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 religious tolerance
The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one's own tradition with reverence for different traditions.
appreciation civilization mind
As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation.
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.
space giving goal
There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.
sacred secular
The road to the sacred leads through the secular.
guilty responsible terrible
In any free society where terrible wrongs exist, some are guilty - all are responsible.
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.