Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940-1972 by Edward K. Kaplan, Yale University Press, 544 pages, $40
Among modern Orthodox Jews, the name Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, or simply "The Rav," has become nearly synonymous with the movement itself. A deep commitment to halakha (Jewish law), rigorous engagement with secular thought, and the cautious attitude toward bending Jewish practice to accommodate shifting social mores that Soloveitchik championed are the cornerstone of the movement. His two major books, "The Lonely Man of Faith" and "Halakhic Mind," remain regular fodder for divrei torah (religious commentaries) at Shabbat meals at Yeshiva University.
On the flip side, for Jews who proudly identify as progressive - think free-range kosher chicken and independent neo-Hasidic havurot - Abraham Joshua Heschel is the Rav. Polish-born and Berlin-educated, like Soloveitchik, his contemporary, Heschel (1907-1972) has become the touchstone for Jews on the spiritual and political left, summed up by the singular image of a bearded Jew marching arm-in-arm with Martin Luther King, Jr., in Selma, Alabama, in 1965.
As an earnest Jewish middle schooler sold on tikkun olam, I was introduced to Heschel through the iconic photograph with King. I remember my counselor at Camp Ramah quoting the famous line - Heschel claimed he was "praying with his feet" in Selma - and then urged us to do the same by picking up the litter around camp. For a 12-year-old, this held tremendous power: Here was a hero-rabbi who managed to fight for voting rights and keep Shabbat.
And so it is in the face of such myth-making that Edward K. Kaplan has written "Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940-1972." A sequel to "Prophetic Witness," Kaplan's (1998) biography of Heschel's early years in Warsaw and Berlin, this meticulously researched account of Heschel's life in the United States recovers a far more complicated, private Heschel.
What such careful research translates into, on balance, is the presentation of Heschel as a flawed man. In much of the book, Heschel is lonely, insecure and melancholy. Though he has handfuls of devoted students, many find him humorless and detached.
There is much value in seeing such warts; understanding the way Heschel was perceived in his own time is crucial for those who wish to understand the man and not the simplified myth. Particularly for scholars interested in understanding the back story behind all of Heschel's publications, meetings and activities, "Spiritual Radical" will no doubt be an invaluable resource. But Kaplan's extreme use of details at times dwarfs the bigger picture. Because he lacks Heschel's own poetic style, it is possible for the lay reader to lose sight of Heschel's real magnitude.
From Cincinnati to Morningside Heights
The book begins with Heschel's arrival at age 33 at Hebrew Union College, the Reform seminary in Cincinnati. One of eight refugee professors rescued from Europe by the school's president, Julian Morgenstern (they were dubbed the "College in Exile"), Heschel largely maintained his exilic status during his almost five-year stint at HUC. Though many will have already heard of Heschel's discomfort with the unkosher cafeteria, Kaplan paints a more detailed picture of his personal isolation. There were pranks involving dead chickens and water-filled condoms that splashed him when he opened his bedroom door; students made fun of his observance and his Yiddish accent.
Still, Heschel found a small group of disciples, including Samuel Dresner, Kaplan's co-author for "Prophetic Witness." Despite the fact that some members of the class derided them as the "kavanah boys" for their earnest intent to learn Hasidism from their rebbe, they maintained their admiratation for Heschel.
But the small band of students proved insufficient. Heschel remained lonely at HUC, even as he maintained a deep sense of appreciation for Julian Morgenstern whom he viewed as having saved his life. He pursued positions at Yeshiva University and the Jewish Theological Seminary, both in New York. While Kaplan notes that there is a lack of evidence as to why a firm job offer did not materialize from YU, it is clear that JTS recruited Heschel forcefully, seeing his theological outlook as a "counterforce" to the humanism of Mordechai Kaplan. When Heschel was formally offered a job as associate professor of Jewish ethics and mysticism at the JTS, he wrote to Morgenstern with respect, but frankness: "While I find that there are ideals and obligations which I whole-heartedly share, I do not feel that my own interpretation of Judaism is in full accord with the teachers of the college."
Amidst exciting professional developments, Heschel was broken by the sorrow of the Holocaust. His mother died of a heart attack when the Nazis stormed into her apartment, and his sister Gittel was murdered in Treblinka. This tremendous personal loss was accompanied by outrage that his American Jewish community had done nothing to save Europe's Jews. Heschel had participated in the only march on Washington - in 1943 - to try to move the American government. In his rage he turned to writing, penning an essay called "The Meaning of This War." He spoke in no uncertain terms: "Let Fascism not serve as an alibi for our conscience. We have failed to fight for right, for justice, for goodness. Jews had to choose between being 'slaves of evil or ministers of the sacred'."
