Michal Govrin

His presentation of the unique Jewish foundation of the 'cathedral in time.'

Author, Poet, Theater Director
Jerusalem, Israel

My “dialogue” with Heschel, particularly with his “Shabbat” crosses my novel Snapshots, presenting a radical reading of the Sukkah and Shmita commandements. I regularly presented his reading of the “cathedral of the Sabbath,” a term he probably borrowed from Bialik’s important essay (translated to German by the young Gershom Scholem) “Halacha and Aggadah,” and his presentation of the unique Jewish foundation of the “cathedral in time.” I read it with my students at the Cooper Union School of Architecture, in my lectures on Sukka and Shmita in a seminar led by the poet David Shapiro.

I often juxtaposed Heschel’s thoughts originally presented to the Yiddish society in New York after World War II to Heidegger’s essays, written at the same time concerning space and building, with a palpable contrast in defining the metaphysical dimension.

Heschel’s attitude toward Zionism, hinted at in this book, interested me in my formulation of a complex attitude to the Topos—Zion, in the actual phase of Jewish thinking from within sovereignty and implantation.

Matan Daskal

Heschel’s poetic and relevant way of connecting spoke to me, igniting my thinking.

Castle in Time Orchestra
Israel
A Secular Israeli Perspective

Transcribed from an interview

As music students, my friend Shalev Ne’eman (co-artistic director of Castle in Time Orchestra) and I first encountered Abraham Joshua Heschel as we engaged many different ideas—creating a hybrid orchestra with classical instruments and a rhythm section including electric guitar and a computer, exploring the concept of time, and contrasting the intensity of the work week with the peace of Shabbat and the intersection of black culture with Jewish and Israeli life. Shalev found Heschel online while searching for the last of these. He saw this incredibly strong image of Heschel walking with Martin Luther King, Jr. And through this, we discovered The Sabbath.

Everything clicked suddenly: We were already working on a song about Shabbat. We started sampling his interviews and inserting them into a hip hop song. The project, which started as a performance, became bigger—a series of workshops on the Sabbath with Bet Avi Chai, a premiere, and then a huge question: What should we do? We decided, maybe naively, to create an orchestra. When selecting a name, we based it on The Sabbath: Castle in Time Orchestra (In Hebrew: Armon B’Zman). As a dancer and a composer, this name merged both the physical and the metaphysical—a castle is part of the material world and time is a different dimension. What is a place in time? Shabbat kept the Jewish people unified when they were exiled from Israel, and Shabbat was the place that they came back to. But more and more than the historical thing, I just love the poetics of it—how time can be a place. And then it also kind of like echoing and place refers to movement and the body and time. Shabbat can be a cure to modern society, this Jewish idea to give a resting day.

If someone spoke about Shabbat in a very religious or specific way, I don’t think it would have touched me. But something about how Heschel’s poetic and relevant way of connecting spoke to me, igniting my thinking.

Gallery

Casper ter Kuile

The rhythm of the week (and my own sanity!) is shaped by this practice.

The Nearness
New York, New York

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

Harvard Divinity School, where I found Heschel’s The Sabbath in the library stacks. I read it in one weekend and fell completely in love with his theological imagination and clear conviction.

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

Personally, he inspired my own “tech sabbath” practice. I started to turn off my phone and laptop on Friday nights in early 2014, and that practice has sustained me for nearly a decade! I don’t always manage to keep to the full 24 hours, but the rhythm of the week (and my own sanity!) is totally inspired by this Heschel-shaped practice. Because I’ve added a note to my emails about my tech sabbath, I’ve had countless people ask about it; I always point them to Heschel.

Reverend Johnnie Moore

Rabbi Heschel taught the Bible and linked it to our present time with effortless elegance. 

The Congress of Christian Leaders
Washington DC
A Baptist Perspective

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

I don’t remember the exact time, but it must have been when I was in my early 20s. I was the campus pastor at Liberty University, and I encountered Rabbi Heschel’s book The Sabbath.  As a young evangelical growing up in the Baptist tradition, I felt a powerful love for the Jewish community, but I had never read any theological text written by a Jewish rabbi. I shortly thereafter discovered his book The Prophets and used it heavily when preparing sermons on the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. In many ways, discovering Heschel launched me into a lifelong passion for Jewish texts. At this very moment, a copy of The Prophets sits on my desk (a gift from a rabbi mentor of mine) and it sits next to several other books by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Rabbi Lau’s three-volume commentary on Pirkei Avos, Rabbi Soloveitchik’s book On Repentance, and a copy of some Chofetz Chaim readings. I’ve found a deeper understanding of my own faith by engaging substantively with rabbinic commentaries on the Hebrew Bible. My relationship with Jews and Judaism isn’t sentimental any longer. It is about shared learning and shared serving.

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

As a millennial evangelical, I felt a commonality with Heschel’s passion for justice and the fact that he still taught the biblical text seriously. His teaching gives us a prophetic theology that isn’t political theology, per se. His sermons shook the foundations of the culture, but they were still sermons drawn from and anchored in the biblical text. Sometimes, clergy preach politics and shimmy in the Bible. Rabbi Heschel taught the Bible and linked it to our present time with effortless elegance. 

I really love the remarks he delivered on the first occasion he and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., shared a pulpit.

What of Heschel lives in you?

Heschel always challenges me to leave my comfort zone, to embrace righteousness and justice, and to know that the Bible says something about all of it. 

The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (1951)

Heschel explores the spiritual and ethical significance of the Sabbath in this classic work. He argues that the Sabbath is a sanctuary in time, providing a space for humans to connect with the divine and find rest from the demands of everyday life.