Sinai Temple
Los Angeles, California
A Jewish Perspective

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

My parents told me when Heschel first arrived in his inaugural lecture, he began with a niggun. Everyone thought, at the intellectually charged JTS, that this was from another planet. Heschel’s confidence in the power of the tradition and his ability to transmit it, even in the face of incomprehension and ridicule, was a constant example throughout his life. And he triumphed.

What of Heschel lives in you?

In my rare best moments, his courage, his wonder, his eloquence, his audacity.

In our own lives the voice of God speaks slowly, a syllable at a time. Reaching the peak of years, dispelling some of our intimate illusions and learning how to spell the meaning of life-experiences backwards, some of us discover how the scattered syllables form a single phrase.

—Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man

First Baptist Church in America
Providence, Rhode Island
An American Baptist Perspective

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

As a student in divinity school.

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

In the late 1990s, the Rev. Dr. Vincent Harding offered a course on Beloved Community at Harvard Divinity School. He taught about how Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched alongside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and others in the struggle for civil rights. The idea of praying with our legs and feet opened my concepts of embodied faith. Petitions for justice and peace take root in deep intercession and thrive in community. Heschel’s embrace of active service as a complementary mode of prayer expanded my theology and practice. Alongside faith, he urged leaps of action towards the righteous world we desire to inhabit. Protest can be a form of prayer, heard both in the rhythm of the psalms and soles on pavement.

Decades later, I heard Heschel’s call put to music by Paul Vasile, in his song, “Pray with Our Feet.” May the teachings of this good rabbi continue to inspire action and awe for generations.

It’s not enough to offer thoughts and prayers.
It’s not enough to say that we care.
It’s not enough to hope that things will change.
We’ve got to pray with our feet,
pray with our feet, pray with our feet
and get out, out on the street.

Paul M. Vasile, LovedIntoBeing Music ©2018

The Nearness
New York, New York

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

Harvard Divinity School, where I found Heschel’s The Sabbath in the library stacks. I read it in one weekend and fell completely in love with his theological imagination and clear conviction.

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

Personally, he inspired my own “tech sabbath” practice. I started to turn off my phone and laptop on Friday nights in early 2014, and that practice has sustained me for nearly a decade! I don’t always manage to keep to the full 24 hours, but the rhythm of the week (and my own sanity!) is totally inspired by this Heschel-shaped practice. Because I’ve added a note to my emails about my tech sabbath, I’ve had countless people ask about it; I always point them to Heschel.

The Jewish Theological Seminary
New York, New York
A Jewish Perspective

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

I first encountered Professor Heschel as a Prozdornik (a student at Prozdor, the Jewish supplemental program for teens) at JTS during high school. At one of our Shabbatons, Professor Reuven Kimelman taught about him, and we were all given a short biography by Byron Sherwin that introduced us to his life and thought.

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

Although I am primarily a biblical scholar, my most recent book, Revelation & Authority: Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition (Yale, 2015; Hebrew edition: Carmel, 2022), is as much about Heschel as it is about the Bible. I attempt to show there that Heschel’s view of revelation (and also that of Franz Rosenzweig) is much more deeply rooted in the Bible than people realize, especially in the Pentateuch’s Priestly and Elohistic strands. The idea of revelation as a partnership to which both God and the people Israel make a contribution is at the core of Heschel's kabbalistic-Hasidic theology. The Priestly and Elohistic strands of the Pentateuch, each in its own way, also describe the law-giving at Sinai as the result of a dialogue between God and Israel.

What of Heschel lives in you?

Much of Heschel’s work, from his first book (in German) through his last (in Yiddish), consists of a deeply respectful but vigorous argument with Maimonides about the true nature of God. In this debate, Maimonides is the theological radical, and Professor Heschel comes to defend traditional rabbinic and biblical understandings of a personal God who enters into relationship with human beings. My second book, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel, shows how this fundamental debate about God already occurs within the Bible itself. While writing that book, I thought of the debate as a medieval one that took place between rationalists and Kabbalists, and I tried to show that a similar or predecessor discussion about God took place in the Bible. But looking back on it, I see now that without fully realizing it, I was deeply influenced by Heschel as I wrote that book. In fact that book is no less about Heschel than my third book. This is the deepest sort of influence, the influence that is so ever-present that one ceases to be aware of it. I should add that this side of Heschel—the traditionalist who defends rabbinic and biblical Judaism against theological radicals like Maimonides—is not acknowledged as much as it should be, so I am glad that in my work and my teaching I have opportunities to show how productive and sensitive his commitment to tradition is.

University of Warsaw
Poland

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

It was about 20 years ago when Stanislaw Obirek recommended that I read Heschel.

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

Heschel was not only a philosopher and theologian but also a poet. I love his Yiddish poems almost as much as I love his philosophy. So it is a pleasure to read his works, all of them, because he wrote so beautifully. Because of his work I became, as an atheist, more open to spirituality and faith as such. I also share his powerful criticism of religious institutes and establishment. I was much struck by his book The Prophets. Not only because it is insightful and beautiful but also because it is so much connected to his social engagements. He shows that the morality of the prophets can guide us morally, even today.

