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
gains misery labor
There is happiness in the love of labor, there is misery in the love of gain.
vanity people deception
Mundus vult decipi'—the world wants to be deceived. To live without deception presupposes standards beyond the reach of most people whose existence is largely shaped by compromise, evasion and mutual accommodation. Could they face their weakness, their vanity and selfishness, without a mask?
religion tragedy isolation
The tragedy of religion is partly due to its isolation from life, as if God could be segregated.
people fulfillment humans
(People) can never attain fulfillment, or sense of meaning, unless it is shared, unless it pertains to other human beings.
inspirational inspiring business
Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge.
guilty responsible
Few are guilty, but all are responsible.
cheating israel people
Indeed, the sort of crimes and even the amount of delinquency that fill the prophets of Israel with dismay do not go beyond that which we regard as normal, as typical ingredients of social dynamics. To us a single act of injustice--cheating in business, exploitation of the poor--is slight; to the prophets, a disaster. To us injustice is injurious to the welfare of the people; to the prophets it is a deathblow to existence: to us, an episode; to them, a catastrophe, a threat to the world.
song heart waiting
Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart. Audacious longing, burning songs, daring thoughts, an impulse overwhelming the heart, usurping the mind--these are all a drive towards serving Him who rings our hearts like a bell. It is as if He were waiting to enter our empty, perishing lives.
men servant-of-god earth
Man's sin is in his failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that he is the servant of God.
loyalty religious tolerance
The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one's own tradition with reverence for different traditions.
light darkness peers
We must first peer into the darkness, feel strangled and entombed in the hopelessness of living without God, before we are ready to feel the presence of His living light.
simple intuition analysis
Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine. ... to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple: to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.
deeds littles
Every little deed counts.
sacred secular
The road to the sacred leads through the secular.