Interreligious Affairs Director (DATES), American Jewish Committee
Fort Meyers, Florida
A Jewish Perspective

Transcribed from an Interview

I’m very proud that my rabbinical school, Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, brought Rabbi Heschel to the United States, where he taught for some years. I want to pay tribute to the HUC president at the time, Rabbi Julian Morgenstern, who had the commitment and resources to save Rabbi Heschel’s life.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was able to position religious mysticism into an academic context. Prior to that, Jewish academia was largely a world of rationalism, Talmud, and maybe Midrash, but certainly not mysticism. He brought a sense of awe and wonderment into the academic world and also into the mainstream of Jewish religious thought. Part of the reason that he could accomplish this was because of his deeply rooted Jewish learning. He married this sense of wonder with his intellectual rigor. 

I was ordained as a rabbi in 1960. I went into the Air Force military chaplaincy and was stationed in Japan and Korea for two years. When I returned to civilian life, I served in Kansas City for two years as an assistant rabbi. By that time, Rabbi Heschel was becoming nationally and internationally known. 

And of course, in 1963, he gave a now-famous speech at the Conference on Religion and Race in Chicago, where he first met Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was there that Rabbi Heschel said, “At the first conference on religion and race, the main participants were Pharaoh and Moses . . . The outcome of that summit meeting has not come to an end. Pharaoh is not ready to capitulate.” This speech also included the notable statement, “Some are guilty, but all are responsible.” His link to Dr. King was notable; they saw in one another modern-day prophets and charismatic leadership qualities. 

Heschel deeply affected my own professional life: specifically, the role he played at the Second Vatican Council. The Council adopted the Nostra Aetate Declaration in 1965. The Latin means “in our time,” and it fundamentally changed the ways Jews and Catholics interacted with each other. 

A year earlier on September 14, 1964, the day before Yom Kippur, he met with Pope Paul VI in Rome because a proposed version of the Declaration included some troubling conversionary language. Rabbi Heschel pushed the church leader on the issue of conversion, saying,  “As I have repeatedly stated to leading personalities of the Vatican, I am ready to go to Auschwitz any time, if faced with the alternative of conversion or death.”  Heschel made it very clear that the statement’s language on conversion was unacceptable, not only to him, but to the global Jewish community. This language was removed, changing thousands of years of church doctrine.

The next time Heschel impacted me was in 1967. I was one of the first rabbis to travel to Israel after the Six Day War. He had written a superb book about Israel, Israel: An Echo of Eternity, and he expressed for all of us the dread and fear Jews everywhere experienced during the run up to the Six Day War.

After hearing about him since I was a student at HUC-JIR in New York, I first met Rabbi Heschel when he came to the American Jewish Committee headquarters in 1970 or 1971. At that point, he was the Jewish voice of opposition to use of destructive napalm and, indeed, the war in Vietnam, which resonated with me because I had been in Asia when the American military buildup was starting. 

Rabbi Heschel broke out of the narrowness of some parts of the Jewish community. Heschel was in America, doing American things. He was involved with civil rights, whether you agreed with him or not. He was there with MLK in Selma, Alabama. He was also anti–Vietnam War. He was in many public arenas taking personal, religiously inspired stands. 

One of the most important things he did for interreligious work was leaving the JTS building and crossing the street in Morningside Heights in NYC to teach at neighboring Union Theological Seminary. By crossing the street, he built a human bridge. Those connections at Union and his personal meeting with the pope made my work much easier because I could talk about Rabbi Heschel’s extraordinary commitment to interreligious dialogue. This gave me enormous credibility in my work as the director of interreligious affairs at the American Jewish Committee. I may not have been an actual classroom student of Heschel’s, but I could, and did, stand on his shoulders.  

I was a student at JTS from 1956 to 1961.  In 1957 I took two courses with Professor Heschel: one on Genesis with an emphasis on Rashi’s interpretation and one on Jewish theology in which we read Heschel’s book God in Search of Man. In 1971, when I was a graduate student at Temple University, in preparation for my dissertation on Heschel, I traveled from Philadelphia to New York City once a week to attend a seminar that Heschel was teaching to his rabbinical students on his book Torah min Hashmayim. After every class I went to his office where Heschel gave me many sources for my thesis. When he left, I walked him home. Sometimes we would converse in Yiddish, our common birth language. 

I was very challenged by the statement that “Providence may someday create a situation which would place us between the river Jordan and the river Ganges,” from his book God in Search of Man. To me, this statement seemed to mean that Professor Heschel was encouraging dialogue between Jews and members of Asian religions. So I devoted a great deal of time to the study of Asian religions. I was even more challenged by his essay “No Religion Is an Island,” where he argues that no religion has a monopoly on truth or holiness and says “In this eon, diversity of religions is the will of God.” In my books on Heschel, I have devoted a great deal of time to his vision of other faiths.

Heschel, who devoted his life to love and peace, was for me not just a superlative teacher but my interreligious hero. He remains the most important spiritual teacher of my life. At Grinnell College, I have offered a seminar: Abraham Joshua Heschel: A Jewish Saint of the 20th Century. Here are just a few of his ideas that I think may have been very moving for students at Grinnell, most of whom were not Jewish:

1.  Human responsibility rather than divine responsibility. Heschel said “few are guilty but all are responsible.” I devote a great deal of time to this issue, especially when we read Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower, to which Heschel contributed a response.

2.  Heschel always looked for harmony and the positive. Heschel said “just to be is a blessing, just to live is holy.” Very often, I showed the interview that he had with Carl Stern just before he died. The interview ended with Heschel’s message to young people: “Remember that there is meaning beyond absurdity. Know that every deed counts, that every word is power . . . Above all, remember that you must build your life as if it were a work of art.” I think this was a very powerful message for my young students.

