Harold S. Kushner, Rabbi Author Clergyman Husband Father Grandfather

Biography:
Harold Kushner is Rabbi Laureate of Temple Israel in the Boston suburb of Natick, Mass., after serving that congregation for twenty-four years. He is best known as the author of "When Bad Things Happen to Good People", an international best-seller first published in 1981. The book has been translated into 14 languages and was recently selected by members of the "Book of the Month Club" as one of the ten most influential books of recent years. One critic has called it "the most important book of popular theology ever written in America."

He has also written, "When All You've Ever Wanted isn't Enough", which was awarded the Christopher Medal for its contribution to the exaltation of the human spirit. In 1995, Rabbi Kushner was honored by the Christophers a Roman Catholic organization, as one of fifty people who have made the world a better place in the last fifty years. He has twice been nominated for the Templeton Prize, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for Religion. He has also written six other New York Times best-sellers, most recently his meditation on the 23rd Psalm, "The Lord is My Shepherd". With novelist Chaim Potok, he is co-author of the new Conservative commentary on the Torah, Etz Hayim, which has been enthusiastically received by hundreds of congregations since its publication in the fall of 2001.

Rabbi Kushner was born in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from Columbia University. He was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1960 and awarded a doctoral degree in Bible by the Seminary in 1972. 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.

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