American Jewish University
Los Angeles, California
A Jewish Perspective

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

In graduate school at Brandeis, I read Torah min Hashamayim. Subsequently I edited (an ultimately unpublished) translation of the books.

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

In certain ways Heschel is used as a fig leaf; the picture of him and MLK on the bridge is trotted out every year on MLK Day as a proof text that the Jewish community is on the right side of history. But we’re not, on the whole, and Heschel's life was a life of prophetic agitation in which he saw his role as pushing the Jewish community beyond their comfort zones, out of the synagogues and the federation buildings and into the streets.

What of Heschel lives in you?

His combination of Hasidic transcendence and awe (which I don’t have, but wish I did) and political courage beyond the walls of the university.

Additional Writing:

From JTS to Riverside Church

Elon University
Elon, North Carolina
A Jewish Perspective

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

Schechter Institutes
Jerusalem, Israel
A Jewish Perspective

How did you first encounter Abraham Joshua Heschel’s work?

On 2002, after a few years of studying in Hesder yeshivot, I joined the family business and became a bored insurance agent. After about a year, I decided to devote one day a week to master’s studies at Bar Ilan, and there I heard a course by Prof. Ephraim Meir on Heschel and Buber. I wrote a seminar paper to compare them, and then I asked Prof. Meir to write a master’s thesis, which would include a comparison between what I wrote about Buber and Rabbi Soloveitchik. Prof. Meir claimed that I should write about Heschel. I started writing and suddenly my eyes were opened. I met Heschel and he changed my life.

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

Before meeting Heschel, I felt that I had a pretty good understanding of the knowledge map of Judaism, but he made me realize that I was looking at it from the wrong perspective. For me, it was a map of mere ethnic and halachic knowledge; Heschel taught me to look at it from God's point of view.

I was born in a hard core settlement in the Jewish-democratic state, and since my youth I felt that there was a tension between the Jewish and the democratic. The murder of PM Rabin shocked me. Because of the world in which I grew up, I was not surprised by the murder, but I was surprised that Israeli society was surprised. I suddenly realized that my Jewishness and my Israeliness cannot live together. When I met Heschel, I understood that there is another Judaism and that mere ethnic and halakhic Judaism could be idolatrous. The most significant lines in his thought for me are:

“What is an idol? Any god who is mine but not yours, any god concerned with me but not with you, is an idol. Faith in God is not simply an afterlife-insurance policy. Racial or religious bigotry must be recognized for what it is: blasphemy . . . God is every man’s pedigree. He is either the Father of all men or of no man. The image of God is either in every man or in no man.”

—”Religious and Race,” The Insecurity of Freedom

Heschel taught me a new (or maybe ancient) interpretation of the word “God,” every time it appears in the sources—and suddenly the whole of Judaism was illuminated in a new light. God is not an absolute other who gives absolute validity to one's ethnicity and religion; He is someone who cares about all human beings and who invites us all into an interpersonal relationship with him. He is a kind of utopian parent, whose light calls all people to live in brotherhood, sisterhood, or solidarity.

What of Heschel lives in you?

I don’t know what to say. I simply feel the great privilege to be his chasid. He is my rebbe, and I try to follow his path, which is very demanding, I must say. Too many times I don’t succeed, but his thought illuminates my way and gives me hope that at the end of the tunnel, there is light.

Bible Raps
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
A Jewish Perspective

How did you first encounter Abraham Joshua Heschel’s work?
I started getting interested in Jewish thought after trip to Israel on Livnot Birthright. Heschel’s Man In Search of God and other works were suggested. I was a philosophy major and his thought was attractive in that regard and how well he articulated my personal beliefs about Judaism and God. Reading Heschel validated my initial interest in Jewish thought and led me to understand that Judaism is where it’s at for me. While I grew up Jewish in Iowa city, Iowa, I never really delved deep into Jewish thought until Heschel. In doing so I said to myself "Wow, I am really am Jewish!"

How did Heschel influence your life, thinking, and/or work? What of Heschel lives in you?
His philosophy of Judaism in Man’s Quest for God and The Prophets, along with his lectures from 1968 and 1970, were essential for the development of my Jewish identity. His partnership with MLK was also important because I spend so much time with Black people as a hip hop artist. I use Heschel to contextualize my magnum opus with samples from his lectures on my album Best Bible Rapper Alive.