There are very few books you can turn to again and again. More beautiful than Before is a gentle tome with a powerful lesson about overcoming pain. You will want to buy two copies of this book: one for your shelf and one to pass on. You will find yourself reaching for Rabbi Steve Leder’s wisdom many times during your life. A publicist for Hay House contacted me about reviewing Rabbi Steve Leder’s new book More beautiful than Before. So when the tiny [...]

Steve Leder knows things. As the senior Rabbi at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, the 155-year-old Los Angeles congregation that is home to some 2400 families (including mine), where Leder has served for 30 years, when his phone rings, it is often not good news.  He has had to comfort, support, minister to and officiate at hundreds of funerals, make thousands of hospital visits and counsel individuals and families as their lives and families fall apart. When cancer is diagnosed, when adultery [...]

A thought-provoking new book explores the idea that the painful aspects of life also bring healing and wisdom. Rabbi Steve Leder, author of "More Beautiful Than Before: How Suffering Transforms Us," serves as senior rabbi at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, the oldest synagogue in Southern California. Leder joined "CBS This Morning" to discuss his book, the power of suffering and the healing nature of apologies. "In a way, I think we're all only truly whole after we've been broken somehow, [...]

A rabbi’s story of the redemptive power of pain — how suffering can provide a window of transformation There is a crack in everything. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Every one of us sooner or later walks through hell. The hell of being hurt or the hell of hurting another. The hell of cancer, the hell of a reluctant shovelful of earth upon the casket of someone we deeply loved. The hell of divorce, of a kid in trouble, of Alzheimer’s, [...]