Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (2nd from right) in the Selma Civil Rights March with Martin Luther King, Jr. (4th from right).

 

Heschel is an inspiration to us in that his life and ideas embody a rare synthesis of values which in lesser spirits would be contradictory: study and action, theology and ethics, a craving for wisdom and spiritual transcendence alongside a similar desire for peace and justice for all, spiritual depth and radical political activism, scholarship and social action, wonder and 'radical amazement' at the natural world together with speaking truth to power in the political arena. Not only did he not see any contradiction between these different values, but he believed that humankind could not fulfill its spiritual potential without the struggle for justice, the eradication of poverty and racism, tireless action for peace, and a renewed relationship to the natural world. These are some of the guiding values of the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership, which is working for a sustainable society, in Israel and the world. A sustainable world is one which is committed to the health of human beings and ecosystems, justice, and the preservation of the commonweal. A sustainable society that can sustain itself over time environmentally, socially, and economically, thereby living up to our responsibilities to future generations. And it is a society that can sustain and nourish us, materially and spiritually, in the present and in the future.

 

Heschel's biography

Heschel was a descendant of preeminent rabbinic families of Europe, both on his mother's (Reizel Perlow Heschel) side, of the family of Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, and his father's (Moshe Mordechai Heschel), a descendant of Rebbe Avrohom Yehoshua Heshl of Apt, the Apter Rebbe – Ohev Yisroel. He was the youngest of six children. In his teens he received a traditional yeshiva education, and obtained traditional semicha, rabbinical ordination at the age of 16. He then studied at the University of Berlin, where he obtained his doctorate, and at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, where he earned a second liberal rabbinic ordination.

 

Heschel's teachers included some of the best German-Jewish teachers: Chanoch Albeck, Ismar Elbogen, Julius Guttmann, and Leo Baeck. When Martin Buber made aliyah in 1937, Heschel was appointed the head of the Lehrhaus Institute in Frankfurt, which Buber and Franz Rosenzweig had founded. Escaping from the Nazis, he found refuge first in England and then the United States, where he briefly served on the faculty of Hebrew Union College (HUC), the main seminary of Reform Judaism, in Cincinnati.

 

Heschel though sought an academic institution which combined critical, modern scholarship of the Bible, wth a commitment to halacha. He found such a place in 1945 when he came to the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS), the main seminary of Conservative Judaism, in New York. He accepted a position there as Professor of Jewish Ethics and Mysticism, where he served until his death in 1972.

 

Heschel authored pioneering studies in modern theology, medieval Jewish philosophy, and Biblical and Talmudic literature Heschel saw the teachings of the Hebrew prophets as a clarion call for social action in the United States and worked for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. The famous picture of him marching arm in arm with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965 in Alabama became a symbol of the cooperation possible between Blacks and Jews in America. Heschel famously said after that march, that he felt that "his legs were praying."

 

His written works include:

 

Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion, 1951

The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man, 1951

God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism, 1955

The Prophets, 1962

Who Is Man?, 1965

The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence, 1966

A Passion for Truth, 1973

Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays with Susannah Heschel, 1997

The Ineffable Name of God: Humankind: Poems, 2004