Abraham Joshua Heschel and the Sources of Wonder is the first book to demonstrate how Heschel s political, intellectual, and spiritual commitments were embedded in his reading of Jewish tradition.".

Or that the tragedy of man is due to the fact that he is a being who has forgotten the question: Who is Man?

This first English publication of selected German writings by Abraham Joshua Heschel written during his years in Nazi Germany and London exile reveals his insights on the redemptive role of Jewish learning"--Provided by the publisher.

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.

Influential scholar and savant Abraham Joshua Heschel combines an account of the life of medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides with an introduction to his writings and their place in the broader tradition of Jewish thought.

Abraham Joshua Heschel was a prolific scholar, impassioned theologian, and prominent activist who participated in the black civil rights movement and the campaign against the Vietnam War. He has been hailed as a hero, honored as a visionary, and endlessly quoted as a devotional writer. In this sympathetic, yet critical, examination, Shai Held elicits the overarching themes and unity of Heschel’s incisive and insightful thought. Focusing on the idea of transcendence—or the movement from self-centeredness to God-centeredness—Held (...) puts Heschel into dialogue with contemporary Jewish thinkers, Christian theologians, devotional writers, and philosophers of religion. (shrink)

Abraham Joshua Heschel's oeuvre deals with the continuum of Jewish religious consciousness from the biblical and rabbinic periods through the kabbalistic and Hasidic ones with regard to God's concern for humanity. The goal of this study is to show how such a “Nachmanidean” reading has partially displaced the discontinuous “Maimonidean” reading promoted by Yehezkel Kaufman, Ephraim Urbach, and Gershom Scholem. The result is that Heschel's understanding of the development of Jewish theologizing is more influential now than (...) it was during his lifetime. This study traces the growth of that development and explores how Heschel became the scholar-theologian who most succeeded in bridging the gap between scholarship and constructive theology. (shrink)

Abraham Joshua Heschel was a prolific scholar, impassioned theologian, and prominent activist who participated in the black civil rights movement and the campaign against the Vietnam War. He has been hailed as a hero, honored as a visionary, and endlessly quoted as a devotional writer. In this sympathetic, yet critical, examination, Shai Held elicits the overarching themes and unity of Heschel’s incisive and insightful thought. Focusing on the idea of transcendence—or the movement from self-centeredness to God-centeredness—Held (...) puts Heschel into dialogue with contemporary Jewish thinkers, Christian theologians, devotional writers, and philosophers of religion. (shrink)

The book is devoted to the thought of one of the 20th century's most interesting philosophers of religion. Heschel, a traditional Polish Jew who became a modern thinker, was also an impressive prophet of interreligious dialogue.

The subject of the following discourse is, as the title itself points out, the anthropology of Heschel. Considering the fact that Heschel is in general unknown in Poland, I shall take the liberty to make known, in short, some pieces of information about him. Heschel was born in Warsaw, Poland on January 11th 1907. After graduating from the Gymnasium in Wilno he started his studies at Friedrich Wilhelm Universität, Berlin. At the Berlin University he studied at the (...) Philosophy Department and, additionally, he took up studies in the sphere of Semitic Philosophy and History of Art. In 1937 Heschel was chosen by Martin Buber as his successor at Mittelstelle für Jüdische Erwachsenen-Bildung in Frankfurt on the Main. In October he was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Poland together with all the Jews of Polish nationality. After returning to Warsaw he taught philosophy and biblical sciences at the Institute of Jewish Studies. Six weeks before the German aggression against Poland he left for England and then for the United States where he stayed until his death. He was the Professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Except for his didactical activity, our philosopher did not neglect creative work. As time went on he was becoming a more and more well-known and appreciated intellectualist and social worker in America. His activity went far beyond the boundaries of the Jewish world. (shrink)