The most compelling quote of Heschel is “Perhaps not all of us guilty, but all of us are responsible.” For me it is a guide for my life, not to be indifferent, to be engaged socially, and not to close myself in a ivory tower. It is such a powerful quote, because it treats all human beings as rational and moral adults. It is especially important today when choosing to be a victim is so widespread. Heschel says, “Do not think about yourself as a helpless person who suffers, but form your suffering into an action of helping others who suffer even more than you. You are strong enough to do that. You are a worthy and powerful human being and not a passive object or an egoistical immature child.” If we all followed this message, the world would be much better.

Heschel’s ethics of responsibility is a powerful inspiration. It also makes his Judaism so humble and accepting. I wish it were an inspiration for all the Jews. I’m very much concerned with what is going on with Jewish mutations, or sects, especially in Israel. There is nothing in common with them and Heschel’s caring for all human beings. Heschel’s God of pathos is based on tikkun olam for all humanity, with no exclusion of any group. I appreciate very much his Torah min Hashamayim, because it shows that his interpretation of Judaism is well established on Jewish sources.

What of Heschel lives in you?

His social collaboration with Martin Luther King, Jr., his theology after Auschwitz and his affirmation of life, his benevolence (for example, toward the plagiarist of his PhD), his commitment to dialogue (which I believe was a result of the Holocaust), and his passion for truth.

Additional Text:

I Am What I Do: Abraham Joshua Heschel Seen from Two Perspectives, Secular Jewish and Christian

University of Maryland
College Park, Maryland
A Protestant Perspective

We published a unit on Rabbi Heschel’s 1963 speech “Religion and Race” with our online Voices of Democracy project. I believe it is one of our more powerful units in our growing collection of speeches and essays because of Heschel’s strong commitment to civil rights in the heart of the Civil Rights Movement. His words are as profound and meaningful in 2023 as they were in 1963. The image of Heschel and King marching together is a poignant reminder that we need to work collectively and find commonality if we are to create more just and nonviolent communities.

Let us dodge no issues, let us yield no inch to bigotry, let us make no compromise with callousness.

—From his 1963 speech on “Religion and Race”

University of Warsaw
Poland
A Christian Perspective

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

Heschel’s prominent students Rabbi Byron L. Sherwin and Professor Harold Kasimow told me about their master.

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

It is a very difficult question for me, because each of books affected me in different way. But if I have to mention one, I will say that his essay “No Religion Is an Island” shaped my perception of Judaism as a dialogical religion and Christianity as a religion closely related to its mother religion. Reading The Prophets was a revelation for me, showing the common ground for both religions which should be a sensitivity to the suffering of poor people. Honestly I cannot think about myself as a Christian and follower of Jesus of Nazareth for whom religion was a religion of the prophets of Hebrew Bible without the books by Abraham Joshua Heschel.

What of Heschel lives in you?

For me the most important from Heschel’s legacy is his commitment to social justice and his passion to transmit to others the beauty of belief in the God of the Hebrew Bible. What inspired me most is Heschel’s involvement in Jewish-Christian dialogue and his contribution to the declaration Nostra Aetate of the Second Vatican Council.

Perhaps it is the will of God that in this eon there should be diversity in our forms of devotion and commitment to Him. In this eon, diversity of religions is the will of God.

The Congress of Christian Leaders
Washington DC
A Baptist Perspective

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

I don’t remember the exact time, but it must have been when I was in my early 20s. I was the campus pastor at Liberty University, and I encountered Rabbi Heschel’s book The Sabbath.  As a young evangelical growing up in the Baptist tradition, I felt a powerful love for the Jewish community, but I had never read any theological text written by a Jewish rabbi. I shortly thereafter discovered his book The Prophets and used it heavily when preparing sermons on the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. In many ways, discovering Heschel launched me into a lifelong passion for Jewish texts. At this very moment, a copy of The Prophets sits on my desk (a gift from a rabbi mentor of mine) and it sits next to several other books by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Rabbi Lau’s three-volume commentary on Pirkei Avos, Rabbi Soloveitchik’s book On Repentance, and a copy of some Chofetz Chaim readings. I’ve found a deeper understanding of my own faith by engaging substantively with rabbinic commentaries on the Hebrew Bible. My relationship with Jews and Judaism isn’t sentimental any longer. It is about shared learning and shared serving.

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

As a millennial evangelical, I felt a commonality with Heschel’s passion for justice and the fact that he still taught the biblical text seriously. His teaching gives us a prophetic theology that isn’t political theology, per se. His sermons shook the foundations of the culture, but they were still sermons drawn from and anchored in the biblical text. Sometimes, clergy preach politics and shimmy in the Bible. Rabbi Heschel taught the Bible and linked it to our present time with effortless elegance. 

I really love the remarks he delivered on the first occasion he and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., shared a pulpit.

What of Heschel lives in you?

Heschel always challenges me to leave my comfort zone, to embrace righteousness and justice, and to know that the Bible says something about all of it.  

Israel Religious Action Center
Israel
A Jewish Perspective

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

I was inspired by the Jewish concept of working for social change, promoting equality and dignity in the name of the Judaism. This is especially vital these days when the Israeli government is espousing a very narrow version of Judaism that is completely opposite to what Heschel believed in.

What of Heschel lives in you?

The image of Heschel marching in Selma together with Martin Luther King, Jr., is powerful and is on my mind when we march for peace and coexistence in Jerusalem or when we march with Torah scrolls at the entrance to the Western Wall.