Meet the Author
Sara Davidson is the New York Times bestselling author of eight books, including Loose Change (1997) and Leap!: What Will We Do with the Rest of our Lives? (2008). Additionally, her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Harper’s, The Atlantic, Esquire, and Rolling Stone.
Book Basics (available tomorrow – March 25)
Living in a community known for its unusually large numbers of retirees, I am well aware of the importance of finishing well. While most people spend many years pursuing education and training for a career, few receive any formal direction or training to prepare them for living well in the final stage of life. The December Project is an excellent introduction to accepting mortality, living meaningfully in the final years of life, and considering what (if anything) follows this life.
The wisdom provided comes from the now 89 year old founder of the Jewish Renewal Movement: Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. Reb Zalman, a name by which this leader is more frequently called, chose Davidson as his weekly conversation partner for two years so that she could share his thoughts with a wider audience. The thinking, however, is heavily filtered through Davidson’s own struggles (now age 70) to determine what she believes and how she wants to live in whatever years may remain in her life. Appropriately both Reb Zalman and Davidson experience heightened awareness of their own mortality over the course of their meetings as his health declines dramatically and as a journalistic opportunity places her in harm’s way.
Few people have life stories as rich and diverse as Reb Zalman, but all should appreciate his willingness to relay what many of those episodes meant at an earlier stage in life and mean now for this spiritual giant. While his ideas necessarily explain his theological/philosophical perspective they function as an invitation to personal introspection rather than data points for a 
comparative analysis or tools for a conversionist agenda. The power of his stories to achieve this outcome is seen clearly in Davidson’s own reflections, including how she revises her perspectives about how fully she wants to live now and what she believes will happen when this life ends.
So What?
Life – the sort in which we find ourselves housed in bodies that move about the earth – is fleeting. As we age our awareness of our own mortality grows. Rather than come to the end of life without having given much thought to how best to live our final years or what we think happens once we breath our last breath, expending effort to outline our desires and our beliefs is an investment that offers a significant return.
- Think of life as a calendar. What month are you living in now? How does this perspective color your view of mortality and of what happens when this life ends?
- What does your religious tradition teach about ending well? about what happens when this life ends? Are there elements within those answers with which you disagree?
Sara Davidson. The December Project: An Extraordinary Rabbi and a Skeptical Seeker Confront Life’s Greatest Mystery (HarperOne, 2014). ISBN: 9780062281746.