Product Description

This first collection of Heschel's essays - compiled, edited and with an introduction by his daughter Susannah Heschel, is a stunning reminder of the virtuosity of one of the most well respected minds in Judaic studies.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #412219 in Books
• Published on: 1997-05-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

From Library Journal
Susannah Heschel has compiled, edited, and written a biographical introduction to this first collection of the essays of her father, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-72), a noted scholar and theologian but also an activist in civil rights and antiwar causes. Although best known until now for such influential books as Man Is Not Alone, God in Search of Man, and Man's Quest for God, all written in the 1950s, Heschel also wrote theological essays and popular articles on social and political issues. In clear but dense prose, the theological essays celebrate the religious culture of pre-World War II Eastern European Jews, stressing the spiritual and mystical dimensions. Recommended for academic libraries with Judaica and theology collections.?Harry Frumerman, formerly with Hunter Coll., New York
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907^-72), a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York in the 1940s and 1950s, fled eastern Europe in 1939, leaving the Hasidic Jewish world in which he was raised--a world soon to be destroyed in the Holocaust. His most important books were Man Is Not Alone (1951), The Sabbath (1951), God in Search of Man (1952), and Man's Quest for God (1954), masterpieces of religious thought. This collection of Heschel's essays has been compiled, edited, and introduced by his daughter, Susannah Heschel, a Case Western Reserve University professor. She has divided the essays into five groups: "Existence and Celebration," "No Time for Neutrality," "Toward a Just Society," "No Religion Is an Island," and "The Holy Dimension." The essays cover all aspects of Judaism; words of compassion and mercy from the most widely revered American rabbi and spiritual teacher of his generation. An appendix includes two interviews with Heschel. George Cohen

Review
"One of the truly great men of our day and age, a truly great prophet." --Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"This essential collection captures the best of a leading thinker and doer who influenced many contemporaries with an ancient prophetic tradition that he made new."--Kirkus Reviews
-- Review

Customer Reviews

This book fills out the human side of Heschel's thought
This is a wonderful book of short essays, speeches, articles and other writings that helps to fill out the more human, more real-world perspective of the man and his approach to Jewish living. You will not find the theological depth of his writing here, but you will find in these words his response to the world as it happened around him. Whether he is dealing with strictly Jewish issues or interfaith or racial or the Vietnam war, he carries his consistent approach that the world must be faced constantly as God's challenge to us and our opportunity to find God.

These essays are approachable and direct. While they do not serve as an introduction to Heschel's core thought, they bring the man himself into relief and let those of us who know him only through his writing to glimpse the real Heschel at work and in life.

An Excellent Work!
A warm yet intellectual compilation of that great thinker. To the Heschel Scholar, it once again proves the undeniable fact, that though he was liberal in his political views, his views on Judaism were deeply rooted in his pious Chassidic ancestry. This book like Heschel's classic "The Earth Is The Lord's" makes you wonder if Heschel - though a faculty member at JTS, is to be considered a "Conservative Jew"? or perhaps it is time to acknowledge that he may have been an Orthodox one after all. All in all a wonderful, warm book for all people of all persuasions.

partially timely; classic Heschel
Mostly addresses and lectures aimed at specific issues to specific audiences and constituencies.

Nevertheless, there is a core of brilliance in every work. And, more importantly, there are some very enduring lessons.

The material on interfaith dialogue is possibly the only clear, Halachically correct yet openminded approach ever presented. He