Abraham Joshua Heschel. A Life of Radical Amazement. Julian E Zelizer. (Jewish Lives), (New Haven, YUP, 2022)
Here's a sample of why Abraham Joshua Heschel deserves some of our time, and why his words and legacy remain important as inspiration, guidance and warning for people struggling with the realities and unrealities of the 21st Century.
"Modern thinking has often lost its way by separating the problem of truth from the problem of living, cognition from the human situation...Reflection alone will not procure self-understanding. The human situation is disclosed in the thick living. By whatever we do, by every act we carry out, we either advance or obstruct the drama of redemption; we either reduce or enhance the power of evil." (p.227)
In a long evolution that started in Warsaw amongst Hasidic Jews, and took him to Berlin to study philosophy, then to America in 1940, Heschel matured into one of the leading religious thinkers and most significant political activists in mid century Jewish and American public life. To a remarkable degree, Heschel integrated devout love and learning of the traditions of Judaism, attentiveness to religious practices of worship, prayer and festival, and an increasing commitment and passion for social activism in pursuit of justice, compassion and radical resistance. It is a particular strength of this well organised biography that Heschel emerges as one prepared to live with the tensions such a paradox represented in his own times, as he plunged into "the thick of living."
When he came to America he did so as a refugee, and within 5 years worse than his worst fears were realised as to the fate of his family and people left behind in Hitler's Europe. His mother, aunts and sisters all perished amongst the millions of his murdered people. Like Elie Wiesel his friend and companion, Heschel never forgot, and never allowed the world to forget what happens when nations expel God from the policies, ideas, values, goals and practices of political power linked to military capacity and motivated by national, racial or ideological self-interest.
Zelizer's biography has narrative energy, and provides careful and informed contextual information about such influences as Hasidic thought, Heschel's own tradition of Reformed as distinct from Orthodox Judaism, his passionate investment in the Civil Rights movement and personalities, his pivotal role in Vietnam War protests, his unceasing highlighting of the plight of Soviet Jews. We are given important insights into the institutions in which he taught and where he was admired by many, resented or tolerated by some; and Zelizer traces Heschel's roles and initiatives in the social activists organisations which swallowed so much of his time and energy.
The reader is guided with enough information to understand and appreciate the complexities and demands Heschel faced as one whose driving passion was to "advance the drama of redemption, and...reduce the power of evil." And to do so in mid 20th Century America, as an immigrant Jew of Hasid origins, and as a poetic and persuasive teacher, an inspiring if demanding mentor, or persistent and annoying gadfly who wouldn't just fly away when politicians tried hard not to listen.
But Heschel was a poet theologian. He wrote philosophy of religion in a spirit of adoration of the God who calls the human being to a life of radical amazement, self-emptying awe in the presence of the Holy, and wonder and gratitude for the gift of life every day. So some of his more academic and rigorous colleagues thought his writing and teaching too poetic, vague lacking scholarly credibility, a style of writing which was devotionally woolly rather than rationally elegant. But many, many more readers, found in Heschel's writing a passionate invitation to live the faith, to taste the wonder, to risk the disciplines of a life whose goal is to repair the world, redeem human failing, renew the social and moral fabric of a dangerously self-absorbed culture.
Zelizer is persuasive in defending Heschel's style of writing and goals in his teaching. He wanted Jewish thought to be embodied in life practices and social values that demonstrate truth in action. Nowhere is the integrative force of Heschel's life of the mind, soul and body more clearly demonstrated than in his decision to march from Selma to Montgomery, arm in arm with Martin Luther King and other Civil Rights Leaders. With every step his theological anthropology was lived, enacted and publicised. Likewise his near obsessive focus on highlighting the moral indefensibility of the Vietnam war, and his prophetic outrage at the use of napalm, saturation bombing, proxy militarism on foreign soil, and caught up in the catastrophe, millions of innocent civilians whose value and lives are measured not as collateral damage but as uniquely treasured human beings created for the joy of God.
"Philosophy cannot be the same after Auschwitz and Hiroshima...Philosophy to be relevant must offer us a wisdom to live by--relevant not only in the isolation of our study rooms but also in moments of facing staggering cruelty and the threat of disaster." (Heschel, p.151)
What drove Heschel, was the moral passion of an Old Testament prophet. Writing his classic study, The Prophets, he had been infected by their moral outrage, penetrating critique of the rich and powerful, compassionate concern for the poor, oppressed and vulnerable, and above all their adamantine certainty that such pervasive and structured injustice is blasphemy, and subject to the holy anger and judgement of God.
I have long studied and admired Heschel. There is a (slowly) growing literature exploring further his ideas, legacy and the importance of voices like his for times like ours. This is now the most accessible, dependable and readable biography of him I've read. Beautifully produced and reasonably priced, it comes with a well constructed and user friendly index, and with endnotes full enough to anchor the scholarship, and selective enough to make them an excellent road map into further study of Heschel.
I finish with a personal response to this book. Heschel once urged people of faith to defy despair. Here are his words, near the end of his life, written by one deeply wounded by humanity's capacity to inflict wounds and suffering on others. And in the face of humanity's worst, they summon humanity's best as service to God, in words of defiant hopefulness:
"And yet God does not need those who praise Him when in a state of euphoria. He needs those who are in love with him when in distress, both He and ourselves. This is the task: in the darkest night to be certain of the dawn, certain of the power to turn a curse into a blessing, agony into a song. To know the monster's rage and, in spite of it, proclaim to its face (even a monster will be transfigured into an angel); to go to Hell and to continue to trust the goodness of God -- this is the challenge and the way." (Passion for Truth, pp. 300-1)
First photo above is of MLK and A J Heschel on the Selma March
Second Photo above is MLK and AJ Heschel at Arlington in shared prayer at a silent protest against the Vietnam war.
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