Last night we talked about Rabbi Everett Gendler, of blessed memory and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, jr.  

Today we are going to talk a little more about Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, whose birthday was observed this week and whose yahrzeit, the anniversary of his death is this weekend.  However, like we have been saying the last few weeks, perhaps more than a birthday or a yahrzeit, is the dash between those dates, the life between. Abraham Joshua Heschel lived that dash. Abraham Joshua Heschel lived a life of meaning, creating meaning for us all. Abraham Joshua Heschel was a giant amongst late 20th century rabbis.  

Born in Warsaw, on January 11, 1907, he escaped Poland with the help of both Hebrew Union College and the Jewish Theological Seminary. He became a professor of Jewish mysticism at JTS and a leader in the civil rights movement as we discussed last night.  

Heschel was the author of a number of books—and if you haven’t read one, I urge you to. Yes, that is a book review! His prose is like poetry and there is a majesty, an elegance, a passion that makes it soar. I contend his writing is in a style like that of Thoreau or Emerson. That elegance and passion is hard to find in other places. I actually have always wanted to write an academic paper comparing the styles because I think that his style is more accessible to Americans precisely because it reads like Emerson and Thoreau. One day.  

Meanwhile, his books, God in Search of Man, Man is Not Alone, The Prophets, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, Insecurity of Freedom have much to teach us, even today, in now the 21st century. Especially now in the 21st Century. We need Heschel more than ever. 

This weekend is also my own father’s yahrzeit, His definition of a Jew, as I have taught you before was someone who questions, thinks and argues. Perhaps he had heard Heschel on that topic: 

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

However, if he were debating my father—an interesting concept on its own, he would have said: “Who is a Jew? A person whose integrity decays when unmoved by the knowledge of wrong done to other people.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays 

This week we read the beginning of the Book of Exodus, Sh’mot in Hebrew. Names. When Moses is shepherding sheep for his father-in-law Jethro, he sees a bush that is on fire; but it is not consumed. He takes off his shoes because he knows he is standing on Holy Ground. He answers the voice of G-d, the call of G-d by saying “Hineini, Here am I”. Fully present and aware. Full of awe.  

Heschel understood that sense of awe.  

“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement… get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.” 

 When I was young and my father was a professor at Northwestern, we didn’t spend Saturday mornings in shul. We spent them at rallies and vigils and demonstrations, on issues that my father was passionate about. The climate. Nuclear disarmament. Civil Rights. Or we were out in a forest, experiencing that radical amazement, although my father problem lacked that vocabulary. 

Much of my own activism, then can be tied back to my father or to Heschel’s comment after marching with King, “My feet were praying..” This Martin Luther King Weekend I challenge you to figure out how your feet can pray. 

Perhaps my favorite Heschel book is The Sabbath, just a short book of only 118 pages. Like many of his books, it seems you could open it at random and just read a paragraph, any paragraph and savor it. The publisher’s review on goodreads says: 

“Elegant, passionate, and filled with the love of God’s creation, Abraham Joshua Heschel’s The Sabbath has been hailed as a classic of Jewish spirituality ever since its original publication-and has been read by thousands of people seeking meaning in modern life. In this brief yet profound meditation on the meaning of the Seventh Day, Heschel introduced the idea of an “architecture of holiness” that appears not in space but in time. Judaism, he argues, is a religion of time: it finds meaning not in space and the material things that fill it but in time and the eternity that imbues it, so that “the Sabbaths are our great cathedrals.”  

Heschel explains the Sabbath this way: 

“Shabbat comes with its own holiness; we enter not simply a day, but an atmosphere. My father cites the Zohar: the Sabbath is the name of God. We are within the Sabbath rather than the Sabbath being within us. For my father, the question is how to perceive that holiness: not how much to observe, but how to observe. Strict adherence to the laws regulating Sabbath observance doesn’t suffice; the goal is creating the Sabbath as a foretaste of paradise. The Sabbath is a metaphor for paradise and a testimony to God’s presence; in our prayers, we anticipate a messianic era that will be a Sabbath, and each Shabbat prepares us for that experience: “Unless one learns how to relish the taste of Sabbath … one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come.” It was on the seventh day that God gave the world a soul, and “[the world’s] survival depends upon the holiness of the seventh day.” The task, he writes, becomes how to convert time into eternity, how to fill our time with spirit: “Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else.” 

“The Sabbath is a reminder of the two worlds—this world and the world to come; it is an example of both worlds. For the Sabbath is joy, holiness, and rest; joy is part of this world; holiness and rest are something of the world to come.”16”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath 

So Shabbat has been described as a palace of time and space. A taste of the world to come.  

He also attempts to answer the question of how do we get there: 

“The solution of mankind’s most vexing problem will not be found in renouncing technical civilization, but in attaining some degree of independence of it.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath 

“Architecture of Time       Technical civilization is man’s conquest of space. It is a triumph frequently achieved by sacrificing an essential ingredient of existence, namely, time. In technical civilization, we expend time to gain space. To enhance our power in the world of space is our main objective. Yet to have more does not mean to be more. The power we attain in the world of space terminates abruptly at the borderline of time. But time is the heart of existence.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath 

I challenge you this weekend, this life to do three things. Know that the ground you are standing on is holy. Know that your feet can be praying. Know that you can live in radical amazement, if you but pause, be fully present and filled with awe. Hineini. Here am I. Ken yehi ratzon.