Chemist
Bradenton, FL
A Jewish (Reform) Perspective

How did you first encounter Abraham Joshua Heschel’s work?
At 18, I was given the book G-d In Search of Man. Its intro shocked me with glee…I had never imagined the Creator was seeking the created in need.

That book stole my attention, leading to college where I shocked my advisor, professor and college: I demanded credit through independent study. My college/advisor’s directive: if you want to credit for those areas, you must submit a proposal with the goals of course, the books/sources, and how I should be tested. In 1990-95 at Appalachian State University, I sent letters to: Duke University, Davidson College, Yale University, & Princeton requesting their class syllabi in: Hebrew Language, Maimonides (Guide for the Perplexed), ibn Rushd (The Incoherence of the Incoherence), Plato and Aristotle! It resulted in four college courses (three 1-semester hour + 1 Senior stud) I respected Heschel the most!

How did Heschel influence your life, thinking, and/or work? What of Heschel lives in you?
The wonder of nature: both as a scientific study and the complexity of the mind. My life was changed after college…I had discord as a gay man in American society, I became a chemist for the local government, then worked on a federal study in the isolation of woods with water animals, living Walden Pond wonder. Prayer has been a beauty – mind the creator and pleading from the created! Nothing else covers life, Lord, love, and respect but Prayer!

I still seek Justice, that sacred call of Judaism. Justice is the balance between created and creator! This is Heschel’s paradigm shift in G-d In Search of Man. The Torah is filled with examples of Love from the Lord AND doesn’t explain why the “Israelites” receive Love. Heschel says this Love from the Lord is necessary not merely a gift. Justice is the foundation of our Western Society–the legal system, the Constitution of the USA– it is a requirement of Humanity to fulfill the goals from the Lord. Israelite teachings/ethics are the foundation of society!

Chancellor Emeritus and Professor of Jewish Thought, JTS 
New York, New York
A Jewish Perspective

I first encountered Heschel as a teenager. My Conservative synagogue in Philadelphia had an assistant rabbi named Nahum Waldman, who had the brilliant idea of taking the teens out of services and forming a discussion group about modern Jewish thought. I met Heschel, Kaplan, and Buber with a group of other teenagers. I concluded that the rabbi must have been as bored with services as we were. I often tell the story, which has a mythic air to it, that I opened God in Search of Man, where Heschel says, “Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid” – and was convinced that he had must have been to my synagogue. 

Several years later, I was a reporter for the Daily Pennsylvanian when Heschel came to speak at Penn. I covered the story, and I screwed up my courage, which was an effort because I was very shy, and asked if I could interview him in New York.  Months after I wrote about his speech at Penn, I drove up to New York, and knocked on the door of Heschel’s office at JTS. I will never forget the room. It was a tiny office that was full of books–not just on the shelves but piled high on the floor. There was barely room for our chairs. I spent an hour and three quarters with him and wrote up the story, which appeared in the Daily Pennsylvanian feature magazine. 

This interview changed my life. Heschel realized quickly that I had personal questions that I needed to ask, and he met me where I was and spoke to me from the heart. I walked into this meeting needing Heschel to prove to me that Jewish life and the life of the mind were worthwhile: that ideas matter; Judaism matters; that religion can make a difference in the world. By the time I walked out of his office, I had no doubt about these things.

I try to be there for students when they are talking to me in my office, as Heschel was for me.  Martin Buber wrote somewhere that you have to not only answer the questions that are asked by the person before you, you have to answer the questions that are not asked. Heschel  certainly did that when I sat before him.   

In the interview I asked:  where did you get the chutzpah to say that religion declined because it became irrelevant, oppressive, insipid and dull? You don’t exclude Judaism from this generalization, so you’re saying that the religion that many Jews are practicing is irrelevant. Where do you get the authority to say that? And first he tried to duck the question– he said that some people like vanilla ice cream, some people like chocolate ice cream. I replied, Rabbi Heschel, we’re not talking about ice cream. We’re talking about people’s lives. And then he said:  President Nixon thinks the war in Vietnam is justified, and I think it’s evil. Then he said something close to the following,  which I must confess I didn’t quote it exactly like this in the Daily Pennsylvanian piece, but this is what I remember:  “I am the heir to a great religious tradition. And as such it is not only my right, it is my duty to speak in the name of that tradition as best I can, knowing that other people will speak differently.”

