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Rabbi Harold Kushner, whose works of practical theology were best-sellers, dies at 88
(JTA) — Rabbi Harold Kushner, one of the most influential congregational rabbis of the 20th century whose works of popular theology reached millions of people outside the synagogue, has died.
Kushner, who turned 88 on April 3, died Friday in Canton, Massachusetts, just miles from the synagogue where he had been rabbi laureate for more than three decades.
Kushner’s fairly conventional trajectory as a Conservative rabbi was altered shortly after arriving at Temple Israel of Natick when, on the day his daughter Ariel was born, his 3-year-old son Aaron was diagnosed with a fatal premature aging condition, progeria.
“When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” published in 1981, represented Kushner’s attempt to make sense of Aaron’s suffering and eventual death, just days after his 14th birthday. It was turned down by two publishers before being released by Schocken Books, a Jewish publisher.
In the book, Kushner labors to reconcile the twin Jewish beliefs in God’s omnipotence and his benevolence with the reality of human suffering. ”Can I, in good faith, continue to teach people that the world is good, and that a kind and loving God is responsible for what happens in it?” he writes.
Ultimately, he concludes that God’s ability is limited when it comes to controlling the hazards of life that result in tragedy on a widespread and smaller scale, such as the Holocaust and the death of a child.
It is a view that runs afoul of traditional Jewish teaching about God, and it earned Kushner critics among some Orthodox Jews and also drew rebuttals from other Jewish theologians. But it resonated widely for a long time and with many people, Jewish and non-Jewish, rocketing to the top of The New York Times’ best-seller list. More than 4 million copies have been sold in at least a dozen languages.
He scaled back his duties at his synagogue, then stepped away, as other books followed, tackling topics equally as daunting: the meaning of life, talking to children about God, overcoming disappointment. “To Life: A Celebration of Jewish Being and Thinking,” published in 1993, became a go-to resource for people exploring Judaism, while “Living a Life That Matters: Resolving the Conflict Between Conscience and Success,” published in 1986, was another best-seller.
“I think that Rabbi Kushner was successful because he catered to everybody,” Carolyn Hessel, the director of the Jewish Book Council, said in 2017 when it revived the Lifetime Achievement Award to honor Kushner. “He reached everybody’s heart. It wasn’t just the Jewish heart. He reached the heart of every human being.”
Kushner was born in Brooklyn and educated in the New York City public schools. After his ordination at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1960, he went to court to have his military exemption waived.
For two years he served as a military chaplain in Oklahoma before assuming his first pulpit, as an assistant rabbi at another Temple Israel, this one in Great Neck, New York.
Four years later he moved to Natick, where he remained even as he became a celebrity. In 1983, with his book a best-seller and demanding more of his time, Kushner cut back to part-time at the synagogue. Seven years later he stepped down to devote himself fully to writing.
The congregation, believing their then-55-year-old rabbi too young to be named rabbi emeritus, made Kushner their rabbi laureate, a title held by only a handful of American spiritual leaders.
It would be one of a growing number of accolades: Kushner was honored by the Roman Catholic organization the Christophers as someone who made the world a better place, and the organization Religion in America named him clergyman of the year in 1999. In 2004 he read from the book of Isaiah at the state funeral of President Ronald Reagan.
He remained involved in the Conservative movement after leaving the pulpit, serving as a leader in the New England region of its rabbinical association and, with the novelist Chaim Potok, editing its 2001 Etz Hayim Torah commentary.
“My seminary training was all about Jewish answers. My congregational experience has been more in terms of Jewish questions,” Kushner told JTA in 2008. “I start with the anguish, the uncertainty, the lack of fulfillment I find in the lives of the very nice, decent people who are in this synagogue and who are my readers. And Judaism is the answer.”
He added, “How do I live a fulfilling life is the question. And Judaism is the answer.”
Kushner’s wife, Suzette, died in 2022, 45 years after their son Aaron. Kushner is survived by his daughter, Ariel Kushner Haber, and two grandchildren.
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The post Rabbi Harold Kushner, whose works of practical theology were best-sellers, dies at 88 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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After Beirut Strike, Netanyahu Says ‘No Immunity’ for Terrorists
Rescuers work at the site of an Israeli strike that took place yesterday, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, May 7, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamad Azakir
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday there was no “immunity” for Israel’s enemies, a day after the Israeli military targeted a Hezbollah commander in its first strike on Beirut‘s southern suburbs since a ceasefire declared last month.
Israel said the attack killed the commander of the Iran-backed terrorist group’s elite Radwan force.
Hezbollah, which controls Beirut‘s southern suburbs, has yet to issue any statement on the strike or the commander’s status.
“He likely read in the press that he had immunity in Beirut. Well, he read it and it is no longer the case,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
Hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah reignited on March 2 when the Islamist group opened fire at Israel after Tehran came under US-Israeli attack.
Wednesday’s strike raises pressure on the Lebanon ceasefire that emerged in parallel to a truce in the wider Middle East war, with a halt to Israeli strikes in Lebanon being a key Iranian demand in Tehran’s negotiations with Washington.
