The Book of Job: When Bad Things Happened to a Good Person

Written by Harold S. Kushner

Narrated by Harold S. Kushner

Part of the Jewish Encounter series

From one of our most trusted spiritual advisers, a thoughtful, illuminating guide to that most fascinating of biblical texts, the book of Job, and what it can teach us about living in a troubled world.
 
The story of Job is one of unjust things happening to a good man. Yet after losing everything, Job—though confused, angry, and questioning God—refuses to reject his faith, although he challenges some central aspects of it. Rabbi Harold S. Kushner examines the questions raised by Job’s experience, questions that have challenged wisdom seekers and worshippers for centuries. What kind of God permits such bad things to happen to good people? Why does God test loyal followers? Can a truly good God be all-powerful?
 
Rooted in the text, the critical tradition that surrounds it, and the author’s own profoundly moral thinking, Kushner’s study gives us the book of Job as a touchstone for our time. Taking lessons from historical and personal tragedy, Kushner teaches us about what can and cannot be controlled, about the power of faith when all seems dark, and about our ability to find God.
 
Rigorous and insightful yet deeply affecting, The Book of Job is balm for a distressed age—and Rabbi Kushner’s most important book since When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 2, 2012
• ISBN: 9780449015438

Harold S. Kushner

Harold S. Kushner es un destacado rabino y autor estadounidense. Es miembro de la Asamblea Rabínica del Judaísmo Conservador y se desempeñó como rabino congregacional del Templo Israel de Natick, en Natick, Massachusetts durante 24 años. Sus 14 libros incluyen los bestsellers Cuando le suceden cosas malas a la gente buena y Viviendo una vida que importa: resolución del conflicto entre la conciencia y el éxito.

Reviews for The Book of Job

[moshepit20 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

 Another beautiful book Rabbi Kushner

[kslade-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Good religous book about adversity and why it happens.

[librisissimo · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

 Read this some years ago and thought it was one of the very best expositions of emotional pain & the role of God in our lives.
Written by a rabbi pondering the life-long disease that lead to the death of his son at age 14.

[keylawk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Harold Samuel Kushner is a prominent American rabbi schooled within the progressive wing of Conservative Judaism. (What?) In this homily drawn from his personal ordeal with the suffering of his own son doomed by a rare disease, Rabbi Kushner finds a God who does not abandon us, but weeps WITH us, and brings comfort to the anguished heart.

Like most who study the recurrence of suffering and view it as problematic, Kushner faces it directly, and is forced to, by the fact that his son was diagnosed with progeria. The rare, fatal, and nasty little disease visited upon children making them age and die rapidly. Aaron died at 14, having suffered for ten years.

Kushner asks, "Why do the Righteous suffer?" and suggests that this is the only theological question that really matters. [6] And when will Religion stop trying to quote Isaiah "Tell the righteous it shall be well with them", after Auschwitz. [11]

Kushner writes that "How could God do this to me?" is the wrong question to ask--although it is almost universal among those who suffer. He unfolds the Book of Job. Quite helpful note on the difficulty of translation where the ancient and elegant Hebrew is filled with so much nuance (and the largest vocabulary of any poem from the ancient world). For example, one key verse, which means either "I will fear God" or "I will not fear God," and no way of knowing which is intended.

In the story, Kushner tells us that Job eventually sees God "as being above notions of fairness, being so powerful that no moral rules apply to him". [41] Then Kushner concludes that if we acknowledge that there are some things that God cannot control, but God wants to, and many good things are possible. "We can be angry at what has happened to us, without feeling that we are angry at God." [45] It is in God's teachings that we see goodness, not in the outcomes. Out indignation is proof of God's goodness, in that our outrage at injustice is God's anger at unfairness working through us. [45]

Kushner follows this with a chapter which spells out the fact that sometimes "things happen which have no reason". [46] Even random events, because of chaos, is a form of evil, and "saddens God even as it angers and saddens us". [55] He makes a point of noting that "nice people" are not favored. [57] Perhaps if nice was an immunity, it would create more problems. He suggests that the experience of pain is "instructive" and adds meaning to life. He ties this to Homer's Odysey where Calypso, the immortal princess, becomes fascinated by Ulysses and envies his mortality. [69] He understands the futility of trying to comfort the grieving by telling them "death is good". [71] But we can rise above the "why did it happen?" to ask "what do I do now that it has happened?"

