Abraham Joshua Heschel:
Essential Writings,
Selected and with an Introduction by Susnnab Heschel;
Maryknoll, Orbis Books, 2011. 189 pp. Paper $20.00
Susannah Heschel gives us a treasure in these selections from her father’s
writings, including some previously unpublished. I am grateful for this
introduction to a holy prophet. I cannot open to a page at random without
being challenged in my thinking (Humility and contrition seem to be most
absent where most required—in theology), in my prayer (Prayer is joy
and fear, trust and trembling together), in my action (Who shall
plead for the helpless? Who shall prevent the epidemic of injustice. .
.?). In addition to the excepts themselves, Susannah’ s introductions
to the sections of the book provide insight into the thought, as well as the
person, of her father.
Abraham Joshua Heschel was born in Warsaw, into a Hasidic family with famous
rebbes as forebears. He relocated to Berlin to study at three academic
institutions: the University of Berlin, the Reform Rabinnical school, and
the Hildescheimer orthodox rabbinical seminary. When Hitler came to power,
he was deported to Poland. From there, having received an invitation to
teach at the Reform Rabbinical college in Cincinnati, he emigrated to the
United Sates in 1939, just before the Nazi invasion of Poland. His mother
and three of his sisters were killed in the Holocaust.
These brief selections from Heschel’s prolific writings reflect his
passionate commitment to the heart of Judaism, expressed in prayer and
prophecy. He laments the neglect of Sabbath observance as Jews assimilate
into the secularism of the United States. He has no use for empty formal
prayer, prayer that does not arise from a deep sense of awe and wonder in
the presence of the mystery that is God. Of particular interest to
preachers, Heschel writes of the intimate relationship between prayer and
preaching: “Preaching is either an organic part of the act of prayer or out
of place. . . .The test of a true sermon is that it can be converted to
prayer.”
For Heschel, prayer naturally leads to action. Susannah Heschel, in her
Introduction, tells of an incident during a demonstration against the
Vietnam War. A journalist asked her father why he, a rabbi, was at the
demonstration. The rabbi answered, “’I am here because I cannot pray.’”
Susannah concludes the anecdote with a memory: “We forfeit the right to
pray, my father said, if we are silent about the cruelties committed in our
name by our government.” In his many denunciations of the war, as well as
of racism, Heschel was living his calling as prophet. “A prophet,” he
writes, is a man who feels fiercely. God has thrust a burden on his soul.
. . .Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, to the
plundered poor. . . .God is raging in the prophet’s words. . . .”
Heschel counted
among his friends other prophets of this period in our history: William
Sloane Cotton, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, and others. He
also included among his friends many Christian theologians. In fact,
according to his daughter, he said that Reinhold Niebuhr “understood his
work better than anyone else.” In his interfaith dialogues, he avoided
conversation on differences; he and his interlocutors explored those
religious attitudes which they shared.
This is a book to
be read slowly, allowing each selection to incubate in one’s soul and
blossom into fruit.
Patricia Chaffee,
OP
Racine, Wisconsin
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