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

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.

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

As a teenager, I saw Heschel’s book God in Search of Man on my parents’ bookshelf. My LTF leader and Torah-reading instructor, Dov (Denny) Elkins, said to me at that time that Heschel’s thought was very challenging. He also reported that in the JTS student body (to which he belonged at the time), half the students were Kaplanians and half were Heschelians.

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

My religious life has been a constant tug between the demands of philosophical rationalism (represented by Maimonides and Milton Steinberg) and existentialist commitment (represented by Heschel). From the Maimonidean pole: intellectual honesty; be true to what your reason tells you is true and credible. From the existentialist pole: commitment to the divine imperative, expressed in ethical obligation not as mere humanistic ideal but as empathy with the divine pathos. “Perform God’s will as if it were your will” (Avot 2:4). To Heschel, this meant an integration of the human and the divine wills, and ultimately working toward harmony of all human wills under the aegis of the Almighty.

It has been one of my greatest privileges to work with Gordon Tucker on delivering to the English-reading audience Heschel’s masterpiece on rabbinic thought, Heavenly Torah. Not coincidentally, he makes the tug in my own thinking the axis of rabbinic thought, with the Ishmaelian tradition representing the rationalist side and the Akivan tradition, the side of absolute commitment and mystical ecstasy.

In teaching Jewish philosophical theology, I, too, present Maimonides and Heschel as the two outstanding thinkers of the Jewish philosophical tradition and the integration of their perspectives as the ultimate challenge for the student of Jewish philosophical theology.

Additional Texts

Adult Education Curriculum to Heavenly Torah

Heavenly Torah Handout, Part 1

Heavenly Torah Handout, Part 2

Heavenly Torah Handout, Part 3

Heavenly Torah Handout, Part 4

A. J. Heschel’s Heavenly Torah Epitome

Brandeis University
Waltham, Massachusetts
A Jewish Perspective

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

In high school I read God in Search of Man, and in my senior year I heard Heschel lecture at Washington University in St. Louis on the Insecurity of Freedom. I then studied with him at JTS for eight years, 1962–1970.

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

Heschel’s example and advice has inspired most of my academic life—from my doctoral thesis on Rabbi Yochanan, which was his suggestion, to my writings on theology, liturgy, ethics, and Jewish-Christian relations from the classical period to the modern one. His legacy grows every year through more commemorations, articles, and books about him. Truly great men become greater posthumously.

What of Heschel lives in you?

My commitment to Jewish practice, thought, religious audacity, and social engagement are all filtered through his example and writings (best reflected in Who Is Man?). During my years in The Rabbinical School, he was my spiritual father.

Additional Text

Review, The Sabbath

Review, Torah Min Hashamayim

Heschel Memorium, in Hebrew (Part 1, Part 2)

The Inexplicable Phenomenon

The Theology of Abraham Joshua Heschel

Response Memorium (Winter 1972–1973)

Rabbis Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Abraham Joshua Heschel on Jewish Christian Relations

Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Theology of Judaism and the Rewriting of Jewish Intellectual History

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.

I first encountered Heschel’s work as a first-year college student at Carleton College, in an introduction to religion class with Prof. Louis Newman. I took the class without any particular interest in Jewish Studies—I was far more interested in studying other traditions—and did not expect to be interested in the Jewish sources that were on the syllabus. But the first Jewish text included on our syllabus was a chapter from Heschel’s God in Search of Man, and I was entranced by it. After reading the chapter, I went to the shelves in Carleton’s Gould Library, found the full volume, started reading, and couldn’t put it down.  I was shocked because Heschel’s writing seemed neither fundamentalist nor dull at all. Rather, it struck me as intellectually serious, challenging, engaging, enticing. This kindled my interest in Jewish studies and eventually my own Jewish engagement, setting in motion the path that eventually led to my becoming a rabbi and scholar of Jewish ethics.

Additional Writing:

God and Suffering in Torah Min Hashamayim

Israel: An Echo of Eternity (1969)

Focused on the significance of the Jewish people, this book explores the historical and spiritual dimensions of Jewish identity. Heschel reflects on the enduring covenant between God and the Jewish people, emphasizing the responsibility to live in accordance with divine teachings. Heschel wrote this book following the Six Day War.

Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion (1951):

In this philosophical exploration, Heschel delves into the nature of religious experience and the relationship between humanity and God. He emphasizes the idea that true knowledge of God comes through a profound sense of awe and wonder.

Additional Content:

Heschel in Ottawa 1967, Exploring Man Is Not Alone

Man’s Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism (1954):

In this book, Heschel explores the profound aspects of prayer and religious symbolism. He delves into the human quest for a meaningful connection with the divine, examining the role of prayer as a spiritual discipline and the symbols that facilitate this dialogue.