The Rabbi then teaches that God has "left space for us to be human". Like the theologian Dorothea Soelle, he finds God with the victims. Having given man freedom to choose, there was nothing God could do to prevent the Holocaust: "Hitler was only one man, and even his ability to do evil was limited. The Holocaust happened because thousands of others could be persuaded to join him in his madness, and millions of others permitted themselves to be frightened or shamed into cooperating. It happened because angry, frustrated people were willing to vent their anger on innocent victims as soon as someone encouraged them to do so. It happened because Hitler was able to persuade lawyers to forget their commitment to justice and doctors to violate their oaths." [84]

The Rabbi fairly concludes with a Chapter entitled "What good, then, is Religion?" He declares, in spite of this book, the suffering he has witnessed, and his own son's progeria, "I believe in God". He recognizes that God is limited by laws of nature, including the evolution of human nature and moral freedom. He excuses God for the tragic, as if it is not God's will. [134]

"We could bear any burden if we thought there was a meaning to what we were doing." [135] Here, Kushner does not mention his debt to concentration-camp survivor, Viktor Frankl, who cited Nietzsche for the concept. Kushner cites another survivor, Martin Gray, author of "For Those I Loved". Gray points to the question of What shall I do next, rather than poring over the past and the pain. [136-137]

For Soelle, it is not the circumstances of death or suffering which matter. It is our being witnesses, and it is our reaction to that suffering and death which is important. [138] We can act positively in the face of tragedy. Or as a 19th century Hasidic rabbi once put it, "human beings are God's language".

I just listened to a YouTube of Bart Ehrman debating the loose Canon Law of Joseph D'Souza, the brilliant plagiarist and libelist who is now reigning over King's College. Bart mentioned that it was theodicy which "converted" him from Christian apologist to Agnostic. He could not stomach cruelty, and the infinite tolerance the Christians seem to have for hypocrisy and torture, whether by human agency or even the "natural" awfulness of earthquakes and disease. D'Souza conceded nothing but clung to the ever-receding "mystery" of the empty and immoral God.

[marse_4 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Harold Kushner comes across in this book as a really humane man. He was a young rabbi when his son was born with the aging disease: progeria. He had to reconcile his beliefs about God with what was happening to his son, who died of the disease at age 14. I sympathize with him greatly. Nevertheless, this book left me more convinced that if there is a god, he is uncaring and cruel. Not what the author's goal was, I'm sure.

Kushner does an excellent job of shooting down the usual justifications given for tragedies such as: it's all part of God's plan, God loved him/her so much he wanted him nearer to him, etc. His defense of God is that tragedies are not judgements, not part of "bigger" plan, but rather God made us human in a world ruled by laws of physics -- which means he can't bend those rules for individual people, that what God brings to us during tragedies is comfort, a gathering of people around us. Frankly, I found this completely uncomforting myself. I want a God who can do miracles -- but then why we should we need miracles to begin with--if God is loving and all-powerful? All we can do, according to Kushner, is accept that tragedies happen and there is no why or wherefore, it is all random. Just as I thought.

[bexaplex · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It took me a while to get to this book; I was so immersed in grief that reading about grief seemed pointless. Now that I've gotten to it, I realize that I came to Kushner's conclusion on my own, and his wisdom wouldn't have been misplaced during any of the terrifically rotten last few years.

I'm not a theist, but I have grown up in a predominantly Judeo-Christian culture, and people tend to reach out to that when attempting to comfort the bereaved, and often come up with the same extremely un-comforting platitude that "things happen for a reason." Ugh. Kushner lays out a very intelligent argument about three things that everyone would like to believe:

1. God is all-powerful and causes everything that happens in the world. Nothing happens without his willing it.

2. God is just and fair, and stands for people getting what they deserve, so that the good prosper and the wicked are punished.

3. I am a good person.

When the subject of (3) suffers loss, people often throw him under the bus so that they can preserve the other two beliefs. But perhaps the more comforting (and maybe the more theologically sound) conclusion to draw is that 2 and 3 are true, but not 1.

Kushner talks about the power of a religious community to comfort, not by preventing grief and loss, but by affirming life and community in spite of it. This book is rightly part of the canon of western wisdom on how to live.

[nebraska_girl1971 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I recently have had some tragedy in my life and this book helped. I was questioning things and this book put those questions in a proper prospective and helped me ask the "right" questions.

