Introduction

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) was one of the most influential Jewish intellectuals in the second half of the twentieth century. In a career beginning with an aristocratic Hasidic upbringing in prewar and then inter-bellum Poland, in literary circles in Vilna, in universities in Weimar Berlin and in Frankfurt, as a lecturer in England, and then a professor in Cincinnati and New York City, Heschel constructed a Jewish theology that would become an inspiration for Jews and Gentiles in postwar America. A committed public intellectual and activist as well as a scholar and theologian, Heschel participated in the Civil Rights movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and inspired the havura and Jewish Renewal movements that were becoming popular in the years immediately preceding his untimely death.

Heschel had scores of students, acolytes, admirers—and critics—many of whom went on to contribute to public life, social activism, and religious pluralism, some becoming leaders in their chosen professions. Those who studied with him personally are now in the latter stages of their careers and many who never knew him have become devoted readers of his work and are emerging as the next generation of academic and spiritual leaders in North America and beyond.

As the centenary of his birth approached, numerous conferences around the globe celebrated his contributions to scholarship, theology, and activism. In the past year, conferences in New York, Texas, Rome, Warsaw, and Israel brought together scholars, activists, and intellectuals to celebrate and critically appraise his contribution to Judaism and American religious and moral life. On March 11/12/2007, Brandeis University held such a meeting, entitled "Pushing the Boundaries: Abraham Joshua Heschel, a Centenary Conference."¹ Apart from the hundredth anniversary of his birth, the occasion for this conference was to celebrate the publication of the second and final volume of Edward K. Kaplan's biography Abraham Joshua Heschel: Spiritual Radical (Yale University Press, 2007), which received a National Jewish Book Award.

The conveners of the conference were committed to celebrating Heschel's life by including his students, colleagues, and many younger scholars and intellectuals who are continuing to make his message a part of the global religious and intellectual landscape. The papers combined both appreciative and critical approaches and touched upon major points of his life's work including education, activism, poetry, rabbinics, theology, Hasidism, Jewish mysticism, religious pluralism, and interfaith dialogue. This volume includes selections of those papers, revised and expanded for publication.

We open with an overview on religious pluralism by Arnold Eisen, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, followed by Mary Boys, a Catholic Sister who teaches at the Protestant Union Theological Seminary, and Philip Cunningham, of the Jesuit Boston College. Heschel's inspiration of educational and political activism is explored by Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine and founder of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, Barry Shrage, pioneer of the adult education program supported by the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, and Peter Geffen, founder of the Abraham Joshua Heschel Schools in Manhattan, Arthur Green, founder of a trans-denominational rabbinical school, and Moshe Idel of the Hebrew University, one of the world's experts on Jewish mysticism, define Heschel's place in those movements, while David Novak of the University of Toronto and Gianluca Giannini, a philosopher at the University of Naples, explore Heschel's religious ethics. The collection ends as Gordon Tucker, editor and translator of Heschel's masterwork on the Talmud, confronts the problem of religious certainty, and Shaul Magid, representing the next generation of Heschel interpreters, explores the contemporary attraction to secularism in a way more positive than Heschel himself.

It is our hope that this collection will broaden and deepen its reader's appreciation of Heschel's work and, more importantly, will help launch another generation of readers who can use Heschel's work to cultivate new vistas of intellectual life and spiritual alternatives for Jews and non-Jews alike, in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. We would like to thank Steven T. Katz, editor of Modern Judaism, for his support, encouragement, and commitment to this project and his willingness...