Our December Selection: "Have a Little Faith"

By Mitch Albom

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I will review this book in my sermon at Beth Yeshurun, Friday night, Dec. 18, 6 p.m.

It might seem strange recommending a current best-seller as a selection for our Jewish Book Circle, but from the moment I started reading Mitch Albom’s new book, Have a Little Faith, I realized there was something very significant and touching about it, in a way that I had not anticipated.

Mitch Albom’s earlier books have all been bestsellers, and I would agree that Tuesdays with Morrie was particularly good. But in his newest book, Albom strikes a very Jewish chord and finds himself answering a Yom Kippur-type question: If someone asked you to write his eulogy, what would you write? Where would you begin? And how would you reconcile the person's public persona with his personal, private side?

This was the challenge Albom faced when his own rabbi, the now-deceased Albert Lewis, made such a request of Mitch. At first, Albom was dumbstruck. Rabbi Lewis had been a god-like creature all Albom’s life. Now he was being asked to sit with his rabbi and prepare for the day when his teacher would die and he, a writer of popular books, would be called upon to “size him up” and make sense of his extraordinary life.

Little wonder I was personally so affected by this book – and not just because it's about a rabbi. No, it's more than that; it's really about all of us and how we measure one another's worth. In so many ways, this bestseller is truly worthy of its sales ranking in the way it speaks to not only Jews but people of all faiths. Have a Little Faith is a little gem.