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Abraham Joshua Heschel

97 quotes

“Being is transcended by a concern for being. Our perplexity will not be solved by relating human existence to a timeless, subpersonal abstraction which we call essence. We can do justice to human being only by relating it to the transcendent care for being.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Torah has not imposed upon Israel a tyranny of the spirit. It does not violate human nature. On the contrary, the road to the sacred leads through the secular. The spiritual rests upon the carnal, like "the Spirit that hovers over the face of the water. " Jewish living means living according to a system of checks and balances. We are not asked anything that cannot be responded to. We are not told: Love thy enemy, but Do not hate him, and positively: "If thou meet thine enemy's ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again." (Exodus 23:4).”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The issue of prayer is not prayer; the issue of prayer is God. One cannot pray unless he has faith in his own ability to accost the infinite, merciful, eternal God.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Society today is no longer in revolt against particular laws which it finds alien, unjust, and imposed, but against law as such, against the principle of law. And yet we must not regard this revolt as entirely negative. The energy that rejects many obsolete laws is an entirely positive impulse for renewal of life and law.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy. And yet being alive is no answer to the problems of living. To be or not to be is not the question. The vital question is: how to be and how not to be? The tendency to forget this vital question is the tragic disease of contemporary man, a disease that may prove fatal, that may end in disaster. To pray is to recollect passionately the perpetual urgency of this vital question.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Religion is critique of all satisfaction. Its end is joy, but its beginning is discontent, detesting boasts, smashing idols. It began in Ur Kasdim, in the seat of a magnificent civilization. Yet Abraham said, "No," breaking the idols, breaking away. And so every one of us must begin by saying no to all visible, definable entities pretending to be triumphant, ultimate. The ultimate is a challenge, not an assertion. Dogmas are allusions, not descriptions.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He who has ever been confronted with the ultimate and has realized that sun and stars and souls do not ramble in a vacuum will keep his heart in readiness for the hour when the world is entranced, awaits a soul to breathe in the mystery that all things exhale in their craving for salvation. For things are not mute. The stillness is full of demands. Out of the world comes a behest to instill into the air a rapturous song for God, to incarnate in the stones a message of humble beauty, and to instill a prayer for goodness in the hearts of all children.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Instead of indulging in jealousy, greed, in relishing themselves, there are men who keep their hearts alert to the stillness in which time rolls on and leaves us behind. … those who are open to the wonder will not miss it. Faith is found in solicitude for faith, in an inner care for the wonder that is everywhere.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only straight discovering in the nearest stone or tree, sound or thought, the shelter of His often desecrated goodness, the treasury of His waiting form man's heart to affiliate with His will — this is the rapture of faith. It is an echo to a pleading voice, a reply to the inconceivable in all beauty.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Faith is an awareness of divine mutuality and companionship, a form of communion between God and man. It is not a psychical quality, something that exists in the mind only, but a force from the beyond.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but the endless, tameless pilgrimage of hearts.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those of faith who plant sacred thoughts in the uplands of time, the secret gardeners of the Lord in mankind's desolate hopes, may slacken and tarry but rarely betray their vocation.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not the individual man nor a single generation by its own power can erect the bridge that leads to God. Faith is the achievement of many generations, and effort accumulated over many centuries. … There is a collective memory of God in the human spirit, and it is this memory which is the main source of our faith.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Faith is not a thing that comes into being out of nothing. It originates in an event. In the spiritual vacancy of life something may suddenly occur that is like the lifting of a veil at the horizon of knowledge. A simple episode may open sight of the eternal. A shift of conceptions, boisterous like a tempest of soft as a breeze may swerve a mind for an instant or forever. For God is not wholly silent and man is not always deaf. God's willingness to call men to His service and man's responsiveness to the divine indications in things and events are for faith what sun and soil are for the plant.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The riches of the soul are stored up in its memory. this is the test of character, not whether a man follows the daily fashion, but whether the past is alive in his present.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only those who are spiritually imitators, only people who are afraid to be grateful and too weak to be loyal, have nothing but the present moment. The mark of nobility is inherited possession. To a noble person it is a holy joy to remember, an overwhelming thrill to be grateful, while to a person whose character is neither rich nor strong, gratitude is a most painful sensation. The secret of wisdom is never to get lost in a momentary mood or passion, never to forget a friendship over a momentary grievance, never to lose sight of the lasting values over a transitory episode.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Much of what the Bible demands can be comprised in one imperative: Remember!”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are many creeds but only one faith. Creeds may change, develop, and grow flat, while the substance of faith remains the same in all ages. The overgrowth of creed may bring about the disintegration of that substance. The proper relation is a minimum of creed and a maximum of faith.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the realm of faith, God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. To rationalists He is something after which they seek in the darkness with the light of their reason. To men of faith He is the light.”
