6 | MAY 18 • 2023 

1942 - 2023

Covering and Connecting 
Jewish Detroit Every Week

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guest column

Rabbi Harold Kushner z”l: 
Guiding People in Their Grief
I

n times of grief, people seek 
succor. In pain, people cry 
out for answers, for support, 
for methods to deal with their 
loss and grief. Within our com-
munity, people most often turn 
to their rabbi, the 
spiritual guide 
for answers and 
support. As a pub-
lic figure in the 
Jewish community, 
to whom does a 
rabbi turn when 
facing grief? How 
does the rabbi find 
solace and resolution?
Within our tradition, the 
Torah offers models of grieving 
leaders. Just three weeks ago, 
on Shabbat, we read Parshat 
Achrei Mot when Aaron’s two 
sons suddenly died and their 
father, the High Priest, brother 
of Moshe, was silent. V’yidom 

Aharon (Leviticus 16:1). Silence in 
the face of loss and grief.
Rabbi Harold Kushner died 
on Friday, April 28, and was 
buried on Monday, May 1, when 
the Torah reading was Parshat 
Emor delineating the obligations 
of the Kohanim, the priests, to 
the dead (Leviticus 21:1) Is it a 
coincidence that the American 
rabbi, who taught generations of 
Jews how to deal with grief, died 
and was buried at the time when 
our Torah addresses responses to 
death?
When modern rabbis have 
written of their religious strug-
gles at times of personal trauma, 
people have eagerly read their 
words. The noted Rabbi Kushner 
experienced multiple traumas 
surrounding his son’s rare dis-
ease. He responded to each event 
by writing, using words to offer 
wisdom to others even as he 

himself found solace in these 
words.
In responding to the progeria 
(rapid aging of a child) diagnosis 
for Aaron, his 3-year-old son, 
Kushner wrote When Children 
Ask About God (Schocken Press). 
After Aaron’s death at age 14, 
Kushner penned When Bad Things 
Happen to Good People (Schocken 
Press). The latter volume became 
an international bestseller trans-
lated into 14 languages. His mes-
sage, like that of the renowned 
psychiatrist and Shoah survivor 
Dr. Viktor Frankl, was that reli-
gious belief gives one meaning 
and purpose in life.
Following Rabbi Kushner’s 
death, in an NPR interview 
on May 4, his daughter Ariel 
Kushner Haber stated that her 
father grappled with his theology 
“as a very young rabbi … and 
throughout my brother’s illness 

… It meant so much to him that 
he was able to comfort others 
with his words.
” 
Meaningful words from a 
daughter grieving for her father.
Rabbi Kushner and I were 
friends who bonded over 
words, shared goals and shared 
experiences. We were both 
Brooklyn boys passionate about 
the Brooklyn Dodgers and avid 
sports trivia buffs. We both 
started college as psychology 
majors who changed plans to go 
to rabbinical school at the Jewish 
Theological Seminary. After 
ordination, we both volunteered 
to serve two years in the U.S. 
Army Chaplain Corps following 
which we were both assistant 
rabbis to great scholars. When 
Rabbi Kushner became the edi-
tor of the Journal of Conservative 
Judaism, he appointed me to his 
Editorial Board.

PURELY COMMENTARY

continued on page 8

Rabbi Herb 
Yoskowitz
Special to the 
Jewish News

