I did not really know Abraham Joshua Heschel. I saw him at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America when I was as a student. I met with him in his office once or twice. And later, as a rabbi, I served with him on the national board of Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam. It is primarily through his writings that Heschel became a major influence in my life.

My mother loved to tell the story that, at the age of four, I was in the synagogue where my father served as a rabbi. The rabbi and the cantor both wore clerical robes and tall hats as was the custom in those days. As the cantor was singing Kiddush, my mother reported, I turned to her and asked, “Is that God?” I think I have been asking that question all my life. I’m not good at negotiation, and I’m not good at institution building. But, I do know when God is present in my life, and I do know when He nudges me to act.

Abraham Joshua Heschel had this gift. He lived in the presence of God, and he acted according to what God moved him to do.

In one of his books, Heschel talks about how he wrote. He would put himself in the presence of God and only then would he write. It could be a paragraph, or a couple of pages, or only a line. And that was it. This is very hard to do. But it does yield words written on a background of consciousness of the divine presence in one’s life.

The Book of Psalms is written this way. Certain passages in the prophets are written this way, too. So are certain Hasidic writings. Maimonides, at the end of his Guide for the Perplexed, comments that one can achieve a state in which the presence of God is with one, always, allowing one to go about one’s daily business and still be aware of God: “I sleep but my heart waketh.” Heschel knew this, and worked and lived this way. We, his readers, Jewish and Christian, stood in wonder before it – not before him, but before his ability to “walk with God.”

In everything Heschel wrote whether about the Holocaust, or ethics, or philosophy, or old age, or the political situation, or prayer, or death, he always said the same thing: that one must live in the presence of God, that “our life must be compatible with the Ineffable.” This made Abraham Joshua Heschel a real theologian.

Heschel, through his writings and life, enabled me to give intellectual form to my four-year-old insight.

The first part of my Facing the Abusing God: A Theology of Protest (Westminster/John Knox: 1993) is an introduction to Jewish theology in Heschel’s sense of the word. The first chapter begins with the following passage:

To be a theologian is also to speak for God. It is to have a personal rapport with God, to have a sense of responsibility for God and for how God is understood and related to by our fellow human beings. It is to mediate between God, as one understands God, and those who listen. It is to create an echo of God in the other.

To be a theologian is to defend God, to put back together the pieces of broken awareness and shattered relationship. Great is the suffering of our fellow human beings, and deep is the estrangement between them and God. A theologian must be a healer of that relationship, a binder of wounds, one who comforts.

The second chapter goes on to talk about personality as the first “essential attribute” of God. God is personhood. That is why the Bible, the midrash, the prayerbook, the Zohar, and other sacred texts always talk about God in human terms. The third chapter talks about holiness as the second “essential attribute” of God. God is holy. That is why the word “holy” is so essential in all the sacred texts. You can’t talk about God without personhood and holiness. This is drawn straight from Heschel. (For selections, see here.)

Part Two of Facing the Abusing God goes on to deal with Psalms and contains four simultaneous commentaries on each psalm, each in a different voice. One voice explains the words. Another explores the classic Jewish values inherent in the texts. Yet another reads against the text. And the last offers spiritual interpretations of the text. Part Three, in a very Talmudic move, incorporates those voices that question the position taken in the book. And the conclusion to the book, which was difficult to write and is difficult to read, faces God directly, in His presence, and says what has to be said. Heschel died before the book was published. I think he would have agreed with my conclusion that protest to God was a proper response to living in God’s presence. He probably would have objected to my proposed changes to the liturgy. But, he would surely have thought that I was on the right path.

Heschel would also have appreciated other books on Jewish spirituality that I have written: God at the Center (Harper and Row: 1988) – a dialogue with the Hasidic Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev; Keeping God at the Center (Hamilton Books, 2016 and on the internet here) – a book on ways to use the prayerbook to pray; Understanding Jewish Mysticism (two volumes, Ktav: 1978, 1982) – not a historical study but an explanation of different types of Jewish mystical experience; and Philosophic Mysticism: Essays in Rational Religion (Bar Ilan University: 2006 with selections here) — a type of mysticism taught by Maimonides who was both a philosopher and a mystic. It’s all about God, and the way humans experience God, as seen through Jewish texts. It’s “theocentrism” – all the way.

