Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes (130 quotes, page 2)

“Some tacit assumptions of the theory of insufficiency remain problematic.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 5
Context: Being is either open to, or dependent on, what is more than being, namely, the care for being, or it is a cul-de-sac, to be explained in terms of self-sufficiency. The weakness of the first possibility is in its reference to a mystery; the weakness of the second possibility is in its pretension to offer a rational explanation.
Nature, the sum of its laws, may be sufficient to explain in its own terms how facts behave within nature; it does not explain why they behave at all. Some tacit assumptions of the theory of insufficiency remain problematic.

“The proper relation is a minimum of creed and a maximum of faith.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The Holy Dimension", p. 335 - 336
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
Context: There are many creeds but only one faith. Creeds may change, develop, and grow flat, while the substance of faith remains the same in all ages. The overgrowth of creed may bring about the disintegration of that substance. The proper relation is a minimum of creed and a maximum of faith.

Faith

“There is a glory, an aura, that lies about all beings, a spiritual setting of reality.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 5
Context: In English the phrase that a person has "a presence" is hard to define. There are people whose being here and now is felt, even though they do not display themselves in action and speech. They have a "presence." … Of a person whose outwardness communicates something of his indwelling power or greatness, whose soul is radiant and conveys itself without words, we say he has presence.
Standing face to face with the world, we often sense a presence which surpasses our ability to comprehend. The world is too much with us. It is crammed with marvel. There is a glory, an aura, that lies about all beings, a spiritual setting of reality.
To the religious man it is as if things stood with their backs to him, their faces turned to God, as if the glory of things consisted in their being an object of divine care.

Reality

“Faith is something that comes out of the soul. It is not an information that is absorbed but an attitude, existing prior to the formulation of any creed.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The Holy Dimension", p. 337
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)

Faith , Soul

“There are many creeds but only one faith. Creeds may change, develop, and grow flat, while the substance of faith remains the same in all ages.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The Holy Dimension", p. 335 - 336
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
Context: There are many creeds but only one faith. Creeds may change, develop, and grow flat, while the substance of faith remains the same in all ages. The overgrowth of creed may bring about the disintegration of that substance. The proper relation is a minimum of creed and a maximum of faith.

Age , Faith , Change

“Wonder, or radical amazement, is a way of going beyond what is given in thing and thought, refusing to take anything for granted, to regard anything as final.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 4
Context: Wonder, or radical amazement, is a way of going beyond what is given in thing and thought, refusing to take anything for granted, to regard anything as final. It is our honest response to the grandeur and mystery of reality our confrontation with that which transcends the given.

Way

“We manipulate what is available on the surface of the world; we must also stand in awe before the mystery of the world.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 5
Context: The world presents itself in two ways to me. The world as a thing I own, the world as a mystery I face. What I own is a trifle, what I face is sublime. I am careful not to waste what I own; I must learn not to miss what I face.
We manipulate what is available on the surface of the world; we must also stand in awe before the mystery of the world. We objectify Being but we also are present at Being in wonder, in radical amazement.
All we have is a sense of awe and radical amazement in the face of a mystery that staggers our ability to sense it.

World

“Faith opens our hearts for the entrance of the holy.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The Holy Dimension", p. 339
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
Context: Faith opens our hearts for the entrance of the holy. It is almost as though God were thinking for us.

Faith , Heart

“Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows
with the ability to say no to oneself.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Sense

“Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Knowledge

“Few are guilty, but all are responsible.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Source: The Prophets

“Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"No Religion is an Island", p. 264
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
Context: Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy. And yet being alive is no answer to the problems of living. To be or not to be is not the question. The vital question is: how to be and how not to be?
The tendency to forget this vital question is the tragic disease of contemporary man, a disease that may prove fatal, that may end in disaster. To pray is to recollect passionately the perpetual urgency of this vital question.

“The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Life , Understanding , Happiness

“Remember that there is meaning beyond absurdity. Know that every deed counts, that every word is power… Above all, remember that you must build your life as if it were a work of art.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Life , Art

“Prayer begins at the edge of emptiness.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Variant: Prayer begins where our power ends.

