More than eulogies

The paradox of a slim book is that it can be dense. The weight of the words feels more significant, heavier, when there are fewer of them; each word and sentence has more work to do. When a book like this is successful, as Living with Our Dead is, the length of the chapters bears no connection to the power and depth of the writing.

Delphine Horvilleur is a French rabbi who leads a congregation in Paris. In this book, she tells the stories of 11 people, most of whose funerals she officiated at. But it’s more than just a collection of eulogies. Each chapter has a different theme, and as the book unfolds readers encounter various aspects of Jewish history and learn about the diverse lives led by French Jews.

She writes about a “Birkenau girl” who survived the concentration camp as a teenager and went on to become the first female president of the European Parliament, a beloved psychoanalyst and writer who was murdered in the Charlie Hebdo magazine shooting, and a young boy whose grieving brother asks unfathomable questions at the funeral. With both an accessible style and references to Jewish texts and Hebrew etymologies, this book should become an instant classic, sharing shelf space with Harold Kushner’s When Bad Things Happen to Good People.