Once, in a meeting of the national board of Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, two well-known radical Catholic priests, were reporting on their activity which included burning draft cards and burning an American flag. Heschel, himself a refugee, turned as white as a sheet and said, “We don’t burn the American flag. It is a symbol of freedom and human dignity.” I have never forgotten that lesson. Some objects are holy, and we don’t burn them.

My wife and I were in Israel when the Hamas pogrom broke out. My son and I were about to go up to the Torah on Simhat Torah when the siren sounded. We spent the first ten days of the war with our family. At the end of the ten days, we realized that, at our age and in our condition, there was not much we could do. In fact, we were a burden to our family who had to keep track of us all the time. So, we left for the exile where we have been ever since.

Right at the beginning of the Hamas pogrom, I asked myself, what does God want me to do now. So, I began to write Letters, daily at the beginning and now, 250+ days into the war, every few days. At first, they were only read by a few friends but word spread and now about 160 people, Jews and non-Jews, receive them. Many reply. I became a shepherd of my people. That’s what God wanted me to do. This is exhausting work for all of us who serve as shepherds and, at my age, it is very exhausting. But I am sent. I am “called,” as our Christian friends would say. Heschel would have known that.

It is an honor to have lived in his shadow.

Additional Text

Books

Facing the Abusing God: A Theology of Protest (especially, section one)

God at the Center

Keeping God at the Center

Articles

“Tselem, Toward an Anthropopathic Theology of Image“

“Abraham Joshua Heschel: On The Inadequacy of the Ecumenical Perspective” (Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Spring 1992)

Book Review

Heschel, A. J., Heavenly Torah as Reflected through the Generations, ed. and transl. G. Tucker, NY, Continuum: 2005

Chemist
Bradenton, FL
A Jewish (Reform) Perspective

How did you first encounter Abraham Joshua Heschel’s work?
At 18, I was given the book G-d In Search of Man. Its intro shocked me with glee…I had never imagined the Creator was seeking the created in need.

That book stole my attention, leading to college where I shocked my advisor, professor and college: I demanded credit through independent study. My college/advisor’s directive: if you want to credit for those areas, you must submit a proposal with the goals of course, the books/sources, and how I should be tested. In 1990-95 at Appalachian State University, I sent letters to: Duke University, Davidson College, Yale University, & Princeton requesting their class syllabi in: Hebrew Language, Maimonides (Guide for the Perplexed), ibn Rushd (The Incoherence of the Incoherence), Plato and Aristotle! It resulted in four college courses (three 1-semester hour + 1 Senior stud) I respected Heschel the most!

How did Heschel influence your life, thinking, and/or work? What of Heschel lives in you?
The wonder of nature: both as a scientific study and the complexity of the mind. My life was changed after college…I had discord as a gay man in American society, I became a chemist for the local government, then worked on a federal study in the isolation of woods with water animals, living Walden Pond wonder. Prayer has been a beauty – mind the creator and pleading from the created! Nothing else covers life, Lord, love, and respect but Prayer!

I still seek Justice, that sacred call of Judaism. Justice is the balance between created and creator! This is Heschel’s paradigm shift in G-d In Search of Man. The Torah is filled with examples of Love from the Lord AND doesn’t explain why the “Israelites” receive Love. Heschel says this Love from the Lord is necessary not merely a gift. Justice is the foundation of our Western Society–the legal system, the Constitution of the USA– it is a requirement of Humanity to fulfill the goals from the Lord. Israelite teachings/ethics are the foundation of society!

Accountant, Founder “Abraham Joshua Heschel in Israel” Facebook Group
Israel
An Israeli Perspective

I grew up in a religious home and studied in Hesder (a program that combines advanced yeshiva study with Army service) in Israel. Most of my friends and family are religious. When I was 27, I stopped being observant and became secular. I stopped keeping shabbat and I moved to Tel Aviv. It was a real break. Five years later or something like that, I went to a bookshop and there was a Heschel book in the front of the shop. This was my first time seeing his name, Heschel. I had never heard about him in my years of yeshiva study, in my life in Israel. This was the first time that I met this man and I fell in love.

Professionally, I am an accountant. My work is not in the area of Jewish study, but I began to study privately. He spoke to what I needed and continue to need. I feel that he is the most important voice for me. As an Israeli, I have both religious and secular friends and they could all learn from Heschel. I created a Facebook group dedicated to Heschel’s thoughts and character.

