Assistant Editor
Americans pride themselves on striving to meet goals: better jobs, more expensive homes, money in the bank. But best-selling author Rabbi Harold Kushner believes that those accomplishments often leave people less satisfied than they expect.
Rabbi Kushner will speak on his book, "When All You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough," on May 11 at Temple Israel in Albany. The event is co-sponsored by Temple Israel, the diocesan Consultation Center and The Eddy, which provides senior care.
The author, best-known for his book "When Bad Things Happen to Good People," said he wrote "When All You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough" the year he turned 50. He hoped to express how people's values change as they reach mid-life, as he realized himself that he would not live forever.
Aging process
As people age, they focus less on accomplishments, he noted. Society urges people to accomplish as much as they can, seeing others as the enemy, but doing so is ultimately unsatisfying.
"We get sold a bill of goods: `This is what you have to do to be happy,'" Rabbi Kushner told The Evangelist. However, he added, the better people become at getting ahead of others, the more unhappy they are.
A passage in "When All You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough" sums up a better perspective on life: "Trying to find one Big Answer to the problem of living is like trying to eat one Big Meal so that you will never have to worry about being hungry again. There is no Answer, but there are answers: love and the joy of working, and the simple pleasures of food and fresh clothes, the little things that tend to get lost and trampled...emerge...only when we have stopped searching."
Interfaith effort
Rabbi Kushner noted that the fact that his talk is co-sponsored by Catholic organization "wouldn't have happened a generation ago." He sees it as a "great development" in relations between Jews and Christians.
In fact, he said, Pope John Paul II's recent visit to Israel and apology for the Church's poor treatment of the Jews were milestones in ecumenical relations.
"John Paul II, 90 percent of the time, is absolutely magnificent at building bridges to the Jewish community," Rabbi Kushner said, calling the Israel trip "a largely wonderful thing. His predecessor, Paul VI, would never let the word `Israel' cross his lips. He always referred to `the Holy Land.'"
However, the author said he was upset at the Pope's canonizations of Edith Stein, a Jewish woman who converted to Catholicism, and Rev. Maximilian Kolbe, who gave his life in a Nazi concentration camp, but whom Rabbi Kushner said also edited an anti-Semitic newsletter.
Rabbi Kushner joked that "aside from the fact that I'm such a compelling speaker," people should attend his talk because it's important "to find out what you should be doing with your life before it's too late."
("When All You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough" will be held May 11, 7:30-9 p.m., at Temple Israel in Albany. Tickets are $12. For information, call the Consultation Center at 489-4431.)