The subject of the following discourse is, as the title itself points out, the anthropology of Heschel. Considering the fact that Heschel is in general unknown in Poland, I shall take the liberty to make known, in short, some pieces of information about him. Heschel was born in Warsaw, Poland on January 11th 1907. After graduating from the Gymnasium in Wilno he started his studies at Friedrich Wilhelm Universität, Berlin. At the Berlin University he studied at the (...) Philosophy Department and, additionally, he took up studies in the sphere of Semitic Philosophy and History of Art. In 1937 Heschel was chosen by Martin Buber as his successor at Mittelstelle für Jüdische Erwachsenen-Bildung in Frankfurt on the Main. In October he was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Poland together with all the Jews of Polish nationality. After returning to Warsaw he taught philosophy and biblical sciences at the Institute of Jewish Studies. Six weeks before the German aggression against Poland he left for England and then for the United States where he stayed until his death. He was the Professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Except for his didactical activity, our philosopher did not neglect creative work. As time went on he was becoming a more and more well-known and appreciated intellectualist and social worker in America. His activity went far beyond the boundaries of the Jewish world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Seductiveness of Virtue: Abraham Joshua Heschel and John Paul II on Morality and Personal Fulfillment by John J. FitzgeraldMatthew R. PetrusekThe Seductiveness of Virtue: Abraham Joshua Heschel and John Paul II on Morality and Personal Fulfillment John J. Fitzgerald new york: bloomsbury t&t clark, 2017. 240 pp. $114The Seductiveness of Virtue offers a close study of the twentieth-century Polish-American rabbi (...) class='Hi'>Abraham Joshua Heschel, and the first Polish pope, St. John Paul II, on the relationship between being good and being happy. Overall the book advances the conversation on the meaning and continued relevance of virtue in contemporary ethics, though its eagerness to build bridges across competing religious and philosophical traditions opens the argument to both methodological and substantive criticisms. [End Page 206]Fitzgerald divides the book into an introduction and four chapters. Chapter 1, "The Meaning of Our Question," establishes the definitions of concepts that Fitzgerald addresses throughout the rest his argument, including "happiness," "meaning," "freedom," "personal fulfillment," "good and evil," and "doing." Fitzgerald locates each term within the theologies of Heschel and John Paul II and provides his own definitions. Chapter 2, "Heschel and the 'Joys of Mitsvah,'" enters more deeply into Heschel's theology, arguing that, despite some ambiguity about whether morality will always lead to personal fulfillment, Heschel establishes a firm theological and practical connection between following the law (mitzvah) and being happy. Chapter 3, "John Paul II and the Good We Must Do to Have Eternal Life," engages in a similar analysis of John Paul's thought (including his writings before becoming pope) and, despite using different theological categories (chief among them "Christ"), arrives at a similar conclusion: there is a necessary connection between being good and being happy. Chapter 4, which also functions as a conclusion, places the comparison between Heschel and John Paul into a wider comparative context, examining how their respective conclusions on morality and the good relate to insights from other contemporary perspectives, including the Dalai Lama, Peter Singer, and present-day "positive psychology." Fitzgerald concludes by offering five reasons why it is important to continue, in his words, an "interworldview" and "interdisciplinary" dialogue on how virtue relates to happiness.The book is richly sourced—containing 199 footnotes, bibliography, and detailed index—and serves as a good addition to the libraries of those working on John Paul II, Abraham Heschel, virtue theory, or comparative ethics more broadly. Yet its breadth on the comparative front also highlights its vulnerabilities, particularly on the question of what defines the relationship between virtue and happiness from a normative perspective. While providing lucid descriptive accounts of different conceptions of God and the good, for example, Fitzgerald acknowledges near the book's conclusion, "whether one finds [any] author persuasive will depend in large part on one's prior conclusions about the existence and nature of God and the afterlife" (184) and notes that this topic "cannot be resolved or even explored here" (185). However, these "prior conclusions" themselves are ultimately most meaningful for answering the book's central question.This reticence to engage in meta-ethical questions also leads the text to a problematic epistemological and ethical equalizing of each perspective, one that allows Fitzgerald to claim, for example, "while there is much common ground between Heschel, John Paul II, and [Peter] Singer on the relationship between morality and fulfillment, there are also key differences" (174). Here Fitzgerald understates the contrast: one of the "key" differences between Singer's utilitarian materialism and John Paul II's gospel of life is that Singer's position could serve as a paradigmatic representation of the "culture of death" [End Page 207] that John Paul spent his papacy resisting. Thus, while providing an excellent analysis of each thinker individually, the book's argument would benefit from establishing a firmer and more transparent standard for evaluating ethical claims across traditions.Matthew R. PetrusekLoyola Marymount UniversityCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

