We all suffer the pain of loss when a loved one dies. We search for meaning in their lives and try to comprehend the unknowable. For each of us, understanding is a journey of inestimable length.

Rafael Grossman was a successful pulpit rabbi, president of his state’s rabbinical council, and the dean of a Hebrew Day School when his teenage daughter Shoshana—vibrant and energetic, a delight to her parents and everyone around her—became ill and died at the age of seventeen.

After her death, Rabbi Grossman was sure that he would never quite have the same faith in God or regain his joy in living. But as the years went by, he appreciated how Jews throughout history had managed to sustain hope in the wake of personal and communal calamities, and he too regained hope.

My Shoshana is a heartfelt letter from father to daughter as an expression of his love, and his never-ending sorrow, but also as a story of renewal and the recognition that, with our memories, no one is truly lost to us.