Elliott Isenberg on "Call Me Eliyahu"

This event will feature a reading by the author followed by a question and answer period, and then a book-signing.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Call me Eliyahu: Tales Told by an Elliott is a memoir that moves through history, counterculture, spirituality, psychology, and personal awakening with honesty, humor, and literary depth.

Born in the shadow of the Holocaust, Elliott Isenberg begins with the remarkable true story of his older brother’s escape from Nazi Germany as a seven-year-old child carrying a string of visas across wartime Europe. From there, the memoir unfolds into a sweeping journey through some of the defining cultural and spiritual movements of the twentieth century.

Part historical narrative, part spiritual quest, and part psychological self-examination, the book follows Isenberg through the turbulence of the 1960s and beyond: civil rights activism in Mississippi, graduate studies in sociology and psychology, travels through Africa and India, psychedelic exploration, encounters with spiritual teachers, and decades of searching for meaning and truth.

Along the way, readers encounter a cast of fascinating figures including Ram Dass, Neem Karoli Baba, Sunyata, Byron Katie, and Adyashanti. Yet the heart of the memoir remains deeply personal. Isenberg writes candidly about fear, identity, trauma, mystical experience, disillusionment, and the ongoing human longing to understand who we truly are.

At once reflective, humorous, and emotionally vivid, Call me Eliyahu is more than a chronicle of one man’s life. It is a meditation on survival, awakening, memory, and the enduring search for inner freedom.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Elliott Isenberg — also known as Eliyahu — is a psychotherapist, traveler, spiritual seeker, and writer whose life journey has taken him across continents, cultures, and inner worlds.

Born in 1945 to a Jewish family shaped by the trauma of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, Isenberg came of age during the social upheavals of the 1960s. He participated in civil rights activism in Mississippi, studied sociology at the London School of Economics, traveled extensively through Africa and Asia, and later pursued graduate studies in transpersonal psychology in California.

Over the decades, his search for understanding brought him into contact with influential spiritual teachers and thinkers associated with the counterculture, nondual spirituality, Buddhism, Hinduism, and psychedelic exploration. His travels included extended stays in India, where he met Neem Karoli Baba, as well as encounters with figures such as Ram Dass, Sunyata, Byron Katie, and Adyashanti.

Isenberg earned a Ph.D. in Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco and worked for many years as a psychotherapist while continuing his lifelong interest in spirituality, meditation, consciousness, and the question of human awakening.

His memoir, Call Me Eliyahu: Tales Told by an Elliott, weaves together history, psychology, memoir, humor, and spiritual inquiry into a unique reflection on a life fully engaged with the deepest questions of existence.

He currently lives in San Francisco.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Morgenstern Books