At Camp Ramah in the early 1970s and subsequently throughout my time at The Rabbinical School.

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

As the product of an Orthodox Yeshiva education, I never encountered Heschel in a serious way until being introduced to his thought at Camp Ramah in the Berkshires, and then, of course, at JTS. “Revelation” as an idea to be explored or understood beyond the notion of “Torah MiSinai” was just not a part of my spiritual world. Neither was studying Midrash as a discipline ever considered to be “serious” Torah. Halakhah dominated all that I was taught. The lines between Midrash and written Torah text were completely and intentionally made invisible.

Heschel introduced to me the idea that the Torah itself was not to be understood literally, that the Torah’s recounting of the revelation at Sinai was, if understood literally, a dramatic subversion of the text, and that those chapters of Exodus describing the experience at Sinai were to be understood more as a painting than a “news report.” When I was introduced to that piece of writing by Heschel, it quite literally changed everything about my own understanding of Judaism, my religious life as a whole, and its direction going forward. It was as if my whole religious world had been challenged, in a good and positive (if earth-shattering) way.

What of Heschel lives in you?

The more I studied Heschel’s thought, the more I came to realize and appreciate that doubt is as irreducible a component of a religious life as faith is. If the intention of Torah is to celebrate the mystery of God and our relationship to God and God’s world, then it must surely be true that that celebration requires religious imagination, and imagination requires the freedom to think both within and outside of accepted norms and structures.

At this point in my life, after a pulpit career of 42 years and preaching to and teaching so many Jews, I cannot imagine how I could possibly have led a Jewish life with sustaining meaning if his words and thoughts were not a part of my everyday practice.

From God in Search of Man, Chapter 19 on “The Mystery of Revelation”:

We must not try to read chapters in the Bible dealing with the event at Sinai as if they were texts in systematic theology. Its intention is to celebrate the mystery, to introduce us to it rather than to penetrate it or explain it. As a report about revelation, the Bible itself is midrash.

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

I spent the year after high school studying in Jerusalem at Yeshivat HaMivtar (Brovenders), where I struggled with issues of religious doubt and observed the darker side of religious zealotry. Somehow I found a copy of Heschel’s Passion for Truth, and learned that there was a rich literature on these topics, especially on the danger of egotism found in elite settings like the Beit Midrash. I appreciated the Kotzker’s intolerance of hypocrisy and pride—it served as much needed tokheha (correction) for my incipient arrogance. And the hesed (compassion) of the Besht reminded me that kindness is the foundation of righteousness.

I returned to Heschel again in college when I studied the prophets as models of social criticism and used a Heschel quote as a frontispiece for my senior thesis on Brit Shalom, a bi-nationalist organization in Mandatory Palestine. In rabbinical school I was drawn to Torah min hashamayim and found appealing the idea that Talmudic sages stood for spiritual world views (even if historians doubted the reliability of such accounts). On the CJLS (Committee for Jewish Laws and Standards), I looked to Heschel’s The Sabbath to frame my responsum on electricity and Shabbat, and then returned to his “Patient as Person” address to the AMA when studying artificial intelligence. Of course we were all proud of Heschel’s social justice activism, but it was his writing that most moved me.

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

A 50-year legacy: Heschel symbolizes for me the importance of being deeply rooted in one’s own religious heritage while remaining wide open to finding friendship and meaning far from one’s own path. It’s not just that Heschel made alliances, but that he was open to being changed by others. It would have been easy for someone whose world was so thoroughly destroyed to turn inward and angry. What a remarkable model he established in the opposite direction!

What of Heschel lives in you?

The fact that his most memorable public actions came at the very end of his life. I look at him and wonder what spiritual opportunities await as I approach 60.

What constitutes being human, personhood? The ability to be concerned for other human beings . . . The truth of being human is gratitude, the secret of existence is appreciation, its significance is revealed in reciprocity. Mankind will not die for lack of information; it may perish from lack of appreciation. Being human presupposes the paradox of freedom, the capacity to create events, to transcend the self.

