“All the days of our lives we must continue to deepen our sense of mystery in order to be worthy of attaining faith.”
Page 29
“What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder.”
Page 57
Thunder in the Soul: To Be Known by God by Rabbi and Civil Rights Leader Abraham Joshua Heschel was published by Plough Publishing with the foreword by his daughter Susannah Heschel and edited by Robert Erlewine as part of its Plough Spiritual Guides series.
Abraham Joshua Heschel was a religious observant Jew and devout researcher in all fields of spirituality of Judaism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Kabbalah, Hasidism, and medieval philosophy. He was fluent in four languages Hebrew, German, English, and Yiddish. But unlike most philosophers and religious leaders of the day, Heschel felt it was necessary to have dissenting opinions and views for religious and/or philosophical traditions to thrive.
Heschel believed that religions and philosophical traditions belonged to the public sphere verses the private sphere. He also believed these traditions and philosophies were necessary for today’s social concerns, even if it meant giving voices to unpopular or controversial claims.
Heschel was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1907 and since 1910 was an ardent student of the Torah, but when he was in his teens his focus encompassed literature, philosophy, poetry leading him to the University of Berlin where he majored in philosophy, Semitics, art history, and trained to be a rabbi and scholar.
Click on the link below to read about the Torah.
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1426382/jewish/Torah.htm#Torah
In 1937 he moved to Frankfurt, Germany only to have him and his mother deported along with thousands of others to Poland at the age of 31. He traveled to. London in July of 1939 with the hopes of getting visas for his mother and other relatives but Germany invaded Poland and his mother and relatives eventually died in the Holocaust.
Click on the link below to view Spiritual Audacity: the Abraham Joshua Heschel story
In 1940, he was a professor at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1945, he joined the faculty at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. It was here that he met and married classical pianist Sylvia Straus (RIGHT TOP_ and the two had daughter Susannah. (RIGHT BOTTOM) Heschel wrote numerous highly acclaimed works that eventually led the Jewish community to be jealous of his success, knowledge and fame.
Heschel taught that in order to persevere in one’s spirituality, religion or philosophy one must not receive validation or reason but wonder, awe, and questions in the very thing they dedicate their lives to, even if this means denying our common sense.
Herschel taught that most things cannot be seen as a whole, and that when we realize this and accept this as our limitation then, and only, then can we experience awe and wonder and yes questions. What we view may not answer the questions we ask but surrounds us with awe which is desirable to us as if the answers to our questions were granted.
Here it is the silence, the lack of knowledge, in which we find ourselves one with God.
“Such is the limitation of the mind that it can never see three sides of a building at the same time. The danger begins when, completely caught in one perspective, we attempt to consider a part as the whole. In the twilight of such perspectivism, even the sight of the part is distorted. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe. When we “stand still and consider.” We face and witness what is immune to analysis.”
Page 27.
Heschel further demonstrates that those who seek to know God, will only find God or a part of God when we are in the sphere of questioning, and never in the sphere of spiritual knowledge or answers.
“Man’s quest for God is not a quest for mere information. In terms of information little was attained by those countless men who strained their minds to find an answer. Only in terms of responsiveness, as an answer to Him who asked, much was achieved and much can be achieved by every one of us. In the realm of science, a question may be asked an answer given by one man for all men. In the realm of religion, the question must be faced and the answer given by every individual soul.”
Page 29
Heschel writes of the existence of God and how it can never be proven, but only witnessed, therefore the prophets of the Old and New Testament are not “proving” existence of God; they are simply writing of their authentic experiences of watching God, and/ or being with God.
He further states a true prophet of God never speaks in the “I” but only in the “God”. It is never “I said” but “God Said”. It is here that the prophet’s thought is never inward but literally from the viewpoint of God Himself. He is never a third party, or a mediation between humanity and God. When God Speaks to the prophet, he is speaking to all of us. It is through this Triangular Speaking that we are experiencing God in a personal way which binds us to Him in an intimate personal relationship: a relationship that grows as long as our awe of Him and not our knowledge of Him grows.
“The pathos and judgement of God transcend the human dimension.”
Page 36
Heschel admits that reasoning and awe are integrated by us being surrounded by things or people that we cannot understand or even comprehend but we can comprehend the mystery. He further states that even our reasoning about mystical things are a mystery themselves.
Click on the below link to purchase Thunder in the Soul: To be Known by God from Plough Publishing.
https://www.plough.com/en/topics/faith/discipleship/thunder-in-the-soul
Heschel warns mankind of trying to find the secret or knowledge of these mysteries because it makes our focus on proving the existence of God when mankind needs to focus on finding prove or authenticity on his or her faith.
And how do we accomplish this. Heschel suggests that man needs to focus on the creation of God as a mystery and that is something we cannot not remove our eyes from because of its beauty. It is this awe and wonder that we should pass on to our children: teach then to embrace the mystery itself.
Click on the link below to read about Jewish Liturgies
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-liturgy
We must also learn to speak not in our own “I’ but in the “I” of God as he relates to us. This itself is a mystery that we should question.
Click on the link to view Abraham Joshua Heschel talks about prayer
Heschel also states that prayer is another way that we can be immersed in the mystery instead of the question. Heschel defines prayer as “man deepening the mutual allegiance between God and Man” with the main goals not to known him Him but for Him to know us; and not to translate a word but to translate ourselves in order for our thoughts become thoughts of prayer. And, according to Heschel, to accomplish begins with chanting the liturgy.
It is the liturgy that teaches us what to pray for. It is through the words of the liturgy that we discover what moves us unawares, what is urgent in our lives, what in us is related to the ultimate.
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