My connection to Heschel is more private—after I read The Sabbath, I started keeping Shabbat again. In my previous religious life, praying for me was about technique, but without intention. Heschel changed my attitude in prayer. He also opened my mind about other religions. For my entire life, I was told to be against violence, but Heschel gave me the framework and moral clarity for understanding what it means to be against violence.

I see the need to engage Heschel and bring him to the people. While it started in the summer of 2023 with the protests around judicial reform, I see the need even more after October 7. This is time for worship, for humanity, for justice. We need Heschel.

I first encountered Heschel as a teenager. My Conservative synagogue in Philadelphia had an assistant rabbi named Nahum Waldman, who had the brilliant idea of taking the teens out of services and forming a discussion group about modern Jewish thought. I met Heschel, Kaplan, and Buber with a group of other teenagers. I concluded that the rabbi must have been as bored with services as we were. I often tell the story, which has a mythic air to it, that I opened God in Search of Man, where Heschel says, “Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid” – and was convinced that he had must have been to my synagogue. 

Several years later, I was a reporter for the Daily Pennsylvanian when Heschel came to speak at Penn. I covered the story, and I screwed up my courage, which was an effort because I was very shy, and asked if I could interview him in New York.  Months after I wrote about his speech at Penn, I drove up to New York, and knocked on the door of Heschel’s office at JTS. I will never forget the room. It was a tiny office that was full of books–not just on the shelves but piled high on the floor. There was barely room for our chairs. I spent an hour and three quarters with him and wrote up the story, which appeared in the Daily Pennsylvanian feature magazine. 

This interview changed my life. Heschel realized quickly that I had personal questions that I needed to ask, and he met me where I was and spoke to me from the heart. I walked into this meeting needing Heschel to prove to me that Jewish life and the life of the mind were worthwhile: that ideas matter; Judaism matters; that religion can make a difference in the world. By the time I walked out of his office, I had no doubt about these things.

I try to be there for students when they are talking to me in my office, as Heschel was for me.  Martin Buber wrote somewhere that you have to not only answer the questions that are asked by the person before you, you have to answer the questions that are not asked. Heschel  certainly did that when I sat before him.   

In the interview I asked:  where did you get the chutzpah to say that religion declined because it became irrelevant, oppressive, insipid and dull? You don’t exclude Judaism from this generalization, so you’re saying that the religion that many Jews are practicing is irrelevant. Where do you get the authority to say that? And first he tried to duck the question– he said that some people like vanilla ice cream, some people like chocolate ice cream. I replied, Rabbi Heschel, we’re not talking about ice cream. We’re talking about people’s lives. And then he said:  President Nixon thinks the war in Vietnam is justified, and I think it’s evil. Then he said something close to the following,  which I must confess I didn’t quote it exactly like this in the Daily Pennsylvanian piece, but this is what I remember:  “I am the heir to a great religious tradition. And as such it is not only my right, it is my duty to speak in the name of that tradition as best I can, knowing that other people will speak differently.”

That has meant everything to me. Heschel’s stance on civil rights was popular, but his leadership in the anti-war movement was extremely controversial. He wasn’t just saying, “on balance, I have concluded that the war is wrong.” Heschel said the war was evil.

When I became Chancellor Elect of JTS, we had to make a decision about the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy,  following the historic halakhic ruling by the Law Committee of Conservative Judaism. I Heschel’s words in my mind: I’m an heir to this religious tradition that I love. And as such I had not only the right, but the duty to speak in its name as best I could Heschel gave me the justification that I needed for taking on this enormous issue. I resist answering questions about “what would Rabbi Heschel do or say in our day about this or that matter?”   Because we can’t know what a person who passed away decades ago would do today. But Rabbi Wolfe Kelman said something to me that was very wise. He said that Heschel sometimes opened doors for people that he himself did not walk through. 

I belong to the generation of people who  tried to follow him, were inspired by his words and tried to take them further. 

My academic career has focused on understanding modern Judaism in terms of the challenges Jews faced and the responses major thinkers and “Jews in the pews” have made to those challenges.  I chose a historical perspective as opposed to a sociological one because I didn’t want to be an outsider to my own tradition, looking at figures like Heschel in terms that come from secular disciplines. The texts and thinkers I study are of personal importance to me. Abraham Joshua Heschel and Mordecai Kaplan often asked versions of the same questions that concern me by day and keep me up at night. Heschel influenced my career choice. And he changed my life.  Here was a man of great learning and immense piety, the author of many beautiful books who was also and an activist who put his learning into practice in pursuit of justice.

