Heschel's yohrzeit Jan. 11-12, 2004
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Dear friends,
The yohrzeit (death-anniversary) of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
is 18 Tevet in the Jewish calendar, which this year falls on January
11-12, 2004. This will be his 31st yohrzeit.
Please note how close this is to the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther
King, on January 15. The two of them marched, thought, struggled
side by side against American racism and -- far more challenging to
their own supporters and the official "leaders" of both the Black and
Jewish communities -- against the US War in Vietnam.
On the Shalom Center's website at www.shalomctr.org in the Torah
section, there is a special subsection with passages from Rabbenu
Heschel and about him, which you may find useful in calling his life- work to the attention of our community.
The Shalom Center has also chosen two texts from his writings that
seem to us of special significance this year. They are provided
below, with some brief questions/ comments on how they might
address our own generation. We also especially commend to your
attention Susannah Heschel's brilliant selection of her father's
essays, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity (Farrar Straus &
Giroux, 1996).
Shalom, Arthur
1) From "On Prayer," pp. 257-267, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual
Audacity.
"The beginning of prayer is praise. The power of worship is song. To
worship is to join the cosmos in praising God. . . . Prayer is
meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and
to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods.
The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement,
seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise,
the hope, the vision."
[For us today, what would it mean to create prayers and prayer forms
that would be "subversive"? What would it mean for us to make the
liturgical changes that have transformed many aspects of Jewish
prayer in the last 20 years, into a "revolutionary" movement? (In the
just-published issue of Tikkun magazine, I have a column called
"Subversive Prayer" that offers some suggestions. See also the
"Prayer" section of oiur Website. We welcome other thoughts.) --
Arthur Waskow]
2. From "The Meaning of This War (World War II)," in Moral Grandeur.
[This essay was published originally in February 1944 in Liberal
Judaism.]
E M B L A Z O N E D O V E R the gates of the world in which we live
is the escutcheon of the demons. The mark of Cain in the face of man
has come to overshadow the likeness of God. There have never
been so much guilt and distress, agony and terror. At no time has the
earth been so soaked with blood. Fellow men turned out to be evil
ghosts, monstrous and weird. Ashamed and dismayed, we ask: Who
is responsible?
Few are privileged to discern God's judgment in history. But all may
be guided by the words of the Baal Shem: If a man has beheld evil,
he may know that it was shown to him in order that he learn his own
guilt and repent; for what is shown to him is also within him. ... Where
were we when men learned to hate in the days of starvation? When
raving madmen were sowing wrath in the hearts of the unemployed?
Let Fascism not serve as an alibi for our conscience. We have failed
to fight for right, for justice, for goodness; as a result we must fight
against wrong, against injustice, against evil. We have failed to offer
sacrifices on the altar of peace; now we must offer sacrifices on the
altar of war. ...
{Heschel has taken a classic spiritual insight from the founder of
Hassidism, the Baal Shem Tov, which was originally about individual
spiritual self-assessment -- and given it new meaning as applied to
whole societies.
[We pause at this point in the passage to ask: "What, today, would it
mean for us to apply this text to our own history? Heschel does not
let Nazism off the hook: he condemns it with utter intensity. Yet he
has the spiritual and political courage to insist that "we" (Western
liberal civilization?) also bear some responsibility for the emergence
of Nazi savagery. Can we muster similar courage today to ask what
measure of responsibility the United States has for the emergence of
the terrorism that we fear? To ask what responsibility the State of
Israel and the world-wide Jewish community bear for the emergence
of the terrorism we fear? With these questions in mind, now let us
continue with Heschel:]
O U R W O R L D seems not unlike a pit of snakes. We did not sink
into the pit in 1939, or even in 1933. We had descended into it
generations ago, and the snakes have sent their venom into the
bloodstream of humanity, gradually paralyzing us, numbing nerve
after nerve, dulling our minds, darkening our vision. Good and evil,
which were once as real as day and night, have become a blurred
mist. In our everyday life we worshipped force, despised
compassion, and obeyed no law but our unappeasable appetite. The
vision of the sacred has all but died in the soul of man. And when
greed, envy, and the reckless will to power, the serpents that were
cherished in the bosom of our civilization, came to maturity, they
broke out of their dens to fall upon the helpless nations.
