Editor’s Introduction

A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers in himself harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.¹

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was just such a religious person. With his brilliant mind and compassionate heart, he became one of the most influential religious teachers of America in the twentieth century. Among those who both admire Heschel and have woven his teachings into their work are not only Jews, but also Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims in many different parts of the world, all attracted by his powerful words of wisdom, by the generosity of his spirit, and by his personal integrity. Heschel’s impact on Jews and others was due in large part to the fact that many who met him in person or who meet him in his works feel that he is writing out of his own experience. He had the rare ability to speak, and be heard, beyond the boundaries of his own religious tradition.

For Byron Sherwin, Heschel’s disciple, secretary, and research assistant, who has written a book and many articles on Heschel, “Abraham Joshua Heschel was a jewel from God’s treasure chest.”² Fritz A. Rothschild, a student and colleague of Heschel, speculates that Heschel’s great impact, especially on Jews and Christians, is due to the fact that “Heschel helps us to perceive life as the biblical prophets and psalmists perceived it; he thereby helps us discern in the biblical message the presence of God.”³ Samuel Dresner, Heschel’s student and disciple from the time that Heschel arrived in the United States until his death, spoke of Heschel as “nasi, a prince of his people. He was shalem, marvelously whole. He was zaddik hador, a master for our age.”⁴

Heschel also had a great impact on a number of the most influential Christians of his day, especially Catholics. He was greatly admired by Thomas Merton, Daniel Berrigan, Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, Cardinal Augustine Bea, who was responsible for the drafting of the Church’s revolutionary document Nostra Aetate, and even Pope Paul VI. Heschel convinced the Pope to remove a paragraph in Nostra Aetate that called for Jews to convert to Christianity.

In his essay “Heschel’s Impact on Catholic`Jewish Relations,” Eugene Fisher tells us that “when Heschel died, the American Catholic community mourned the loss of one who was, for us, a spiritual mentor and guide, a man whose faith helped form and mold our own faith at its deepest point. When Heschel died, the Jesuit journal America, reflecting the mood of the American Catholics throughout the country, took the unprecedented step of devoting an entire issue to a discussion of his work by the leading Catholic thinkers of the day.”⁵ The well-known American writer James Carroll stated, “To read Heschel was to step aboard the endangered but still seaworthy idea that the most transforming adventure of all can be intellectual. Heschel changed my notions not only of Judaism but of religion itself, and of God.”⁶

Many prominent Protestants also became close friends and admirers of Heschel, including Jaroslav Pelikan and William Sloan Coffin, and no one more so than the great Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr considered Heschel to be “the most authentic prophet of religious life in our culture” and the “commanding and authoritative voice not only in the Jewish community but in the religious life of America.”⁷ Martin Luther King, Jr., often expressed his deep appreciation of Heschel. He spoke of Heschel as “one of the persons who is relevant at all times, always standing with prophetic insight to guide us through these difficult days.”⁸ King saw Heschel as a “truly great man,” and “a truly great prophet.” He viewed him as a messenger of God because his words, “to think of man in terms of white, black, or yellow is more than an error. It is an eye disease, a cancer of the soul,”⁹ expressed King’s own dream for the world...