our bodies. So, you know, Judaism de emphasizes the body. That's why we don't embalm. That's why we don't view. That's why we don't have flowers and pictures and montages and all these crazy things, holograms. Who knows what. The moment a person dies, we begin to focus on the spirit, not the body. And I would urge her to focus on the spirit and not the body.

Very good. Well, an hour has flown by. Well, maybe 55 minutes. People who want to know more about you, they want to be sure to be aware when the new book comes out. Get the old book. How can they find you?

Well, the books. The book just go to, you know, search my name on Amazon under books. Steve Leiter. The current book is called More Beautiful than Before. How Suffering Transforms Us. And it does have quite a bit. It actually is organized in three sections. Surviving, Healing, and Growing. So I think it'll be helpful if the grief community has grabbed on to the current book pretty firmly. So just go to Amazon for the book. I have a website, steveleader.com where you could I aggregate all the stuff I'm doing.

And Wilshire Boulevard Temple. Of course you can Google. The new book will be out January 5th. It's coming out Penguin, Random House, and it's called the Beauty what Remains. And It'll be on steveleader.com and Amazon and all of that. So I'm not that hard to find. Just Google Steve Leader and you'll find your way. And I'm happy to take L E.

D E R. Correct.

L E D E R. Correct. That's correct.

Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you joining me. And I look forward to our next talk at ucla, I think in October, which now will be virtual.

Yes. But I. And I want to thank you for your incredible work in.

In. In, you know, walking willingly, willingly into the darkness with so many people. I don't know you, but I'm proud of you.

Thank you so much. Means a lot. Thank you.

I mean that.

Thank you, sir. All right. I was gonna. You almost made me cry. And I'm like, it's a grief group. We can cry. All right. Thank you so much. Stick around in a moment. And, everyone, I will see you very soon. Thanks so much for being here.

Thank you, everyone.