The outbreak of this war was no surprise. It came as a long expected
sequel to a spiritual disaster. Instilled with the gospel that truth is
mere advantage and reverence weakness, people succumbed to the
bigger advantage of a lie-"The Jew is our misfortune"-and to the
power of arrogance-"Tomorrow the whole world shall be ours. " The
roar of bombers over Rotterdam, Warsaw, was but the echo of
thoughts bred for years by individual brains, and later applauded by
entire nations.
It was through our failure that people started to suspect that science
is a device for exploitation; parliaments pulpits for hypocrisy, and
religion a pretext for a bad conscience In the tantalized souls of
those who had faith in ideals, Suspicion became a dogma and
contempt the only solace. Mistaking the abortions of their conscience
for intellectual heroism, many thinkers employed clever pens to scold
and to scorn the reverence for life, the awe for truth, the loyalty to
justice. Man, about to hang himself, discovered it was easier to hang
others.
T H E C O N S C I E N C E of the world was destroyed by those who
were wont to blame others rather than themselves. Let us remember,
we revered the instincts but distrusted ideals. We labored to perfect
engines and let our inner life go to wreck. We ridiculed superstition
until we lost our ability to believe. We have helped to extinguish the
light our fathers had kindled. We have bartered holiness for
convenience, loyalty for success, love for power, wisdom for
diplomas, prayer for sermon, wisdom for information, tradition for
fashion.
God will return to us when we are willing to let Him in-into our banks
and factories, into our Congress and clubs, into our homes and
theaters. For God is everywhere or nowhere, the father of all men or
no man, concerned about everything or nothing. Only in His
presence shall we learn that the glory of man is not in his will to
power but in his power of compassion. Man reflects either the image
of His presence or that of a beast.
Dear friends,
The yohrzeit (death-anniversary) of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
is 18 Tevet in the Jewish calendar, which this year falls on January
11-12, 2004. This will be his 31st yohrzeit.
Please note how close this is to the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther
King, on January 15. The two of them marched, thought, struggled
side by side against American racism and -- far more challenging to
their own supporters and the official "leaders" of both the Black and
Jewish communities -- against the US War in Vietnam.
On the Shalom Center's website at www.shalomctr.org in the Torah
section, there is a special subsection with passages from Rabbenu
Heschel and about him, which you may find useful in calling his life- work to the attention of our community.
The Shalom Center has also chosen two texts from his writings that
seem to us of special significance this year. They are provided
below, with some brief questions/ comments on how they might
address our own generation. We also especially commend to your
attention Susannah Heschel's brilliant selection of her father's
essays, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity (Farrar Straus &
Giroux, 1996).
Shalom, Arthur
1) From "On Prayer," pp. 257-267, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual
Audacity.
"The beginning of prayer is praise. The power of worship is song. To
worship is to join the cosmos in praising God. . . . Prayer is
meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and
to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods.
The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement,
seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise,
the hope, the vision."
[For us today, what would it mean to create prayers and prayer forms
that would be "subversive"? What would it mean for us to make the
liturgical changes that have transformed many aspects of Jewish
prayer in the last 20 years, into a "revolutionary" movement? (In the
just-published issue of Tikkun magazine, I have a column called
"Subversive Prayer" that offers some suggestions. See also the
"Prayer" section of oiur Website. We welcome other thoughts.) --
Arthur Waskow]
2. From "The Meaning of This War (World War II)," in Moral Grandeur.
[This essay was published originally in February 1944 in Liberal
Judaism.]
