Shalom, I am Rabbi Jonathan GinsBurg. This series is on great Jewish you should know.
This particular video is on Abraham Joshua Heschel. He was one of the great Jewish thinkers of the 20th Century, born in Europe and he was a Hasid. In fact, going to be one of the great Hasidic Rabbis but he lest Hasidic do it because he did not believe that was the right course for him. He then went to Berlin and studied philosophy at the University of Berlin. Got a PhD writing a very important classical work of the prophet, which I highly recommend, his study of the Hebrew prophets. But he finally left philosophy because he believes that philosophy answered the penultimate question, what is good. He believes that religion and Judaism answered the most important question which is what is the holy?
Heschel wrote many books. He is very difficult to understand even though his writing is beautiful. And it is not his first or second or third language, but he writes very poetically. If you want a system theology of Heschel, the book to read is The Genesis of Faith by John Merkle. But Heschel talk about God and God’s demand of us and our demands of God.
I just want to read two brief passages from Heschel’s book Man is Not Alone. His study of religion which is, well it is difficult but it is well worth reading. He says to define religion primarily as a quest for personal satisfaction or salvation is to make it a refined kind of magic. As long as man sees in religion the satisfaction of his own needs. A guaranty of immortality or a device to protect society, it is not God whom he serves but him self. The more removed from the ego, the more real is God’s presence. So if that is not religion then what is religion and what is Judaism?
He says the only way to define Jewish religion. It is the awareness of God’s interest in a human being or man he said, the awareness of a covenant of a responsibility that lays on God as well as on us. Our task is to concur with God’s interest, to carry out God’s vision of our task. God is in need of man for the attainment of God’s ends and religion as Judaism understands it, is a way of serving this ends of which we are in need. Even though we may not be aware of them, ends which we must learn to feel the need of. So religion is not about us. The goal in life is not to achieve immortality or to see how God can help our society protect us or satisfy our own needs. Those are the lowest form of worship and that is the kind of primitive magic. The highest form is to understand that we have obligations to God and to carry out those obligations to help the world.
Heschel brought a lot of great ideas and reaffirmed a lot of beauty to Judaism, but that is one of his main contributions. He wrote also about how it is difficult for secular modern humanity to come to grip with God. He said that we find God in the bible, in the nature of the world, the natural world and on observing the sacred deaves that means devote. A little bit Heschel and the beauty of Heschel.
He was saved from Hitler by Hebrew Union College and through out there for a few years. Then he spent the rest of his carrier at The Jewish Theological Seminary, the conservative seminary teaching. He is also very famous for the photo of him walking and lying next Martin Luther King in the famous Selma walk. He was believing that you not only have to talk, to talk but you have to walk the walk. And he believed deeply in God’s demand for social justice. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.
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