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Living a Life that matters by Harold Kushner

Living a Life that matters by Harold Kushner

As we sat at our Seder benches this week, we practised the cruelties, which the Egyptians imposed on our persons for over 400 years. The Pharaoh organised the midwives to drown all Jewish male infants. He instructed our ancestors to work under inhumane situation to construct his castles and storehouses. He organised his taskmasters to whip them harshly, if they failed to make their every day quota (Harold, 2001).

Yet, nowhere in the Haggadah are we instructed to take revenge on the Egyptians neither to accept any animosity in the direction of them. In detail, our Torah specifically instructions us: “Do not despise an Egyptian, because you were outsiders in his land.” (Deut. 23:9)

Rabbi Harold Kushner has just penned a new publication, Living a Life that Matters, with the subtitle, Resolving the Conflict between Conscience and Success. In it, he interprets the cause why we should not despise the Egyptians. It is not because they warrant our forgiveness. We can not ever disregard the barbarism we endured at their hands(Harold, 2001).

Rather, it is to assist up offload sore mental baggage. We warrant better than to be mired in the acrimony of the past. As long as we play the function of casualty and permit our spirits to be corroded by wrath, we stay slaves to the Egyptians. Only when we can relieve us of this wrath, can we be really free men and women. Kushner indicates that, at the Seder, we flavour the acrid herb recalling our sore servitude. But we manage not linger with our bitterness. Soon, thus, we override the acrid flavour with matzah and wine, emblems of liberation and freedom.

It is the identical require that drives us to come ...