The text deals with the emergence of a specific Jewish counterculture in the wake of the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement in the USA in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue, Erich Fromm’s humanism and the religious existentialism of Abraham Joshua Heschel had a significant impact on the ideas of the young Jewish generation and influenced their striving for a renewal of Jewish life. Although the three Jewish thinkers differed in (...) their forms of expression, they had in common a relentless critique of existing state of affairs and fought for a just society. Whether it be Buber’s communitarian society, Fromm’s humanist socialism or Heschel’s free society imbued with religion – they offered answers to the frustrated young generation and pointed the way to the “spiritual revolution” they longed for. Thus they became prophets for them. (shrink)

In 1964, the American Medical Association invited liberal theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel to address its annual meeting in a program entitled “The Patient as a Person” [1]. Unsurprisingly, in light of Heschel’s reputation for outspokenness, he launched a jeremiad against physicians, claiming: “The admiration for medical science is increasing, the respect for its practitioners is decreasing. The depreciation of the image of the doctor is bound to disseminate disenchantment and to affect the state of medicine itself” (...) [1, p. 35]. Heschel’s reference to “disenchantment” suggests that he may have been familiar with the work, or at least the outlook, of sociologist Max Weber, whose 1917 address “Science as a Vocation” portrays the modern world as disenchanted by the progress of rationalism. Heschel’s life’s vocation had been to uncover the inner meaning of religious faith and to translate that faith into principled action. Heschel saw disenchantment not as an inescapable aspect of modern life but rather as the byproduct of physicians’ conscious choices to seek worldly success and material comfort. Yet, because of their privileged position as witnesses to human vulnerability, physicians possess an obligation to develop their own personhood, to re-enchant medicine, and through medicine to spark a positive transformation in all of modern life. As Heschel says, “The doctor must realize the supreme nobility of his vocation, to cultivate a taste for the pleasures of the soul. … The doctor is a major source of moral energy affecting the spiritual texture and substance of the entire society” [1, pp. 34, 38]. While Heschel’s conception of the physician’s role is romanticized and idealized, changes in the organization and practice of medicine have validated his concerns. (shrink)

A filosofia da educação de Abraham Joshua Heschel busca, na tradição judaica, uma luz para o homem moderno. Esta tradição afirma que o mundo descansa sobre três pilares: estudar para participar da sabedoria divina, cultuar o Criador e ter compaixão pelo nosso próximo. Nossa civilização, afirma o filósofo, subverteu esses pilares fazendo do estudo uma forma de alcançar o poder, da caridade um instrumento de relações públicas e do culto uma forma de adorar nosso próprio ego. Essa (...) crise extrema exige uma reorientação radical: estudo, culto e caridade são fins e não meios. O poder, por sua vez, deveria ser um instrumento e não a finalidade da existência. Para Heschel, o clímax da existência, a experiência suprema do viver, deveria ser estudar. Na prática, isso significa uma reforma radical dos fundamentos da educação contemporânea. Os insights heschelianos podem ser fundamentais para a compreensão da condição humana em sua historicidade e do mundo como lugar de realização da humanidade. (shrink)

Drawing on the writings of the Jewish thinker, Abraham Joshua Heschel, I defend a partial response to the problem of divine hiddenness. A Jewish approach to divine love includes the thought that God desires meaningful relationship not only with individual persons, but also with communities of persons. In combination with John Schellenberg’s account of divine love, the admission of God’s desire for such relationships makes possible that a person may fail to believe that God exists not because (...) of any individual failing, but because the individual is a member of a larger community that itself is culpable. (shrink)