You ask:  What of Herschel does not live in me? I will never be as learned or pious or courageous as he was. I value Heschel’s teaching that we are not all prophets but there should be something of the prophet in every one of us. Heschel taught me that we’re not just here  to sit in shul or in the study hall. There is work to be done and we must be active doing that work in the world. Torah must lead to action. Heschel wanted us to take God seriously to take the study of Torah seriously and to take action in the world seriously. I got that from him at the age of twenty and it has remained fundamental to who I am and try to be. That’s an incredible gift for one person to give to another. I will be indebted to this man for as long as I live.

Connected Texts:

“Heschel Urges Festivity and Sense of Awe in World of ‘Tedium, Humdrum Inevitability.” The Daily Pennsylvanian. (2/26/1971).

“Miracles and a Shrug of the Shoulders.” 34th Street. (10/7/1971)

First Executive Director, Masorti Movement
Omer, Israel
A Jewish Perspective

I first encountered Herschel as a teenager in the Lincoln, Nebraska. Our rabbi, Harold Stern, had been Heschel’s secretary at JTS. He went on to lead a large congregation in Skokie, Illinois and became an important figure in the rabbinical assembly. Stern was a fascinating rabbi—he had been in intelligence in the US Army during World War II and spoke sixteen languages. We loved him; we were happy to go the cheder in those days because of him. He organized a group of post-bar mitzvah students who were interested in studying more deeply. We started off by studying The Sabbath. The course ended up going through much of modern Jewish thought, but Heschel was the starting point.

Stern continued my education—he gave me God in Search of Man, which grabbed me right away and I became enamored of the concept of a Jewish philosophy. Prior to that I had only thought of Judaism in terms of ritual and practice.

Eventually I got to meet Heschel in person. I attended the Jewish Theological Seminary in part to study with Heschel. He was just one of the many luminaries that drew me to the JTS for the dual degree with Columbia. It was enthralling to learn from the people who I first met through their books. My first meeting with was at a Shabbat dinner he hosted when I was an undergraduate. Later, he was in my interview for rabbinical school. It was truly intimidating. He pulled me aside after it was over and invited me to his house to discuss what I had learned in the interview.

In rabbinical school, I began working with Torah Min Hashamayim. I started reading through the volumes and I was hooked. I had never seen encountered anything so clearly laid out and insightful, delving into rabbinic thought and its cores values, while exploring the inherent contradictions in the texts. Heschel saw the genius and vibrancy in these contradictory concepts. For me this was a huge opening of the mind. Right before Heschel died, I was working with him on a translation of this book.

The main pillar that influenced me—one that I have worked on and stressed throughout my life—was that of amazement. It is essential to cultivate this sense of wonderment in your soul, in your psyche. Heschel rooted this sense of wonder in Jewish tradition and I have carried this with me. I see the wonder in everything—in the restaurants I go to, in the desert and its flowers. He shot an arrow into thinking about religion; it wasn’t just about don’t do this, do that, but instead make yourself open to the amazement of the world. Of nature. Of humanity. Of variances.

Christ Church by the Sea
Newport Beach, CA
A Methodist Perspective

How did you first encounter Abraham Joshua Heschel’s work?

I have known of Heschel for a long time but just finished reading his book God in Search of Man which deeply impressed me and touched my heart and soul. I intend to read his other books. I heard his daughter speak at a synagogue in Minneapolis a few years back and I read a book by her.

How did Heschel influence your life, thinking, and/or work? What of Heschel lives in you?
I have always felt a deep spiritual connection with Judaism. Heschel’s interpretation of Judaism helped me to understand why. Like Buber, there is an existentialist strand in Heschel's interpretation of religion that speaks to our common humanity and thereby invites non-Jews into dialogue with Jewish tradition.

Director of Arts and Culture
Boston, MA
A Jewish Perspective (Conservative)

My first Shabbat as an undergrad I took all of that week’s reading out to the main quad. I was overwhelmed and thought if I read the smallest book first, that would motivate me to do the rest. I looked up when I turned the final page of the slim volume and the sun was setting. An entire afternoon had passed and I was unaware, so deeply had I been pulled into The Sabbath.

