Cedars-Sinai Chaplain Publishers New Book

The latest literary offering of Rabbi Levi-Meier, Chaplain at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, has been published by Devora Publishing in New York and is available in hardcover through your local bookstores, pitspop@netvision.net.il or Amazon.com.

Entitled Seven Heavens - Inspirational Stories to Elevate Your Soul, the book explores, among other subjects: What does it mean to "die with dignity"? Is it possible for family and friends to "prepare" for the death of a loved one?

Through a series of evolving dialogues based on his true, poignant day-to-day experiences, the author presents a philosophy of life that enlightens as it teaches us to overcome the challenges of living and dying.

Rabbi Meier is a licensed clinical psychologist and a marriage, family and child therapist. He has written two previous books and is Special Issues Editor of the Journal of Psychology and Judaism. He lives with his wife, Marcie, and their children in Los Angeles.

Harry Waterstone
Beverly Hills Courier
August 9, 2002

Rabbi Levi Meir is a California hospital chaplain who respects honesty and readers are bound to respect his book about facing death. In every chapter, the blossoming spiritual growth of a particular dying client named Joe takes Rabbi Meir, Joe, and the reader on a soothing spiritual journey based on the recognition and acceptance of reality. As Rabbi Meir writes on page 94, "How we journey through life is most significant. Our visions... give us strength to continue..." The promises of theological tenets, belief and disbelief in G-d, and the frank honesty of fear of approaching death lead to Joe`s and Rabbi Meir`s recorded conversations with developing and comforting insights that reduce Joe`s anxieties and inspire him to face the next phase of life with gratitude and reassurance.

A psychologist and the Jewish chaplain at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Levi does not clutter Seven Heavens - Inspirational Stories to Elevate Your Soul with oft-tried cliches so often employed by some rabbis. His prose is true to life, addressing the raw, nagging issues that distress the living and depress the dying. Instead of aphorisms and Toraitic tidbits about the wonders of suffering, Rabbi Meir provides his patients and his readers with compassion and the occasionally apropos Toraitic insight about appreciating life. Freely flowing conversations unhampered by lock-step cooperation with the polite, stultifying behaviors often shared by the living and the dying help Joe and Seven Heavens readers with the stuff all of us want to resolve. The rabbi`s heartfelt kindnesses enable Joe to become spiritually attuned and elevated after a lifetime of avoiding religious deliberations.

Poignant stories of Rabbi Meir`s other dying clients fill paragraphs that complement Joe`s developing insights. Levi`s written record of conversations about the G-dly soul, eternity and purpose with other people is vastly superior to the dreary proscriptions that some other allegedly spiritual leaders use on hapless, suffering listeners. Meir`s explanation to an exasperated surgeon that the reason the disappointed doctor never found a soul in the live bodies he operates on is because there is more to reality than physical vision. "You`ve experienced love. Have you ever seen it in a patient`s surgically opened body?" Levi asks rhetorically. The surgeon and the reader are left close-mouthed, realizing the enormous implication of the statement.

One of the most irritating responses a rabbi can make to a suffering person`s painful request for spiritually relieving insight is that "we are born to suffer" or worse, "you are being tested in your love for Hashem." It is a damning indictment against the compassionate aspect of Hashem, a spiritually bankrupt and childish point of view. The metaphysical reality of G-d is not something on which humans beings can offer reliable speculation. Mentally stable observant Jews simply do not eat traife or transgress other Jewish laws to test Hashem`s love for them. It is therefore exasperating to be informed that Hashem is capriciously toying with individual loyalties to Him. Rabbi Meir never goes there, preferring to focus on the heart-felt needs of the dying to reconcile their spiritual future with their physical past. He empowers his patients to bring the Divine into their last physical moments with music, art, speech and focused thought processes.

The manner in which he connects Joe to the angel Uriel is an astonishing act of kindness: the rabbi presents Joe with the high-quality copy of a painting that fascinates his dying client. Joe`s attraction to the depiction of a harbor becomes a metaphor for the soul`s spiritual tasks while becoming completely accepting of life and of individuals as they are. On the last page of the anthology of spiritually uplifting stories, even Rabbi Meir finds a startling and previously unnoticed spiritual gift in the picture. Perhaps it was a gift from Uriel or Joe. The book is certainly a gift to its readers.

Seven Heavens - Inspirational Stories to Elevate Your Soul belongs in private homes, hospices, and in the syllabi of social services professions. It is a book that should be made freely available to all mental and physical health care facilities so that practitioners and their clients can benefit from its spiritually satisfying lessons.

Yocheved Golani
The Jewish Press
October 23, 2002

Rabbi Meier is Jewish Chaplain of Cedars-Sinai Medial Center in Los Angeles. He is a licensed clinical psychologist and a marriage, family, and child therapist. Rabbi Meier is the author of Ancient Secrets: Using the Stories of the Bible to Improve our Everyday Lives, and Moses-the Prince, the Prophet: His Life, Legend and Message for Our Lives. He is Special Issues Editor of the Journal of Psychology and Judaism.

Rabbi Meier lives with his wife Marcie, and their children in Los Angeles, California.

Seven Heavens - Inspirational Stories to Elevate Your Soul, the latest work of this spiritual leader covers 45 inspiring short chapters. Based on his true, poignant, day-to-day experiences, the author presents a philosophy of life that enlightens as it teaches us to overcome the challenges of living and dying.

Iranian-Jewish Chronicle
January, 2003