Resumo O presente artigo defende que a ciência moderna não é a única ou a melhor forma de explicação possível da realidade. A religião, especificamente, pode ser uma protagonista na construção de um novo paradigma de conhecimento em uma sociedade secularizada. A filosofia de Heschel busca na tradição judaica uma luz para o homem moderno. Esta tradição afirma que o mundo descansa sobre três pilares: estudar para participar da sabedoria divina, cultuar o criador e ter compaixão pelo nosso próximo. (...) Nossa civilização subverteu esses pilares fazendo do estudo uma forma de alcançar o poder, da caridade um instrumento de relações públicas e do culto uma forma de adorar nosso próprio ego. Esta crise extrema exige uma reorientação radical: estudo, culto e caridade são fins, não meios. Os insights de Heschel podem ser fundamentais para compreensão da condição humana em sua historicidade e do mundo como lugar de realização da humanidade. Palavras chave: Heschel; ciência; religião.The article argues that modern science is not the only or best explanation of reality. Religion, specifically, can be a protagonist in the construction of a new paradigm of knowledge in a secularized society. The philosophy of Heschel seeks guidance in Jewish tradition for the modern man. This tradition states that the world rests on three pillars: to study in order to participate in the divine wisdom; to worship the creator; and to have compassion for our neighbor. The philosopher states that our civilization has subverted these pillars making the study a way to achieve power, charity a public relations tool and cult a form of worshipping our own ego. This extreme crisis requires a radical reorientation: study, worship and charity are ends, not means. The insights of Heschel may be fundamental to understand the human condition in its historicity and the world as a place of humanity's fulfillment. Keywords: Heschel; science; religion. (shrink)

Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Buber were giant thinkers of the twentieth century who made significant contributions to the understanding of religious consciousness and of Judaism. They wrote on various subjects, such as the Bible, the commandments, Hasidism, Zionism and Christianity, and had much in common, though they also differed on substantial points. Of special note is the intense and fruitful interaction that took place between them. Until now, scholars have not undertaken a comparative analysis of Buber (...) and Heschel as eminent contemporary interpreters of the Jewish tradition. In this volume, Meir and Even-Chen have taken upon themselves the challenge of monitoring their agreements and disputes. (shrink)

No pensamento do filósofo e teólogo judeu Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972), o ser humano é colocado em uma posição única diante da transcendência e da natureza; ele é reconhecido como um verdadeiro símbolo de Deus e um participante da vida divina em um contexto de desvalorização e desumanização que vinha se formando desde os primórdios da modernidade. Em diálogo com alguns pensadores contemporâneos, neste artigo propomos refazer os caminhos conceituais e práticos que levaram este rabino a pensar (...) e agir energicamente em favor da reconstrução da natureza humana, e apontar o pathos divino como elemento de solidariedade, e o resgate da ética e da sacralidade humana. Nossa proposta de reflexão está estruturada em torno de três pontos fundamentais: o problema do simbolismo religioso humano em relação a Deus; o pathos divino como ponte para Deus; e o ser humano que é Homem e, ao mesmo tempo, um apelo à ética. (shrink)

The article presents the conception of interreligious dialogue developed by Abraham Joshua Heschel in his legendary text No Religion Is an Island. Then, it illustrates the approach to this issue by the next generation of Jewish thinkers, Heschel’s disciples, Harold Kasimow and Byron Sherwin. Another interesting Heschel’s disciple is Alon Goshen-Gottstein who takes a step further in his explicating interfaith dialogue. The last part of the article analyses the understanding of Kasimow and Sherwin of the (...) thought and deeds of Pope John Paul II in the field of interreligious dialogue, and especially, in the attitude of the Catholic Church toward Jews. (shrink)

