Connecting Cultures for Peace
Baltimore, Maryland
A Jewish Perspective

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s legacy is not only his scholarship, but also his leadership as he marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and taught us to pray with our feet. I learned from Dr. Susannah Heschel that as she grew up, she was able to watch and learn as those two great men of their age became friends, ate together, prayed together, and spoke out for one another time and time again.  I learned this through my involvement in launching a new nonprofit, Connecting Cultures for Peace. Our founder and president began this organizational journey with a conversation between Dr. Susannah Heschel and Rabbi Capers Funnye (with whom she often presents). We are inspired by and learning from the mid–20th century relationship between Heschel and King. There is so much more to learn about this era and their leadership. 

For me, this is one of the key emotional links to my ability to stay the course today as I seek to address and confront the rising tide of hate speech and violence against Jews, against people of color, against people who are different, against outsiders, against anyone who is not white.  Rabbi Heschel is quoted as having said we must fight nihilism. He meant it then, and if he were alive today, he would mean it now. Connecting Cultures for Peace is an organization of like-minded people who seek out ways to stay the course, fight nihilism, and never give up as the challenges befall us. I believe this is one of Heschel’s greatest gifts to me personally and to all of us who seek support each day as we awake to the frightening news of the day. To this legacy, I am ever grateful. 

Center for Contemporary Mussar
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
A Jewish Perspective

Fifty-two years ago I was a college dropout working for Jewish Family Service of Long Island as an outreach worker with drug-abusing teens. My job was to blend in with teens congregating at various hangouts, primarily Jewish kids, and steer them toward social workers, doctors, and other professional services if they found themselves in crisis. At one particular hangout, many of the kids were cutting their evening Hebrew high school classes. I was out on the street for hours and developed the practice of reading the books that were lying around on the pavement. One of these books was Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism from the Writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel by Fritz Rothschild. While I had had something of a Jewish background and education typical for a Conservative Jew of the time—I attended Hebrew school and had even liked it—it had been years since I had had any contact with Jewish life. I didn’t even go to shul on Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur, much to my mother’s chagrin. Reading excerpts from Heschel changed my life. I will skip all the details of the rest of the journey that began that night, the important points are: I returned to college, graduated with a degree in religious studies, and entered The Jewish Theological Seminary in 1972 with the primary goal of studying with Heschel. He died during that first semester.

During that same first semester, in my first philosophy class in The Rabbinical School, I wrote a paper entitled “On the Possibility for a Modern Mussar Practice.” While I would eventually use the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas to craft what I believed was a theological basis for a contemporary Mussar practice, in this course I propose to honor what I now realize sent me in the direction of Mussar, and more importantly, still very much reverberates in the subconsciousness of my Mussar mind, namely the writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Additional Text:

Lectures on Who Is Man?

California
A Jewish Perspective

Early in 1960, just prior to receiving my rabbinic ordination, I met with Heschel to discuss a proposed doctoral thesis for myself. I was to write about the saga of “Amalek”—Amalek the nation and Amalek the symbol; its transition from an external enemy to an internal foe, and its metamorphosis into a metaphysical, metahistorical, and metaphorical phenomenon in the religious thinking of Israel.

 I inquired of Prof. Heschel, “How would you suggest researching this matter?”

Heschel emitted a thick cloud of smoke from his cigar and replied that it was imperative that I first study carefully the role played in Kabbalistic thought and enumerated quite a number of Kabbalistic sources to carefully consider.

I responded somewhat sophomorically and ungraciously, “But professor, that will take many, many years of preparation on my part!”

Heschel replied charmingly in Yiddish, “Don’t worry, I shall be mispallel (praying) for you that you be granted arichas shanim (enough years) so you will be able to complete the saifer (book).”

I recall him adding with a chuckle that it may be beneficial for a Litvak like me to receive such a berakhah (blessing) from a descendant of prominent Hasidic rabbeim. Over 63 years have elapsed since that encounter with Professor Heschel, and I especially think back to his berakhah when celebrating a birthday.

The encounter also vividly encompasses for me some of Heschel's remarkable qualities . . . not only his warmth, caring, humor, and humanity, but his insistence on rigorous and careful scholarship. He was not only a profoundly gifted poet of the neshama, but also a profound academic and brilliant religious and philosophical thinker. 

