Joseph Telushkin
RABBI JOSEPH TELUSHKIN, named by Talk magazine as one of the 50 best speakers in the United States, is one of America’s leading ethicists. His book, Words That Hurt, Words That Heal, inspired Senators Joseph Lieberman and Connie Mack’s Senate Resolution #151 to establish a National Speak No Evil Day in the U.S., a day in which Americans would go for 24 hours without saying anything unkind or unfair about, or to, anyone. An invaluable sourcebook of tools for businesspeople, Words That Hurt, Words That Heal contains suggestion after suggestion of how and when to criticize, how to keep a disagreement from turning into a quarrel, and the one technique that will keep you, even when angry, from ever saying something that can destroy a relationship.
Hailed by Jewish Week as “America’s rabbi,” Telushkin is a renaissance figure whose reputation extends well beyond the Jewish community. His novel An Eye for an Eye became the basis for four episodes of David Kelley’s Emmy award-winning TV series The Practice, and he wrote an episode for the TV series Touched by an Angel for Kirk Douglas, in which Douglas stars as a man who, after a lifetime of struggle with his faith, returns to God.
The renowned historian Paul Johnson labeled Telushkin’s A Code of Jewish Ethics – winner of the 2007 National Jewish Book Award as the Book of the Year – as “the most comprehensive introduction to Jewish ethics to appear for many years.”
Telushkin’s work has been the subject of a PBS special entitled Moral Imagination: A Day by Day Guide to Ethical Living, which aired throughout the United States in 2000.
