Abraham Joshua Heschel
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Abraham Joshua Heschelwas a Polish-born American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. Heschel, a professor of Jewish mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, authored a number of widely read books on Jewish philosophy and was active in the American Civil Rights movement...
NationalityPolish
ProfessionEducator
Date of Birth11 January 1907
CountryPoland
loyalty commitment religion
Religion has become an impersonal affair, an institutional loyalty. It survives on the level of activities rather than in the stillness of commitment.
sacred-things deeds pagan
Pagans exalt sacred things, the Prophets extol sacred deeds.
attitude soul information
Faith is something that comes out of the soul. It is not an information that is absorbed but an attitude, existing prior to the formulation of any creed.
prayer issues have-faith
The issue of prayer is not prayer; the issue of prayer is God. One cannot pray unless he has faith in his own ability to accost the infinite, merciful, eternal God.
essence justice care
Being is transcended by a concern for being. Our perplexity will not be solved by relating human existence to a timeless, subpersonal abstraction which we call essence. We can do justice to human being only by relating it to the transcendent care for being.
faith religious attitude
Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man's attitude toward history and nature.
love commitment worth-living
Life without commitment is not worth living.
recovery hysteria solitude
Solitude is a necessary protest to the incursions and the false alarms of society's hysteria, a period of cure and recovery.
deeds speech sound
Speech has power. Words do not fade. What starts out as a sound, ends in a deed.
conceit forfeit ability
Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a market place for you.
self roots discipline
Self-respect is the root of discipline
god unless
God is of no importance unless He is of supreme importance.
people humanity suffering
The degree to which one is sensitive to other people's suffering, to other (people's) humanity, is the index of one's own humanity
life spiritual morning
Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ....get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.