Interreligious Affairs Director (DATES), American Jewish Committee
Fort Meyers, Florida
A Jewish Perspective

Transcribed from an Interview

I’m very proud that my rabbinical school, Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, brought Rabbi Heschel to the United States, where he taught for some years. I want to pay tribute to the HUC president at the time, Rabbi Julian Morgenstern, who had the commitment and resources to save Rabbi Heschel’s life.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was able to position religious mysticism into an academic context. Prior to that, Jewish academia was largely a world of rationalism, Talmud, and maybe Midrash, but certainly not mysticism. He brought a sense of awe and wonderment into the academic world and also into the mainstream of Jewish religious thought. Part of the reason that he could accomplish this was because of his deeply rooted Jewish learning. He married this sense of wonder with his intellectual rigor. 

I was ordained as a rabbi in 1960. I went into the Air Force military chaplaincy and was stationed in Japan and Korea for two years. When I returned to civilian life, I served in Kansas City for two years as an assistant rabbi. By that time, Rabbi Heschel was becoming nationally and internationally known. 

And of course, in 1963, he gave a now-famous speech at the Conference on Religion and Race in Chicago, where he first met Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was there that Rabbi Heschel said, “At the first conference on religion and race, the main participants were Pharaoh and Moses . . . The outcome of that summit meeting has not come to an end. Pharaoh is not ready to capitulate.” This speech also included the notable statement, “Some are guilty, but all are responsible.” His link to Dr. King was notable; they saw in one another modern-day prophets and charismatic leadership qualities. 

Heschel deeply affected my own professional life: specifically, the role he played at the Second Vatican Council. The Council adopted the Nostra Aetate Declaration in 1965. The Latin means “in our time,” and it fundamentally changed the ways Jews and Catholics interacted with each other. 

A year earlier on September 14, 1964, the day before Yom Kippur, he met with Pope Paul VI in Rome because a proposed version of the Declaration included some troubling conversionary language. Rabbi Heschel pushed the church leader on the issue of conversion, saying,  “As I have repeatedly stated to leading personalities of the Vatican, I am ready to go to Auschwitz any time, if faced with the alternative of conversion or death.”  Heschel made it very clear that the statement’s language on conversion was unacceptable, not only to him, but to the global Jewish community. This language was removed, changing thousands of years of church doctrine.

The next time Heschel impacted me was in 1967. I was one of the first rabbis to travel to Israel after the Six Day War. He had written a superb book about Israel, Israel: An Echo of Eternity, and he expressed for all of us the dread and fear Jews everywhere experienced during the run up to the Six Day War.

After hearing about him since I was a student at HUC-JIR in New York, I first met Rabbi Heschel when he came to the American Jewish Committee headquarters in 1970 or 1971. At that point, he was the Jewish voice of opposition to use of destructive napalm and, indeed, the war in Vietnam, which resonated with me because I had been in Asia when the American military buildup was starting. 

Rabbi Heschel broke out of the narrowness of some parts of the Jewish community. Heschel was in America, doing American things. He was involved with civil rights, whether you agreed with him or not. He was there with MLK in Selma, Alabama. He was also anti–Vietnam War. He was in many public arenas taking personal, religiously inspired stands. 

One of the most important things he did for interreligious work was leaving the JTS building and crossing the street in Morningside Heights in NYC to teach at neighboring Union Theological Seminary. By crossing the street, he built a human bridge. Those connections at Union and his personal meeting with the pope made my work much easier because I could talk about Rabbi Heschel’s extraordinary commitment to interreligious dialogue. This gave me enormous credibility in my work as the director of interreligious affairs at the American Jewish Committee. I may not have been an actual classroom student of Heschel’s, but I could, and did, stand on his shoulders.  

24/6: A Jewish Theater Company
New York City, New York
A Jewish Perspective

Transcribed from an Interview

My first association with Heschel was riding the Manhattan Day School bus. Students from the Heschel School were on the bus, and I didn’t know who the school was named for—a benefactor? I became fully aware of who Heschel was as a student at NYU when we started creating art and culture Shabbat dinners, and Heschel’s metaphors for art and practice became a focal point. 

I was invited to start this theater company with a friend from high school. We started inviting friends and people we knew who were Shabbat observant to conversations of what would it mean to have a Shomer Shabbat theater company. We had salons of artists, and we chose to learn together a section of The Sabbath. The focus ultimately creatively was “The Splendor of Space,” the story of Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zachai that Heschel retells from the Talmud.

