I first encountered Heschel in JTS Prozdor, a fantastic program for high school students. Some teachers and the other students mentioned Heschel, so I went and got a copy of God in Search of Man. I don’t know how much of it I read at the time, but when I reread it a couple of decades later, I was utterly shocked because so much of what I think as my essence was what I had read in Heschel. He shaped the way I see life. I absorbed the first part of the book into the very fiber of my being, but the rest of the book was completely new to me re-reading as an adult. Here is this thinker whose words shaped the essence of how I think about Judaism, how I think about life, the way I am as a human being, the way I am as a Jew, as a rabbi and a teacher.

The pieces that most appealed to me explored ultimate questions—how much human beings must strive to meet God, how we can think deeply amid all the busyness of life. I see these ideas in who I am as a person, in my vocation, and in my hobbies. I am someone who spends a great deal of time in nature. This is part of God’s Torah. For me, the field guide to the birds of Puerto Rico is almost as much Torah as the Bavli (Babylonian Talmud), or the Book of Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah) in the Bible. There’s something fantastic and wondrous about nature. This also emerges in my love of travel, because I’m going to places and seeing the world and societies as other people have shaped them.

Within the university, I run a Muslim-Jewish student dialogue group. Since October 7, I have been astonished by the Muslim alumni who have called to say they are thinking about me and they’re praying for peace. I don’t know how much I specifically knew of Heschel’s involvement in interfaith work, but the message I took is that human beings are human beings at the core, and we all think about the same things and struggle with the same things. This shared humanity was what I was striving for in my dialogue group so that the Muslim and Jewish students would know how much they share.

I am starting work on a commentary of Exodus. In a recent course I taught on Exodus, the students were surprised that the book continued after the Decalogue (Ten Commandments). Why does the book of Exodus keep on going? Wouldn’t the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) be an appropriate culmination of yetziat Mitzrayim (the Exodus from Egypt)? The story continues with a description of how the Tabernacle is to be built and then returns to the details a second time by describing how the Tabernacle was built. God took up a presence in the Tabernacle, and God’s presence was felt by the community. These details highlight a Heschel connection. Religion is not just the top three inches of a person, not just in the mind and in thought. We must reach out and work to bring God’s presence into the world.

Heschel wrote in God in Search of Man:

The Bible is a seed, God is the sun, but we are the soil. Every generation is expected to bring forth new understanding and new realization.

I’ve taught this in class, and for students it opens their eyes. It’s a new way of thinking, a new way of understanding the religious texts that we study. Scripture is at the center, but we all come to Scripture through different paths.

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.  

This is how Emelda Decoteau and her mother describe the first episode of their podcast:

What does it mean to pray with our feet? How can we spark change through conversation one moment, one day at a time? What is the biblical basis for activism (Proverbs 31:8–9, Matthew 25:40, Amos 5:24, and Isaiah 54:6–7).

All this and more on our first episode lifting up the intersection of faith and social justice / activism.

We delve into:

• Sharing God’s grace and love with folks who have different lived experiences than us. 
• Why activism must be intersectional—immigrant children in detention centers, folks caught in the web of mass incarceration, climate justice, dismantling white supremacy—all of it is connected. 
• The story behind the phrase “pray with our feet,” a quote from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.  
• How we connect to God through our creativity. 
• Why we’re so excited for you to hear our upcoming guests, some include: Rev. Amanda (founder of Raising Imagination, an online community, and co-pastor at Middle Church); Avril Sommervile, activist and writer (Journey of a Life on Purpose); Rev. Lyvonne Proverbs (founder of Beautiful Scars and Emmy award–winning media producer); and Dr. Marisela Gomez, author, activist, and public health physician. Watch her TEDx talk. 

Sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Colin Bossen delivered as part of a series on “The Lives of the Spirit.” The civil rights activist and Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel understood God as pathos. He explores Heschel’s belief that religious piety and social justice activism, which he named the prophetic, were inextricably linked. 

Documentarian Martin Doblemeier’s film which explores Heschel’s activism. The site includes clips and educational materials on themes relating to Heschel’s justice work, his theology, and his interfaith dialogue.

God in Search of Man

The Prophets

Repairing the World

No Religion is an Island

Heschel and the Vietnam War

Heschel and Jewish Tradition

The Sabbath

Twenty distinguished participants in Notre Dame’s international conference “The Theological Issues of Vatican II” were awarded honorary doctorates by the university, including Heschel (front row, third from left).

List of Participants

Heschel receiving his honorary degree from Notre Dame.

In his capacity as Harry Emerson Fosdick Visiting Professor at Union Theological Seminary, Heschel gave this speech in 1965 which he discussed the shared values of Judaism and Christianity and the profound need for dialogue.

Horizons are wider, dangers are greater . . . No religion is an island. We are all involved with one another. Spiritual betrayal on the part of one of us affects the faith of all of us. Views adopted in one community have an impact on other communities. Today religious isolationism is a myth.

Additional Text

Transcript of the speech

The Fall 1973 edition of Conservative Judaism was dedicated to the legacy of Abraham Joshua Heschel. The issue included articles by Arthur Green, Louis Finkelstein, Edward K. Kaplan, Judith Hershlag Muffs, and Fritz Rothschild, among others.

When Pope Paul VI issued the the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions, otherwise known as Nostre Aetate, it fundamentally shifted the relationship between Catholics and Jews. This process began under his predecessor, Pope John XXIII. Throughout the deliberations, Heschel was a key voice for Jewish values and concerns. When the Heschels visited Rome in the 1970s, they met with Pope Paul VI.

Additional Text:

Wide Horizons: Abraham Joshua Heschel, AJC, and the Spirit of Nostra Aetate

In Our Time: AJC and Nostre Aetate