Review: Abraham Joshua Heschel: Essential Writings, (Selected and with an Introduction by his daughter, Susannah Heschel, Orbis, 2011)

Abraham Heschel is one of the three or four most-read modern Jewish writers – by non-Jews – and probably the most popular Jewish theologian.

This book is one of Orbis’ Modern Spiritual Masters series (other titles include writings/ speeches of Bonhoeffer, Henri Nouwen, Anthony de Mello, Gandhi, Sadhu Sundar Singh, the Dalai Lama etc. etc. – an eclectic group eh?) – about 50 titles I’d take to a desert island any time!

Heschel’s spiritual formation was influenced by two rabbis (a stern one emphasizing God’s justice, another who majored on God’s mercy): Heschel suggests we combine both, but put compassion ahead of justice.

He was also powerfully affected by the Nazi persecution of his family and compatriots. Heschel’s sister Esther was killed in a German bombing. His mother was murdered by the Nazis, and two other sisters, Gittel and Devorah, died in concentration camps. He never returned to Germany, Austria or Poland. He wrote, ‘If I should go to Poland or Germany, every stone, every tree would remind me of contempt, hatred, murder, of children killed, of mothers burned alive, of human beings asphyxiated.’

Heschel arrived in New York City in March 1940, and served on the faculty of Hebrew Union College, the main seminary of Reform Judaism, in Cincinnati for five years. In 1946, he took a position at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the main seminary of Conservative Judaism, where he served as professor of Jewish Ethics and Mysticism until his death in 1972.

Heschel married Sylvia Straus, a concert pianist, and their daughter, Susannah Heschel, is a Jewish scholar in her own right.

As a biblical scholar (his PhD dissertation was on the Hebrew prophets) he was more interested in spirituality and social justice than in critical textual study. He believed the prophets’ view of God is best understood as anthropopathic — that God has human feelings. And he saw their teachings as a clarion call for social action in the United States, working with Martin Luther King for black civil rights and against the Vietnam War. His words ‘When I marched in Selma, my legs were praying’ is one of his most frequently cited quotes.

Heschel’s most influential works included Man is Not Alone, God in Search of Man, The Sabbath, and The Prophets.

Here’s a pot-pourri of some of his most memorable quotes:

The biblical words about the genesis of heaven and earth are not words of information but words of appreciation. The story of creation is not a description of how the world came into being but a song about the glory of the world’s having come into being .(155)

The problem to my philosophy professors [at the University of Berlin] was how to be good. In my ears the question rang: how to be holy. There is much that philosophy can learn from Jewish life… To Judaism the idea of the good is penultimate. It cannot exist without the holy. The good is the base, the holy is the summit. (180)

His daughter writes: ‘Reinhold Niebuhr wrote a glorious review of [my father’s book] Man is Not Alone, for the New York Herald Tribune… The Sunday it appeared the phone didn’t ring all day… One example of the jealousy and mean-spiritedness of academic life.’ (28)

We think we are in search of an elusive God, not realizing that it is God who is in search of us… There is in us more kinship with the divine than we are able to believe. The souls of men and women are candles of the Lord. (44)

I shudder at the thought of a society ruled by people who are absolutely certain of their wisdom, by people to whom everything in the world is crystal-clear, whose minds know no mystery, no uncertainty… Wonder rather than doubt is the root of knowledge. (56,58)

What is an idol? Any god who is mine but not yours, any god concerned with me but not with you, is an idol. Faith in God is not simply an afterlife-insurance policy. Racial or religious bigotry must be recognized for what it is: satanism, blasphemy. (66)

The Bible insists that the interests of the poor have precedence over the interests of the rich. The prophets have a bias in favor of the poor… (71)

Our people were consumed by fire. And the world is unchanged. The ash of human skeletons emits no odor. The atmosphere of the world is not contaminated. Our bread is fresh; our sugar is sweet. The screams of millions of victims of the crematoria were never transmitted over the radio waves… Perhaps our souls went up in flames along with their bodies in Majdanek and Auschwitz. (79)

The prophets’ great contribution to humanity was the discovery of the evil of indifference. One may be decent and sinister, pious and sinful. (86)

The question of theodicy: How can we justify a good God in the face of so much evil? But the central question [is] anthropodicy: How could human beings commit mass murder? How can God continue to have faith in our humanity, given the wickedness we commit? (88)

Inherent to all traditional religion is the peril of stagnation. What becomes settled and established may easily turn foul. Insight is replaced by cliches, elasticity by obstinacy, spontaneity by habit. (106)

It is with shame and anguish that I recall that it was possible for a Roman Catholic church adjoining the extermination camp in Auschwitz to offer communion to the officers of the camp, to people who day after day drove thousands of people to be killed in the gas chambers. (145)

Following a service, I overheard an elderly lady’s comment to her friend, ‘This was a charming service!’ I felt like crying. Is this what prayer means to us? God is grave; not charming: ‘Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling’ (Psalm 2:11). Prayer is joy and fear, trust and trembling together (159-160)

We preach in order to pray, to inspire others to pray. The test of a true sermon is that it can be converted to prayer… Unfortunately some rabbis/[ministers] conduct services as if they were adult-education programs… Too often explanation kills inspiration. (168)

Tensions between loving compassion and radical demands for truth mark the inner lives of many religious people, who find it difficult at times to keep the two in balance. There is heaven on earth, [and also] hell… God is both Judge and Father… but mercy rather than justice is the outstanding attribute of God. (170-174)

A moderately clean heart is like a moderately foul egg. Lukewarm Judaism would be effective in purging our character as a lukewarm furnace in melting steel. (176)

Ouch!

Rowland Croucher

http://jmm.aaa.net.au

August 2011