"If
you want to know God, sharpen your sense of the human." -
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Abraham
Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) was one of the great religious teachers
and moral prophets of our time. Born in Warsaw to a long line of
Hasidic rabbis, he chose instead to study philosophy in Germany.
Expelled back to Warsaw, he escaped just weeks before the Nazi
invasion and settled in the United States. Through a series of books
he contributed greatly to the spiritual renewal of Judaism. But he
exerted an equal influence on Christians, so much that he was called
another "apostle to the gentiles."
A
passionate champion of interfaith dialogue, he served as an official
observer at Vatican II and was influential in challenging the
Catholic Church to overcome the legacy of anti-Semitism. He raised a
prophetic challenge to the social issues of his day, marching with
Martin Luther King and protesting the Vietnam war. His writings here
on prayer, God, prophecy, the human condition, and the spiritual life
vividly communicate his instinct for the "holy dimension of all
existence."