“We can never sneer at the stars, mock the dawn, or scoff at the totality of being.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Star

“… morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The Reasons for My Involvement in the Peace Movement" (1972) http://www.shalomctr.org/node/61; later included in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity (1996)
Context: There is immense silent agony in the world, and the task of man is to be a voice for the plundered poor, to prevent the desecration of the soul and the violation of our dream of honesty.
The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the Prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.

Feeling , Suffering , Evil , Indifference

“Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

“The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one's own tradition with reverence for different traditions.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Problem , Loyalty

“I have one talent, and that is the capacity to be tremendously surprised, surprised at life, at ideas.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

The Zookeeper's Wife (2008)
Context: I have one talent, and that is the capacity to be tremendously surprised, surprised at life, at ideas. This is to me the supreme Hasidic imperative: Don't be old. Don't be stale.

Life , Idea

“The riches of the soul are stored up in its memory. this is the test of character, not whether a man follows the daily fashion, but whether the past is alive in his present.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The Holy Dimension", p. 333
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)

Soul , Fashion , Memory , Past

“One must forget many clichés in order to behold a single image. Insight is the beginning of perceptions to come rather than the extension of perceptions gone by. Conventional seeing, operating as it does with patterns and coherences, is a way of seeing the present in the past tense. Insight is an attempt to think in the present. … Insight is knowledge at first sight.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Introduction
The Prophets (1962)

Way , Knowledge , Thinking , Past

“The stone is broken, but the words are alive.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

(2008)

“Much of what the Bible demands can be comprised in one imperative: Remember!”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The Holy Dimension", p. 334
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)

“We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

As quoted in SQ : Connecting with Our Spiritual Intelligence (2000) by Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall, p. 15

God , Question , Thinking

“The search of reason ends at the shore of the known.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

(2008)

Search

“He who has ever been confronted with the ultimate and has realized that sun and stars and souls do not ramble in a vacuum will keep his heart in readiness for the hour when the world is entranced, awaits a soul to breathe in the mystery that all things exhale in their craving for salvation. For things are not mute. The stillness is full of demands. Out of the world comes a behest to instill into the air a rapturous song for God, to incarnate in the stones a message of humble beauty, and to instill a prayer for goodness in the hearts of all children.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The Holy Dimension", p. 330
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)

God , Children , World , Beauty

“In his great vision Isaiah perceives the voice of the seraphim even before he hears the voice of the Lord. What is it that the seraphim reveal? "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory."
Holy, holy, holy — indicate the transcendence and distance of God. The whole earth is full of His glory — the immanence or presence of God. The outwardness of the world communicates something of the indwelling greatness of God.
The glory is neither an aesthetic nor physical quality. It is sensed in grandeur, but it is more than grandeur. It is a presence or the effulgence of a presence.
The whole earth is full of His glory, but we do not perceive it; it is within our reach but beyond our grasp. And still it is not entirely unknown to us.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 5

God , World , Communication , Sense

“Why were so few voices raised in the ancient world in protest against the ruthlessness of man? Why are human beings so obsequious, ready to kill and ready to die at the call of kings and chieftains? Perhaps it is because they worship might, venerate those who command might, and are convinced that it is by force that man prevails. The splendor and the pride of kings blind the people.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The idolatry of might," Volume 1, p. 159
The Prophets (1962)

People , World

“The idea of dependence is an explanation, whereas self-sufficiency is an unprecedented, nonanalogous concept in terms of what we know about life within nature. Is not self-sufficiency itself insufficient to explain self-sufficiency?”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 5

Life , Idea , Nature , Dependency

“It is an act of evil to accept the state of evil as either inevitable or final.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Volume 1, p. 181
The Prophets (1962)

Evil

“There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Prologue p. 3
The Sabbath (1951)

Life , Time

“Instead of indulging in jealousy, greed, in relishing themselves, there are men who keep their hearts alert to the stillness in which time rolls on and leaves us behind. … those who are open to the wonder will not miss it. Faith is found in solicitude for faith, in an inner care for the wonder that is everywhere.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The Holy Dimension", p. 331
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)