Our first show was Shabbat Variations, which showed different people’s responses to this story. Heschel was essential for this exploration as a writer of such rich language with a positive view of the Sabbath. In thinking about creating a Shabbat-observant theater company, we were unified in the goal of wanting to make theater, and Shabbat observance is the biggest challenge, right? But Shabbat is the reason we created a company.

Shabbat could be seen as this big hurdle and limitation. As a performer you’re told, you’re never going to work. I was told by people not to study theater; it’s a fool’s errand for many reasons: Shabbat; the rules of tzniut (modesty). With this very loud discouragement, we found the choice of someone who spoke so articulately about Shabbat was positive for us. Heschel offers a framework to say Shabbat is not a bad thing. As shomer shabbat artists, we understand the positives of the day. We didn’t want to come into process with a sense of negativity.

Judaism has a conflicted relationship with the arts, because the arts stem back into ritual. For the Greeks, theater was a ritual practice; it was used for festivals to gods like Dionysus. So the idea of idolatry and the arts is intertwined, and that’s the challenge of art in a Jewish context. This is a challenge for many religious groups—they are striving for this connection to something higher and deeper. Heschel, on the other hand, embraced the arts. I particularly appreciate this quote of Heschel’s:

The meaning of life is to build a life as if it were a work of art.

Additional Text:

New Theater Troupe Dark on Sabbath (New York Jewish Week)

For New Theater Company, Shabbat Takes Center Stage (Forward)

B’nai Jeshurun
New York, New York
A Jewish Perspective

Transcribed from an Interview

I was born and raised in Argentina. My rabbi growing up was Rabbi Marshall Meyer, a graduate of JTS and a devotee of Heschel. Meyer worked with Heschel as a student and was very close with Heschel. He went to serve in Argentina and brought Heschel’s teaching with him. I never met Heschel personally, but through Meyer, I met him when I was six years old and never stopped meeting him, learning from him, and deepening my understanding of his work. 

It wasn’t until I entered the Seminario to study with Rabbi Meyer that I fully realized how deeply rooted Rabbi Meyer was in Heschel’s teachings. Rabbi Meyer worked to put Heschel’s ideas into action: his ideas about prayer, his approach to halakhah, his inclination to social justice. Each of these aspects became part of the living community in Argentina, which Meyer passed down to his students, steeping us all in Heschel. All of Rabbi Meyer’s students are stamped with Heschel. 

After 25 years in Argentina, in 1985, Rabbi Meyer returned to New York at the time I was entering my last year of rabbinical school. After my ordination in 1986, Rabbi Meyer invited me to join him at B’nai Jeshurun. He died at the end of 1993, but in those seven years we worked together to translate Heschel into a living community; Heschel’s program as it lives in a synagogue, which continues to be central to this synagogue. 

For example, our approach to prayer is consistent with Heschel’s teachings in his amazing book Man’s Quest for God, ideas he synthesized from his inherited rabbinic and Hasidic Judaism. Heschel discusses the ideal form of Jewish prayer, which is deeply rooted in tradition, very alive and connected with kavanah (intent). Prayer is a serious and consequential matter. There is a tension between the fixed and the spontaneous prayers, which must be felt. Bringing this book into our services changed the culture of B’nai Jeshurun.

Another of many aspects of Heschel’s teaching we incorporated was his approach to Jewish law. Jewish law is not total. It’s very subtle, focused on seeing yourself through the mitzvot (commandments) as serving God and serving other human beings. Performing mitzvot is not just an obligation, but an opportunity to do service with a sense of reverence for God and service. It’s not all or nothing, but it can be selective and informed by justice and ethics. 

Associate Professor of Jewish Theology, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
Jerusalem, Israel
A Jewish Perspective

I never met Abraham Joshua Heschel. I was a 10-year old Londoner when he died. Nonetheless, he has been a presence in my life for as long as I can recall. He lived on my father’s bookshelves, where the mysterious paradox inherent in such titles as God In Search of Man and Who Is Man? caught my young attention. He came alive when his aphorisms, more evocative than abstract reasoning or unbridled polemic, were quoted in sermons and conversations.

