Nine Essential Things I've Learned About Life

ldquo;Whatever one’s religious beliefs may be, Mr. Kushner has much to say about the enduring value of community, the universal need for a sense of belonging, the moral sense that makes us human and the ways in which we also help ourselves by helping others.” —The Wall Street Journal, Best Books on Retirement Living
 
“As always, Rabbi Kushner writes in a way that makes deep religious thought accessible to the casual reader while giving the more sophisticated reader a great deal to ponder… Regardless of your personal theology, and whether or not it aligns perfectly with Rabbi Kushner’s, this is a book that will stimulate your mind and encourage you to examine what are the lasting lessons in your life.” —The Jewish Book Council

"This book is a provocation and a balm for the skeptical and the religious, offering persuasive evidence that belief, forgiveness, hope, altruism, and joy are all possible, even in the face of death." —Publishers Weekly

“An absorbing read and easy to comprehend.” —Library Journal

“A lifetime of wisdom from someone who has studied, suffered, celebrated, and, through it all, taught an entire generation. Written for everyone, it could have been written by no one but Rabbi Harold Kushner.” —Rabbi David Wolpe, author of Why Faith Matters
 
“In this book, Harold Kushner both wrestles with and celebrates the capacity of faith and community to reaffirm life’s purpose and generate joy and meaning in the twenty-first century.”
—*Dr. Erica Brown, author of *Happier Endings: A Meditation on Life and Death
 
“In Nine Essential Things I’ve Learned About Life, the empathy and understanding of Rabbi Harold Kushner shine forth on every page. He draws upon his vast storehouse of knowledge and speaks clearly from his compassionate heart to provide insight and comfort to his readers. This is a profoundly wise and spiritual book.” —*Rabbi David Ellenson, chancellor emeritus of Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion
 
“I remember how, when I was in school, Harold Kushner’s words opened up Judaism to me in new ways. He spoke with wisdom and clarity, a love of the tradition, and a willingness to challenge it all the same. Now, decades later, Rabbi Kushner’s wisdom and his understanding of faith have grown even richer. His book offers inspiring guidance from a man who has embraced life.” —*Rabbi Mychal B. Springer, director, Center for Pastoral Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary

From the Hardcover edition.

Auteur

HAROLD S. KUSHNER is rabbi laureate of Temple Israel in Natick, Massachusetts, having long served that congregation. He is best known as the author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People. This is his thirteenth book.

From the Hardcover edition.

Résumé
From the beloved author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, deeply moving and illuminating reflections on what it means to live a good life. *

• As a congregational rabbi for half a century and the best-selling author of twelve books on faith, ethics, and how to apply the timeless wisdom of religious thought to everyday challenges, Rabbi Harold S. Kushner has demonstrated time and again his understanding of the human spirit. In this compassionate new work, his most personal since When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Kushner relates how his time as a twenty-first-century rabbi has shaped his senses of religion and morality. He elicits nine essential lessons from the sum of his teaching, study, and experience, offering a lifetime’s worth of spiritual food for thought, pragmatic advice, inspiration for a more fulfilling life, and strength for trying times.

  With fresh, vital insight into belief (“there is no commandment in Judaism to believe in God”), conscience (the Garden of Eden story as you’ve never heard it), and mercy (forgiveness is “a favor you do yourself, not an undeserved gesture to the person who hurt you”), grounded in Kushner's brilliant readings of Scripture, history, and popular culture, Nine Essential Things I’ve Learned About Life is compulsory reading from one of modern Judaism’s foremost sages.

  Distilling the wisdom of an extraordinary career, this profoundly inspiring yet practical guide to well-being is truly the capstone to Kushner’s luminous oeuvre.

From the Hardcover edition.

Échantillon de lecture
Chapter One

Lessons Learned Along the Way

In the twenty-first century, the religious agenda will be set not by tradition’s answers but by congregants’ questions.

For thirty years, I had the perfect job. I was a congrega­tional rabbi. I studied, I taught, I officiated at life-cycle events—bar mitzvah services, weddings, and funerals—trying to enhance the joy and mitigate the sorrow of those moments with my words and with elements of the Jewish tradition, all things I had been taught to do and felt good about doing. (I confess there was one other aspect of being a congregational rabbi that pleased me. I have read that the most frightening thing a person can contemplate, even more than the fear of death, is the fear of having to speak in public. That’s not me. In a room where two hundred people are sitting and lis­tening and one person is standing and speaking, I will always be most comfortable being the one standing and speaking.)
 
I’m not sure how I ended up being a rabbi. It was never my intention growing up. I don’t think it ever occurred to me, nor to my parents, who suggested regu­larly that they would like me to be a doctor. I entered college with no idea of what I would do professionally, hoping that college would give me a direction. My father was a successful businessman, which ruled that out as a career. I did not want to go into business and fail, dis­appointing my father, nor did I want to go into busi­ness and be more successful than my father (a highly unlikely outcome). I have known families in which that engendered not pride but resentment.
 
I entered Columbia in 1951, listing my major as “lib­eral arts,” which left open all possibilities short of medi­cal school. I also took advantage of Columbia’s proximity to the Jewish Theological Seminary, where my mother had studied to be a Hebrew teacher some twenty-five years earlier and where some of her most revered teach­ers still taught. The Seminary offered evening classes for students who wanted the education without seeking a career in Jewish professional life.
 
In those evening classes, I came to recognize four or five familiar faces from my freshman classes at Colum­bia, and we bonded. We would come back from class and stay up late talking theology, trying to make sense of the Holocaust, details of which had just become widely known, and discussing what the State of Israel, founded just a few years earlier, would mean for Jewish life. Sev­eral of those friends were planning to study for the rab­binate, though none of them did. Only I ended up there. After graduating from Columbia in 1955, I enrolled in the Seminary’s rabbinical school and emerged five years later as a Conservative rabbi.
 
My spiritual life—what I believe, teach, and prac­tice—has been shaped in large measure by two sets of circumstances. The first was the home I grew up in and the synagogue my family and I attended. The rabbi at the Brooklyn Jewish Center was Israel Levinthal, recognized as one of the outstanding preachers of the American Jewish community. Stories circulated of how Orthodox Jews woul…