There are multiple manners of defining Jewish philosophy. The controversies woven around this topic seem to leave the issue perpetually open instead of determining a unique and final perspective. However, this outcome is indubitably an indication of the fact that Jewish philosophy proposes a privileged manner of understanding Judaism through the encounter between philosophy and religion as a founding polar- ity of a creative tradition. One of the ways of asserting this polarity has gained the symbolic dimension of superimposing two (...) cultural paradigms. This has been expressed through the metaphor of two cities, namely Jerusalem and Athens, and through the metaphor of two lands, Greece and Israel. Out of these symbolic designations I will bring into discussion the standpoints of Leo Strauss and Abraham Joshua Heschel and will try to offer a new perspective over this issue. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine Hermann Cohen's and Abraham Joshua Heschel's respective accounts of the classical prophets of the Hebrew Bible, which contend with the Protestant biblical criticism of their day. Their accounts of the prophets are of central significance for their philosophies of Judaism, which mirror and oppose each other. This Auseinandersetzung addresses the often neglected topic of Jewish responses to German-Protestant biblical criticism and stresses the cogency of Heschel's thought. Additionally, examining Cohen and (...) class='Hi'>Heschel together problematizes the polarization between theocentrism and neo-humanism currently dominating the landscape of modern Jewish thought. (shrink)

In this essay I discuss Abraham Joshua Heschel’s influence in the Chinese-reading world by focusing on the growing list of publications about, and translations of, his works in Chinese. By examinin...

This article examines A.J. Heschel’s “Theology of pathos” in light of the critique Eliezer Berkovits raised against it. Heschel’s theology of pathos is the notion of God as the “most moved mover”, who cares deeply for humans, and thus highly influencing their prophetic motivation for human-social improvement. Berkovits, expressing the negative-transcendent theology of Maimonides, assessed that Heschel’s theology of pathos is not systematic, is anthropomorphic, and reflects a foreign Christian influence. However, when checking Berkovits’s own views as (...) a thinker, it turns out that he formulated some immanent theological notions that were overlapping those of Heschel, for example in attributing God the personal trait of caring. Surprisingly, most Heschel’s scholars did not consider this point. This riddle addressed here in two ways: (1) Psychological and Social, on which I understand Berkovits’s critique as a way of coping with his own religious perplexities, and in a wider sense, it is asserted that trans-denominational critique may be a discursive opportunity for mutual corrigibility. (2) Theological, since Heschel and Berkovits indeed faced a similar theological challenge, of rejecting any description of God as anthropomorphism. I thus offer a constructive theological argument for providing a justification to the immanent theologies of both Heschel and Berkovits. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 26, Issue 1, pp 94 - 117 Martin Heidegger’s philosophy has elicited many theological responses; some enthusiastic, others critical. In this essay I provide an organized and critical analysis of Abraham Joshua Heschel’s theological critique of and rejoinder to the thought of the German philosopher. By looking at Heschel’s 1965 _Who is Man?_ as well as earlier and later texts, I demonstrate the way in which Heschel presents his biblical theology as an (...) alternative to Heidegger’s philosophy. (shrink)

Studies in Abraham Joshua Heschel's Oeuvre.

This essay on Cathleen Kaveny's Prophecy Without Contempt challenges her argument from two opposing sides. First, it critiques all jeremiads. It asks how a person uttering prophetic indictments, whether in the form of a classical jeremiad or the more moderate form that Kaveny argues for, can possibly know of what she speaks, given the otherness of God. Second, it calls for more jeremiads. It asks whether a person, whether religious or not, might indeed know enough to offer withering jeremiads, in (...) those cases where she sees the target of her jeremiad making flagrantly incompatible commitments. (shrink)

Abstract. Darwinism has attracted proportionately less attention from Jewish thinkers than from Christian thinkers. One significant reason for the disparity is that the theodicies created by Jews to contend with the catastrophes which punctuated Jewish history are equally suited to address the massive extinctions which characterize natural history. Theologies of divine hiddenness, restraint, and radical immanence, coming together in the sixteenth-century mystical cosmogony of Isaac Luria, have been rehabilitated and reworked by modern Jewish thinkers in the post-Darwin era.