Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Telepathy: A Window on
the Soul's Survival
In my own life I have ignored many experiences that would have provided evidence for survival of the soul. Although I was raised to value an open mind, like many in my generation I was blind to the supernatural, which was defined as anything that could not be scientifically proven or seen. On most levels I was a predictable product of middle-class, Jewish-American values, with the most unusual aspect of my upbringing being that I was the child of Holocaust survivors.
Allow me to digress to share with you my roots, which offer greater context for my story. When I was six years old my father, a businessman, saw the chance to make a good real estate investment, which led my parents to raise their four children on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona. My parents were from Czechoslovakia, and the family business revolved around wigs. My father was the son of the wig maker with whom my mother had apprenticed, making wigs for religious Jewish women, who by tradition cover their hair after getting married.
Although my parents had minimal formal education, they strongly encouraged each of us to excel in school. As they said, "No one can ever take an education away from you." In college in the 1970s I majored in psychology and Jewish philosophy, completing most of my studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Although I had a strong inclination toward the rabbinate, I chose not to pursue that course because I felt too young and ambivalent about key religious beliefs. Instead I opted for lawschool at Boston University. My legal training furthered my ability to look at problems dispassionately and analytically. I practiced law in Boston for several years, first in the criminal sector and later as legal counsel for Brigham and Women's Hospital, part of the collective of Harvard teaching hospitals. The task of writing medical-legal protocols allowed me to pursue my philosophic interests.
After three years of practice I became very ill with encephalitis, which in the throes of the illness left me delirious. My recovery was slow, and I was unable to continue my work. I had always loved to travel and decided to explore some new countries while recuperating. I sold my possessions and traveled backpack-style for close to a year to Hawaii, French Polynesia, mainland China, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia. At the end of my trip I needed to decide whether to resume my career in law. My college roommate invited me to join him on a trip to Los Angeles, where he had scheduled several medical residency interviews. In Los Angeles I decided to visit the University of Judaism. The dean of the rabbinical school agreed to meet me, so I borrowed my friend's blazer and told him that I would be back in a half hour. When the half hour was up he knocked on the door because he needed his blazer back to proceed to his own appointment. I returned the coat and continued my meeting with the dean, who invited me to begin studies in the winter session and to apply to rabbinical school in the spring.
From the day I began I loved rabbinical school. My passion had always been toward understanding people and the world, along with a desire to express my strong attachment to the Jewish people. I studied eagerly and received a superb rabbinical school education at the University of Judaism and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. My course of study enabled me to adeptly read sacred Jewish texts, skillfully perform traditional rituals, and describe Jewish history, values, and philosophy. Yet, in the course of my studies I never heard a discussion on survival of the soul. I did learn about Jewish concepts of messiah, resurrection, and the world to come, but they were never brought down to the level of the real world. The concepts were presented as traditional theoretical constructs rather than as communal "maps" that describe reality.
In my work as a rabbi my concerns regarding the soul grew less abstract and more practical. I had to help people make decisions about shutting off ventilators and discontinuing dialysis. When people died I needed to offer solace and meaning. These dilemmas challenged me to contemplate the nature of life and death. At the outset my speculation remained largely legal and psychological, which matched my training. My first dramatic encounter with the paranormal shifted my attention to what happens after we die, a topic I had never really addressed in my years of education.
One Sunday morning, Ching-Lan, the wife of a congregant, called to tell me that her husband, Al, had died the previous day. I arranged to meet with her on Monday. They had been married nearly twenty-five years when he died of a chronic wasting illness. They had met when he worked for an athletic club and she was the beautiful, gentle rebel of a formerly aristocratic Chinese family, and had fallen in love and eloped. Now they had two nearly grown children.
Soon after Ching-Lan welcomed me to her apartment on Monday I encountered the first twist to this story when Ching-Lan shared the following experience:
Rabbi, something amazing occurred yesterday. I received a phone call from my son's former karate teacher with whom I had not spoken in about two years. He's an older Japanese man whom we call Sensei.<