3. His stress on wonder and radical amazement. Heschel said, “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement . . . Get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.” He also said “I have one talent, and that is the capacity to be tremendously surprised, surprised at life, at ideas. This is to me the supreme Hasidic imperative: Don’t be old. Don’t be stale.”

4. His engagement with the Civil Rights Movement and his stress on social justice.

Heschel may be best known for his 1965 Selma to Montgomery march with Martin Luther King, Jr. After the march he wrote, “I felt my legs were praying.” He was also an early activist against the war in Vietnam and in the plight of the Jews in the Soviet Union.

I focus on his great contribution to interreligious dialogue and on his original idea of pathos. I always remember to tell my students what Heschel once wrote (or perhaps just said in class), that if he could teach only one central idea from Judaism, it would be, "And God said I will make man in my image after my likeness, and God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female, He created them."

Additional Text:

Interfaith Affinity: The Shared Vision of Rabbi Heschel and Pope Francis

Biographer
Waltham, Massachusetts
A Jewish Perspective

Upon meeting and reading Heschel in 1965, for the first time in my life I found a Jewish writer who convincingly evoked the presence of God. Heschel calls this spiritual attitude toward human experience “radical amazement,” a mode of religious thinking about reality. His ultimate goal as writer and teacher was to guide us to “holiness in words.” Henceforth, I began to confront my aspirations and perplexities through Heschel’s perspective. Heschel’s erudition and teaching, rooted in his ethical and political standards derived from the Hebrew prophets, became my models in life and scholarship.

Heschel’s story is the story of the 20th century—its horrors and its marvels. How did Heschel preserve his faith in the God of pathos, justice, and compassion during and after the Holocaust? After he immigrated to the United States in 1940, Heschel developed a prophetic critique of war, economic and spiritual poverty, racism and bigotry, and political corruption. He addressed the terrible ambiguities of religious faith and the fragility of truth. The interfaith consequences of Heschel’s own trajectory provide models for our search for meaning. His scholarship and activism exemplify a sort of neo-Hasidism that inspired Jewish renewal in our lives and observances within and beyond official denominations. In the end, for all his exquisite emotion and subtle interpretations of tradition, Heschel urges us to practice Judaism as best we can. 

There is mystery but no secret. Ruaḥ ha-kodesh, the Holy Spirit, lies waiting in our primal texts: the Bible and the prayerbook. These are the foundations of Sabbath observance—eventually, they may guide us in daily prayer, thinking, and feeling. Of course, we need teachers and activists, such as Heschel, impassioned with the divine imperative. Yet, we may find that books maintain the vision more authentically than do most human beings. That remains our challenge—rising to the standards God has defined. Half a century since Abraham Joshua Heschel’s death, his ultimate message is profound yet simple to grasp: Whatever the yearning is that throbs within us—whether or not we call it the Holy Spirit—it is our responsibility to make it live.

Additional Text:

Abraham Joshua Heschel: Mind, Heart, Soul (Jewish Publication Society, 2019)

Metaphor and Miracle: Abraham Joshua Heschel and the Holy Spirit (Conservative Judaism, Winter 1994)

Albany, New York
A Jewish Perspective

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

Though I knew from an early age that my mother had studied with Dr. Heschel, my first formal encounter with him was through an anthology of his writings given to me as a gift by my high school social studies teacher. Heschel’s ideas about prophecy, radical amazement, and communal responsibility, as well as the beauty of his writing, have inspired me for decades.

Additional Text:

The Aroma of Paradise

What Do We Make of the Nighttime Stars

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

Where did you first encounter Heschel’s work?

Several years ago, I was searching for a connection between activism and faith. For as long as I can remember, I have felt drawn to speaking out against injustice, but sadly, didn’t find a place for it in many church spaces. One day, while reading about Dr. King’s later years and writings, I stumbled across a short blog post on Rabbi Heschel and his involvement with the Civil Rights Movement.

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

Rabbi Heschel inspired me to start an online community and podcast (which I cohost with my mom), Pray with Our Feet. We highlight the intersection of progressive Christianity and social justice through interviews with ministers, activists, artists, and thinkers.

The idea came alive after reading about Rabbi Heschel’s involvement in the Civil Rights Movement and commitment to seeing faith and activism as deeply connected.

There’s an incident from his life that really resonates with me because it lifts up how central faith is along our journey to creating a better world (described here):

When Rabbi Heschel returned from Selma, he was asked by someone, ‘Did you find much time to pray, when you were in Selma?’ Rabbi Heschel responded, ‘I prayed with my feet.’ What was his point? That his marching, his protesting, his speaking out for Civil Rights was his greatest prayer of all.

Rabbi Heschel’s legacy is one of activism built upon his relationship with God. He challenged us to see each other as human beings created in the image of God. Only then can we love, esteem, and value others. After 50 years, his voice is that of a modern-day prophet reminding each of us that racism is the ultimate evil perpetuated by humanity.

What of Heschel lives in you?

Heschel’s commitment to human rights, antiracism, and love for humanity and God live within us. These values (which he beautifully embodied) drive the work Mom and I do together, and ground us in a deeper presence with the world. Heschel often spoke of the wonder and amazement of God:

Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement . . . Get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.

His words, legacy, and life push us to awaken continually.

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

The Earth Is the Lord’s: The Inner World of the Jew in East Europe (1950):

Heschel provides a vivid and personal account of Jewish life in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. Through his personal reflections, he captured the richness of Jewish spirituality, culture, and devotion, shedding light on a world that was tragically lost.

Who Is Man? (1965)

Heschel reflects on the nature of humanity and the purpose of existence in this philosophical work. He discusses the unique qualities that distinguish humans from other beings and explores the ethical responsibilities that come with human existence.