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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THIS BOOK HAS had a life of its own. Originally created as a handout for a seminar I offered at my Miami synagogue in the early nineties, these letters have been circulated in a variety of ersatz editions throughout North and South America. In 1994, Open Secrets found a home with Bo and Sita Lozoff and the Human Kindness Foundation. There it lived for ten years, as part of the mailings they send to residents of our nation’s many prisons. I am grateful to Bo and Sita, and also to the hundreds of prisoners who have written me in appreciation of this book and its teachings.

The muse behind these letters is the real Aaron Hershel—my son. I wrote these letters shortly after his Bar Mitzvah. They were a distillation of my philosophy that I hoped to share with him during his adolescence. I don’t know how well I did in that regard. For all my desire to impart these teachings to him, I also felt the need to allow him to discover them on his own. Maybe the book was my way of saying, “Here is the dad I meant to be. Here are the things I wanted to share with you.” I am proud of my son and the man he has grown up to be. While most of the credit goes to his mother, Debbie, I will reserve a bit for Reb Yerachmiel and myself.

A few additional thank yous are vital here. First, to my rebbe Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, whose concern for me and respect for my work led to the revival of this book. Second, to my friend and teacher Father Thomas Keating, whose endless enthusiasm for this book pushed me to find a commercial outlet for it. Third, to my publisher Paul Cohen of Monkfish whose willingness to back this venture turned Fr. Thomas’s urgings into reality. And fourth, to my editor, Toinette Lippe. This is my fourth book with Toinette, and in some ways it has been the most satisfying. She has been involved with Open Secrets almost as long as I have: reading and rereading it, making suggestions to clarify both the text and the teaching, and encouraging me to stick with it even when the only home we could find for it was my desk drawer. Her eagerness to bring this book to fruition is a gift for which I am eternally grateful.