Abraham Joshua Heschel

File:SelmaHeschelMarch.jpg

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (second from right) in the Selma Civil Rights March with Martin Luther King, Jr. (fourth from right)

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (January 11, 1907, – December 23, 1972) was a leading thinker of Conservative Judaism and social activist, considered by many to be one of the most significant Jewish theologians of the twentieth century. He was a leading exponent of the Jewish prophetic and mystical traditions and sought a middle ground between the critical approach to Jewish law as represented by Reform Judaism and what he saw as the legalism of Orthodoxy. He also sought to interpret Judaism in term of the modern philosophy.

On the foundation of his intellectual achievements in the 1950s, Heschel won fame as an activist for civil rights in the USA in the 1960s, and an activist for freedom for Soviet Jewry in the 1970s. He is one of the few Jewish theologians widely read by Christians. His most influential works include Man is Not Alone, God in Search of Man, The Sabbath, and The Prophets.

Hecshel was chosen by American Jewish organizations to negotiate with leaders of the Roman Catholic church at the Vatican Council II. He helped persuade the church to eliminate or modify passages in its liturgy that demeaned the Jews and called for their conversion to Christianity. His theological works argued that the religious experience was fundamentally human impulse, not just a Jewish one, and that no religious community could claim a monopoly on religious truth.

His life's work has inspired three namesake schools: one on the Upper West Side of New York City, one in Northridge, California, and one in Toronto.

Biography

Heschel was a descendant of preeminent rabbinic families of Europe both on his father's (Moshe Mordechai Heschel) and mother's (Reizel Perlow Heschel) side, and a descendant of Rebbe Avrohom Yehoshua Heshl of Apt. He was the youngest of six children. In his teens he received a traditional yeshiva education, and obtained rabbinical ordination. He then studied at the University of Berlin, where he obtained his doctorate, and at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, where he earned a second, more liberal, rabbinic ordination.

Heschel's teachers included some of the best German-Jewish teachers: Chanoch Albeck, Ismar Elbogen, Julius Guttmann, and Leo Baeck. He later taught the Talmud. Escaping from the Nazis, he found refuge both in England and the United States, where he briefly served on the faculty of Hebrew Union College (HUC), the main seminary of Reform Judaism, in Cincinnati.

Increasingly uncomfortable with the lack of observance of Jewish law at HUC, Heschel sought an academic institution where critical, modern scholarship of the Bible was allowed in a context that held that Jewish law was normative. He found such a place in 1946 when he came to the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS), the main seminary of Conservative Judaism. He accepted a position there as Professor of Jewish Ethics and Mysticism, where he served until his death in 1972.

Heschel explicated many facets of Jewish thought including studies on medieval Jewish philosophy, Kabbalah, and Hasidism. He had a special interest in the prophets and their lives. His books contain civil but pointed rejoinders towards those in Reform Judaism who no longer held that Jewish law was normative, and also towards those in Orthodox Judaism, who valued legalism over the spirit of the law, according to Heschel.

Heschel saw the teachings of the Hebrew prophets as a clarion call for social action in the United States and worked for black civil rights and against the Vietnam War , but his social activism was at the time dismissed as unimportant by most JTS faculty.

Heschel was strongly criticized by his colleague Mordechai Kaplan, founder of Reconstructionist Judaism. Many students who attended JTS in the 50s sympathized with Kaplan over Heschel.

He married Sylvia Straus on December 10, 1946, in Los Angeles. They had a daughter named Susannah. Susannah Heschel eventually became a scholar of Judaism in her own right.

Works

The Prophets

This work started out as his Ph.D. thesis in German, which he later expanded and translated into English. Originally published in a two-volume edition, this work studies the books of the Hebrew prophets. It covers their life and the historical context that their missions were set in, summarizes their work, and discusses their psychological state. In it Heschel promulgated what would become a central idea in his theology: that the prophetic (and, ultimately, Jewish) view of God is best understood not as anthropomorphic but rather as anthropopathic—that God has human feelings.

The Sabbath

The Sabbath: Its Meaning For Modern Man is a work on the nature and celebration of the Jewish Sabbath. This work is rooted in the thesis that Judaism is a religion of time, not space, and that the Sabbath symbolizes the sanctification of time. Unlike Reform Jews, Heschel insisted that proper observance of the Sabbath was crucial to Judaism.

Man is Not Alone

Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion offers Heschel's views on how man can apprehend God. Judaism views God as being radically different from man, so Heschel explores the ways that Judaism teaches that a person may have an encounter with the ineffable. A recurring theme in this work is the radical amazement that man experiences in the presence of the Divine. Heschel then goes to explore the problems of doubts and faith, what Judaism means by teaching that "God is one," the essence of man and his needs, the definition of religion in general and of Judaism in particular, and man's yearning for spirituality. He offers his views as to Judaism being a pattern for life.

