My New Project: Book Number Four

A week ago, I experienced the best day of my life, my daughter’s wedding (building on the equally wonderful days of my marriage and the birth of my children.)

Since then, a great deal has happened. Alongside that joy, I had a mini-stroke and have now started with a carer, something that has already proved much needed, as I come to terms with becoming weaker and slower due to PSP.

Life can change very quickly.

And yet, I feel strongly that I must keep moving forward.

I need a short-term goal, something that motivates me, inspires me, and gives me the push to keep going. Not something artificial or imposed, and certainly not something that places pressure on those around me. Rather, something meaningful, personal, and achievable.

So I have chosen to focus on something deeply important to me.

Over the past forty weeks, I have been writing a weekly piece, sharing thoughts, ideas, and reflections on the weekly Torah portion, following the rhythm of the Jewish year. Now, as I approach the completion of that cycle, I have the opportunity, please God, health permitting, to bring this work together into a book over the coming ten weeks.

I have already gathered the articles, and I have asked a close friend and neighbour to write a foreword, which I hope will add a sense of completeness and dignity to the project.

This will be my fourth book. In many ways, it feels like the most important in terms of my faith. And yet, it is also the one for which I am least formally trained. Perhaps that is precisely why it offers a different perspective, one shaped not only by study, but by lived experience and reflection.

More than anything, this project gives me purpose. It gives me focus. It allows me to keep building, even as other things become more difficult. Much of the work is already there, written week by week over these past months. I can see the finish line, and I am determined to reach it.

As with my previous books, I plan to self-publish on Amazon. It may not be the most effective way to sell books, but selling is not my goal. Creating and completing the book is. Self-publishing is simply the most practical way to achieve that.

In time, I would also like to produce a Hebrew version. That will be more challenging for me, but it is something I hope to pursue afterwards, building on the work of a good friend who has already been helping translate the pieces week by week.

This is my next step. To take what I have already built, and bring it to completion.

Wish me luck.