Order Beside Still Waters now! Copies are $18 and there is a discount available for bulk orders of 10 or more.

I edited Beside Still Waters as the first publication project of Bayit: Building Jewish and we co-published the book with Ben Yehuda Press. It’s a bilingual volume to support the journey of healing, loss, grief, comfort and renewal in both individual and communal contexts. Beside Still Waters offers materials for before death, stages of mourning and grief, remembrance and much more.

Beside Still Waters is a curated volume with traditional and modern liturgies, resonant new translations, evocative poetry and readings, and full transliteration.  It also offers prayers for a variety of spiritually difficult circumstances (miscarriage, stillbirth, suicide, when there is no grave to visit, mourning an abusive relationship) too often overlooked in the journey of memory and transformation. It features the work of some 40 contributors from across the breadth of Jewish life.

Praise for Beside Still Waters

Beside Still Waters is a treasury of loving, comforting Jewish wisdom offered to support us in times of loss and grief. It is like having a wise, warm friend when you need that most. In my own time of loss, it became that for me. — Rabbi Marcia Prager, author of The Path of Blessing and dean of the ALEPH Ordination Programs

This is a wisely constructed and genuinely beautiful book. Beside Still Watersweaves ancient practice and new traditions into a totally approachable and readily usable companion that will help carry people through each phase of illness, death, mourning and healing, with honesty, compassion, wisdom and love. May those who turn to this book in time of need discover that they are not as alone as they likely feel, are more supported than they may know, and that a place of genuine comfort is there for them no matter what. — Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, Co-president of CLAL, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership

Beside Still Waters is a sensitive, beautiful and contemporary re-invention of Jewish liturgy, ritual, and wisdom surrounding the end of life.  Many talented poets and liturgists have contributed to this companion to those who are grieving, healing, and accepting. Their words offer a variety of practices and beliefs, addressing a multitude of human circumstances — some that are traditionally marked and others once overlooked.  Facing into the dilemmas and mysteries of our existence, Beside Still Waters is a friend to those who mourn, those who face their own death, and those who ask questions about the meaning of life and its end. Whether you are facing a dying, a funeral, a shiva, a yahrtzeit, or the lack of a mourning structure to hold your grief, there is something for you here.  — Rabbi Jill Hammer, Author of The Jewish Book of Days: A Companion for All Seasons and co-founder of Kohenet: The Hebrew Priestess Institute

Order Beside Still Waters now! Copies are $18 and there is a discount available for bulk orders of 10 or more.