Micah Lapidus and Melvin Myles
Musicians
The Davis Academy, The Temple, Ebenezer Baptist Church
Atlanta, Georgia
An Interfaith Perspective

Rabbi Micah Lapidus first encountered Heschel as a young learner at Los Angeles Hebrew High School. Melvin Myles first encountered Heschel through Ebenezer Baptist Church’s partnership with The Temple in Atlanta.

Heschel is an inspiration in many ways. Most relevant here is that he is the inspiration for the composition “Praying with our Feet,” written by Rabbi Micah Lapidus and performed by Lapidus and Melvin Myles, often accompanied by the Ebenezer Baptist Church and Temple choirs.

He imbued in us a sense of wonder and a commitment to justice.

Brandeis University
Waltham, Massachusetts
A Jewish Perspective

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

In high school I read God in Search of Man, and in my senior year I heard Heschel lecture at Washington University in St. Louis on the Insecurity of Freedom. I then studied with him at JTS for eight years, 1962–1970.

How did Heschel and his thinking inspire your work, religious life, or civic engagement?

Heschel’s example and advice has inspired most of my academic life—from my doctoral thesis on Rabbi Yochanan, which was his suggestion, to my writings on theology, liturgy, ethics, and Jewish-Christian relations from the classical period to the modern one. His legacy grows every year through more commemorations, articles, and books about him. Truly great men become greater posthumously.

What of Heschel lives in you?

My commitment to Jewish practice, thought, religious audacity, and social engagement are all filtered through his example and writings (best reflected in Who Is Man?). During my years in The Rabbinical School, he was my spiritual father.

Additional Text

Review, The Sabbath

Review, Torah Min Hashamayim

Heschel Memorium, in Hebrew (Part 1, Part 2)

The Inexplicable Phenomenon

The Theology of Abraham Joshua Heschel

Response Memorium (Winter 1972–1973)

Rabbis Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Abraham Joshua Heschel on Jewish Christian Relations

Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Theology of Judaism and the Rewriting of Jewish Intellectual History

Mishkan Chicago
Chicago, Illinois
A Jewish Perspective

I first encountered Heschel with Professor Arnold Eisen at Stanford University; he recalled aloud how the opening words of Heschel’s book God in Search of Man inspired him to pursue a career in Jewish academia. I, in turn, found deep inspiration in those words and that book:

It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.

Assistant Professor, Systematic Theology, St. Patrick’s Pontifical University
Maynooth, Ireland
A Catholic Perspective

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

As a young student, I read his theological writings, but it was through his daughter, Susannah, that I encountered his writings in a more personal way when I was lecturing on religious existentialism at Dartmouth.

How did Heschel and his thinking inspire your work, religious life, or civic engagement?

For me as a Roman Catholic, I find Heschel’s involvement in shaping Nostra Aetate with Cardinal Bea is something that needs more attention. Heschel’s treatment of Kierkegaard is something that I hope to explore further when an opportunity presents itself.

What of Heschel lives in you?

I found Heschel’s emphasis on the wonder that we are, which awakens us to action, profound. This quote highlights Heschel’s approach to the Torah:

We sail because our mind is like a fantastic seashell, and when applying our ear to its lips we hear a perpetual murmur from the waves beyond the shore.

Additional Text:

Abraham Joshua Heschel and Nostra Aetate: Shaping the Catholic Reconsideration of Judaism during Vatican II

The Time and Name of Mercy: Rabbi Abraham Heschel and Pope Francis in Dialogue

Podcaster, Pray with Our Feet
Baltimore, Maryland
A Christian Perspective

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

Several years ago, I was searching for a connection between activism and faith. For as long as I can remember, I have felt drawn to speaking out against injustice, but sadly, didn’t find a place for it in many church spaces. One day, while reading about Dr. King’s later years and writings, I stumbled across a short blog post on Rabbi Heschel and his involvement with the Civil Rights Movement.

How did Heschel and his thinking inspire your work, religious life, or civic engagement?

Rabbi Heschel inspired me to start an online community and podcast (which I cohost with my mom), Pray with Our Feet. We highlight the intersection of progressive Christianity and social justice through interviews with ministers, activists, artists, and thinkers.

The idea came alive after reading about Rabbi Heschel’s involvement in the Civil Rights Movement and commitment to seeing faith and activism as deeply connected.

There’s an incident from his life that really resonates with me because it lifts up how central faith is along our journey to creating a better world (described here):

When Rabbi Heschel returned from Selma, he was asked by someone, ‘Did you find much time to pray, when you were in Selma?’ Rabbi Heschel responded, ‘I prayed with my feet.’ What was his point? That his marching, his protesting, his speaking out for Civil Rights was his greatest prayer of all.

Rabbi Heschel’s legacy is one of activism built upon his relationship with God. He challenged us to see each other as human beings created in the image of God. Only then can we love, esteem, and value others. After 50 years, his voice is that of a modern-day prophet reminding each of us that racism is the ultimate evil perpetuated by humanity.

What of Heschel lives in you?

Heschel’s commitment to human rights, antiracism, and love for humanity and God live within us. These values (which he beautifully embodied) drive the work Mom and I do together, and ground us in a deeper presence with the world. Heschel often spoke of the wonder and amazement of God:

Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement . . . Get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.