God in Search of Man

God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism is a companion volume to Man is Not Alone. In this book Heschel discusses the nature of religious thought, how thought becomes faith, and how faith creates responses in the believer. He discusses ways that man can seek God's presence, and the radical amazement that man receives in return. He offers a criticism of nature worship, a study of man's metaphysical loneliness, and his view that we can consider God to be in search of man. The first section concludes with a study of Jews as a chosen people. Section two deals with the idea of revelation, and what it means for one to be a prophet. This section gives us his idea of revelation as a process, as opposed to an event. This relates to Israel's commitment to God. Section three discusses his views of how a Jew should understand the nature of Judaism as a religion. He rejects the idea that mere faith (without law) alone is enough, but then cautions against adding too many restrictions to Jewish law, as he believes many Orthodox rabbis have done. He discusses the need to correlate ritual observance with spirituality and love, the importance of kavvanah (intention) when performing mitzvot. He engages in a discussion of religious behaviorism — when people strive for external compliance with the law, yet disregard the importance of inner devotion.

Prophetic Inspiration After the Prophets

Heschel also wrote a series of articles, originally in Hebrew, on the existence of prophecy in Judaism after the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E. These essays were translated into English and published as Prophetic Inspiration After the Prophets: Maimonides and Others by the American Judaica publisher Ktav.

The book counters the traditional view that prophecy ended early in the Second Temple era, around the fourth century B.C.E. Heschel argued that prophecy continued during of the medieval period, and even in modern times. He held that prophetic inspiration occurred even in post-Talmudic times and emphasized that prophecy involves men of God standing not only for religious truth, but also for social justice.

Torah min HaShamayim (Heavenly Torah)

Many consider Heschel's Torah min HaShamayim BeAsafklariah shel HaDorot, (Torah from Heaven in the light of the generations) to be his masterwork. The three volumes of this work are a study of classical rabbinic theology and aggadah (exegesis), as opposed to halakha (Jewish law.) It explores the views of the rabbis in the Mishnah, Talmud and Midrash about the nature of Torah, the revelation of God to mankind, prophecy, and the ways that Jews have used scriptural exegesis to expand and understand these core Jewish texts. In this work Heschel views the second century sages Rabbis Akiva and Ishmael ben Elisha as paradigms for the two dominant world-views in Jewish theology, Akiva being more of a reformer, and Ishmael taking the more conservative view that changes in law or custom must be based firmly on scripture.

Two Hebrew volumes were published during his lifetime by Soncino Press, and the third Hebrew volume was published posthumously by JTS Press in the 1990s. An English translation of all three volumes, with notes, essays and appendices, was translated and edited by Rabbi Gordon Tucker, entitled Heavenly Torah: As Refracted Through the Generations.

Legacy

They saw their job as academics and educators, and left the role of social activism to pulpit rabbis and laypeople. Today most JTS faculty are more involved in social activism, and some have written that it was a mistake for JTS not to follow Heschel's lead at that time.

Quotations

• "Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum hatred for a minimum reason."
• "All it takes is one person… and another… and another… and another… to start a movement"
• "Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge."
• "A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers no harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair."
• "God is of no importance unless He is of utmost importance."
• "Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy."
• "Self-respect is the fruit of discipline, the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself."
• "Life without commitment is not worth living."
• "In regard to cruelties committed in the name of a free society, some are guilty, while all are responsible."
• "Remember that there is a meaning beyond absurdity. Be sure that every little deed counts, that every word has power. Never forget that you can still do your share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and frustrations and disappointments."
• "When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people."
• "Awareness of symbolic meaning is awareness of a specific idea; kavvanah is awareness of an ineffable situation.

Selected bibliography

• Heschel, Abraham Joshua. Man is not alone: a philosophy of religion. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 1976. ISBN 0374513287
• Heschel, Abraham Joshua, and Ilya Schor. The Sabbath: its meaning for modern man. Boston: Shambhala. 2003. ISBN 1590300823
• Heschel, Abraham Joshua. Man's quest for God: studies in prayer and symbolism. Hudson River editions. New York: Scribner's Sons. 1980. ISBN 0684168294
• Heschel, Abraham Joshua. God in search of man: a philosophy of Judaism. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1955. ISBN 0374513317
• Heschel, Abraham Joshua. The Prophets. New York: Perennial. 1962. ISBN 0060936991
• Heschel, Abraham Joshua. Who is man? Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press. 1965. ISBN 0804702659
• Heschel, Abraham Joshua, and Abraham Rattner. Israel: an echo of eternity. A Jewish Lights classic reprint. Woodstock, Vt: Jewish Lights Pub. 1997. ISBN 1879045702
• Heschel, Abraham Joshua. A passion for truth. A Jewish Lights classic reprint. Woodstock, Vt: Jewish Lights Pub. 1995. ISBN 1879045419
• Heschel, Abraham Joshua, and Gordon Tucker. Heavenly Torah: as refracted through the generations. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. 2004. ISBN 0826408028
• Heschell, Abraham Joshua. 1962. Theology of ancient Judaism. London: The Soncino Press. OCLC 16830315
• Heschel, Abraham Joshua, and Morton M. Leifman. The ineffable name of God—man: : poems. New York: Continuum. 2004. ISBN 0826416322

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

• Abraham Joshua Heschel  ^history

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

• History of "Abraham Joshua Heschel"

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.