A Passion for Truth

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.

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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. Edward K. Kaplan It was as if my whole religious world had been challenged, in a good and positive (if earth-shattering) way. Rabbi Gerald Skolnik We, his readers, Jewish and Christian, stood in wonder before it – not before him, but before his ability to “walk with God.” Rabbi David R. Blumenthal, PhD