Against the Dying of the Light: A Father's Journey Through Loss [Hardcover]

Leonard Fein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2001

How do you explain a seemingly senseless tragedy? What does it mean to be an observer of your own life?

In this unusual exploration of heartbreak and healing, Leonard Fein chronicles the sudden death of his 30-year-old daughter and shares the hard-earned wisdom that emerges in the face of loss and grief.

With the rich support of his community, Fein anguished, questioned, and ultimately coped with the death of his daughter by wrestling with some of life’s toughest questions. The answers he discovers in the course of his own mourning process provide not only comfort to others in “the company of the bereaved” and strength to those who face personal tragedy, but also wisdom for all who search for life’s meanings.

Against the Dying of the Light leads us to a different, surprising understanding of the gifts that life and the quest for understanding have to offer.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Leonard Fein struggled with some of the deepest and most difficult questions of faith while mourning the death of his daughter Nomi, who suffered a heart attack at age 30. "I understood from the start that the act of writing was a way both to keep her alive and to accept the fact of her death. And I needed to do both," he explains in the first paragraph of Against the Dying of the Light. Fein, a veteran Jewish social activist, teacher (at M.I.T. and Harvard), and writer, recognized in his daughter's early childhood that she was "among the most interesting people I'd ever known." In case you missed the point of that statement, he reiterates: "'People,' not 'kids.'" Among the most striking things about this book is Fein's ability to see his daughter as a whole person--empathic, intelligent, and generous, and yet sometimes haughty and defensive. The first part of this book is a memoir, describing his relationship with Nomi. The second part is a meditation on the significance of life and death, and the experience of mourning. The conclusion synthesizes memoir and meditation in the form of a letter to Nomi's daughter Liat, who was an infant when her mother died. Fein also writes that his daughter's death taught him a new emotion: "The terror: I can no longer take my children's lives for granted." But the central lesson of this letter is that, although bad things do happen to good people, every person is obliged make a difference in the project of helping to heal a broken world. --Michael Joseph Gross

From Publishers Weekly

On January 29, 1996, Fein's 30-year-old daughter, Nomi, collapsed suddenly and died minutes later, leaving behind a husband, a young daughter and a grieving family. In order to come to terms with the loss, Fein (Where Are We?: The Inner Life of America's Jews) narrates his memories of his daughter as well as his own attempts to understand her death. In the first section, which chronicles the first year after the tragedy, Fein interweaves scenes of her death and funeral with vignettes from her life. Nomi's brilliance and her deep love for others and for social justice provide a poignant counterpoint to Fein's own rehearsal of the loss generated by her death. The second section presents Fein's agonizing questions about why his daughter, of all people, had to die, and how we can justify the ways of God to humankind. Certainly Fein experiences a wide range of feelings, from anger and bitterness to acceptance, but he beautifully describes his life without Nomi as "the enduring presence of an absence." In the final section, Fein writes a letter to his five-year-old granddaughter, Liat, offering the stories of her grandparents and her mother and encouraging Liat to choose life and love in the midst of the chaos of the world. Although Fein sometimes engages in self-conscious philosophizing, his honest and searing words powerfully evoke the deeply felt loss of a child.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Jewish Lights Publishing (February 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580231101
• ISBN-13: 978-1580231107
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,293,039 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "self-help" book for everyone, March 28, 2001

By 

M. Rosenberg "freddymac" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Against the Dying of the Light: A Father's Journey Through Loss (Hardcover)

This is a book everyone needs to help in confronting the most unfair aspect of life: death. Specifically, this gem of a book is about the loss of Fein's daughter, Nomi, and how he has come to terms with it. But the wisdom in this book will benefit anyone who faces death, their own or the deaths of their loved ones. I imagine many people try to avoid a book like this because they assume it is depressing. This one isn't. The loss of Nomi was tragic, terrible, but her life was such a gift. You read this book and understand that we are promised nothing in terms of longevity; we must make the most of whatever time we have. That Nomi dead and so did her father. An important message Fein conveys whether intentionally or not is that the pain of losing someone you love is unbearably painful but far more bearable if your love has been expressed openly during life. Fein loved his daughter and told her so, over and over again. His recollection of that simple fact keeps him going. Pain, yes. Guilt, none. There is an important lesson there. This book is a must.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Triumph over Grief, March 8, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Against the Dying of the Light: A Father's Journey Through Loss (Hardcover)

I found this book both touching and inspirational. It is a must for anyone stuggling with the existential questions of life and death. Fein deals with the ultimate horror, the death of a child, with insight and sensitivity. The book alternates between memories of her death and life enabling the reader to share the sense of loss expressed by the author. Anyone who reads this book will be touched by the author's pain, but in the end we recognize that it is memories that lead to healing. I recommend this book for everyone.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Parent's Worst Nightmare Relived, April 16, 2001

By 

Lois Shenker (Portland,, OR USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Against the Dying of the Light: A Father's Journey Through Loss (Hardcover)

 Leonard Fein's book, Against the Dying of the Light, A Father's Journey through Loss is a realistic,no frills account of a parent's worst nightmare. With poetic prose, the author takes us on his journey since losing his daughter, a young Mother whose sudden death left her husband, family and friends bereft, and his 16 month old granddaughter without her Mother. Throughout the journey he shares his pain, his struggles in trying to cope with his loss, his memories, his hopes for the future of his granddaughter, his heritage, and his love.

If asked to describe the book in a few words, I would say it is a love story: a love story written about his daughter Nomi, but also about his other children, his parents, his brother and sister-in-law, his friends, his basic values, and his tradition. It is a story of shared love with all of these people, and both the depth and quality of his feelings about them and everything in his life about which he cares, come across in the beauty of his writing.

While "deeply personal" as the author himself suggests, this story of a father's painful loss of his daughter moves the reader from the personal to the universal, from Nomi's death to her life, from the agony of the initial horror of her dying, to the ultimate acceptance of her death as a reality. At no time does the author come to terms with his daughter's death as "acceptable": over time, he does, however, come to terms with her death as fact.

Does he give the reader consolation? Does he have answers that make the reader feel better? Does it all come out okay? I don't think so. What we are left with, however, is the simple, basic truth that most of us already know, but do not always practice: that we must value everyday and every experience, and that we must let those we love know how valued, loved, and important they are to us not just once in awhile, but all the time. The saving grace in the book for me was that the author did that. Through quoted letters and comments of others, he is able to share with the reader that this beautiful young woman, his daughter, knew how loved and cherished she was, that they did in fact share many special times together and they valued those times as they happened. The fact is also shared that in her short life, Nomi made a difference. Her presence on this earth was viewed as a great gift by those who knew her. There must be small comfort in that knowledge, but comfort it is nonetheless.

Against the Dying of the Light is a good read. It is a quick read, an emotional read, a poignant read, and a beautifully written read as well. It will have an honored place on my book shelf.

Book Review written by: Lois S. Shenker 3340 S. W. Stonebrook Drive Portland, OR 97201 503-245-0018 e-mail [e-mail]