Men , Jealousy , Faith , Time

“Man is a messenger who forgot the message.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

(2008)

“To be human is a problem, and the problem expresses itself in anguish.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

(2008)

Problem

“Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time, to attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of year. The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals; and our Holy of Holies is a shrine that neither the Romans nor the Germans were able to burn.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Prologue p. 8
The Sabbath (1951)

Learning , Time

“Worship is a way of seeing the world in the light of God.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The Light of God" in I Asked for Wonder : A Spiritual Anthology (1983) edited by Samuel H. Dresner, p. 20

God , World , Way , Light

“Acceptance is appreciation, and the high value of appreciation is such that to appreciate appreciation seems to be the fundamental prerequisite for survival. Mankind will not die for lack of information; it may perish for lack of appreciation.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 5

“Trust is the core of human relationships, of gregariousness among men. Friendship, a puzzle to the syllogistic and critical mentality, is not based on experiments or tests of another person's qualities but on trust. It is not critical knowledge but a risk of the heart which initiates affection and preserves loyalty in our fellow men.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The Holy Dimension", p. 339
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)

Men , Friendship , Knowledge , Heart

“Pagans exalt sacred things, the Prophets extol sacred deeds.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

The Earth Is The Lord's : And The Sabbath (1963), p. 14

“Being is transcended by a concern for being.
Our perplexity will not be solved by relating human existence to a timeless, subpersonal abstraction which we call essence. We can do justice to human being only by relating it to the transcendent care for being.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 5

Justice

“Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Prologue p. 6
The Sabbath (1951)

Life , Sense , Time

“Being as we know it, the world as we come upon it, stands before us as otherness, remoteness. For all our efforts to exploit or comprehend it, it remains evasive, mysteriously immune. Being is unbelievable.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 5

World , Effort

“Ultimate meaning is not grasped once and for all in the form of timeless idea, acquired once and for all, securely preserved in conviction. It is not simply given. It comes upon us as an intimation that comes and goes. What is left behind is a memory, and a commitment to that memory. Our words do not describe it, our tools do not wield it. But sometimes it seems as if our very being were its description, its secret tool.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 4

Secret , Idea , Memory

“Society today is no longer in revolt against particular laws which it finds alien, unjust, and imposed, but against law as such, against the principle of law. And yet we must not regard this revolt as entirely negative. The energy that rejects many obsolete laws is an entirely positive impulse for renewal of life and law.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"No Religion is an Island", p. 264
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)

Life , Law

“Ultimately there is no power to narcissistic, self-indulgent thinking. Authentic thinking originates with an encounter with the world.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 5

World , Thinking

“The striking surprise is that prophets of Israel were tolerated at all by their people. To the patriots, they seemed pernicious; to the pious multitude, blasphemous; to the men in authority, seditious.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Volume 1, p. 19
The Prophets (1962)

Men , People

“Being points beyond itself.
Accustomed to think in terms of space, the expression "being points beyond itself" may be taken to denote a higher point in space. What is meant, however, is a higher category than being: the power of maintaining being.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 5

Thinking

“The opposite of freedom is not determinism, but hardness of heart. Freedom presupposes openness of heart, of mind, of eye and ear.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Volume 1, p. 191
The Prophets (1962)

Freedom , Heart

“The focus of prayer is not the self. … It is the momentary disregard of our personal concerns, the absence of self-centered thoughts, which constitute the art of prayer. Feeling becomes prayer in the moment in which we forget ourselves and become aware of God. … Thus, in beseeching Him for bread, there is one instant, at least, in which our mind is directed neither to our hunger nor to food, but to His mercy. This instant is prayer. We start with a personal concern and live to feel the utmost.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

As quoted in Judaism (1998) by Arthur Hertzberg, p. 300
Variant: "It is the momentary disregard of our personal concerns, the absence of self-centered thoughts, which constitute the act of prayer."

Hunger , God , Food , Art