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)
“Faith is something that comes out of the soul. It is not an information that is absorbed but an attitude, existing prior to the formulation of any creed.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reason is not the measure of all things, not the all-inclusive power in the inner life of man. The powers of will and emotion, the realm of the subconscious lie beyond the scope of knowledge. The rush of reason is an effort of limited strength. Faith is not the miniature of thinking but its model, not its shadow but its root. It is a spiritual force in man, not dealing with the given, concrete limited, but directed upon the transcendent. It is the spring of our creative actions.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All action is vicarious faith.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reality is not exhausted by knowledge. Inaccessible to research are the ultimate facts. All scientific conclusions are based on axioms, all reasoning depends ultimately upon faith. Faith is virgin thinking, preceding all transcendent knowledge. To believe is to abide at the extremities of spirit.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The account of our experiences, the record of debit and credit, is reflected in the amount of trust or distrust we display towards life and humanity. There are those who maintain that the good is within our reach everywhere; you have but to stretch out your arms and you will grasp it. But there are others who, intimidated by fraud and ugliness, sense scorn and ambushes everywhere and misgive all things to come. Those who trust develop a finer sense for the good, even at the hight cost of blighted hopes. Charmed by the spell of love, faith is, as it were, imposed upon their heart.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Trust is the core of human relationships, of gregariousness among men. Friendship, a puzzle to the syllogistic and critical mentality, is not based on experiments or tests of another person's qualities but on trust. It is not critical knowledge but a risk of the heart which initiates affection and preserves loyalty in our fellow men.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Faith opens our hearts for the entrance of the holy. It is almost as though God were thinking for us.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain the sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainments. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer in return for the mystery by which we live. Who is worthy to be present at the constant unfolding of time?”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man is a messenger who forgot the message.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The search of reason ends at the shore of the known.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The stone is broken, but the words are alive.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To be human is a problem, and the problem expresses itself in anguish.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have one talent, and that is the capacity to be tremendously surprised, surprised at life, at ideas. This is to me the supreme Hasidic imperative: Don't be old. Don't be stale.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In my youth, growing up in a Jewish milieu, there was one thing we did not have to look for and that was exaltation. Every moment is great, we were taught, every moment is unique.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He who is satisfied has never truly craved, and he who craves for the light of God neglects his ease for ardor, his life for love, knowing that contentment is the shadow not the light. The great yearning that sweeps eternity is a yearning to praise, a yearning to serve. And when the waves of that yearning swell in our souls all the barriers are pushed aside: the crust of callousness, the hysteria of vanity, the orgies of arrogance. For it is not the I that trembles alone, it is not a stir out of my soul but an eternal flutter that sweeps us all. No code, no law, even the law of God, can set a pattern for all of our living. It is not enough to have the right ideas. For the will, not reason, has the executive power in the realm of living. The will is stronger than reason and does not blindly submit to the dictates of rational principles. Reason may force the mind to accept intellectually its conclusions. Yet what is the power that will make me love to do what I ought to do?”
