Beneath the engrossing beauty of this book runs a strong current of judgment of the failures of the modern secular world. Tellingly, Russell does not single individuals out for specific judgments. In a formulation that will not be satisfactory to many orthodox Christians, he adds that Every person, of any religion and of any degree of faith, whose heart leans to love and whose life leans to good will is in heaven. In any event, that choice is his alone. What Russell firmly, if implicitly, does condemn is the modern habit of mind that tenaciously substitutes the shadow for the substance, the vain idol for the divinity.
Idols block our view of, our path to, reality.
And here, the choice lies in our hands. At stake in that choice, Russell delicately suggests, is the measure not merely of our lives but of our very way of understanding and ordering them. As a culture and a civilization, we are turning our backs on God, which is to say we are turning away from reality itself. Apparently Jews, like Christians, confess one thing about the afterlife when they say kaddish, but tend to believe something else. The Death of Death is Neil Gilman's contribution toward the recovery among Jews of the doctrine of the resurrection.