A Passion for Truth

A Passion for Truth (1973)

This book was published posthumously and is significantly autobiographical. It compares and contrasts the life and thought of the enigmatic Hasidic Rebbe Menahem Mendl of Kotzk with that of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. A secondary contrast that is that between the Baal Shem Tov (considered the founder of Hasidism) and the Kotzker Rebbe, a duality that Heschel maps onto the mind and soul.

Tags

Related Content

I have no doubt that my involvement in these same causes were because of his influence upon me. Rabbi Jim Lebeau My own identity became renewed by the idea that Judaism and Jewish values and Jewish actions could be and should be brought to the streets. Rabbi David Steinhardt The first Jewish text included on our syllabus was a chapter from Heschel’s God in Search of Man, and I was entranced by it. Rabbi Geoffrey Claussen, PhD