Rabbi David Steinhardt

Bnai Torah Congregation
A Jewish Perspective

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

I was first “introduced” to Heschel when my mother came home from a talk Heschel gave in 1963 at my synagogue. I was only 10 years old, but I have a vivid memory of my mother’s enthusiasm. She was from a rigid orthodox “yekke” family. That night she was exposed to a visionary, a philosopher, a freedom fighter, a humanist steeped in tradition. And she said: “One day, David, you will have to hear him.” I believe he renewed her sense of being Jewish in the post-Holocaust world.

In high school I read some Heschel and was exposed to his thought through teachers from JTS at my shul and Ramah. And I was alive and aware during the Vietnam War days and the struggles for civil rights. My own identity became renewed by the idea that Judaism and Jewish values and Jewish actions could be and should be brought to the streets, to the community, to the fight for social justice, freedom, and the deeper places where the spirit resided.

I met Rabbi Heschel in 1970 in the cafeteria at JTS long before my college or rabbinical school years. My teacher had brought me to NYC to pick up some work he had submitted to Heschel. One memory from that moment: this man of greatness was very interested in speaking to me and hearing about me.