| The Power of Simple Things | |
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Will anyone remember me when I'm gone? Rabbi Harold Kushner brings clarity and intelligence to that age-old question in his new book, Living a Life That Matters: Resolving the Conflict Between Conscience and Success (bestsellers). This timely exploration delves into our innate desire to achieve great things, but without selling our souls in the process. Like the best-selling When Bad Things Happen to Good People, which gave a personal glimpse of the Jewish rabbi as he faced the fatal illness of his own child, Kushner again draws on scripture, modern literature, psychology and his own 30 years as a congregational rabbi for answers. His conclusion? It's the simple things, like relationships with friends and family and small acts of kindness, that allow us to change lives in small but powerful ways.
What led you to write about this topic?
For a long time, I have been aware of the human need to feel significant, to know that we are taken seriously by the world. But as I listened to people, especially older people, lament what they had done or not done in their lives, I realized that a lot of people didn't like themselves because of moral compromises they had made to reach that goal. They were like Jacob in the Bible who is ashamed of having deceived his father and cheated his brother to get ahead.
But is it an either/or choice between being important and being good? Is there a way to reconcile the two?
Of course there is, and that is what my book is really about. You do it by redefining what you mean by "important" and "successful." If you've been a faithful husband or wife, a loving parent, a caring friend, you've changed the world for the better. That's what I refer to as "best actor in a supporting role." And you do it by understanding the difference between being a good person and being a perfect person. The first is possible; the second is unrealistic.
What is it about us that craves significance?
Once we come to understand that we're not going to live forever, we feel the need to leave our mark on the world, so that when we are gone, people will know that we were once there. It's not mortality that frightens us, it's invisibility, the dreadful feeling that neither our living nor our dying will make a difference to the world. Religion tries to help us conquer that fear by giving us good things to do and by reassuring us that our choices matter at the highest level. We may not be famous, but we matter to the people close to us and we matter to God.
This year is the 20th anniversary of your hugely best-selling book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Did the response to that book surprise you?
It still surprises me 20 years later that so many people, Christians, Jews and agnostics, were comforted by that book, that it is used in college courses and taught at Christian seminaries. I suspect that people are responding not only to my message but to my witness: that you can go through a searing tragedy and come out of it with your faith strengthened.
How would you like to be remembered?
For two things: that when people were hurting, I came to them through my writings as someone who cared and who taught them that God cared. And that when my son was desperately ill and in pain, I could make him laugh.
Harold Kushner was born in Brooklyn, New York, and is Rabbi Laureate of Temple Israel in the Boston suburb of Natick, MA. He has six honorary doctorates, has studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and taught at Clark University, Worcester, Mass., and the Rabbinical School of the Jewish Theological Seminary. For four years, he edited the magazine Conservative Judaism. In 1999, the national organization Religion in American Life honored him as their clergyman of the year. He is best known as the author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People which has been translated into fourteen languages. His other books include When All You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough, When Children Ask About God, Who Needs God, and many more.
Author photo by J.D. Sloan.