A Passion for Truth

A Passion for Truth (1973)

This book was published posthumously and is significantly autobiographical. It compares and contrasts the life and thought of the enigmatic Hasidic Rebbe Menahem Mendl of Kotzk with that of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. A secondary contrast that is that between the Baal Shem Tov (considered the founder of Hasidism) and the Kotzker Rebbe, a duality that Heschel maps onto the mind and soul.

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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. Rabbi Michael Graetz He offered me an urgency that I hadn't felt in my Judaism before then. Rabbi Jill Jacobs Heschel's ideas about prophecy, radical amazement, and communal responsibility have inspired me for decades. Rabbi Dan Orenstein