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Harold S. Kushner

Living a Life That Matters:
Resolving The Conflict Between Conscience And Success

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001
Hardcover, $33.00 CAN, $22.00 U.S., ISBN 0-375-41063-5, pp.158

Harold S. Kushner, Rabbi Laureate of Temple Israel in Natick, Massachusetts, Religion in American Life’s 1999 Clergyperson of the Year, is the author of several best-sellers, including When Bad Things Happen to Good People. In that tradition, this volume is destined to be a classic work for Jews and Christians who are interested in the field of practical ethics.

Kushner has been a rabbi for over thirty years, the student of spiritual giant Abraham Joshua Heschel, and an astute reader of the classics of Western literature, psychology and sociology. Consequently, this is not so much a work displaying new and uncharted territory, as it is a thoughtful exposition of timeless truths made palatable for contemporary readers.

In eight chapters, Rabbi Kushner weaves the biblical narrative of Jacob together with the different stages of the human life-cycle and universal moral-ethical issues. He begins by observing that we live in two worlds - work and commerce, and faith and spirit. The former exists on the principal that one is honoured and successful if one works hard to earn it based on a clear set of standards and criteria. The latter is different; it underscores the unconditional acceptance and love of God towards humankind as a gift, without our earning it. In Rabbi Kushner’s view, human beings need both “father love,” the former, and “mother love,” the latter to live in a holistic way.

Over the centuries, Jews and Christians have been divided concerning the doctrine of human beings, based on their diverse exegetical conclusions of the so-called “fall” and “Original Sin” of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis. Rabbi Kushner speaks of the two-thousand-year-old fable of yetzer ha-ra: translated from the Hebrew as “the evil impulse” or “the will to do evil” but rendered by Kushner as “the will to selfishness.” Legend has it that the yetzer ha-ra was once captured and locked up because it was believed that then people could live a perfect life. However, soon they discovered that without the yetzer ha-ra, no one opened up their stores for business, no one married and no children were born. Human beings, they learned, need a balanced measure of the yetzer ha-ra in order to be selfish and aggressive or competitive enough to keep the world going. Rabbi Kushner maintains that human beings get into trouble when they emphasise “total depravity” or “total goodness/sainthood.” We are a complex combination of both goodness and evil, selfishness and unselfishness. Living a life that matters involves reaching a healthy balance between the two. This is one of the great truths integral to the narrative of Jacob wrestling all night with the angel. Both Jewish and Christian exegetes have offered several answers regarding the angel’s identity. However, Rabbi Kushner has his own insight - he believes that the angel is Jacob’s own conscience. It is after he wrestles with his conscience that he journeys towards living a life of integrity and peace, resolving the inner conflicts within his soul.

In his years as a rabbi, counselling Holocaust survivors and victims of sexual abuse, Kushner has learned that most of these people do not desire to take revenge on their perpetrators by inflicting physical harm. Rather, what they ultimately need for healing and wholeness is to overcome their feelings of powerlessness suffered at the hands of their oppressors. This is accomplished if they are able to hold the perpetrators publicly accountable for the horrible wrongs they have committed. In such a process, survivors and victims gain new power and dignity - especially if their perpetrators admit their wrongdoing. Rabbi Kushner observes that by publicly bringing these perpetrators to justice and holding them accountable for their crimes, the survivors and victims are actually helping to restore humanity back into the perpetrators by acknowledging that there are moral, ethical consequences for exercising their free will. Furthermore, there is also a personal benefit for the survivors and victims: in seeing their perpetrator’s vulnerability and helplessness, they no longer need to take revenge by getting even. Kushner suggests that this is a very important motif in the Joseph narrative when he as Pharaoh’s Prime Minister exercises his power and authority by revealing himself to his brothers after setting them up and detaining them. Instead of getting even by taking revenge against them, he chooses to identify himself as their brother, and inquire about Jacob his father.

In the end, what Jacob and hopefully all of us eventually learn is that we do not have to win by causing others to lose. Living a life that matters is not about wealth or becoming an honoured international celebrity. Rather, it is making a difference in the everyday, ordinary events of loving-kindness and the decisions that we make, which may have profound consequences not only for us personally, but for others in ways that we may never see or know.

Whether it is a discussion on how God speaks and reveals God’s Self to humankind; or grappling with moral dilemmas within the workplace, church and synagogue and the family; or counselling youth and the elderly; or discovering the ultimate meaning of our lives by living with integrity as messengers of shalom; Rabbi Kushner draws us into a dialogue not as indifferent observers, but as active participants. This volume shall be a valuable resource for years to come for students of ethics, as well as for clergy and members of churches and synagogues.

Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson

Rev. Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson is Pastor at Grace Lutheran Church and Chaplain, South Ridge Village, The Good Samaritan Society, Medicine Hat, Alberta