Announced on April 16 by US President Donald Trump, the Lebanon ceasefire has led to a reduction in hostilities: the Beirut area was not struck by Israel for weeks before Wednesday’s attack.
But the sides have continued to trade blows in the south, where Israel has carved out a self-declared security zone.
Netanyahu said the Hezbollah commander, identified as Ahmed Ali Balout by the Israeli military, “thought he could continue to direct attacks against our forces and our communities from his secret terrorist headquarters in Beirut.”
“I say to our enemies in the clearest possible way: No terrorist has immunity,” he said.
LEBANESE PM: TOO EARLY FOR ‘HIGH-LEVEL’ MEETING
More than 2,700 people have been killed in the war in Lebanon since March 2, Lebanon’s Health Ministry says. Some 1.2 million people have been driven from their homes in Lebanon, many of them fleeing from southern Lebanon. According to Israeli officials, the majority of those killed have been Hezbollah terrorists.
Israel has announced 17 soldiers have been killed in southern Lebanon, along with two civilians in northern Israel.
At least 11 people were killed in Israeli strikes in three different areas of south Lebanon on Wednesday, according to a tally of Lebanese health ministry announcements.
Hezbollah said it carried out 17 operations against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, while the Israeli military said it had struck more than 15 militant infrastructure sites in the south the same day.
The Israeli military says Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel since March 2.
Hezbollah says it has the right to resist Israeli forces occupying the south.
Israel’s control zone extends as deep as 10 km (6 miles) into southern Lebanon. Israel says it aims to protect northern Israel from Hezbollah terrorists embedded in civilian areas.
The Lebanon ceasefire was announced for an initial 10 days and then extended for an additional three weeks during a meeting between the Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors to Washington, hosted by Trump at the Oval Office.
Hezbollah strongly objects to the Lebanese government’s contacts with Israel, which reflect deep differences between the group and its critics in Lebanon.
Trump said last month he looked forward to hosting Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in the near future, and that he saw “a great chance” the countries would reach a peace deal this year.
But on Wednesday, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said that it was premature to talk of any high-level meeting between Lebanon and Israel, and said that shoring up a ceasefire would be the basis for any new negotiations between Lebanese and Israeli government envoys in Washington.
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A View From My Campus: Sacrificing Science and Innovation for Political Symbolism
Illustrative: A BDS demonstration outside the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
In 2021, then-president of Rutgers, Jonathan Holloway, traveled to Tel Aviv to sign a partnership with Tel Aviv University (TAU) for future research at a cutting-edge facility being constructed in New Brunswick, The HELIX, which stands for The Health and Life Science Exchange.
This project includes collaborations with Robert Wood Johnson Hospital, Nokia Bell Labs, the NJ Economic Development Authority (NJEDA), Devco, and the American Technological University, all aimed at advancing innovation across industries.
The $665 million project offers “premier workspaces & laboratories for both startups and established companies operating across the gamut of healthcare, biotech, pharma, and, most broadly, the life sciences.” According to the NJEDA’s calculations, the cross-cultural development will bring an economic benefit of $340.4 million to the state.
But amongst Rutgers’ anti-Israel student groups, and Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) activists, there have been calls to terminate the partnership between Rutgers and Tel Aviv University, one of the leading research universities in the Middle East. This opposition came long before Oct. 7, 2023, and the war that followed.
According to these groups at Rutgers, the partnership with “Israeli universities play[s] a key role in supporting Israel’s system of apartheid rule,” and they call for “nothing less than complete divestment from these egregious investments, which drown our endowment fund and university facilities in blood.”
Note that they don’t actually care if this program or TAU connects in any way to the Israeli military or government; treating any Israeli, regardless of affiliation, like a human is apparently beyond the pale.
Notably, TAU was the first university in Israel to establish a Commission for Equity, Diversity, and Community, and has increased the representation of Arab students on campus to close to their proportion in the general population, a feat that is only possible in a place like Israel. It’s also important to note that, like many other universities in Israel, TAU leadership has gone out of its way to advocate for Palestinians.
Yet, somehow in the distorted truth of the BDS movement, TAU is complicit in “genocide.” Morally focused political movements on campus have historically claimed to fight for justice and against discrimination, exemplifying the higher education ideals of open-mindedness and critical thinking. And yet, these groups want to terminate partnerships for research, for innovation, for healthcare-based initiatives, for job and economic growth, and for expanding the academic frontier.
The Endowment Justice Collective, a Rutgers anti-Israel group, sent a letter to the administration claiming, “[a]ny collaboration which serves to bolster TAU’s reputation, provide it with a public platform, or materially support its operations shores up the legitimacy of an institution which aids and abets Israel’s oppression and genocide of Palestinians.”
But what will ending this huge project achieve, apart from a symbolic show of solidarity to a global movement whose priorities seem to obsessively focus on attacking Jews at Palestinians’ expense?
