Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 296.7
EAN num: 9780671680268
ISBN number: 0671680269
Label: Summit Books
Manufacturer: Summit Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 208
Printing Date: 1989-09
Publishing house: Summit Books
Sale Popularity Level: 546453
Studio: Summit Books
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Fillling a need for connetion, joy and community. Rabbi Kushner shares a path to faith that offers new sources of comfort and strength for all of us. Powerful, provocative and persuasive.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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I'm glad I read this book, but I'm afraid I will disappoint Rabbi Kushner with my response. A quick background on myself:Once I was a moderately observant Jew (went to High Holidays, tried not to work on Sabbath, etc..) A few years ago I read Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens,and a few others and completely lost all belief in God. With an open mind, I read Who Needs God to see if there was any chance I might regain some faith. I regret to say, that while I thought the book was enjoyable and passionate, it did not at all convince me that God or religion is necessary (or true) anymore. Rabbi Kushner's arguments for God (see p.177, where he says God is "found in the courage of the human soul....") just aren't compelling. The courage of human beings is evidence that some human beings have courage, nothing more. An empiricist like myself wants a little more evidence of God's existence. I find another non-religious Jew, Steven Weinberg, more convincing: "Remembrance of the Holocaust leaves me unsympathetic to attempts to justify the ways of God to man."
If a reader joins a congregation after reading this book, more power to him or her. But it won't be me.
Rated by buyers 
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There is so much in this scarry world that we don't understand. It's nice to get another persons point of view.
Rated by buyers -
A nice, innocuous, not-too-deep book- designed not for scholars but for the sort of person who might believe in God but feels no particular Divine command to do anything and is turned off by organized religion. Thus, this is not a book for Christian fundamentalists or observant Jews, but for people who are trying to decide between some sort of liberal religion and no religion at all.
Kushner's goal is to defend religion to such people. He asserts that religion "helps us not by changing the facts, but by teaching us new ways of looking at those facts"- for example, to see food as "a bounty which calls for admiration and gratitude", rather than taking reality for granted. Similarly, religion enables us to deal with crises more effectively. A religious life makes tragedy easier to handle, because a religious community can console us more effectively than the odd friend here and there. And feeling forgiven by God enables people to think about their sins without feeling paralyzed by them. (By contrast, human feedback can make people feel crushed and hopeless if we are criticized too aggressively or patronized if their errors are treated as too minor).
He also suggests that religion caters to other psychological needs as well, including our needs for (a) a feeling that life is significant, (b) reverence and awe, to be aware of the things we can't control (the very reasons mighty animals like tigers tend to attract more interest in zoos than smaller animals), and c) our need to acknowledge our limitations.
Most of this book struck me as pretty obvious, elementary stuff. But one or two things grabbed me. Kushner tries to explain why Jews now prefer smaller synagogues than they once did. He speculate that because of the size of the baby boom generation, they spent their school and work lives "being anonymous members of somebody's army" and as a result wanted a more intimate religious experience instead of wanting "that sense of awe and confidence that came from being a member of God's mighty army." (I wonder what Kushner would think of the recent rise of megachurches - and of that trend's failure to spread into Judaism).
Rated by buyers 
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Regardless of your religious affiliation, or not, Rabbi Kushner provides thought provoking ideas for everyone. Not pushing the reader to believe, but offering reasons and options to believe. I would suggest to anyone, of any religious conviction, or lack of, looking to explore a few of the "why" reasons to believe. He leaves the final decision to the reader.
Rated by buyers -
In this book, Rabbi Harold Kushner, answers the question of those who ask what difference religion can make in our lives, why do we need religion.
He explains the importance of faith through community.
How faith can enrich our lives and give us strength when all the strength within in us dried up.
That there are absolute standards of good and evil built into the human soul which the author describes as 'G-D given'.
"The affirmation of monotheism- that there is only one G-D and He demands moral behaviour. then there can be such a thing as good and evil."
The author stresses that religion is about community, the family through which it means to be human and by which we are reinforced in our efforts to do what is right.
He terms the essential difference between religion and so-called secular 'humanism' as thus: I have the advantage of believing in a G-D who is beyond myself, a G-D who renews my strength when I turn to Him, who replenishes my capacity to love, to work who gives me strength so that I can go forth again and share my strength with others."
In this book, Rabbi Harold Kushner, answers the question of those who ask what difference religion can make in our lives, why do we need religion.
Another difference, not touched on by the author, between religious and secular morality is that secular morality is subjective.
Unlike religious morality it is subject to fads and fashions- to political correctness- although yesterday much 'religion' has also been infected with this disease.
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