—“Patient as Person,” Insecurity of Freedom

Additional Text:

Electricity and Shabbat

Artificial Intelligence

Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano
Buenos Aires, Argentina
A Jewish Perspective

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

In the 1970s in Argentina, I learned about Heschel through the impact of Marshall Meyer’s rabbinic work, but my first direct personal encounter with Heschel’s work was in the 1980s, while living in New York.

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

Heschel, for me, is a true prophet in our times, in every sense of the word. What he describes of the prophet, the prophetic experience, and prophecy in many of his works (The Prophets, Prophetic Inspiration After the Prophets, God in Search of Man, and others) is born out of his own personal experience. One can sense in the poetry of his youth how he was almost “accosted” by God as the prophets of the Bible were.

Then we have Heschel’s own personal hint in God in Search of Man, where he tells us that “the philosopher is never a pure spectator . . . his books are . . . as windows, allowing us to view the author’s soul . . . All philosophy is an apologia pro vita sua.” Thus, also, what Heschel writes about Saadia, Maimonides, Abarbanel, the Baal Shem Tov, or the Kotzker Rebbe often reveals his own life, ideas, and struggles.

For Heschel, the prophet, the man is more important than prophecy; the life of a person more important than his ideas. Heschel’s ideas are profound and spiritually transformative, for me more so than those of any other religious master or philosophical thinker I have ever read in my life. But even more amazing is to feel the enormous privilege of the close connection to Heschel that is created when one reads his works. When he writes, every reader is addressed personally, and his ideas are applicable to the lives of all people at all times. This is the distinctive quality of divine revelation. Through it, God speaks to us, in our time. Heschel was His prophet for our times. God is concerned for us, for the desperate and possible terminal state of humankind and our inability to find a way out of our quandary by ourselves, without His help. He never loses faith in us, and Heschel lived in great anxiety and almost despair in the face of the human condition. He was given the gift of prophecy but also the gift of poetry and language to translate into human terms the divine concern. His message will only grow more and more meaningful for humankind with the passage of time. As Marshall once told me, Heschel will be understood 500 years from now.

What of Heschel lives in you?

His passion for truth about the deeper wisdom and significance of Judaism is a spiritual adventure that unfolds in history as a response to the divine call to all humankind. He is sensitive to each and every sacred source of Judaism: the Hebrew Bible (Torah, Prophets, and Writings), rabbinic literature (Talmud and Midrash), medieval Jewish philosophy, and mysticism and Hasidism. He is the last great master of Judaism, able to integrate all of the Jewish tradition, understanding the significance of each period in Jewish history and the right tenor of each sacred source. He was able to create a bridge between them and our times and culture, which he also embraced and mastered with unique depth and sensitivity. He was able, also, to dialogue meaningfully with all people and groups, knowing how to speak to each one of them and what message they each needed to hear. In this he was like Aaron, “ohev et habriyot umekarvan la Torah” (be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving mankind and drawing them close to the Torah).

In response to the question of whether he was a prophet, Heschel said:

I won’t accept this praise, because it’s not for me to say that I am a descendant of the Prophets, which is an old Jewish statement. It is a claim almost arrogant enough to say that I’m a descendant of the Prophets, what is called Bnai Neviim. So let us hope and pray that I am worthy of being a descendant of the prophets.

—Eternal Light interview, 1972; transcribed in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity

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.

University of Warsaw
Poland

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

It was about 20 years ago when Stanislaw Obirek recommended that I read Heschel.

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

Heschel was not only a philosopher and theologian but also a poet. I love his Yiddish poems almost as much as I love his philosophy. So it is a pleasure to read his works, all of them, because he wrote so beautifully. Because of his work I became, as an atheist, more open to spirituality and faith as such. I also share his powerful criticism of religious institutes and establishment. I was much struck by his book The Prophets. Not only because it is insightful and beautiful but also because it is so much connected to his social engagements. He shows that the morality of the prophets can guide us morally, even today.