That has meant everything to me. Heschel’s stance on civil rights was popular, but his leadership in the anti-war movement was extremely controversial. He wasn’t just saying, “on balance, I have concluded that the war is wrong.” Heschel said the war was evil.

When I became Chancellor Elect of JTS, we had to make a decision about the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy,  following the historic halakhic ruling by the Law Committee of Conservative Judaism. I Heschel’s words in my mind: I’m an heir to this religious tradition that I love. And as such I had not only the right, but the duty to speak in its name as best I could Heschel gave me the justification that I needed for taking on this enormous issue. I resist answering questions about “what would Rabbi Heschel do or say in our day about this or that matter?”   Because we can’t know what a person who passed away decades ago would do today. But Rabbi Wolfe Kelman said something to me that was very wise. He said that Heschel sometimes opened doors for people that he himself did not walk through. 

I belong to the generation of people who  tried to follow him, were inspired by his words and tried to take them further. 

My academic career has focused on understanding modern Judaism in terms of the challenges Jews faced and the responses major thinkers and “Jews in the pews” have made to those challenges.  I chose a historical perspective as opposed to a sociological one because I didn’t want to be an outsider to my own tradition, looking at figures like Heschel in terms that come from secular disciplines. The texts and thinkers I study are of personal importance to me. Abraham Joshua Heschel and Mordecai Kaplan often asked versions of the same questions that concern me by day and keep me up at night. Heschel influenced my career choice. And he changed my life.  Here was a man of great learning and immense piety, the author of many beautiful books who was also and an activist who put his learning into practice in pursuit of justice.

You ask:  What of Herschel does not live in me? I will never be as learned or pious or courageous as he was. I value Heschel’s teaching that we are not all prophets but there should be something of the prophet in every one of us. Heschel taught me that we’re not just here  to sit in shul or in the study hall. There is work to be done and we must be active doing that work in the world. Torah must lead to action. Heschel wanted us to take God seriously to take the study of Torah seriously and to take action in the world seriously. I got that from him at the age of twenty and it has remained fundamental to who I am and try to be. That’s an incredible gift for one person to give to another. I will be indebted to this man for as long as I live.

Connected Texts:

“Heschel Urges Festivity and Sense of Awe in World of ‘Tedium, Humdrum Inevitability.” The Daily Pennsylvanian. (2/26/1971).

“Miracles and a Shrug of the Shoulders.” 34th Street. (10/7/1971)

Global Ambassador, American Jewish World Service
New York
A Jewish Perspective

My mother, Marjorie Wyler, arrived at JTS through a series of accidents. She was raised Jewish, but she did not have a sophisticated understanding of Judaism from her childhood. She pursued that understanding as an adult. When she found herself working at the Jewish Theological Seminary with Chancellor Finkelstein as the Head of Public Relations, Radio, and Television, she became responsible for explaining the intricacies of Judaism–everything from text to holidays to observance—to both Jews, who tended to have their own version of Judaism, and to the broader world. There was an immediate connection between her work and Heschel. He was the perfect conduit for conveying Judaism and Conservative Judaism in ways that would make a difference to varied audiences.

Separate from her work at JTS, she was attracted to Heschel’s ideas. I first heard about him through her. As I became very active in the civil rights and anti-war movements, she brought this  iconic person to my attention. My mother would have presented the breadth of Heschel; he marched with Doctor King, but he’s much more complex than this. She introduced what he was saying about civil rights, why he’s engaged, what he’s saying about democracy, what he’s saying about the war. She gave me a fuller picture than most people had or have of Heschel.

Heschel was a man out of time and space. If you come to any country from somewhere else, you can see things that people who live here don't see. Heschel not only saw the American people, but opened himself up to reflecting on and frankly, making new Torah for the US. He knew everything about text, teaching the prophets and Judaism, but that didn’t stop him from developing new perspectives. Most importantly to me, he wasn’t afraid to use his talents and unique perspective to push for America to be a better version of itself.

