"Faith is not a fortress," writes Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. "We are not locked into it. I do not believe as I did ten years ago, and I hope I do not believe today as I will ten years from now. My faith has become more honest as I have grown. But it is not easy." The author speaks of his wife's battle with cancer nine months after their daughter was born and his mother's stroke that took away her speech when she was 52 years old.

Judaism, according to Wolpe, does not deny or run away from loss. In the words of the Kotzker Rebbe, "The only whole heart is a broken one." Faith squares off against loss but doesn't capitulate to despair or to pie-in-the-sky optimism. It makes meaning out of pain, suffering, and disappointment.

In chapters on the loss of home, dreams, love, and death, Wolpe discusses the struggles of friends and relatives alongside the experiences of Adam and Eve, Moses, Jacob, Joseph, and Job. He concludes: "Faith teaches us not that life will be easy but that the difficulties of life yield beauty." Wolpe honors the mystery of suffering and grief as losses that can open our hearts through the alchemy of a living, evolving faith.