Абрахам Джошуа Гешел: Польша-Америкалық еврей теологы мен философы

Polish American Conservative Judaism Rabbi
the Polish born American philosopher

Abraham Joshua Heschel (January 11, 1907 – December 23, 1972) was a Polish 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 a leader in the civil rights movement.

Abraham Joshua Heschel was born in Warsaw in 1907, the youngest of six children of Moshe Mordechai Heschel and Reizel Perlow Heschel. He was descended from preeminent European rabbis on both sides of his family. After a traditional yeshiva education and studying for Orthodox rabbinical ordination (semicha), Heschel pursued his doctorate at the University of Berlin and rabbinic ordination at the non denominational Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. There he studied under notable scholars including Hanoch Albeck, Ismar Elbogen, Julius Guttmann, Alexander Guttmann, and Leo Baeck. His mentor in Berlin was David Koigen. Heschel later taught Talmud at the Hochschule. He joined a Yiddish poetry group, Jung Vilna, and in 1933, published a volume of Yiddish poems, Der Shem Hamefoyrosh: Mentsch, dedicated to his father. In late October 1938, while living in a rented room in the home of a Jewish family in Frankfurt, Heschel was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Poland in the Polenaktion. He spent ten months lecturing on Jewish philosophy and Torah at Warsaw's Institute for Jewish Studies. Heschel married Sylvia Straus, a concert pianist, on December 10, 1946, in Los Angeles. Their daughter, Susannah Heschel, became a Jewish scholar in her own right.

Heschel explicated many facets of Jewish thought, including studies on medieval Jewish philosophy, Kabbalah, and Hasidic philosophy. According to some scholars, he was more interested in spirituality than in critical text study; the latter was a specialty of many scholars at JTS. He was not given a graduate assistant for many years and he was mainly relegated to teach in the education school or the Rabbinical school, not in the academic graduate program. Heschel became friendly with his colleague Mordecai Kaplan. Though they differed in their approaches to Judaism, they had a very cordial relationship and visited each other's homes from time to time. Heschel believed that the teachings of the Hebrew prophets were a clarion call for social action in the United States and inspired by this belief, he worked for African Americans' civil rights and spoke out against the Vietnam War. He also criticized what he specifically called "pan halakhism", or an exclusive focus upon religiously compatible behavior to the neglect of the non legalistic dimension of rabbinic tradition. Heschel is notable as a recent proponent of what one scholar calls the "Nachmanidean" school of Jewish thought emphasizing the mutually dependent relationship between God and man as opposed to the "Maimonidean" school in which God is independent and unchangeable. In Heschel's language, the "Maimonidean" perspective is associated with Rabbi Yishmael and the "Nachmanidean" perspective with Rabbi Akiva; according to Heschel neither perspective should be adopted in isolation, but rather both are interwoven with the other. Heschel described kabbalah as an outgrowth of classical rabbinic sources which describe God's dependence on man to implement the divine plan for the world. This contrasts with scholars like Gershon Scholem who saw kabbalah as reflecting the influence of non Jewish thought. In recent years, a growing body of kabbalah scholarship has followed Heschel's emphasis on the mystical experience of kabbalah and on its continuity with earlier Jewish sources. For these and other reasons, Martin Luther King Jr. called Heschel "a truly great prophet." Heschel actively participated in the Civil Rights movement, and was a participant in the third Selma to Montgomery march, accompanying Dr. King and John Lewis.

The Earth Is the Lord's: The Inner World of the Jew in Eastern Europe. 1949. Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion. 1951. The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man. 1951. Man's Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism. 1954. God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism. 1955. The Prophets. 1962.
Who Is Man? 1965. Israel: An Echo of Eternity. 1969. A Passion for Truth. 1973. I asked for Wonder: A spiritual anthology. 1983. Heavenly Torah: As Refracted Through the Generations. 2005. Torah min ha shamayim be'aspaklariya shel ha dorot; Theology of Ancient Judaism. [Hebrew]. 2 vols. London: Soncino Press, 1962. Third volume, New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1995. The Ineffable Name of God: Man: Poems. 2004. Kotsk: in gerangl far emesdikeyt. [Yiddish]. 2 v. (694 p.) Tel Aviv: ha Menorah, 1973. Added t. p.: Kotzk: the struggle for integrity (A Hebrew translation of vol. 1, Jerusalem: Magid, 2015). Der mizrekh Eyropeyisher Yid 45 p. Originally published: New York: Shoken, 1946.

Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion offers Heschel's views on how people can comprehend God. Judaism views God as being radically different from humans, so Heschel explores the ways that Judaism teaches that a person may have an encounter with the ineffable. A recurring theme in this work is the radical amazement that people feel when experiencing the presence of the Divine. Heschel then goes on to explore the problems of doubts and faith; what Judaism means by teaching that God is one; the essence of humanity and the problem of human needs; the definition of religion in general and of Judaism in particular; and human yearning for spirituality. He offers his views as to Judaism being a pattern for life.

The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man is a work on the nature and celebration of Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath. It is rooted in the thesis that Judaism is a religion of time, not space, and that the Sabbath symbolizes the sanctification of time. Heschel wrote that "Technical civilization is man's conquest of space. It is a triumph frequently achieved by sacrificing an essential ingredient of existence, namely, time." And that "To enhance our power in the world of space is our main objective" while warning that "We have often suffered from degradation by poverty, now we are threatened with degradation through power."

God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism is a companion volume to Man Is Not Alone. In this book Heschel discusses the nature of religious thought, how thought becomes faith, and how faith creates responses in the believer. He discusses ways that people can seek God's presence, and the radical amazement that we receive in return. He offers a criticism of nature worship; a study of humanity's metaphysical loneliness, and his view that we can consider God to be in search of humanity. The first section concludes with a study of Jews as a chosen people. Section two deals with the idea of revelation, and what it means for one to be a prophet. This section gives us his idea of revelation as an event, as opposed to a process. This relates to Israel's commitment to God. Section three discusses his views of how a Jew should understand the nature of Judaism as a religion. He discusses and rejects the idea that mere faith (without law) alone is enough, but then cautions against rabbis he sees as adding too many restrictions to Jewish law. He discusses the need to correlate ritual observance with spirituality and love, the importance of Kavanah (intention) when performing mitzvot. He engages in a discussion of religious behaviorism—when people strive for external compliance with the law, yet disregard the importance of inner devotion.

Many consider Heschel's Torah min HaShamayim BeAspaklariya shel HaDorot, (Torah from Heaven in the mirror of the generations) to be his masterwork. The three volumes of this work are a study of classical rabbinic theology and aggadah, as opposed to halakha (Jewish law). It explores the views of the rabbis in the Mishnah, Talmud and Midrash about the nature of Torah, the revelation of God to mankind, prophecy, and the ways that Jews have used scriptural exegesis to expand and understand these core Jewish texts. In this work, Heschel views the 2nd century sages Rabbi Akiva and Ishmael ben Elisha as paradigms for the two dominant world views in Jewish theology

Two Hebrew volumes were published during his lifetime by Soncino Press, and the third Hebrew volume was published posthumously by JTS Press in the 1990s. A new edition, including an expanded third volume, due to manuscripts which were found and edited by Dr. Dror Bondi, was published by Magid Press in 2021. An English translation of all three volumes, with notes, essays and appendices, was translated and edited by Rabbi Gordon Tucker, entitled Heavenly Torah: As Refracted Through the Generations. In its own right it can be the subject of intense study and analysis, and provides insight into the relationship between God and Man beyond the world of Judaism and for all Monotheism.

Heschel discusses the nature and role of man. In these three lectures, originally delivered in somewhat different form as The Raymond Fred West Memorial Lectures at Stanford University in May 1963, Dr. Heschel inquires into the logic of being human: What is meant by being human? What are the grounds on which to justify a human being's claim to being human? In the author's words, “We have never been as openmouthed and inquisitive, never as astonished and embarrassed at our ignorance about man. We know what he makes, but we do not know what he is or what to expect of him. Is it not conceivable that our entire civilization is built upon a misinterpretation of man? Or that the tragedy of man is due to the fact that he is a being who has forgotten the question: Who is Man? The failure to identify himself, to know what is authentic human existence, leads him to assume a false identity, to pretend to be what he is unable to be or to not accepting what is at the very root of his being. Ignorance about man is not lack of knowledge, but false knowledge.”

Heschel wrote a series of articles, originally in Hebrew, on the existence of prophecy in Judaism after the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE. These essays were translated into English and published as Prophetic Inspiration After the Prophets: Maimonides and Others by the American Judaica publisher Ktav. The publisher of this book states, "The standard Jewish view is that prophecy ended with the ancient prophets, somewhere early in the Second Temple era. Heschel demonstrated that this view is not altogether accurate. Belief in the possibility of continued prophetic inspiration, and belief in its actual occurrence existed throughout much of the medieval period, and it even exists in modern times. Heschel's work on prophetic inspiration in the Middle Ages originally appeared in two long Hebrew articles. In them, he concentrated on the idea that prophetic inspiration was even possible in post Talmudic times, and, indeed, it had taken place at various schools in various times, from the Geonim to Maimonides and beyond."