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January 23, 2004/Tevet 29 5764, Vol. 56, No. 18
Rabbi is master at parsing comfort
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
When bad things happen to good people, some people write.
That's the story of Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of the enduring bestseller, "When Bad Things Happen to Good People."
Kushner, already a pulpit rabbi and published author when his son Aaron died of a rare incurable disease at the age of 14, found that putting pen to paper was a useful way for him to work through his grief.
"My son's death was a defining moment of my life," confided Kushner in a recent interview during a stop in the Valley as part of a national book tour promoting his newest offering, "The Lord Is My Shepherd, Healing Wisdom of the Twenty-Third Psalm," (Alfred A. Knopf, $19.95 hardcover.) Writing helped him as he wrestled with the big questions of life and death, of hope and despair.
"Writing forces me to think about think about things that I might never talk about," says Kushner, alluding to the innate limitations of the spoken word and the inherent reticence to talk about intimate spiritual matters.
The continuing popularity of "Bad Things/Good People," which has sold more than 6 million copies in 14 languages since it was published in 1981, the success of Kushner's other eight self-help pri-mers and his regard as an inspiring speaker, are testimony to his ability to key into painful issues in a remarkably accessible and comforting way. He will be featured in the Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center's 92nd Street Y satellite series on Jan. 29.
Kushner's latest offering takes a slightly different tack, using the words of the 23rd Psalm as a starting point for the continuing conversation with his readers about the vagaries of life and God's role in helping us deal with them.
"The question (of why bad things happen to good people) is still relevant," he says. "Every week there are new people facing tragedy - and answers that can still help."
His new offering contains many of them.
A pocket-sized book with soft cream jacket accented with gold, one could almost see Kushner, or any clergyman, pulling it out of his or her pocket when visiting a family in need of support. Kushner, now rabbi emeritus at Temple Israel in Natick, Mass., made many such pastoral calls when he served as the congregation's spiritual leader from 1966-1990.
In the book, Kushner walks the reader through 15 lines of the well-loved psalm, a standard reading at funerals and memorial services, using each as a starting point to ruminate on its healing wisdom. Kushner's basic premise has not changed.
"God is on your side, not on the side of misfortune," he says.
But suffering is part of life and will come whether we wish it or not.
"It's what we do with the suffering that counts," he says.
He writes in the first chapter, "God's promise was never that life would be fair. God's promise was that, when we had to confront the unfairness of life, we would not have to do it alone for He would be with us."
Kushner writes that God is there to walk us through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, as described in the lines of the psalm, and to lead us "through the dark valley back into life. It summons us to live bravely, to go forward with our lives in the confidence that we are not alone."
How we respond to adversity, and how we respond to others' suffering, presents an opportunity for personal growth, says Kushner.
He tells how he counsels parents who have suffered the loss of a child, as he and his wife, Suzette, did in 1977.
"I tell them that when your child died you inherited all his unlived years. That should be a precious legacy, and you honor his life by living."
Simple analogies and spare words such as these have made Kushner a household name in the spiritual self-help business. He refers aptly to God as our "spiritual nightlight," who watches over us even as we sleep letting us close our eyes without worrying what danger might be lurking in the shadows.
"Worrying is God's job," says Kushner.
He says that the post-9/11 world is an even scarier place and that people are ever more in need of comfort and reassurance.
"People want to be told that there is hope," he says.
He says he sees a yearning to make sense of the world and a quest for meaning.
There is a perceived return to religion, says Kushner, who was ordained at the Con-servative Jewish Theological Seminary in 1966 and earned a doctorate in Bible there in 1972, but not what he terms "brand-name" religion.
He suggests that there is an acknowledgement that what is accessible to the five senses may not be all that there is in the world.
"Part of our instinct knows that there is more to life than what can be measured," he says, noting, "We live in a relentlessly rational world that is starved for the non-rational."
Kushner, whose married daughter and family live in Florida, where his grand-children attend Jewish day school, says we must work at developing the spiritual side of our lives.
"Religious education should be about an inventory of moments when we have met God," he says.
He reminds parents of the importance of role modeling and of the responsibility to help children experience the breadth and depth of Jewish life.
"When I first came to Natick, I encouraged parents to bring their kids to make shivah calls," he says. "They have to learn to grieve."
He speaks, too, of the "empty spaces" in our lives, the losses, disappointments, frustrations that can cause us to despair. He suggests that those spaces are what can inspire us to recover our innate spiritual connection.
"The empty spaces may be there to give you room to grow, to dream, to yearn, and to teach you to appreciate what you have because it may not have been there yesterday and may not be there tomorrow," he writes.
Kushner says that, for him, continuing to write inspires him to nourish his soul.
He says that he has made a personal commitment to write a new book every two or three years.
"It makes me think and grow," he says.
And brings extraordinary succor to legions of devoted readers.
Kushner notes that 70 percent of his readers are non-Jews and that he speaks at as many churches as at synagogues and Jewish book fairs.
His books, and his lectures, often initiate serious discussion about spiritual issues.
"They want to hear about God," he says of his audiences. And what they want is more comfort than explanations, he says.
"They want to find out how to find God in the Valley," he says.
Details
- Who: Rabbi Harold Kushner
- What: "Psalms, Ancient Songs of the Spirit," Live from the 92nd Street Y Satellite Series
- Where: Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center, 12701 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale.
- When: 6 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 29
- Cost: $15 members, $20 nonmembers
- Call: 480-483-7121.
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