Abraham Joshua Heschel

Like the Hebrew prophets before him, the great American rabbi and civil rights leader reveals God’s concern for this world and each of us. Abraham Joshua Heschel, descended from a long line of Orthodox rabbis, fled Europe to escape the Nazis. He made the insights of traditional Jewish spirituality come alive for American Jews while speaking out boldly against war and racial injustice. Heschel brought the fervor of the Hebrew prophets to his role as a public intellectual. He challenged the sensibilities of the modern West, which views science and human reason as sufficient. Only by rediscovering wonder and awe before mysteries that transcend knowledge can we hope to find God again. This God, Heschel says, is not distant but passionately concerned about our lives and human affairs, and asks something of us in return. This little book, which brings together Heschel’s key insights on a range of topics, will reinvigorate readers of any faith who hunger for wonder and thirst for justice. Plough Spiritual Guides briefly introduce the writings of great spiritual voices of the past to new readers.

No matter who wins the next election, Caesar will remain Caesar, doing some good and some bad. But Christians report to a different king. This issue starts with a provocation. In his opening letter, editor Peter Mommsen suggests Christians are too excited about the wrong politics: “Questions of public justice should matter deeply to Christians. We dare not be indifferent about securing healthcare for all and ending interventionist wars; we must seek to reduce abortions and strengthen families. When an election comes, we should pray and then, perhaps, lend our support to a candidate we judge may, on balance, advance social righteousness. But if the early Christians and the Anabaptists are right, this isn’t the politics that matters most. And so, as a matter of faithfulness, we should question how much it deserves of our passion and time. Our allegiance belongs elsewhere.” In contrast to an election campaign, this politics may feel grittier and less glamorous. This issue of Plough Quarterly explores what this alternate vision of faithful Christian witness in the political sphere might look like. You’ll find articles on: What two leading political theorists of left and right agree on What persecution taught Anabaptists about politics The Bruderhof’s interactions with the state Tolstoy’s case against making war more humane How some Christians read Romans 13 under fascism

In This Hour offers the first English translations of selected German writings by Abraham Joshua Heschel from his tumultuous years in Nazi-ruled Germany and months in London exile, before he found refuge in the United States. Moreover, several of the works have never been published in any language. Composed during a time of intense crisis for European Jewry, these writings both argue for and exemplify a powerful vision of spiritually rich Jewish learning and its redemptive role in the past and the future of the Jewish people. The collection opens with the text of a speech in which Heschel laid out with passion his vision for Jewish education. Then it goes on to present his teachings: a set of essays about the rabbis of the Mishnaic period, whose struggles paralleled those of his own time; the biography of the medieval Jewish scholar and leader Don Yitzhak Abravanel; reflections on the power and meaning of repentance, written for the High Holidays in 1936; and a short story on Jewish exile, written for Hanukkah 1937. The collection closes with a set of four recently discovered meditations-on suffering, prayer, spirituality, and God-in which Heschel grapples with the horrors unfolding around him. Taken together, these essays and story fill a significant void in Heschel’s bibliography: his Nazi Germany and London exile years. These translations convey the spare elegance of Heschel’s prose, and the introduction and detailed notes make the volume accessible to readers of all knowledge levels. As Heschel teaches history, his voice is more than that of a historian: the old becomes new, and the struggles of one era shed light on another. Even as Heschel quotes ancient sources, his words address the issues of his own time and speak urgently to ours.

These 66 poems, here in English and Yiddish on facing pages, were collected in the first book Abraham Joshua Heschel ever published. They appeared in Warsaw in 1933 when Heschel was 26 years old and still a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Berlin. Written between 1927 and 1933-and never published in English before-this is the intimate spiritual diary of a devout European Jew, loyal to the revelation at Sinai and afflicted with reverence for all human beings. These poems sound themes that will resonate throughout Heschel's later popular writings: human holiness, a passion for truth, awe and wonder before nature, God's quest for righteousness, solidarity with the downtrodden, and unwavering commitment to tikkun olam. In these poems we also discover a young man's acute loneliness, dismay at God's distance, and dreams of spiritual and sensual intimacy with a woman.

Known most widely for his role in the civil rights and peace movements of the 1960s, Abraham Joshua Heschel made major scholarly contributions to the fields of biblical studies, rabbinics, medieval Jewish philosophy, Hasidism, and mysticism. Yet, his most ambitious scholarly achievement, his three-volume study of Rabbinic Judaism, is only now appearing in English. Heschel's great insight is that the world of rabbinic thought can be divided into two types or schools, those of Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael, and that the historic disputes between the two are based on fundamental differences over the nature of revelation and religion. Furthermore, this disagreement constitutes a basic and necessary ongoing polarity within Judaism between immanence and transcendence, mysticism and rationalism, neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism. Heschel then goes on to show how these two fundamental theologies of revelation may be used to interpret a great number of topics central to Judaism.