This uncompromising, prophetic voice took shape in New York, where a new chapter of Heschel's life began. In his first year, the young rabbi found personal comfort in his budding relationship with Sylvia Straus. Kaplan illuminates their courtship by revealing Heschel's personal reflections. A music lover, Heschel was drawn to Straus, a professional pianist. Particularly moving is a Yiddish poem he wrote after seeing his future wife (and mother of their daughter, Susannah) play:
Your fingers caress the piano keys -
an army of white, long bird beaks -
I've gathered stillness for the shrines
Of my nights, and light for your wild secrets
Heschel had the kind of sensitivity to detail that more often characterizes poets than rabbis, and it is this sensitivity to the world that formed the very foundation of his theology. Building on the Hasidic sense of wonder at God's universe, Heschel's theology urged Jews to delve into the world, rather than withdraw from it, as the way to approach God.
In his first major book, "Man Is Not Alone" (1951), Heschel articulated his theology. The book focused on the importance of "righteous self-questioning" that would lead, eventually, to a sense of "radical amazement." In this "blueprint for theological revolution" - the themes of which he'd continue to develop for the rest of his life - a living God, rather than the self, is at the center.
The book's message reached far beyond the Jewish community. Protestant theologian and public intellectual Reinhold Niebuhr, who later would become one of Heschel's closest friends, predicted his review of the book in the New York Herald Tribune that Heschel would become a "commanding and authoritative voice not only in the Jewish community but in the religious life of America."
From his post in Morningside Heights - within the teeming intellectual life offered by the Jewish Theological Seminary, Union Theological Seminary across the street, and Columbia University a few blocks downtown - looking out at the rest of the world, this is exactly what Heschel became. Heschel engaged with the most pressing issues of his day: the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union, the young State of Israel, the war in Vietnam, segregation, interfaith relations, and the growing spiritual crisis Heschel perceived was facing Jews and America. He responded to such issues as a Jew, whose beliefs stretched well beyond the confines of Conservative Judaism.
Spiritual Radical
By focusing on Heschel's spiritual philosophy, Kaplan is especially successful at helping the reader understand his involvement in public affairs. The underpinning of Heschel's political activism is what Kaplan terms "spiritual radicalism." And though the section on spiritual radicalism is technically part three of a five-part book, it is the theme that allows Kaplan to weave together what to many are seemingly disparate aspects of Heschel's personality: the loner, the Yiddish poet, the public intellectual, the melancholy mystic, the political dissident. By understanding Heschel as a spiritual radical, Kaplan helps explain the seeming paradox of a man who at once believed in Torah from Sinai and endorsed George McGovern for president.
Kaplan's understanding of Heschel's spiritual radicalism has been developing for years: In the 1973 issue of Conservative Judaism published as an extended eulogy for Heschel, Kaplan explains his rabbi's theological DNA. For Heschel, religion was not limited to the synagogue. Instead, it was a deeply personal experience of the individual soul, "a challenge" and "a dynamic thrust towards truth and holiness." Kaplan calls this radicalism spiritual, for "it confronts the complacency of religion itself." Thus prayer, according to Heschel, was meant to subvert, to "overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, falsehoods."
Heschel's model for spiritual radicalism was none other than the Hebrew Prophets.
Encountering God through faith rather than rationalism, by Heschel's lights, these men lived lives of uncompromising integrity. "The prophet hates the approximate," he wrote in "The Prophets" (1962), "he shuns the middle of the road... The prophet is strange, one-sided, an unbearable extremist." The prophet's aim was nothing less than to "revolutionize history."
These spiritual extremists he so admired were the men whom Heschel strove to emulate. By judging the world uncompromisingly, he often upset the complacent and the comfortable. Heschel's clear allegiance to the truth, rather than any institution or party, allowed him to consistently cut to the heart of the matter: "Some bar mitzvah affairs are galut [characteristic of the Exile]. Our timidity and hesitation to take a take a stand of behalf of the Negroes are galut. There is galut whenever Judaism is judged by the standards of the market-place."
He urged his fellow Jews to resist prioritizing petty matters of religious observance over pressing public issues where Judaism should have a role. When his students at JTS engaged in deep debate over the kosher status of gelatin, he interrupted forcefully: "Gentlemen, can you tell me if the atomic bomb is kosher?"
Perhaps these sorts of powerful anecdotes are precisely why it's easy to mythologize Heschel. But in his own life, Kaplan reminds us, they often made him like the prophets - lonely, burdened by the tremendous weight of the world.
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