In that moment, Shabbat went from something I did to somewhere I dwelled. The other six days of the week changed too, seen through the lens of the seventh. I didn’t know then that I was on a path to the rabbinate. I didn’t know that it would become a passion for me to teach Heschel’s words in the hopes of opening that same portal for others. I didn’t know that I would come to see the work of justice as sacred and holy. But not a day passes that I don’t feel the imprint of Heschel’s words on my life. Awe and wonder are with me daily, in spite of the brokenness of the world.

Congregation Eshel Abraham
Be’er Sheva, Israel
A Jewish Perspective

How did you first encounter Abraham Joshua Heschel’s work?

When I was child in Chile, I heard from my Rabbi about some of Heschel’s ideas, as my rabbi was Rabbi Marshall Mayer’s student who was Heschel’s student. He was kind of a “Hassidic Rebbe” for us there.

How did Heschel influence your life, thinking, and/or work? What of Heschel lives in you?

During Rabbinical school I learned more in depth Heschel’s ideas and the one that remains with me the most is his view of Revelation. As a non-fundamentalist movement, we struggle often to reconcile Divine revelation with human authorship and Heschel's words: "A minimum of revelation, a maximum of interpretation (...) the Torah is a Midrash of the Revelation" has been very helpful to me in order to explain others the way we (I) undertsand the Divinity of the Torah and Revelation itself.

My mother, Marjorie Wyler, arrived at JTS through a series of accidents. She was raised Jewish, but she did not have a sophisticated understanding of Judaism from her childhood. She pursued that understanding as an adult. When she found herself working at the Jewish Theological Seminary with Chancellor Finkelstein as the Head of Public Relations, Radio, and Television, she became responsible for explaining the intricacies of Judaism–everything from text to holidays to observance—to both Jews, who tended to have their own version of Judaism, and to the broader world. There was an immediate connection between her work and Heschel. He was the perfect conduit for conveying Judaism and Conservative Judaism in ways that would make a difference to varied audiences.

Separate from her work at JTS, she was attracted to Heschel’s ideas. I first heard about him through her. As I became very active in the civil rights and anti-war movements, she brought this  iconic person to my attention. My mother would have presented the breadth of Heschel; he marched with Doctor King, but he’s much more complex than this. She introduced what he was saying about civil rights, why he’s engaged, what he’s saying about democracy, what he’s saying about the war. She gave me a fuller picture than most people had or have of Heschel.

Heschel was a man out of time and space. If you come to any country from somewhere else, you can see things that people who live here don't see. Heschel not only saw the American people, but opened himself up to reflecting on and frankly, making new Torah for the US. He knew everything about text, teaching the prophets and Judaism, but that didn’t stop him from developing new perspectives. Most importantly to me, he wasn’t afraid to use his talents and unique perspective to push for America to be a better version of itself.

I can sum up my career in public service and nonprofit leadership in one sentence using Heschel’s words: “In a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.” This quote appeared on the masthead of every newsletter I printed as both a city council member and Manhattan Borough president. When I ran American Jewish World Service (AJWS), I spent a great deal of time talking to Jews about why they should care about people in the rest of the world, and that quote was my most powerful tool.

In my capacity at AJWS, I was often asked what my favorite country was to visit. After mentioning specific projects, or food and travel, I would always add Cambodia and Haiti. In both of those instances, we, the United States, created the structural problems AJWS was attempting to combat. Although I was not personally guilty for creating American foreign policy towards these countries, I can name the guilty parties, and in both cases, they were my government. While I am not guilty, I am responsible.

I spend a lot of time talking to college students. In these settings, I quote Heschel’s final interview on NBC. I believe Heschel told the interviewer, Carl Stern, to ask him what advice he had for young people. This may be apocryphal, but that’s the way I like to tell the story. Heschel answered with the world’s most amazing, succinct quote:

Let them be sure that every little deed counts, that every word has power, and that we can—every one—do our share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and all frustrations and all disappointments. And above all, remember that the meaning of life is to build a life as if it were a work of art.

The first half is a good reminder to people, especially today, when they can so easily make fools of themselves on social media. Focusing on the second half—“build their lives as if they were a work of art”— I love that concept and seeing how it resonates with younger people. I ask them when you think of your life as a sculpture in a public place, what are you going to put on that sculpture?