Rabbi Harold Kushner
Rabbi Harold Kushner was named Rabbi Laureate of Temple Israel in Natick, MA, after serving that congregation for twenty-four years. He is best known as the author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, an international best seller first published in 1981, which has been translated into fourteen languages. One critic has called it “the most important book of popular theology ever written in America.” Rabbi Kushner also has written six other New York Times best sellers.
In 1995, Rabbi Kushner was honored by the Christophers, a Roman Catholic organization, as one of fifty people who have made the world a better place in the last fifty years. He has twice been nominated for the Templeton Prize, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for Religion. In 1999, the national organization Religion in American Life honored him as their clergyman of the year. In 2008, he was the first recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award for contributions to the world of Jewish books, presented by the Jewish Book Council.
Source: Hillel at the University of Massachusetts Amherst website, “An Evening with Rabbi Harold Kushner”