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Abraham Joshua Heschel

97 quotes

“The time for the kingdom may be far off, but the task is plain: to retain our share in God in spite of peril and contempt. There is a war to wage against the vulgar, the glorification of the absurd, a war that is incessant, universal. Loyal to the presence of the ultimate in the common, we may be able to make it clear that man is more than man, that in doing the finite he may perceive the infinite.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Meaning of Jewish Existence" in The Torch (1950)
“The greatest problem is not how to continue but how to exalt our existence. The call for a life beyond the grave is presumptuous, if there is no cry for eternal life prior to our descending to the grave. Eternity is not perpetual future but perpetual presence. He has planted in us the seed of eternal life. The world to come is not only a hereafter but also a here-now.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy Of Religion (1951), Ch. 26: The Pious Man; Our Destiny is to Aid
“We do not step out of the world when we pray; we merely see the world in a different setting. The self is not the hub but the spoke of the revolving wheel. It is precisely the function of prayer to shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Man's Quest For God: Studies In Prayer And Symbolism (1954), p. 7; Heschel would later use this analogy in several minor variations in other writings.
“Some are guilty, but all are responsible.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Religious Basis of Equality of Opportunity—The Segregation of God" (1963) in Race: Challenge to Religion (1963) Edited by Mathew Ahmann.
“Pagans exalt sacred things, the Prophets extol sacred deeds.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Earth Is The Lord's: And The Sabbath (1963), p. 14
“We forfeit the right to worship God as long as we continue to humiliate negroes. … The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Telegram to President John F. Kennedy (16 June 1963)
“The Biblical words about the genesis of heaven and earth are not words of information but words of appreciation. The story of creation is not a description of how the world came into being but a song about the glory of the world's having come into being.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Wisdom of Heschel (1970), p. 150
“There is immense silent agony in the world, and the task of man is to be a voice for the plundered poor, to prevent the desecration of the soul and the violation of our dream of honesty. The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the Prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Reasons for My Involvement in the Peace Movement" (1972); later included in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity (1996)
“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.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The World's Religions (1976) by Sir James Norman Dalrymple Anderson, p. 61
“Worship is a way of seeing the world in the light of God.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Light of God" in I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology (1983) edited by Samuel H. Dresner, p. 20
“The focus of prayer is not the self. … It is the momentary disregard of our personal concerns, the absence of self-centered thoughts, which constitute the art of prayer. Feeling becomes prayer in the moment in which we forget ourselves and become aware of God. ... Thus, in beseeching Him for bread, there is one instant, at least, in which our mind is directed neither to our hunger nor to food, but to His mercy. This instant is prayer. We start with a personal concern and live to feel the utmost.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Judaism (1998) by Arthur Hertzberg, p. 300
“We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in SQ: Connecting with Our Spiritual Intelligence (2000) by Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall, p. 15
“There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In our daily lives we attend primarily to that which the senses are spelling out for us: to what the eyes perceive, to what the fingers touch. Reality to us is thinghood, consisting of substances that occupy space; even God is conceived by most of us as a thing. The result of our thinginess is our blindness to all reality that fails to identify itself as a thing, as a matter of fact.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time, to attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of year. The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals; and our Holy of Holies is a shrine that neither the Romans nor the Germans were able to burn.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One must forget many clichés in order to behold a single image. Insight is the beginning of perceptions to come rather than the extension of perceptions gone by. Conventional seeing, operating as it does with patterns and coherences, is a way of seeing the present in the past tense. Insight is an attempt to think in the present. … Insight is knowledge at first sight.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The striking surprise is that prophets of Israel were tolerated at all by their people. To the patriots, they seemed pernicious; to the pious multitude, blasphemous; to the men in authority, seditious.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To Hosea, marriage is the image of the relationship of God and Israel. ... Idolatry is adultery.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why were so few voices raised in the ancient world in protest against the ruthlessness of man? Why are human beings so obsequious, ready to kill and ready to die at the call of kings and chieftains? Perhaps it is because they worship might, venerate those who command might, and are convinced that it is by force that man prevails. The splendor and the pride of kings blind the people.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The gods are on the side of the stronger," according to Tacitus. The prophets proclaimed that the heart of God is on the side of the weaker. God's special concern is not for the mighty and the successful, but for the lowly and the downtrodden, for the stranger and the poor, for the widow and the orphan.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The prophets never taught that God and history are one, or that whatever happens below reflects the will of God above. Their vision is of man defying God, and God seeking man to reconcile with him.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is an act of evil to accept the state of evil as either inevitable or final.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The opposite of freedom is not determinism, but hardness of heart. Freedom presupposes openness of heart, of mind, of eye and ear.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Freedom is not a natural disposition, but God's precious gift to man. Those in whom viciousness becomes second-nature, those in whom brutality is linked with haughtiness, forfeit their ability and therefore their right to receive that gift. Hardening of the heart is the suspension of freedom.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wonder, or radical amazement, is a way of going beyond what is given in thing and thought, refusing to take anything for granted, to regard anything as final. It is our honest response to the grandeur and mystery of reality our confrontation with that which transcends the given.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It would be a contradiction in terms to assume that the attainment of transcendent meaning consists in comprehending a notion. Transcendence can never be an object of possession or of comprehension. Yet man can relate himself and be engaged to it. He must know how to court meaning in order to be engaged in it. Love of ultimate meaning is not self-centered but rather a concern to transcend the self.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ultimate meaning is not grasped once and for all in the form of timeless idea, acquired once and for all, securely preserved in conviction. It is not simply given. It comes upon us as an intimation that comes and goes. What is left behind is a memory, and a commitment to that memory. Our words do not describe it, our tools do not wield it. But sometimes it seems as if our very being were its description, its secret tool.