The most compelling quote of Heschel is “Perhaps not all of us guilty, but all of us are responsible.” For me it is a guide for my life, not to be indifferent, to be engaged socially, and not to close myself in a ivory tower. It is such a powerful quote, because it treats all human beings as rational and moral adults. It is especially important today when choosing to be a victim is so widespread. Heschel says, “Do not think about yourself as a helpless person who suffers, but form your suffering into an action of helping others who suffer even more than you. You are strong enough to do that. You are a worthy and powerful human being and not a passive object or an egoistical immature child.” If we all followed this message, the world would be much better.

Heschel’s ethics of responsibility is a powerful inspiration. It also makes his Judaism so humble and accepting. I wish it were an inspiration for all the Jews. I’m very much concerned with what is going on with Jewish mutations, or sects, especially in Israel. There is nothing in common with them and Heschel’s caring for all human beings. Heschel’s God of pathos is based on tikkun olam for all humanity, with no exclusion of any group. I appreciate very much his Torah min Hashamayim, because it shows that his interpretation of Judaism is well established on Jewish sources.

What of Heschel lives in you?

His social collaboration with Martin Luther King, Jr., his theology after Auschwitz and his affirmation of life, his benevolence (for example, toward the plagiarist of his PhD), his commitment to dialogue (which I believe was a result of the Holocaust), and his passion for truth.

Additional Text:

I Am What I Do: Abraham Joshua Heschel Seen from Two Perspectives, Secular Jewish and Christian

University of Warsaw
Poland
A Christian Perspective

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

Heschel’s prominent students Rabbi Byron L. Sherwin and Professor Harold Kasimow told me about their master.

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

It is a very difficult question for me, because each of books affected me in different way. But if I have to mention one, I will say that his essay “No Religion Is an Island” shaped my perception of Judaism as a dialogical religion and Christianity as a religion closely related to its mother religion. Reading The Prophets was a revelation for me, showing the common ground for both religions which should be a sensitivity to the suffering of poor people. Honestly I cannot think about myself as a Christian and follower of Jesus of Nazareth for whom religion was a religion of the prophets of Hebrew Bible without the books by Abraham Joshua Heschel.

What of Heschel lives in you?

For me the most important from Heschel’s legacy is his commitment to social justice and his passion to transmit to others the beauty of belief in the God of the Hebrew Bible. What inspired me most is Heschel’s involvement in Jewish-Christian dialogue and his contribution to the declaration Nostra Aetate of the Second Vatican Council.

Perhaps it is the will of God that in this eon there should be diversity in our forms of devotion and commitment to Him. In this eon, diversity of religions is the will of God.

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.  

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

As a young student, I read his theological writings, but it was through his daughter, Susannah, that I encountered his writings in a more personal way when I was lecturing on religious existentialism at Dartmouth.

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

For me as a Roman Catholic, I find Heschel’s involvement in shaping Nostra Aetate with Cardinal Bea is something that needs more attention. Heschel’s treatment of Kierkegaard is something that I hope to explore further when an opportunity presents itself.

What of Heschel lives in you?

I found Heschel’s emphasis on the wonder that we are, which awakens us to action, profound. This quote highlights Heschel’s approach to the Torah:

We sail because our mind is like a fantastic seashell, and when applying our ear to its lips we hear a perpetual murmur from the waves beyond the shore.

Additional Text:

Abraham Joshua Heschel and Nostra Aetate: Shaping the Catholic Reconsideration of Judaism during Vatican II

The Time and Name of Mercy: Rabbi Abraham Heschel and Pope Francis in Dialogue

A Passion for Truth (1973)

This book was published posthumously and is significantly autobiographical. It compares and contrasts the life and thought of the enigmatic Hasidic Rebbe Menahem Mendl of Kotzk with that of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. A secondary contrast that is that between the Baal Shem Tov (considered the founder of Hasidism) and the Kotzker Rebbe, a duality that Heschel maps onto the mind and soul.