Six years ago, Rabbi Benjamin Blech, assistant professor of Bible, was informed that he was suffering from cardiac amyloidosis, a fatal and incurable disease. The book he has written about this experience, Hope, Not Fear: Changing the Way We View Death, received a laudatory review in the New York Jewish Week by Jonathan Mark, associate editor. Marks calls it a “slender but splendid book” and notes that Rabbi Blech comes to his understanding that souls not only have a consciousness but that they can communicate with the living “with the excitement of a blind person suddenly able to see the aurora borealis.” Alan Rosenbaum, in the Jerusalem Post, also wrote a complimentary review, calling the book an “eloquent and personal response” to the fact of the death that he and all humans face. “To understand death,” said Rabbi Blech, “is to enter a realm that of necessity requires faith as a guide...There is life after this life.”