Learned by Heart: Dialogues with My Father

Learned By Heart: Dialogues With My Father began as a dutiful compilation of Rabbi Dr. Carl Klein's views about Judaism, philosophy, and Torah study and morphed into a posthumous conversation about life, love, family, and core beliefs.

Reading his father's poignant sermons, Dr. Milton Klein would soon discover a profound and unexpected solace-a renewed understanding of the life his father had prepared for him. Appreciated now as his birthright, this treasure, exposed twenty years after his father's death, beckoned Milton into explorations of remembrance, reflection, reclamation, and redemption.

Part medicine, part philosophy, part parenting guide, the book uncovers the quieter legacy that his father left his family. The man who was asked to translate ancient Chaldaic manuscripts in the Vatican basement and communicated with the likes of Pope John Paul II, George H.W. Bush, Menachem Begin, and Edward Teller, spoke through his work from a deeper, simpler place. Milton began to understand his father's sermons as if they were whispers of both an ethical will and a map to chart the more meaningful possibilities of life.

From a distant pulpit, Rabbi Klein seemed to be overseeing his son's continuing education. Learned By Heart provides a fascinating interplay between medicine and religion; Talmudic wisdom offering insights into modern dilemmas. Sincere in his belief and fervent about his ethics while considering the abyss of the unknowable, Rabbi Klein derived strength rather than apprehension from asking the basic philosophical questions about life and death. Experienced in dealing with the intense emotional milestones of health, family, and faith, the Drs. Klein address many central themes that touch us all.