E M B L A Z O N E D O V E R the gates of the world in which we live
is the escutcheon of the demons. The mark of Cain in the face of man
has come to overshadow the likeness of God. There have never
been so much guilt and distress, agony and terror. At no time has the
earth been so soaked with blood. Fellow men turned out to be evil
ghosts, monstrous and weird. Ashamed and dismayed, we ask: Who
is responsible?
Few are privileged to discern God's judgment in history. But all may
be guided by the words of the Baal Shem: If a man has beheld evil,
he may know that it was shown to him in order that he learn his own
guilt and repent; for what is shown to him is also within him. ... Where
were we when men learned to hate in the days of starvation? When
raving madmen were sowing wrath in the hearts of the unemployed?
Let Fascism not serve as an alibi for our conscience. We have failed
to fight for right, for justice, for goodness; as a result we must fight
against wrong, against injustice, against evil. We have failed to offer
sacrifices on the altar of peace; now we must offer sacrifices on the
altar of war. ...
{Heschel has taken a classic spiritual insight from the founder of
Hassidism, the Baal Shem Tov, which was originally about individual
spiritual self-assessment -- and given it new meaning as applied to
whole societies.
[We pause at this point in the passage to ask: "What, today, would it
mean for us to apply this text to our own history? Heschel does not
let Nazism off the hook: he condemns it with utter intensity. Yet he
has the spiritual and political courage to insist that "we" (Western
liberal civilization?) also bear some responsibility for the emergence
of Nazi savagery. Can we muster similar courage today to ask what
measure of responsibility the United States has for the emergence of
the terrorism that we fear? To ask what responsibility the State of
Israel and the world-wide Jewish community bear for the emergence
of the terrorism we fear? With these questions in mind, now let us
continue with Heschel:]
O U R W O R L D seems not unlike a pit of snakes. We did not sink
into the pit in 1939, or even in 1933. We had descended into it
generations ago, and the snakes have sent their venom into the
bloodstream of humanity, gradually paralyzing us, numbing nerve
after nerve, dulling our minds, darkening our vision. Good and evil,
which were once as real as day and night, have become a blurred
mist. In our everyday life we worshipped force, despised
compassion, and obeyed no law but our unappeasable appetite. The
vision of the sacred has all but died in the soul of man. And when
greed, envy, and the reckless will to power, the serpents that were
cherished in the bosom of our civilization, came to maturity, they
broke out of their dens to fall upon the helpless nations.
The outbreak of this war was no surprise. It came as a long expected
sequel to a spiritual disaster. Instilled with the gospel that truth is
mere advantage and reverence weakness, people succumbed to the
bigger advantage of a lie-"The Jew is our misfortune"-and to the
power of arrogance-"Tomorrow the whole world shall be ours. " The
roar of bombers over Rotterdam, Warsaw, was but the echo of
thoughts bred for years by individual brains, and later applauded by
entire nations.
It was through our failure that people started to suspect that science
is a device for exploitation; parliaments pulpits for hypocrisy, and
religion a pretext for a bad conscience In the tantalized souls of
those who had faith in ideals, Suspicion became a dogma and
contempt the only solace. Mistaking the abortions of their conscience
for intellectual heroism, many thinkers employed clever pens to scold
and to scorn the reverence for life, the awe for truth, the loyalty to
justice. Man, about to hang himself, discovered it was easier to hang
others.
T H E C O N S C I E N C E of the world was destroyed by those who
were wont to blame others rather than themselves. Let us remember,
we revered the instincts but distrusted ideals. We labored to perfect
engines and let our inner life go to wreck. We ridiculed superstition
until we lost our ability to believe. We have helped to extinguish the
light our fathers had kindled. We have bartered holiness for
convenience, loyalty for success, love for power, wisdom for
diplomas, prayer for sermon, wisdom for information, tradition for
fashion.
God will return to us when we are willing to let Him in-into our banks
and factories, into our Congress and clubs, into our homes and
theaters. For God is everywhere or nowhere, the father of all men or
no man, concerned about everything or nothing. Only in His
presence shall we learn that the glory of man is not in his will to
power but in his power of compassion. Man reflects either the image
of His presence or that of a beast.