By taking intellectual pursuits such as the HELIX and dismissing them as politically motivated human endeavors, they become the very thing they seek to speak out against. TAU has the Neubauer Fellowship, an initiative specifically for Palestinian PhD students and faculty in STEM fields to provide high-level lab access and funding to elevate Palestinian representation in advanced research. When calls to cut ties like these set a precedent, they put such fellowships at risk as well. Rather than advancing equity, these efforts can ultimately backfire, restricting opportunities for Palestinian researchers and weakening the academic partnerships that make such programs possible.
Academic research and partnerships remain among higher education’s greatest strengths. They drive medical breakthroughs, technological innovation, and cross-cultural understanding. When groups like SJP demand the severance of ties with institutions like Tel Aviv University, they don’t just protest a government, but wall off the very pathways of discovery that benefit all of humanity. On our part, we must reject the close-mindedness of movements that prioritize ideological purity over global progress.
The author is a CAMERA Fellow at Rutgers University. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CAMERA.
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Unreported: Palestinian Youth Leadership Center Named After Munich Olympics Massacre Planner
An image of one of the Palestinian terrorists who took part in the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
A Palestinian center for “training and nurturing young leaders, children, and trainees” sounds amazing, right?
It’s an initiative that Western donors would undoubtedly love to support, and something everyone would consider a step in the right direction to Palestinian Authority (PA) reform.
But what is the name of the center?
“The Martyr Salah Khalaf Center for Training Young Leaders”
Who was Salah Khalaf, you ask?
Maybe he was a famous Palestinian leader who could inspire the youth arriving at the center to participate in “programs and activities,” which are held “in accordance with the vision and goals of the PLO Supreme Council for Youth and Sports”?
In fact, Salah Khalaf headed the terror organization Black September, a secret branch of Fatah. Attacks he planned include the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics (Sept. 5, 1972) and the murder of two American diplomats in Sudan (March 1, 1973).
A PA role model par excellence!
Furthermore, the center is not only named after terrorist Salah Khalaf — but is hosting children specifically on Prisoner’s Day to indoctrinate them to honor terrorist prisoners. The pictures below show young children visiting the center:
This is a classic example of how the PA subtly transmits its ideologies and values to young Palestinians. Naming education centers, streets, and schools after terrorist murderers ensures that everyone is reminded of the name and the “role model” daily. This cements the terrorist’s status as a PA “celebrity.”
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has reported on the center in the past, documenting that its walls are adorned with images of terrorist Salah Khalat, former PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, and current Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Supervising the Salah Khalaf center is the PLO Supreme Council for Youth and Sports, which is headed by none other than top PA official Jibril Rajoub, who is also Fatah’s Central Committee Secretary.
Palestinian Media Watch has documented that Rajoub is an avid terror supporter. He recently praised a murderer of 12 people as “the most sacred thing”:
Official PA TV reporter: “The Fatah Movement, the Ramallah and El-Bireh District, the [PA-funded] Prisoners’ Club, the [PLO] Commission of Prisoners’ [Affairs]… set up a mourning tent for Martyr and released prisoner deported to Egypt Riyad Al-Amour [i.e., terrorist, responsible for murder of 12], who died as a Martyr…”
Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub: “The most sacred thing in the eyes of the Palestinians is those who sacrificed their lives and their freedom – our Martyrs.”
[Official PA TV News, April 9, 2026]
In keeping with this view, Rajoub has announced that terror against Israel — which he and other PA leaders refer to as “resistance in all its forms” — is “still on the agenda” for Fatah:
Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub: “National unity must be based on the adoption of UN resolutions by all of us, which grant us a state and also resistance in all its forms [i.e., including terror].
I tell you as a Fatah member, resistance in all its forms is still on the agenda of this [Fatah] Movement … Let no one think that we are surrendering. I tell you that the first among us who believes this is [PA President] Mahmoud Abbas … We all know the nature and essence of Fatah … Either popular resistance without blood if there will be a state, or else resistance in all its forms.”
Posted text: “During the opening of the first national youth conference.”
[Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub, Facebook page,
Jan. 19, 2026]
Rajoub has also announced his support for terrorists and the PA’s “Pay-for-Slay” program that rewards them financially, vowing the PA “won’t give up on” them “or their rights or their status”:
Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub: “I want to see hundreds of young people holding processions to end the [Hamas-Fatah] rift and holding processions for reforms that stem from our reality and our will and align with our aspirations and interests. Not what [US President] Trump wants or John Doe or whoever, I don’t know what their problem is with the prisoners.
This is not a reform, this is a burial, elimination, and denial of our history and heritage. We won’t give up on the Martyrs or the prisoners or their rights or their status, not in our awareness nor in our project, whether the political, militant, or organizational.”
[Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub, Facebook page, Jan. 19, 2026]
Western donors who are supporting the PLO Supreme Council for Youth and Sports would do well to examine the kind of activities the Council is involved in. Presumably they would hardly appreciate the glorification of one of the planners of the Munich Olympics massacre.
The author is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this story first appeared.