As a young rabbi casting around for a doctoral research topic, my initial idea had been to compare aspects of the thought of Heschel and Mordecai Kaplan. I was guided by the instinct that Israel (where I had moved) needed to undergo significant processes both of Kaplanization and of Heschelization, and I wanted to help think this through. When I decided that acquiring expertise in the work of both of these giants of 20th-century Judaism was overly ambitious, it was clear to me with whom I preferred to spend the time I would dedicate to this research. 

I was in the library of the University of Haifa, rereading God In Search of Man slowly and carefully, when my particular link to Heschel was forged. I noticed that appended to almost every chapter were intriguingly extensive and suggestive endnotes. What was their purpose and to whom were they directed? This question—and the questions it in turn triggered—have preoccupied me for the past 30 years. 

It may seem odd to have developed such an interest in an aspect of Heschel’s work that is so literally marginal. Most of those who have been drawn into Heschel’s magnetic field have been attracted by his spirituality or his activism or his language. Drawn to all these as I surely was and still am, it was in fact his footnotes that captivated me. I was intrigued by the way in which Heschel based his challenging theology not in the dictates of Kantian philosophy (which he respected) or Freudian psychology (which he respected less), but from within the rich and varied sources of Judaism. He turned to these sources not as literary embellishments, but as urgent and vibrant expressions. The great Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen had sought to make the case for a Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism, but here was an approach to Judaism and to life that was not just derived from Jewish sources—it was marinated in them, immersed and informed by profound learning. I was hooked. 

Since then, following Heschel’s writings has provided a more rigorous syllabus than any I have encountered in a seminary or university. That which Heschel had committed to memory at a young age, I have intended to chase up and track down. He has not only been the primary object of my research, he has also been my teacher. 

It is certainly the case the Abraham Joshua Heschel was a very learned Jew. This places him in select company, but he was not unique in his erudition. It was the combination of deep learning with his commitment to action, his unwillingness to stay ensconced in his study room, his engagement with the great questions of his day that set him apart. I hear Heschel’s voice every time I am tempted to settle for vapid progressive slogans, and every time I am tempted to stay in my comfort zone when I should be protesting. His particular form of praxis, the welding together of doing and learning, has been my principle guide. 

One of the hundreds of works I would never have encountered were it not for Heschel is entitled To’ameha Chayyim Zachu. This expression has its roots in the additional Sabbath prayer, and it relates to the Sabbath itself. Those who taste and experience it are privileged with life. As I consider decades of reading, thinking, and responding to Heschel, it is this expression that comes most readily to mind. To taste Heschel, his remarkable combination of learning and activism, his call to wonder and response, his critique and his poetry, his hints and his slogans, his certainties and his vulnerability, his intellect and his soul is a dose of life. Had it not been for him, I would have done less, cared less, thought less, lived less. 

I am surely not alone. Fifty years after he breathed his last, Abraham Joshua Heschel continues to offer a taste of life for contexts and generations he could not have imagined. So long as he is quoted (and misquoted), so long as his example serves as inspiration, he has not breathed his last. 

Reading through the Heschel papers at Duke University some years ago, I shed a tear. I had just come across a page (there are many of them to be found there) upon which Heschel had written out a teaching. This one is from Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. To paraphrase, "When a student repeats the teaching of a tanna, a foundational sage, there is a kind of embrace between the tradition and the tradent, the propagator and the broadcaster. You kiss the tanna, and the tanna kisses you. I never met Abraham Joshua Heschel. But I sense his embrace." 

His memory is for a blessing, and those who experience it are privileged with the gift of life.  

Emeritus Professor, Grinnell College
Grinnell, Iowa
A Jewish Perspective

I was a student at JTS from 1956 to 1961.  In 1957 I took two courses with Professor Heschel: one on Genesis with an emphasis on Rashi’s interpretation and one on Jewish theology in which we read Heschel’s book God in Search of Man. In 1971, when I was a graduate student at Temple University, in preparation for my dissertation on Heschel, I traveled from Philadelphia to New York City once a week to attend a seminar that Heschel was teaching to his rabbinical students on his book Torah min Hashmayim. After every class I went to his office where Heschel gave me many sources for my thesis. When he left, I walked him home. Sometimes we would converse in Yiddish, our common birth language. 

