Baron Rothschild’s Secret by Rabbi Shlomo Landau
It all started in 1991. I was in a helicopter and we had just lifted 50 feet above the ground. At the same time, a small plane was taking off with an instructor and his student. We collided. Our helicopter crashed to the tarmac. But the plane exploded. Its two passengers were killed. I woke up in the hospital, tormented by a wave of guilt – why did those two young people die? Why was I alive? That haunted me. And I tried to find the answer.
What We Leave Behind: Tolstoy and the Mortality of Man by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
The most profound fear most of us have is of death. As La Rochefoucauld said, “Neither the sun nor death can be looked on with a steady eye.” The Untaneh Tokef prayer tells the poetry of mortality with haunting pathos:
