Rabbi Harold S. Kushner recently had to deal with one of life’s disappointments, this one involving something in Wisconsin.
He had been scheduled to speak in Madison on Oct. 14 about his newest book “Overcoming Life’s Disappointments: Learning from Moses How to Cope with Frustration.”
However, at the airport, problems with his aircraft kept him waiting for some four hours, to the point that he had to cancel his appearance there, Kushner told The Chronicle in a recent telephone interview.
One hopes that such mishaps won’t occur a second time soon. Kushner has been tapped to lead off the coming Jewish Book & Culture Fair, run by the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center in partnership with the Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops.
His recent book, the tenth and latest in the series that began with “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” (1985), came out in hardcover last year (Alfred A. Knopf) and was published this past summer in paperback (Anchor Books). It spent “a few weeks” on the New York Times best-seller list, Kushner said.
But more gratifying than that has been the “dozens of letters” he has received from readers, “telling me they found it at just the right time in their lives when they needed it,” he said.
And these folks “ran the gamut” from a college student who was not admitted into a desired graduate program to an older woman who felt inspired to try to contact a sister after they had not spoken to each other for 40 years, Kushner said.
As the subtitle indicates, Kushner focuses on the life of the great biblical leader and teacher Moses.
Though Moses to this day is considered Judaism’s greatest single leader and teacher, he “knew frustration and failure in his public and personal life at least as often and as deeply as he knew fulfillment … If he could overcome his monumental disappointments, we can learn to overcome ours,” Kushner wrote.
And Kushner is not bothered by any modern biblical archeology claims that Moses actually may not have existed. “I believe he existed,” Kushner said, but “in a sense he is real even if he never existed.”
Like such great literary characters as Hamlet and Faust, Moses authentically responds to life the way a real person would. But even more, “We learn things from the story of Moses that we could not have learned if he were just a figure in a novel,” Kushner said.
One of many such things, Kushner said, was “Moses’ capacity for seeing people in depth.” When the Israelites “do something that at the moment drives him crazy, he does not lose faith. He remembers they were slaves, and has a vision of what they might be.”
One criticism that sometimes arises for authors of self-help books such as this is that they focus on individuals changing themselves, but seem to let the larger society and culture off the hook.
Kushner acknowledged that someone had recently raised this issue with him; but he insisted that in his own books, “I do not say that whatever happens to you is your own fault. I write about what people can do to improve their lives.”
But only public officials “have the power to change society,” and “I have zero interest” in running for public office, Kushner said. “That is not my métier,” he said. “I can only change people one at a time.”
Kushner is scheduled to appear at the JCC on Tuesday, Nov. 6, 7 p.m. General admission is $18, $10 for students.
For more information, call 414-967-8210 or 414-967-8217.
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