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. 24: The Great Yearning; The Yearning for Spiritual Living
“As a result of letting the drive for power dominate existence, man is bound to lose his sense for nature's otherness. Nature becomes a utensil, an object to be used. The world ceases to be that which is and becomes that which is available. It is a submissive world that modern man is in the habit of sensing, and he seems content with the riches of thinghood. Space is the limit of his ambitions, and there is little he desires besides it. Correspondingly, mans consciousness recedes more and more in the process of reducing his status to that of a consumer and manipulator. He has enclosed himself in the availability of things, with the shutters down and no sight of what is beyond availability.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Exclusive manipulation results in the dissolution of awareness of all transcendence. Promise becomes a pretext, God becomes a symbol, truth a fiction, loyalty tentative, the holy a mere convention. Mans very existence devours all transcendence. Instead of facing the grandeur of the cosmos, he explains it away; instead of beholding, he takes a picture; instead of hearing a voice, he tapes it. He does not see what he is able to face. There is a suspension of mans sense of the holy. His mind is becoming a wall instead of being a door open to what is larger than the scope of his comprehension. He locks himself out of the world by reducing all reality to mere things and all relationship to mere manipulation. Transcendence is not an article of faith. It is what we come upon immediately when standing face to face with reality.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Authentic existence involves exaltation, sensitivity to the holy, awareness of indebtedness. Existence without transcendence is a way of living where things become idols and idols become monsters. Denial of transcendence contradicts the essential truth of being human. Its roots can be traced either to stolidity of self-contentment or to superciliousness of contempt, to moods rather than to comprehensive awareness of the totality and mystery of being. Denial of transcendence which claims to unveil the truth of being is an inner contradiction, since the truth of being is not within being or within our consciousness of being but rather a truth that transcends our being.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In our reflection we must go back to where we stand in awe before sheer being, faced with the marvel of the moment. The world is not just here. It shocks us into amazement. Of being itself all we can positively say is: being is ineffable. The heart of being confronts me as enigmatic, incompatible with my categories, sheer mystery. My power of probing is easily exhausted, my words fade, but what I sense is not emptiness but inexhaustible abundance, ineffable abundance. What I face I cannot utter or phrase in language. But the richness of my facing the abundance of being endows me with marvelous reward: a sense of the ineffable.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe. 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 in small things the beginning of infinite significance, 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.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In his great vision Isaiah perceives the voice of the seraphim even before he hears the voice of the Lord. What is it that the seraphim reveal? "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory." Holy, holy, holy — indicate the transcendence and distance of God. The whole earth is full of His glory — the immanence or presence of God. The outwardness of the world communicates something of the indwelling greatness of God. The glory is neither an aesthetic nor physical quality. It is sensed in grandeur, but it is more than grandeur. It is a presence or the effulgence of a presence. The whole earth is full of His glory, but we do not perceive it; it is within our reach but beyond our grasp. And still it is not entirely unknown to us.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In English the phrase that a person has "a presence" is hard to define. There are people whose being here and now is felt, even though they do not display themselves in action and speech. They have a "presence." … Of a person whose outwardness communicates something of his indwelling power or greatness, whose soul is radiant and conveys itself without words, we say he has presence. Standing face to face with the world, we often sense a presence which surpasses our ability to comprehend. The world is too much with us. It is crammed with marvel. There is a glory, an aura, that lies about all beings, a spiritual setting of reality. To the religious man it is as if things stood with their backs to him, their faces turned to God, as if the glory of things consisted in their being an object of divine care.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One of the results of the rapid depersonalization of our age is a crisis of speech, profanation of language. We have trifled with the name of God, we have taken the name and the word of the Holy in vain. Language has been reduced to labels, talk has become double-talk. We are in the process of losing faith in the reality of words. Yet prayer can happen only when words reverberate with power and inner life, when uttered as an earnest, as a promise. On the other hand, there is a high degree of obsolescence in the traditional language of the theology of prayer. Renewal of prayer calls for a renewal of language, of cleansing the words, of revival of meanings. The strength of faith is in silence, and in words that hibernate and wait. Uttered faith must come out as a surplus of silence, as the fruit of lived faith, of enduring intimacy. Theological education must deepen privacy, strive for daily renewal of innerness, cultivate ingredients of religious existence, reverence and responsibility.