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Rabbi Dr. Abraham Joshua Heschel - A personal view
Chaïm Weiner
It is with certain reservation that I have accepted an invitation to write a short article about my rabbi and teacher - Rabbi Dr. Abraham Joshua Heschel. I consider writing such an article to be rather presumptuous. First, although I refer to Rabbi Heschel as my teacher, I have never met him personally. Second, although I have read and cherished many of his books, I do not consider myself an expert on his thought. However, Rabbi Heschel has served as an inspiration to a generation of Rabbis and teachers all over the globe. His writings have certainly been a major influence on my own religious thought and development, and have had a strong impact on my work as a religious educator. It is from this point of view that I write.
Personal background
Let me start with a short introduction to the man and his writings. Rabbi Heschel was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1907. He was the son of a long chain of Hasidic Rabbis. Hasidic Jewry places a great emphasis on the inner spiritual life of the religious individual. Heschel grew up surrounded by a world of profound spirituality - a world of faith. Although he later went on to the University of Berlin to pursue secular intellectual studies, he continued to draw on the well springs of his early religious experiences throughout his lifetime.
A "Poetic" Approach
Students of Heschel's thought are frequently either put off or overwhelmed by the style of his writing. He does not give us a straightforward presentation of a religious philosophy supported by proofs and arguments. His writing is poetic. His books are descriptions of faith rather than an argument for faith. This style is deliberate, reflecting Heschel's understanding of language and religion. Indeed, it seems that language and faith are closely related in Heschel's thought. I wish to look at Heschel's understanding of language, and to use it to present his understanding of faith. Let us consider each element of this style separately.
Heschel was a master of language, and had clear ideas of how language is used in the context of faith. Let us first consider the issue of vocabulary. He writes:
The language of faith employs only a few words coined in its own spirit; most of its terms are borrowed from the general sphere of human experience and endowed with new meaning. Consequently, in taking these terms literally we miss the unique connotations which they assumed in the religious usage.
The meaning of words in scientific language must be clear, distinct, unambiguous, conveying the same concept to all people. In poetry, however, words that have only one meaning are considered flat. The right word is often one that evokes a plurality of meanings and one that must be understood on more than one level. What is a virtue in scientific language is a failure in poetic expression (1).
Heschel writes in poetry, because he feels that only through poetry can the richness of the world of faith be properly conveyed. Faith does not have a vocabulary of its own, because the faith experience can only be alluded to, not described. A1legory and metaphor are the only tools that are capable of conveying the complexity of the faith experience. Just as the literal minded will not be able to fathom the true meaning of poetry, so will they be blind to the hand of God in creation. Indeed, one could say that the key to religious faith is the ability to view the world as a piece of poetry.
The Root of Faith
Heschel does not present an argument for faith, because he does not believe that the root of faith lies in the realm of rational argumentation. He says:
When the soul is not aflame, no light of speculation will illumine the darkness of indifference. No masterly logical demonstration of God's existence or any analysis of the intricacies of the traditional God concepts will succeed in dispersing that darkness... Proofs may aid in protecting, but not in initiating certainty; essentially they are explications of what is already intuitively clear to us. (2)
Reason is not the root of faith. Faith comes before reason. Its roots are in our pre-conceptual perception of the world. It is our pre-conceptual reactions to the world, wonder - awe - amazement, all attitudes that come before reason that suggest to the religious minded (Heschel would say the open-minded), that there is more to the world than what we "understand". Persons of faith first experience God in the world, and only then try to come to terms with this experience through reason. Modern men and women have closed themselves off to their pre-conceptual experiences. By being too literal minded, by ignoring the poetry that is inherent in creation, they have closed themselves off to the possibility of faith.
Heschel does not argue for faith for he knows that no argument will convince a person who is blind to religious experiences that there is a value in religious living. What he does is describe the world from the point of view of one who believes. Heschel's gift is that he was blessed with three qualities: he was a profoundly religious person with a rich spiritual life on which to draw; he had a brilliantly perceptive mind which could analyze and present this world of experience in the conceptual terms of modern thinkers, and he was a master of language, which he used to delicately portray the fine lines and contours of a religious soul. He is therefore uniquely suited to open up the world of faith to people of the modern world. Heschel never did become the "Rebbe" [spiritual leader] of a Hasidic sect. He went on instead to reach outward, to become a Rebbe for the whole world.
Heschel and Prayer
If one cannot be convinced of faith through reason, what value does Heschel's writings have for other people? This can be best explained through an analogy with another question that Heschel deals with in his writing - that of prayer. Prayer is very central in Heschel's writing. Prayer is generally understood as the out-pouring of a person's heart to God. While this is a very powerful picture, it does not really describe the traditional patterns of prayer of the religious Jew. Jewish prayer is based on a prayer-book. One is obligated to say set prayers at set times - a far cry from spontaneous out-pouring of the heart understood to be the ideal form of prayer. Heschel tries to describe the value of this kind of prayer - which he calls "prayer of empathy" - to a religious person. He writes:
"There need be no prayerful mood in us when we begin to pray. It is through our reading and feeling the words of prayers, through the imaginative projection of our consciousness in the meaning of the words, and through empathy for the ideas with which the words are pregnant, that this type of prayer comes about." (3)
What Heschel is saying is that for prayer to be meaningful it does not have to start from us. When we read the words of the prayer book, they do not inform - they inspire. We find ourselves in the words and have the ability to project ourselves into them. The words of prayer are "pregnant" words - words that have the potential of becoming more than themselves. There is an interaction between the words of the prayer and the person praying. The words come first and provoke us. We respond by identifying with the words and enriching them through our own experience. Finally, the words enrich our own experience by suggesting variations of experience and new meanings that we would perhaps not have reached on our own. Set prayers are there to remind us of the holy when we take the world for granted, to inspire and inform our spiritual lives and to point us in the direction of spiritual fulfilment.
Heschel and the Believer Today
This is what reading Heschel does for me. His genius is in his rich description, in the language of modern people, of the faith experience. For a person who believes, reading Heschel's poetry evokes a wealth of emotions.
Through reading and empathizing with his words we become aware of that which we only intuitively felt at some unconscious level beforehand. More than that, we come to better understand ourselves as religious people and are challenged to deepen our spiritual quests. Finally, through a better understanding of ourselves, in the language of our secular world, we become more confident of our position as religious people, and better able to present that position for others.
Although Heschel wrote from the context of the Jewish religion, his basic insight - that God is to be found by opening our hearts to the mysteries of this world and that the ultimate spiritual challenge is to walk with humility in the presence of the Almighty - is relevant to people of faith of all religions. Indeed, Heschel would be the first to condemn anybody claiming to have the monopoly on holiness.
Finally, as a Rabbi I am not only a religious person but a religious teacher. I believe that Heschel speaks not only to people who consider themselves to be religious but to all people. Although we call ourselves a secular society this is not entirely true. In society today there is an overwhelming feeling of emptiness. Perhaps even more than in the past there is a craving to uncover the spiritual dimensions of our existence. Heschel instructs us that the path to God is open to all. We are challenged as a religious people, to use our understanding of our own inner life to help others who wish to walk along that path.
*Chaïm Weiner is Rabbi at the Edgware Masorti Synagogue in North London, England.
1. Heschel, A.J. God in Search of Man, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 1955, pg. 179.
2. Heschel, A.J. Man is Not Alone, Farrar, Straus and Giroux New York, 1955, pg. 84.
3. Heschel, A.J. Man's Quest for God, Charles Scriber's Sons, New York, 1954, pg. 28.