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The anchor of meaning resides in an abyss, deeper than the reach of despair. Yet the abyss is not not infinite; its bottom may suddenly be discovered within the confines of a human heart or under the debris of might doubts. This may be the vocation of man: to say "Amen" to being and to the Author of being; to live in defiance of absurdity, notwithstanding futility and defeat; to attain faith in God even in spite of God.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sense of meaning is not born in ease and sloth. It comes after bitter trials, disappointments in the glitters, foundering, strandings. It is the marrow from the bone. There is no manna in our wilderness. Thought is not bred apart from experience or from inner surroundings. Thinking is living, and no thought is bred in an isolated cell in the brain. No thought is an island.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ultimately there is no power to narcissistic, self-indulgent thinking. Authentic thinking originates with an encounter with the world.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Human being is both being in the world and living in the world. Living involves responsible understanding of one's role in relation to all other beings. For living is not being in itself, but living of the world, affecting, exploiting, consuming, comprehending, deriving, depriving.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are two primary ways in which mans relates himself to the world that surround him: manipulation and appreciation. In the first way he sees in what surrounds him things to be handled, forces to be managed, objects to be put to use. In the second way he sees in what surrounds him things to be acknowledged, understood, valued or admired.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fellowship depends on appreciation while manipulation is the cause of alienation: objects and I apart, things stand dead, and I am alone. What is more decisive: a life of manipulation distorts the image of the world. Reality is equated with availability: What I can manipulate is, what I cannot manipulate is not. A life of manipulation is the death of transcendence.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Acceptance is appreciation, and the high value of appreciation is such that to appreciate appreciation seems to be the fundamental prerequisite for survival. Mankind will not die for lack of information; it may perish for lack of appreciation.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The perceptibility of things is not the end of their being. Their surface is available to our tools, their depth is immune to our inquisitiveness. Things are both available and immune. We penetrate their physical givenness, we cannot intuit their secret. We measure what they exhibit, we know how they function, but we also know that we do not know what they are, what they stand for, what they imply.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man is naturally self-centered and he is inclined to regard expediency as the supreme standard for what is right and wrong. However, we must not convert an inclination into an axiom that just as man's perceptions cannot operate outside time and space, so his motivations cannot operate outside expediency; that man can never transcend his own self. The most fatal trap into which thinking may fall is the equation of existence and expediency.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The supremacy of expediency is being refuted by time and truth. Time is an essential dimension of existence defiant of man's power, and truth reigns in supreme majesty, unrivaled, inimitable, and can never be defeated.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Essential to education for being human is to cultivate a sense for the inexpedient, to disclose the fallacy of absolute expediency. God's voice may sound feeble to our conscience. Yet there is a divine cunning in history which seems to prove that the wages of absolute expediency is disaster. Happiness is not a synonym for self-satisfaction, complacency, or smugness. Self-satisfaction breeds futility and despair. Self-satisfaction is the opiate of fools.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“New insight begins when satisfaction comes to an end, when all that has been seen, said, or done looks like a distortion. … Man's true fulfillment depends on communion with that which transcends him.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Being as we know it, the world as we come upon it, stands before us as otherness, remoteness. For all our efforts to exploit or comprehend it, it remains evasive, mysteriously immune. Being is unbelievable.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our concern with environment cannot be reduced to what can be used, to what can be grasped. Environment includes not only the inkstand and the blotting paper, but also the impenetrable stillness in the air, the stars, the clouds, the quiet passing of time, the wonder of my own being. I am an end as well as a means, and so is the world: an end as well as a means. My view of the world and my understanding of the self determine each other. The complete manipulation of the world results in the complete instrumentalization of the self.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The world presents itself in two ways to me. The world as a thing I own, the world as a mystery I face. What I own is a trifle, what I face is sublime. I am careful not to waste what I own; I must learn not to miss what I face. We manipulate what is available on the surface of the world; we must also stand in awe before the mystery of the world. We objectify Being but we also are present at Being in wonder, in radical amazement. All we have is a sense of awe and radical amazement in the face of a mystery that staggers our ability to sense it.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Faith is not belief, an assent to a proposition, faith is attachment to the meaning beyond the mystery. Knowledge is fostered by curiosity; wisdom is fostered by awe. Awe precedes faith; it is the root of faith. We must be guided by awe to be worthy of faith. Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the world becomes a market place for you. The loss of awe is the avoidance of insight. A return to reverence is the first prerequisite for a revival of wisdom, for the discovery of the world as an allusion to God.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Being is both presence and absence. God had to conceal His presence in order to bring the world into being. He had to make His absence possible in order to make room for the world's presence. Coming into being brought along denial and defiance, absence, oblivion and resistance.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Being points beyond itself. Accustomed to think in terms of space, the expression "being points beyond itself" may be taken to denote a higher point in space. What is meant, however, is a higher category than being: the power of maintaining being.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Being is either open to, or dependent on, what is more than being, namely, the care for being, or it is a cul-de-sac, to be explained in terms of self-sufficiency. The weakness of the first possibility is in its reference to a mystery; the weakness of the second possibility is in its pretension to offer a rational explanation. Nature, the sum of its laws, may be sufficient to explain in its own terms how facts behave within nature; it does not explain why they behave at all. Some tacit assumptions of the theory of insufficiency remain problematic.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The idea of dependence is an explanation, whereas self-sufficiency is an unprecedented, nonanalogous concept in terms of what we know about life within nature. Is not self-sufficiency itself insufficient to explain self-sufficiency?”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source