Israel, Martin 1927-2007 (Martin Spencer Israel)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born April 30, 1927, in Johannesburg, South Africa; died October 23, 2007. Physician, pathologist, mystic, priest, educator, and author. Israel received his medical degree in 1949 and worked as a pathologist at a British hospital in the early 1950s. He studied and taught pathology at the Royal College of Surgeons from 1957 to 1981. At the same time Israel was developing his interest in Christianity, Eastern mysticism, and alternative forms of spirituality. He discovered a talent for healing and psychic communication and began to practice the healing arts. In 1975, when he was nearly fifty years old, Israel formally rejected his Jewish roots by becoming an ordained Anglican priest. To his power for healing, he added the religious ritual of exorcism, which he conducted in the classical manner. Israel served the church as a curate concurrently with his work as a pathologist and educator. He became a priest at Holy Trinity and All Saints Church in the Kensington section of London, where he remained until 1996 as both spiritual leader and practicing exorcist. He was the president of the Churches' Fellowship for Psychical and Spiritual Studies from 1983 to 1998, and a consultant on exorcism to the bishop of London. Israel was also the author of more than fifty books, few of which were devoted to pathology. His spiritual writings include The Pain That Heals: The Place of Suffering in the Growth of the Person (1981), The Dark Face of Reality: A Study of Emergent Awareness (1989), Dark Victory: Through Depression to Hope (1995), Happiness That Lasts (1999), and Learning to Love (2001).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Times (London, England), November 5, 2007, p. 62.