I can sum up my career in public service and nonprofit leadership in one sentence using Heschel’s words: “In a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.” This quote appeared on the masthead of every newsletter I printed as both a city council member and Manhattan Borough president. When I ran American Jewish World Service (AJWS), I spent a great deal of time talking to Jews about why they should care about people in the rest of the world, and that quote was my most powerful tool.

In my capacity at AJWS, I was often asked what my favorite country was to visit. After mentioning specific projects, or food and travel, I would always add Cambodia and Haiti. In both of those instances, we, the United States, created the structural problems AJWS was attempting to combat. Although I was not personally guilty for creating American foreign policy towards these countries, I can name the guilty parties, and in both cases, they were my government. While I am not guilty, I am responsible.

I spend a lot of time talking to college students. In these settings, I quote Heschel’s final interview on NBC. I believe Heschel told the interviewer, Carl Stern, to ask him what advice he had for young people. This may be apocryphal, but that’s the way I like to tell the story. Heschel answered with the world’s most amazing, succinct quote:

Let them be sure that every little deed counts, that every word has power, and that we can—every one—do our share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and all frustrations and all disappointments. And above all, remember that the meaning of life is to build a life as if it were a work of art.

The first half is a good reminder to people, especially today, when they can so easily make fools of themselves on social media. Focusing on the second half—“build their lives as if they were a work of art”— I love that concept and seeing how it resonates with younger people. I ask them when you think of your life as a sculpture in a public place, what are you going to put on that sculpture?

From January 14 to 17, 1963, religious leaders from the Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish organizations met in Chicago, Illinois. The conference was organized to bring “the joint moral force of the churches and synagogues to bear on the problem of racial segregation.” Rev Martin Luther King Jr was the keynote speaker at the Conference and Heschel delivered an address on “Religion and Race.” It was here that Heschel said:

Few of us seem to realize how insidious, how radical, how universal an evil racism is. Few of us realize that racism is man’s gravest threat to man, the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason, the maximum of cruelty for a minimum of thinking.

First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston
Houston, Texas
A Christian Perspective

Transcribed from an interview

I consider Heschel one of the religious giants of the 20th century, and it’s probably worth noting here that I’m a Unitarian Universalist. My dad is a secular Jew from the Jewish socialist tradition, and my mom’s family was connected to the Christian socialist tradition—one of my grandparents grew up in the Amana Colonies. When they got together, they joined a Unitarian Universalist congregation because they were in the Midwest and there wasn’t a progressive Jewish community that they felt comfortable in. My brother and I were raised as Unitarian Universalists, and I became a minister. Heschel was just one of those people, like Martin Buber or Arthur Waskow, who was just around in the background of my early life. 

My deeper engagement with Heschel came through my engagement with African-American religious studies. Prior to joining the clergy, I earned a PhD from Harvard in American Studies, and over the years I have held a couple of nonresidential fellowships in African American studies. I have had the opportunity to engage with many people—like Albert Raboteau (professor of religion at Princeton University)—who were deeply influenced by Heschel.  

My congregation, First Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Houston Texas, is doing a yearlong program looking at some of the spiritual giants of the 20th century. I selected Rabateau’s book American Prophets as a guidepost for determining whom we might explore. He dedicates a whole chapter to Heschel. We ended up focusing on Heschel in September 2023. 

This program has many different elements. I give a sermon once a month on one of the spiritual giants, then we have a book discussion group that meets twice. For Heschel, we read Man’s Quest for God. We had a workshop that was led by a rabbi and a Jewish member of our congregation. I was impressed by the level of response. I thought we would have about 40 people engaged in the programs throughout the course of the month, and we had almost double that. 

Reflecting upon my personal connection to Heschel, I am struck by his civil rights activism and engagement across communities of faith. I look to the incredible speech he gave at the Conference of Religion and Race (where he met King for the first time) as a model. 

Heschel was going to host King for a seder in 1968 right before King was assassinated. That loss continues today. Maybe if King had lived even just a little bit longer, and there had been an even deeper connection between the two of them, perhaps it could have added more resources for us to navigate the complicated relationships that sometimes exist between the Jewish and African American communities. Heschel provided a connection between his experiences in the Holocaust with the civil rights struggle and Jim Crow.  Fifty years later, we're in a place where dialogue is so difficult, and I celebrate Heschel who relished those moments and found many ways to be in conversation.  

