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
prayer pyramids hatred
Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.
thought-provoking worry church
We worry a great deal about the problem of church and state. Now what about the church and God? Sometimes there seems to be a greater separation between the church and God than between the church and state.
compassion names voice
When religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.
love encouragement religious
A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.
sacred secular
The road to the sacred leads through the secular.
art prayer training
There is no specialized art of prayer. All of life must be a training to pray. We pray the way we live.
mean doe surrender
To serve does not mean to surrender but to share.
spiritual long audacity
We forfeit the right to worship God as long as we continue to humiliate negroes. ... The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.
importance supreme
God is either of no importance, or of supreme importance.
opposites evil indifference
The opposite of good is not evil, the opposite of good is indifference,
thinking self world
Ultimately there is no power to narcissistic, self-indulgent thinking. Authentic thinking originates with an encounter with the world.
prayer heart bridges
Prayer cannot bring water to parched fields, or mend a broken bridge, or rebuild a ruined city; but prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart, and rebuild a weakened will.
space trying world
The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.
father compassion people
God is everywhere or nowhere, the father of all people or of none, concerned about everything or nothing. Only in His presence shall we learn that the glory of humankind is not in its will to power but in its power of compassion.