I was very challenged by the statement that “Providence may someday create a situation which would place us between the river Jordan and the river Ganges,” from his book God in Search of Man. To me, this statement seemed to mean that Professor Heschel was encouraging dialogue between Jews and members of Asian religions. So I devoted a great deal of time to the study of Asian religions. I was even more challenged by his essay “No Religion Is an Island,” where he argues that no religion has a monopoly on truth or holiness and says “In this eon, diversity of religions is the will of God.” In my books on Heschel, I have devoted a great deal of time to his vision of other faiths.

Heschel, who devoted his life to love and peace, was for me not just a superlative teacher but my interreligious hero. He remains the most important spiritual teacher of my life. At Grinnell College, I have offered a seminar: Abraham Joshua Heschel: A Jewish Saint of the 20th Century. Here are just a few of his ideas that I think may have been very moving for students at Grinnell, most of whom were not Jewish:

1.  Human responsibility rather than divine responsibility. Heschel said “few are guilty but all are responsible.” I devote a great deal of time to this issue, especially when we read Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower, to which Heschel contributed a response.

2.  Heschel always looked for harmony and the positive. Heschel said “just to be is a blessing, just to live is holy.” Very often, I showed the interview that he had with Carl Stern just before he died. The interview ended with Heschel’s message to young people: “Remember that there is meaning beyond absurdity. Know that every deed counts, that every word is power . . . Above all, remember that you must build your life as if it were a work of art.” I think this was a very powerful message for my young students.

3. His stress on wonder and radical amazement. Heschel said, “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.” He also said “I have one talent, and that is the capacity to be tremendously surprised, surprised at life, at ideas. This is to me the supreme Hasidic imperative: Don’t be old. Don’t be stale.”

4. His engagement with the Civil Rights Movement and his stress on social justice.

Heschel may be best known for his 1965 Selma to Montgomery march with Martin Luther King, Jr. After the march he wrote, “I felt my legs were praying.” He was also an early activist against the war in Vietnam and in the plight of the Jews in the Soviet Union.

I focus on his great contribution to interreligious dialogue and on his original idea of pathos. I always remember to tell my students what Heschel once wrote (or perhaps just said in class), that if he could teach only one central idea from Judaism, it would be, "And God said I will make man in my image after my likeness, and God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female, He created them."

Additional Text:

Interfaith Affinity: The Shared Vision of Rabbi Heschel and Pope Francis

Biographer
Waltham, Massachusetts
A Jewish Perspective

Upon meeting and reading Heschel in 1965, for the first time in my life I found a Jewish writer who convincingly evoked the presence of God. Heschel calls this spiritual attitude toward human experience “radical amazement,” a mode of religious thinking about reality. His ultimate goal as writer and teacher was to guide us to “holiness in words.” Henceforth, I began to confront my aspirations and perplexities through Heschel’s perspective. Heschel’s erudition and teaching, rooted in his ethical and political standards derived from the Hebrew prophets, became my models in life and scholarship.

Heschel’s story is the story of the 20th century—its horrors and its marvels. How did Heschel preserve his faith in the God of pathos, justice, and compassion during and after the Holocaust? After he immigrated to the United States in 1940, Heschel developed a prophetic critique of war, economic and spiritual poverty, racism and bigotry, and political corruption. He addressed the terrible ambiguities of religious faith and the fragility of truth. The interfaith consequences of Heschel’s own trajectory provide models for our search for meaning. His scholarship and activism exemplify a sort of neo-Hasidism that inspired Jewish renewal in our lives and observances within and beyond official denominations. In the end, for all his exquisite emotion and subtle interpretations of tradition, Heschel urges us to practice Judaism as best we can. 

There is mystery but no secret. Ruaḥ ha-kodesh, the Holy Spirit, lies waiting in our primal texts: the Bible and the prayerbook. These are the foundations of Sabbath observance—eventually, they may guide us in daily prayer, thinking, and feeling. Of course, we need teachers and activists, such as Heschel, impassioned with the divine imperative. Yet, we may find that books maintain the vision more authentically than do most human beings. That remains our challenge—rising to the standards God has defined. Half a century since Abraham Joshua Heschel’s death, his ultimate message is profound yet simple to grasp: Whatever the yearning is that throbs within us—whether or not we call it the Holy Spirit—it is our responsibility to make it live.

Additional Text:

Abraham Joshua Heschel: Mind, Heart, Soul (Jewish Publication Society, 2019)

Metaphor and Miracle: Abraham Joshua Heschel and the Holy Spirit (Conservative Judaism, Winter 1994)