Temple Beth Zion
Brookline, Massachusetts
A Jewish Perspective

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

I encountered Heschel’s work as a little kid. Growing up in South America, Heschel was an intrinsic part of the teachings. Most of his books have been translated into Spanish, and I still have them in my library. My father, Rabbi Angel Kreiman-Brill (z”l), was one of the first two graduates of the Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano and a student of Rabbi Marshall Meyer (z”l). Heschel's teachings were so embedded in the teaching I grew up with that I remember being very surprised when I learned in my 20s that the "palace of time" from the book The Sabbath was not in the Torah. For a long time (and perhaps still) my Judaism was fully shaped by Heschel’s writing, without even knowing.

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

Heschel’s thinking was/is the base of my religious practice and the basis of my social justice engagement as a religious obligation. A few things come to mind:

My relationship to prayer, especially to the tension/relation between keva (straightforward prayer) and kavanah (the intention behind prayer). I wrote my final paper for rabbinical school on that question and I have applied this question not only in religious practice and prayer but beyond in my teaching and my own practice.

Heschel’s activism, as a religious man and in response to the teachings of the prophets, is perhaps at the center of my activism (through the teachings of Rabbi Marshal T. Meyer). I see in social justice activism a religious obligation, and that is at the center of my rabbinate.

The Sabbath (which I read first in Spanish) shaped my understanding of Shabbat from early age.

Lastly my relationship with God, as a seeker. I am searching for God at all times. As a student of Rabbi Art Green, I use the concept of seeker; I believe that Rabbi Green’s teachings are also influenced by Heschel.

I do not know how/if I would be a committed and searching Jew, let alone a healing-oriented rabbi, without Dr. Heschel. Though I was raised in a loving, observant home, and my parents (a Conservative rabbi and rebbetzin) were true “disciples” of Heschel (my mother kept The Sabbath and other Heschel books in her night table for decades), it was my own encounter with Heschel’s writings as an adolescent and young adult that challenged me to pray with self-evaluation, searching, praise, and wonder; to both uplift and spiritually ground my Shabbat; and to merge my Jewish particular practice of Rites with my also Jewish universalist pursuit of Rights. In many of Dr. Heschel’s precious words come to mind; let me cite just three quotes related, I feel, to these areas of Prayer, Shabbat, and Social Justice:

 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.

—God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism

Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self.

—The Sabbath

Morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.

—Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity

Fifty years after Rabbi Heschel’s death, finding ourselves in a violently self-destructive, hate-saturated, and dangerously fragmented society and world, I think of these prescient words:

Modern man may be characterized as a being who is callous to catastrophes. A victim of enforced brutalization, his sensibility is being increasingly reduced; his sense of honor is on the wane. The distinction between right and wrong is becoming blurred. All that is left to us is our being horrified at the loss of our sense of honor.

—God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism

Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam (CALCAV) emerged as a pivotal organization during the Vietnam War, bringing together a diverse group of religious leaders and laypeople who shared deep concerns about the escalating conflict. Heschel was one of the notable figures playing a crucial role in CALCAV’s founding. He worked with Rev. John Bennett (president, Union Theological Seminary), John Berrigan (Jesuit priest), Rev William Sloane Coffin (chaplain, Yale University), Pastor Richard Neuhaus (St John the Evangelist Church, Brooklyn), and David Hunter (Deputy General Secretary, National Council of Churches). His moral authority and commitment to social justice were instrumental in shaping CALCAV’s mission. Together, they provided a unified voice, transcending religious boundaries, and advocating for peace amidst the turbulent backdrop of the Vietnam War.

It was under CALCAV’s auspices that Martin Luther King delivered his 1967 speech at Riverside Church, “Beyond Vietnam.”

Melvin Myles leads the combined choirs of The Temple and Ebenezer Baptist Church as the two communities celebrate the 137th anniversary of Ebenezer in a song written by Rabbi Micah Lapidus. In addition to the incredible musical performance, Rev. Warnock offers a special benediction that concludes the song and the worship service.