Elegant, passionate, and filled with the love of God's creation, Abraham Joshua Heschel's The Sabbath has been hailed as a classic of Jewish spirituality ever since its original publication-and has been read by thousands of people seeking meaning in modern life. In this brief yet profound meditation on the meaning of the Seventh Day, Heschel introduced the idea of an "architecture of holiness" that appears not in space but in time Judaism, he argues, is a religion of time: it finds meaning not in space and the material things that fill it but in time and the eternity that imbues it, so that "the Sabbaths are our great cathedrals." Featuring black-and-white illustrations by Ilya Schor

Dr Abraham Joshua Heschel (19071972), professor of Ethics and Mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, was one of the outstanding philosophers and theologians of our time. Internationally acclaimed author, scholar, activist and theologian, Dr Heschels classic, "Mans Quest for God", originally published in 1954, continues to be a significant contribution to contemporary Jewish literature. In his poetic and inspiring style, Heschel offers insights that speak deeply to the essence of prayer.

This first collection of Heschel's essays - compiled, edited and with an introduction by his daughter Susannah Heschel, is a stunning reminder of the virtuosity of one of the most well respected minds in Judaic studies.

"Heschel's last statement on despair and hope in Hasidism as he experienced it himself through study of the Baal Shem Tov and the Kotzker, whose life and thought is dramatically depicted in this book." —Prof. Fritz A. Rothschild, The Jewish Theological SeminaryIt is comparatively easy to preach joy and fervor, but to demand Truth is like shaping marble without tools. And so [the Kotzker] went looking for a few surging people and called loudly upon their souls to bend their conceit and see the Truth beneath the soil.... This was not a philosophical inquiry into the nature of Truth but a scrutiny of men’s lives in relation to Truth. Religion, the Kotzker maintained, was not simply an act of adopting a system of beliefs and certain modes of conduct; test and trial were needed, and one had to ascertain through introspection whether one’s beliefs were genuine or not, and whether one acted out Truth or lived a life of pretense.... Kierkegaard made it his task “to reintroduce Christianity into Christendom.” The Kotzker sought to reintroduce authenticity to Jewish life. Kierkegaard’s posthumous impact has been powerful. But has the Kotzker affected Jewish self-understanding?—from A Passion for Truth

"Israel: An Echo of Eternity "is Dr. Heschel's book about the past, present, and future home of the Jews. According to Dr. Heschel the presence of Israel has tremendous historical and religious significance for the whole world: "History is not always made by men alone... Israel is a personal challenge, a personal religious issue. We are God's stake in human history. We are the dawn and the dusk, the challenge and the test. The presence of Israel is the repudiation of despair. Israel calls for a renewal of trust in the Lord of history." Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the foremost religious figures of our time, died in 1972. "Israel: An Echo of Eternity" is his powerful and eloquent book on the meaning of Israel today.

"Philosophy may be defined as the art of asking the right questions... Awareness of the problem outlives all solutions. The answers are questions in disguise, every new answer giving rise to new questions." This example of Rabbi Heschel's thought and manner of expression, familiar to the readers of his many books, serves as an epigraph to The Wisdom of Heschel. As Ruth Goodhill says in her foreword, "These selections from the works of the prophetic giant of the twentieth century, Abraham Joshua Heschel, represent my personal response to his writings. This book, conceived during his lifetime, is offered as an introduction to his thought and to his profound understanding of the agonies of modern society." Most of the selections are taken from God in Search of Man, The Insecurity of Freedom, Man Is Not Alone, The Sabbath, The Prophets, and Who Is Man? Among the categories in which the excerpts have been grouped are "Questions Man Asks, " "Man's Needs, " "Caring for Our Old, " "Teaching Our Young, " "Law, "" The Sabbath, " and "One World."

Heschel's classic work on Maimonides, originally published in Berlin during the thirties, in one of the few scholarly biographies available of the great medieval philosopher.

Considered by many to be one of the most significant Jewish theologians of the 20th century, Abraham Heschel finds just the right words to startle the mind and delight the heart. He addresses and challenges the whole person, portraying that rarest of human phenomena--the holy man.

Abraham Joshua Heschel was one of the most revered religious leaders of the 20th century, and God in Search of Man and its companion volume, Man Is Not Alone, two of his most important books, are classics of modern Jewish theology. God in Search of Man combines scholarship with lucidity, reverence, and compassion as Dr. Heschel discusses not man's search for God but God's for man--the notion of a Chosen People, an idea which, he writes, signifies not a quality inherent in the people but a relationship between the people and God. It is an extraordinary description of the nature of Biblical thought, and how that thought becomes faith.

Man Is Not Alone is a profound, beautifully written examination of the ingredients of piety: how man senses God's presence, explores it, accepts it, and builds life upon it. Abraham Joshua Heschel's philosophy of religion is not a philosophy of doctrine or the interpretation of a dogma. He erects his carefully built structure of thought upon foundations which are universally valid but almost generally ignored. It was Man Is Not Alone which led Reinhold Niebuhr accurately to predict that Heschel would "become a commanding and authoritative voice not only in the Jewish community but in the religious life of America." With its companion volume, God in Search of Man, it is revered as a classic of modern theology.

The Insecurity of Freedom is a collection of essays on Human Existence by one of the foremost Jewish thinkers of our time, Abraham Joshua Heschel.