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is the predicament of man. All souls descend a ladder form heaven to the world. Then the ladders are taken away. Once they are in this world, they are called upon from heaven to rise, to come back. It is a call that goes out again and again. Each soul seeks the ladder in order to ascend above; but the ladder cannot be found. Most people make no effort to ascend, claiming, how can one rise to heaven without a ladder? However, there are souls which resolve to leap upwards without a ladder. So they jump and fall down. They jump and fall down, until they stop. Wise people think that since no ladder exists, there must be another way. We must face the challenge and act. Be what it may, one must leap until God, in His mercy, makes exultation come about.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It seems as though we have arrived at a point in history, closest to the instincts and remotest from ideals, where the self stands like a wall between God and man. It is the period of a divine eclipse. We sail the seas, we count the stars, we split the atom, but never ask: Is there nothing but a dead universe and our reckless curiosity? Primitive man's humble ear was alert to the inwardness of the world, while the modern man is presumptuous enough to claim that he has the sole monopoly over soul and spirit, that he is the only thing alive in the universe. … But there is a dawn of wonder and surprise in our souls, when the things that surround us suddenly slip off the triteness with which we have endowed them, and their strangeness opens like a gap between them and our mind, a gap that no words can fill. … What is the incense of self-esteem to him who tastes in all things the flavor of the utterly unknown, the fragrance of what is beyond our senses? There are neither skies nor oceans, neither birds nor trees — there are only signs of what can never be perceived. And all power and beauty are mere straws in the fire of a pure man's vision.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Faith is sensitiveness to what transcends nature, knowledge and will, awareness of the ultimate, alertness to the holy dimension of all reality. Faith is a force in man, lying deeper than the stratum of reason and its nature cannot be defined in abstract, static terms. To have faith is not to infer the beyond from the wretched here, but to perceive the wonder that is here and to be stirred by the desire to integrate the self into the holy order of living. It is not a deduction but an intuition, not a form of knowledge, of being convinced without proof, but the attitude of mind toward ideas whose scope is wider than its own capacity to grasp. Such alertness grows from the sense for the meaningful, for the marvel of matter, for the core of thoughts. It is begotten in passionate love for the significance of all reality, in devotion to the ultimate meaning which is only God. By our very existence we are in dire need of meaning, and anything that calls for meaning is always an allusion to Him. We live by the certainty that we are not dust in the wind, that our life is related to the ultimate, the meaning of all meanings. And the system of meanings that permeates the universe is like an endless flight of stairs. Even when the upper stairs are beyond our sight, we constantly rise toward the distant goal.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He whose soul is charged with awareness of God earns his inner livelihood by a passionate desire to pour his life into the eternal wells of love. … We do not live for our own sake. Life would be preposterous if not for the love it confers. Faith implies no denial of evil, no disregard of danger, no whitewashing of the abominable. He whose heart is given to faith is mindful of the obstructive and awry, of the sinister and pernicious. It is God's strange dominion over both good and evil on which he relies. … Faith is not a mechanical insurance but a dynamic, personal act, flowing between the heart of man and the love of God.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is neither advance nor service without faith. Nobody can rationally explain why he should sacrifice his life and his happiness for the sake of the good. The conviction that I must obey the ethical imperatives is not derived from logical argument but originates from an intuitive certitude, in a certitude of faith. There is no conspiracy against reason, no random obstinacy, no sluggish inertia of mind or smug self-assurance entrenched behind the walls of believing. Faith does not detach a man from thinking, it does not suspend reason. It is opposed not to knowledge but to backwardness and dullness, to indifferent aloofness to the essence of living. … It is a distortion to regard reason and faith as alternatives. Reason is a necessary coefficient of faith. Faith without explication by reason is mute, reason without faith is deaf. There can be a true symbiosis of reason and faith.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source