Last month we celebrated the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. Last month was also the birthday of a Jewish philosopher and rabbi, who became closely associated with King. He was a person who said about King these words, “Where in America today do we hear a voice like the prophets of Israel? Martin Luther King is a sign that God has not forsaken the United States….His presence is the hope of America. His mission is sacred, his leadership of supreme importance to every one of us.” King responded to this Jewish philosopher in these words. “He is indeed a truly great prophet….Here and there, we find those who refuse to remain silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows.” This person, despite his towering intellect that flourished in the ivory towers of Europe and the US, was inspired to see the world beyond those towers, to speak out for social causes, and to act as well. He marched with Martin Luther King in Selma Alabama in support of civil rights. Last month would have been his hundredth birthday. Unfortunately he died at the age of 65. Can you guess whom I’m talking about?
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Biography
Heschel was born on January 11, 1907, into a Chassidic family in Warsaw, Poland. He was a genius, and was ordained as a rabbi at the age of 16. His intellect and his curiosity were such that they could not be satisfied within the Chassidic community. It was highly unusual for a Chassid to study in the secular world. But Heschel did just that. He moved from the yeshiva world in Warsaw, to Vilna, Lithuania, a city famous for its Talmudists and their rational approach to Jewish study. Nothing could have been further from the emotional, sometimes ecstatic approach of the Chassidim. He became interested in poetry and philosophy, and on account of these secular interests he moved to Berlin, one of the best places to study philosophy. He earned a doctorate in philosophy from its university. He taught in Berlin and succeeded the famous German philosopher, Martin Buber, at the central agency for Jewish education in Frankfurt. Heschel might have lived out the rest of his life in Germany, but the Nazis came to power.
Fortunately for Heschel, the Nazis deported him from Germany back to Poland in 1938. And also, fortunately for him, within the year, and just six weeks before Warsaw was invaded by the Nazis, he was able to move to England where he established the Institute for Jewish Learning in London. He did not stay in London long. The Hebrew Union College, the Reform seminary in Cincinnati, extended him a special scholar’s invitation to enable him to get out of Europe. Unfortunately, the visa that accompanied this invitation was not the kind that would have permitted him to bring his family to the United States. He never saw his family and friends again; they all perished at the hands of the Nazis. Heschel never returned either to Poland or to Warsaw; it would have brought up memories too painful for him.
While Heschel might have been a good intellectual match for HUC students and fellow faculty, it was hardly a good lifestyle match. These were the golden years of Classical Reform, which was anti-Zionist, which disapproved of emotional outpourings during services, and which did not accept the halachah (Jewish law), for example, the laws of kashrut—keeping kosher. And there was Heschel, an Orthodox Jew, obedient to Jewish law, and prone to ecstatic outpourings in his writings. He later transferred to the Jewish Theological Seminary, the seminary of the Conservative movement, which was more traditional and where he was a professor of Jewish ethics and mysticism. Nevertheless, JTS did not appreciate his extending his roles as a philosopher and theologian outside the seminary walls as an activist, and sometimes even within the seminary walls there were differences between him and the some other faculty members and the administration.
Activism
Heschel was inspired to become an activist in the early 1960s when he was revising his doctoral dissertation on the Hebrew prophets for publication. Who better than the prophets could serve as great spiritual and moral exemplars? Who better than the prophets could “hold God and man in one thought at one time at all times,” speaking out against social injustice, even to the point of being obnoxious and being considered traitors? Martin Luther Kings was similarly inspired. In fact, on the monument to King in Atlanta we find the words of the prophet Amos: “Let Justice well up like water and righteousness as mighty stream.” Not only did Heschel join with King in support of African-American civil rights, he also spoke out in defense of Soviet Jews who were neither allowed to practice their religion nor to emigrate to a place where they could. He joined the anti-Vietnam war movement, and he went to the Vatican to speak with Catholic religious leaders to promote better relations between Catholics and Jews. In particular he encourage the Pope to include in Vatican II a statement making it clear that all the Jews of Jesus’ day were not responsible for his death, that the Jews in later times had nothing to do with it, and that anti-Semitism is a sin.
Later in his life his words carried weight, not only because he was a distinguished philosopher and eminent rabbi, but how can one ignore someone who, in addition to these qualities, has a head of wild, white hair and a full white beard, looking every bit the part of a biblical prophet?
Theology
In his writings, Heschel was concerned about questions of how we come to faith as well as the nature of faith. He makes a difference between our acknowledging God and our responding to God. I think many of us can understand this difference because we come to synagogue, we say prayers, we study, but even so we are still seeking the experience of God. So what can inspire us to faith? According to Heschel, wonder before nature, not inherently a Jewish characteristic, can lead one to faith. I can speak to this personally. One day, sleepless at the seashore, I went out before dawn, and as I walked all alone by the water, I experienced a moment of wonder at the canopy of stars. At that moment I was aware of the mystery of God.
Other paths to God described by Heschel are through a feeling of indebtedness to God, through saying prayers in praise of God, and through following halachah, that is, leading a life of holiness. All of these paths describe what a person does who has faith in God, but these paths also prepare us to acquire that faith. In other words, we can pray without fully accepting God. We can do good deeds, mitzvot, without feeling ourselves touched by God and without fully understanding their requirements. We can wonder at nature without acknowledging God. We can learn our science and use our reason. But eventually we come to realize that life is a mystery and that our encounter with God cannot be expressed in human language. God is, to use Heschel’s favorite word for this, ineffable.
For Heschel, revelation is an awareness of being confronted by God. God is both within us and beyond us. God is attentive to us and feels for us. And we feel God’s presence. It is the divine pathos—the Godly concern for human beings—that is transmitted to us, not truths about God, or values, or norms of behavior. It is the divine pathos that inspires us to live holy lives. To give an example derived from this position, since God is upset about social injustice on earth, we should feel that upset, and then we realize that God needs us to help make things right, and it is incumbent on us to act.
Conclusion
I’d like to conclude by reading something short written by Heschel. I personally love to read Heschel’s writings. I am captivated by his poetry and I enjoy the beauty of his images even if I don’t agree entirely with his theological position.
“We cannot make God visible to us, but we can make ourselves visible to Him. So we open our thoughts to Him.
To pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain the sense of the mystery that animates all beings.
Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer in return for the mystery by which we live. It is gratefulness which makes the soul great.”
Rabbi Peggy de Prophetis
Congregation Beth Sholom
Dover, DE