[steadfastreader · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this book for the first time about ten years ago. I was an atheist then and I'm an atheist now, but I still think that this is a fantastic book - especially for those who ARE spiritual.

As an atheist it's a fascinating look into the mind of the faithful and how they reconcile tragedy and god. I also think that I like the god described in this book a lot more than I like the evangelical's god ... anyway. Spiritual or atheist -- read this book.

[maryann12_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Good Reading!

[jbgusa · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent discussion of G-d's role or lack thereof in day-to-day life in Jewish terms.

[girlwithafacee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An interesting summation of the different ways people act in bad situations. Credible advice on how to deal with people properly when they have been dealt a raw hand, in addition to how to deal with events better in one's own life.

[jmcdbooks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Rated: A-
Are you capable of forgiving and loving the people around you, even if they have hurt you and let you down by not being perfect? Can you forgive them and love them because there aren't any perfect people around, and because the penalty for not being able to love imperfect people is condemning oneself to loneliness.

[jdhomrighausen · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

After finishing Endo's A Life of Jesus, I turned to the book I picked up yesterday afternoon, this popular book on suffering and God. As great as it felt to read two books in one day, Kushner's book was so light that it wasn't a big feat. This rabbi's work was wrought out of his suffering over a son who died at 14 from a rare rapid aging disorder. Since it's written out of grief rather than scholarly acumen, it carries an extra punch.

Kusher's premise is that suffering is not caused by God. He looks at Job and his pastoral experience and finds many of the pat answers unsatisfactory: "it's your fault you're suffering," "God is punishing you," "It serves a purpose or helps you grow," "It is a test of faith," "the virtuous always prosper in the long run," "You only see it as suffering because you are deluded," and "We can't know God's plan" (aka "God works in mysterious ways"). None of these sit right with Kushner, and none are useful pastorally when he is comforting peoples' grief. Rather suffering is caused by human action, the chaos and interdependent situations of the universe, and the natural laws that do not care about human suffering. God loves us and empathizes with the suffering, but is not able to stop all of it. It is up to us to do God's work in stopping suffering.

Wait, what? But the Bible is full of God stopping suffering. Miracles happen in the Bible. The Lord takes the Israelites' side in a battle and they win despite outrageous odds. God, through Moses, parts the Sea of Reeds and brings water from the rock and manna from the sky. Yet Kushner, who has a Ph.D. in Bible, doesn't address any of this. Miracles, he says, are unlikely coincidences of natural events, which we should be thankful for but not credit to God. While this follows from his theory of the universe's dealings as random, it doesn't sit well even with his Jewish Biblical tradition.

As one of my professors put it, the problem of evil leads to the meanie God (powerful enough to stop suffering but not all-loving) or the weenie God (all-loving but not powerful enough). Kushner adopts the weenie God. The weenie God is in the Bible. Think of the God who had a rough time wrestling Leviathan in Job. But the Psalms echo the almighty power of God time and time again. Kushner doesn't discuss this. God is only an emotional consolation, a psychology, but not an ontological reality who acts in the world. Ultimately, his blind spot is what does him in. I can't accept his metaphysics without throwing out huge parts of the Bible.

That said, Kushner has some very, very good pastoral advice. How often we tell wounded people tired cliches that amount to blamingthe victim or telling them they are wrong to be grieved! Job didn't need answers that were theologically correct as much as he needed empathy, compassion, and a receptive ear. Kushner's book has transformed the way I interact with people who suffer. And since it succeed in its goal as a pastoral help, I shouldn't knock its facile philosophy too much. Just take it with a grain of salt.

[phoenixcomet · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Reads almost like a dissertation on the role of God in today's society and how God can be a source of comfort and support in the most trying of times. Looks at the different views we as people hold concerning the Divine and particularly utilizes the story of Job to create thoughtful discussion. Excellent.

[mama_kanga · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very helpful insight into questions I've been asking myself. A very real look at grief from someone who's "been there."

[gra29_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It is the author's view that God does not have control of the physical things that happen to us on Earth. God is there to comfort us though.

[bridgeportcat · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I expected this book to be hokey and filled with the dull HANG IN THERE platitudes of every other self-help-through-hard-times book I've read, but instead I found a perspective on religion that changed my life. As a unitarian, I can't recommend this book enough to fellow Christian Unitarians. However, since the entire basis of it revolves around the nature of God, I can't really recommend it for anyone from a non-religious perspective, which stinks.