Authors: Simon Jacobson
ISBN-13: 9780060732783, ISBN-10: 0060732784
Format: Paperback
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Date Published: November 2004
Edition: REV
For fourteen years Rabbi Simon Jacobson was responsible for publishing the talks of Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe. A widely traveled and prolific public speaker, Rabbi Jacobson lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is the founder of the Meaningful Life Center, which builds bridges between the secular and spiritual and helps people discover the deeper meaning of their lives based on the three-thousand-year-old wisdom of the sages.
With a new foreword and chapter that address the upheaval that followed the events of September 11, Toward a Meaningful Life is a spiritual road map for living based on the teachings of one of the foremost religious leaders of our time: Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Head of the Lubavitcher movement for forty-four years and recognized throughout the world simply as "the Rebbe," Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who passed away in June 1994, was a sage and visionary of the highest order.
Toward a Meaningful Life gives Jews and non-Jews alike fresh perspectives on every aspect of their lives from birth to death, youth to old age; marriage, love, intimacy, and family; the persistent issues of career, health, pain, and suffering; and education, faith, science, and government. We learn to bridge the divisions between accelerated technology and decelerated morality, between unprecedented worldwide unity and unparalleled personal disunity.
At the threshold of a new world where matter and spirit converge, the Rebbe proposes spiritual principles that unite people as opposed to the materialism that divides them. In doing so, he continues to lead us toward personal and universal redemption, a meaningful life, and God.
...Toward a Meaningful Life would be of interest and value to a reader regardless of religious affiliation or degree of belief.
Foreword | ix | |
Introduction | xix | |
I | MAN | |
1 | Body and Soul | 3 |
2 | Birth | 14 |
3 | Childhood | 21 |
4 | Education | 30 |
5 | Youth | 39 |
6 | Marriage | 48 |
7 | Love | 58 |
8 | Intimacy | 66 |
9 | Home and Family | 74 |
10 | Health and Fitness | 85 |
11 | Work and Productivity | 93 |
12 | Charity and Wealth | 101 |
13 | Aging and Retirement | 108 |
14 | Death and Grieving | 117 |
15 | Pain and Suffering | 125 |
16 | Fear and Anxiety | 134 |
17 | A Day of Life | 143 |
II | Society | |
18 | Responsibility | 153 |
19 | Government | 161 |
20 | Leadership | 170 |
21 | Women and Men | 178 |
22 | Science and Technology | 188 |
23 | Upheaval and Change | 198 |
24 | Our Generation | 212 |
III | G-D | |
25 | G-d | 223 |
26 | Faith and Reason | 238 |
27 | Unity | 249 |
28 | Philosophy and Practicality | 261 |
29 | Good and Evil | 269 |
30 | Miracles | 280 |
31 | Redemption | 288 |
Epilogue: The Rebbe as the Messiah? | 296 | |
Acknowledgments | 299 | |
Biography | 303 | |
References and Notes | 307 | |
Selected Bibliography | 315 |