His words, legacy, and life push us to awaken continually.

American Jewish University
Los Angeles, California
A Jewish Perspective

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

In graduate school at Brandeis, I read Torah min Hashamayim. Subsequently I edited (an ultimately unpublished) translation of the books.

How did Heschel and his thinking inspire your work, religious life, or civic engagement?

In certain ways Heschel is used as a fig leaf; the picture of him and MLK on the bridge is trotted out every year on MLK Day as a proof text that the Jewish community is on the right side of history. But we’re not, on the whole, and Heschel's life was a life of prophetic agitation in which he saw his role as pushing the Jewish community beyond their comfort zones, out of the synagogues and the federation buildings and into the streets.

What of Heschel lives in you?

His combination of Hasidic transcendence and awe (which I don’t have, but wish I did) and political courage beyond the walls of the university.

Additional Writing:

From JTS to Riverside Church

Elon University
Elon, North Carolina
A Jewish Perspective

I first encountered Heschel’s work as a first-year college student at Carleton College, in an introduction to religion class with Prof. Louis Newman. I took the class without any particular interest in Jewish Studies—I was far more interested in studying other traditions—and did not expect to be interested in the Jewish sources that were on the syllabus. But 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. After reading the chapter, I went to the shelves in Carleton’s Gould Library, found the full volume, started reading, and couldn’t put it down.  I was shocked because Heschel’s writing seemed neither fundamentalist nor dull at all. Rather, it struck me as intellectually serious, challenging, engaging, enticing. This kindled my interest in Jewish studies and eventually my own Jewish engagement, setting in motion the path that eventually led to my becoming a rabbi and scholar of Jewish ethics.

Additional Writing:

God and Suffering in Torah Min Hashamayim

Schechter Institutes
Jerusalem, Israel
A Jewish Perspective

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

On 2002, after a few years of studying in Hesder yeshivot, I joined the family business and became a bored insurance agent. After about a year, I decided to devote one day a week to master’s studies at Bar Ilan, and there I heard a course by Prof. Ephraim Meir on Heschel and Buber. I wrote a seminar paper to compare them, and then I asked Prof. Meir to write a master’s thesis, which would include a comparison between what I wrote about Buber and Rabbi Soloveitchik. Prof. Meir claimed that I should write about Heschel. I started writing and suddenly my eyes were opened. I met Heschel and he changed my life.

How did Heschel and his thinking inspire your work, religious life, or civic engagement?

Before meeting Heschel, I felt that I had a pretty good understanding of the knowledge map of Judaism, but he made me realize that I was looking at it from the wrong perspective. For me, it was a map of mere ethnic and halachic knowledge; Heschel taught me to look at it from God's point of view.

I was born in a hard core settlement in the Jewish-democratic state, and since my youth I felt that there was a tension between the Jewish and the democratic. The murder of PM Rabin shocked me. Because of the world in which I grew up, I was not surprised by the murder, but I was surprised that Israeli society was surprised. I suddenly realized that my Jewishness and my Israeliness cannot live together. When I met Heschel, I understood that there is another Judaism and that mere ethnic and halakhic Judaism could be idolatrous. The most significant lines in his thought for me are:

“What is an idol? Any god who is mine but not yours, any god concerned with me but not with you, is an idol. Faith in God is not simply an afterlife-insurance policy. Racial or religious bigotry must be recognized for what it is: blasphemy . . . God is every man’s pedigree. He is either the Father of all men or of no man. The image of God is either in every man or in no man.”

—”Religious and Race,” The Insecurity of Freedom

Heschel taught me a new (or maybe ancient) interpretation of the word “God,” every time it appears in the sources—and suddenly the whole of Judaism was illuminated in a new light. God is not an absolute other who gives absolute validity to one's ethnicity and religion; He is someone who cares about all human beings and who invites us all into an interpersonal relationship with him. He is a kind of utopian parent, whose light calls all people to live in brotherhood, sisterhood, or solidarity.

What of Heschel lives in you?

I don’t know what to say. I simply feel the great privilege to be his chasid. He is my rebbe, and I try to follow his path, which is very demanding, I must say. Too many times I don’t succeed, but his thought illuminates my way and gives me hope that at the end of the tunnel, there is light.

Bible Raps
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
A Jewish Perspective

How did you first encounter Abraham Joshua Heschel’s work?
I started getting interested in Jewish thought after trip to Israel on Livnot Birthright. Heschel’s Man In Search of God and other works were suggested. I was a philosophy major and his thought was attractive in that regard and how well he articulated my personal beliefs about Judaism and God. Reading Heschel validated my initial interest in Jewish thought and led me to understand that Judaism is where it’s at for me. While I grew up Jewish in Iowa city, Iowa, I never really delved deep into Jewish thought until Heschel. In doing so I said to myself "Wow, I am really am Jewish!"

How did Heschel influence your life, thinking, and/or work? What of Heschel lives in you?
His philosophy of Judaism in Man’s Quest for God and The Prophets, along with his lectures from 1968 and 1970, were essential for the development of my Jewish identity. His partnership with MLK was also important because I spend so much time with Black people as a hip hop artist. I use Heschel to contextualize my magnum opus with samples from his lectures on my album Best Bible Rapper Alive.