Small Miracles from Beyond: Dreams, Visions and Signs that Link Us to the Other Side
By Yitta Halberstam & Judith Leventhal
Sterling Ethos Press
On a recent visit to Montreal, I went to visit my parents at the cemetery where they are buried. I hadn’t been in Montreal in 13 years. Being mid January, the cemetery was mid-calf deep in snow.
Since I hadn’t been there in a long time, I wasn’t exactly sure where the graves were located, but I set off in the general direction. When I had searched a few minutes, suddenly my knee buckled and I fell in the snow. I got up and tried again and the same thing happened. When it happened a third time, I was worried I might have to crawl out of the cemetery but I also assumed someone was trying to tell me something. I decided I would try and find my uncle’s grave first and then try and locate my parents. I turned in the direction I thought it was and as I came out between two headstones, I turned and saw my parent’s graves. I had fallen right behind them. I paid my visit, went to see my uncle and then left the cemetery, no problem with my knee, which for a few minutes had been turned into an other-worldly GPS.
For those who believe, and even know from personal experience, that the line of communication is not completely severed between us and our loved ones, ancestors, teachers and friends once they go to a better world, Small Miracles from Beyond will provide both inspiration, comfort and validation. For those who doubt or entirely disbelieve the phenomenon, this book will change your mind.
This is the eighth book Yitta Halberstam and Judith Leventhal have co-authored in the Small Miracles series, stories of inspiration, kindness and Divine Providence. Small Miracles from Beyond takes you beyond the boundaries of place (this world) and time and shows we are always connected, if we are just open to the signs and try and discern their meanings.
The book is not entirely Jewish, as apparently non-Jewish relatives like to visit family as well, but the stories are predominantly Jewish with Jewish hashkafah. My favorite story in the book, “The Shofar,” tells of the Odyssey of a shofar crafted in a concentration camp and how it was the vehicle for the fulfillment of a rebbe’s blessings, the reconnection of a recalcitrant community in California to Yiddishkeit decades later and even a shidduch.
This book is transcendent. “There is no way you can collect all these stories and not be deeply affected on a spiritual level,” says Halberstam. “It has given me tremendous amounts of bitachon and emunah.”
Reading this book will strengthen your faith as well and maybe even open your eyes to other small miracles from beyond.