Photo by Ariane Kadoch Swisa
Valentine’s Day 2019 forever changed Rabbi Amy Grossblatt Pessah’s life. On that day, she lost her 20-year-old son, Josef “Yossi” Pessah, to an aggressive form of brain cancer.
In the years that followed, Pessah found a metaphor for grief and healing in kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer and gold powder. An image of a kintsugi heart now adorns the cover of her second book, “The Wholeness of a Broken Heart: Pathways to Resilience and Renewal,” which will be available through major booksellers Oct. 13, ahead of Jewish Book Month in November. Divided into two sections, “Understanding Brokenness” and “Crafting Wholeness in Seven Ways,” it takes readers on a spiritual journey through stages of mourning based on Jewish wisdom and traditions.
“The book has experiences and writings based on the death of my son, and it is part of our family story,” says Pessah, 57, who lives in Boca Raton. “It’s not our whole story, so some of the little vignettes are about him and my own grieving process, resilience and renewal. There are much larger pieces about the pandemic, October 7 and the rise of antisemitism.”
Putting those experiences into words comes naturally to Pessah. When an idea strikes, she calls it a “divine download” and either races to her study to write it down or records a voice note on her phone. She’s kept a journal since third grade and credits her high school English teachers in her hometown of Baltimore with inspiring a lifelong love of words.
“I find writing to be such a helpful, therapeutic process,” she says. “It helps me organize my thoughts, and it allows me to get my emotions out and sometimes brings me to places and understandings that I would not have been able to [reach] just through thinking.”
A Jewish educator for more than 30 years, Pessah is married to Aryeh Pessah, an emergency room doctor. They have two other children, a 25-year-old son and 24-year-old daughter. Her experiences raising her family helped shape her debut book, “Parenting on a Prayer: Ancient Jewish Secrets for Raising Modern Children,” published in 2020. The book draws on 18 Jewish prayers that teach children the importance of empowerment, responsibility and their roots. She shares what worked well and what didn’t while raising her children but cautions that the book is not a blueprint for perfect parenting.
“I believe people have to put it through what I call their own ‘GPS’ — their own Great Parenting System,” she explains, “and then see if it works for them.”