Harold Kushner
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| Harold Kushner | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1935 Brooklyn, New York, United States |
| Occupation | Rabbi, Conservative Judaism Author, When Bad Things Happen to Good People |
Harold S. Kushner is a prominent American rabbi aligned with the progressive wing of Conservative Judaism.
Contents |
[edit] Education
Born in Brooklyn, Kushner was educated at Columbia University and later obtained his rabbinical ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in 1960. The same institution awarded him a doctoral degree in Bible in 1972. Kushner has also studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, taught at Clark University and the Rabbinical School of the JTS, and received six honorary doctorates.
[edit] Congregational Rabbi
He served as the long time congregational rabbi of Temple Israel in Natick, Massachusetts for twenty-four years and belongs to the Rabbinical Assembly.
[edit] Author
He is the author of a best selling book on the problem of evil, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Written following the death of his son--who was afflicted with progeria--the book deals with questions about human suffering, God, Omnipotence and Theodicy. The book was deeply ridiculed by the late Rabbi Y. Kirzner who himself suffered terribly of cancer and gave out a book called "Making Sense of Suffering" and audio cassettes right before he died to bring out the nonsense in Rabbi Kushner's theories written in his book "When Bad Things Happen to Good People".
Kushner has written a number of other popular theological books, such as How Good Do We Have to Be?, To Life! and many others. In collaboration with the late Chaim Potok, Kushner co-edited Etz Hayim: A Torah Commentary, the new official Torah commentary of the Conservative movement, which was jointly published in 2001 by the Rabbinical Assembly and the Jewish Publication Society. His Living a Life That Matters became a best seller in the fall of 2001. Kushner's book, The Lord Is My Shepherd, was a meditation on the Twenty-Third Psalm released in 2003. Kushner also wrote a response to Simon Wiesenthal's question of forgivness in the book The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness.
[edit] List of publications
- Overcoming Life's Disappointments is Kushner's latest book, published in August 2006 to generally positive reviews.
[edit] Miscellanious
- Kushner offered a reading from the Bible at the State Funeral of Ronald Reagan in the Washington National Cathedral on June 11, 2004.
