Word: heschel
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Distrust & Resentment. U.S. Jews were dismayed by the tone and spirit of the revision. Particularly offensive to them was the reference to conversion, which was not matched by any call for Moslems to become Christians. Perhaps the most telling criticism came from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel of Manhattan's Jewish Theological Seminary, a good friend of Cardinal Bea's, who has worked long and hard for better Christian-Jewish relations. "A message that regards the Jew as a candidate for conversion and proclaims that the destiny of Judaism is to disappear is bound to foster reciprocal distrust...
...real keynoter was Dr. Abraham J. Heschel, whose book you review on the same page but whose thumping paper at the conference you ignore. Dr. Heschel recalled an earlier conference on religion and race, that between Moses and Pharaoh, and predicted an equally happy outcome for this one. His prediction, I feel certain, will be borne out in the long-term fruits of this historic meeting...
...explanation of this supranatural fury, Heschel says, lies in the prophets' claim to be surrogates for God. In their writings, they expressed both their own anger and divine wrath as well; their mission was to make known this "divine pathos"-God's concern for the world-to men. "Prophecy," Heschel writes, "is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor. God is raging in the prophet's words." Their distinction "was to sense the human situation as a divine emergency...
Lesson for Today. Yet though the prophets have gone, still "the world is dark, and human agony is excruciating." Although Heschel does not expressly argue it in his book, he believes that man today is called upon to be prophetlike-last week in Chicago he was a mordant critic of religion's ineffectiveness in U.S. race questions (see below). Born in Warsaw, the descendant of a long line of Hasidic rabbis, Heschel earned his doctorate at the University of Berlin, but was expelled by the Nazis to Poland in 1938. He left for England six weeks before the outbreak...
...Heschel first turned to the study of the prophets as a university student, when he was repelled by the aridity of contemporary philosophy. He has since spent most of his energies defending "the intellectual relevance of the Bible." Heschel argues that the secular disciplines of philosophy or science are no help to man in solving the ultimate riddles of life. "Marx and Freud are interesting," he says, "but in extreme situations, such as in dealing with good and evil, do they lead anywhere? Science presupposes a certain aspect of being, but is it the ultimate?" Heschel answers no, and says...