Rabbi Lizzi Heydemann

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.