Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes

I have one talent, and that is the capacity to be tremendously surprised, surprised at life, at ideas. This is to me the supreme Hasidic imperative: Don't be old. Don't be stale.

This is what the Sabbath should feel like. A pause. Not just a minor pause, but a major pause. Not just lowering the volume, but a muting. As the famous rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel put it, the Sabbath is a sanctuary in time.

As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel noted (as recounted by his daughter), “The Holocaust did not begin with the building of crematoria, and Hitler did not come to power with tanks and guns; it all began with uttering evil words, with defamation, with language and propaganda.

and pleasure? What is it that I am tasting?' The most eloquent rabbi and writer of Hasidic mysticism, Abraham Joshua Heschel, left Warsaw in 1939 to become an important

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. —Galatians 3:28 (ESV) On June 16, 1963, in the middle of an epic struggle for civil rights in America, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel sent a powerful telegram to President John F. Kennedy: We forfeit the right to worship God as long as we continue to humiliate Negroes. . . . The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity. When we demean, humiliate, debase God’s beloved creation, the rabbi said, we forfeit our very right to worship God.

God does not reveal Himself; he only reveals His way. Judaism does not speak of God’s self-revelation, but of the revelation of His teaching for man. The Bible reflects God’s revelation of His relation to history, rather than of a revelation of His very Self. Even His will or His wisdom is not completely expressed through the prophets. Prophecy is superior to human wisdom, and God’s love is superior to prophecy. This spiritual hierarchy is explicitly stated by the Rabbis.

I argue that synagogue leaders have it backwards. Engaging individuals is what will lead them to affiliate with a synagogue as the institution that serves them, that meets their needs and those of their family. If synagogues continue to focus on the needs of the institution rather than on the needs of the individual, they will lose their dues-paying members and eventually become financially unviable. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel suggested to folks in the 1960s that they pray with their feet—and those prayers took them to places like the civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama. As a result of the actions of Rabbi Heschel and the influence of American political culture, American Jews—like most Americans—have been taught to vote with

The great Jewish Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, "The Greeks learned in order to comprehend. The Hebrews learned in order to revere. The modern man learns in order to use" (‘God in Search of Man’ p34)

At the very heart of the message of the New Testament is a Hebraic approach to the Almighty and His Good News. This approach is so vastly different from the Greek (and modern, Western) mindset, that without some basic appreciation of this foundational truth and perspective, the New Testament can be so totally misunderstood and misused as to render it’s central message null and void.   In his book “Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament", Professor Norman H. Snaith make this point very emphatically when he states that:     “The aim of Hebrew religion was Da’ath Elohim (the Knowledge of God); the aim of Greek thought was Gnothi seauton (Know thyself).  
   Between these two there is a great gulf fixed.  We do not see that either admits of any compromise.  They are fundamentally different in a priori assumption, in method of approach, and in final conclusion…
   The Hebrew system starts with God.  The only true wisdom is Knowledge of God.  ‘The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.’  The corollary is that man can never know himself, what he is and what is his relation the world, unless first he learn of God and be submissive to God’s sovereign will.  
The Greek system, on the contrary, starts from the knowledge of man, and seeks to rise to an understanding of the ways and Nature of God through the knowledge of what is called ‘man’s higher nature’.    According to the Bible, man had no higher nature except he be born of the Spirit. We find this approach of the Greeks nowhere in the Bible.    The whole Bible, the New Testament as well as the Old Testament, is based on the Hebrew attitude and approach… “     The great Jewish Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, "The Greeks learned in order to comprehend. The Hebrews learned in order to revere. The modern man learns in order to use" (‘God in Search of Man’ p34)

The great Jewish Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, "The Greeks learned in order to comprehend. The Hebrews learned in order to revere. The modern man learns in order to use" (‘God in Search of Man’ p34)   To know God is to revere God. To revere God is to listen, to listen and act (responsive hearing), to obey. Perhaps the most important text of Judaism begins with this call. The Sh’ma[1] opens with ‘Hear O’Israel …’! We are called to love the Almighty, not just with our intellect, not just to try to comprehend Him, but with our all; with our heart, with our mind, with our very strength, our actions!

Writing in the context of racial prejudice—as one who marched with Martin Luther King Jr in the 1960s—Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel argued that prejudice is atheism, “a treacherous denial of the existence of God.” In other words, prejudice negates any pretence of trying to believe in a God who claims to have made all people in His image. Heschel continues, “Any god who is mine but not yours, any god concerned with me but not with you, is an idol.

Rabbi Tarfon said: “You are not called upon to complete the task, yet you are not free to evade it.” Whatever we do is only a partial fulfillment; the rest is completed by God.

Be not like servants who wait upon their master in the expectation of receiving a reward, but be like the servants who wait upon their master in no expectation of receiving reward.”3 Vital, precious, and holy as dedication to Torah is, it is pernicious to study Torah for selfish ends, to study it so that we may be called rabbis, in order to obtain reward either here or in the life to come,4 to make of the Torah “a diadem with which to boast,” “a spade with which to dig.” According to Hillel, “he who uses the crown of Torah to his own advantage will perish; he who derives a profit for himself from the words of the Torah takes his own life.”5 The Rabbis continue to warn us: “He who studies the Torah for its own sake, his learning becomes an elixir of life to him … but he who studies the Torah not for its own sake, it becomes to him a deadly poison.”6 “If you fulfill the words of the Torah for their own sake, they bring you life; but if you fulfill the words of the Torah not for their own sake they will kill you.”7

In the late twentieth century, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was famously quoted as saying, “When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.

Every day ask yourselves the question: “What is there about me that deserves the reverence of my child?” RABBI ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL, 1907–1972

God’s goodness is not a cosmic force but a specific act of compassion. We do not know it as it is but as it happens. To mention an example, “Rabbi Meir said: When a human being suffers what does the Shechinah say? My head is too heavy for Me; My arm is too heavy for Me. And if God is so grieved over the blood of the wicked that is shed, how much more so over the blood of the righteous.

I am a father. I have a daughter and I love her dearly. I would like my daughter to obey the commandments of the Torah; I would like her to revere me as her father. And so I ask myself the question over and over again: What is there about me that deserves the reverence of my daughter? You see, unless I live a life that is worthy of her reverence, I make it almost impossible for her to live a Jewish life. So many young people abandon Judaism because the Jewish models that they see in their parents are not worthy of reverence. My message to parents is: Every day ask yourselves the question: “What is there about me that deserves the reverence of my child?” RABBI ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL, 1907–1972