Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes

• Human being is both being in the world and living in the world. Living involves responsible understanding of one's role in relation to all other beings. For living is not being in itself, but living of the world, affecting, exploiting, consuming, comprehending, deriving, depriving.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  "Who Is Man?". Book by Abraham Joshua Heschel. Chapter 5, 1963.

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• The issue of prayer is not prayer; the issue of prayer is God.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1983). “I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology”, Crossroad Publishing Company

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• This is one of the goals of the Jewish way of living: to experience commonplace deeds as spiritual adventures, to feel the hidden love and wisdom in all things.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Goal  

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1976). “God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism”, p.49, Macmillan

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• Indeed, the sort of crimes and even the amount of delinquency that fill the prophets of Israel with dismay do not go beyond that which we regard as normal, as typical ingredients of social dynamics. To us a single act of injustice--cheating in business, exploitation of the poor--is slight; to the prophets, a disaster. To us injustice is injurious to the welfare of the people; to the prophets it is a deathblow to existence: to us, an episode; to them, a catastrophe, a threat to the world.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  People  

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1969). “The Prophets”

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• When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendors of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1955). “Insecurity of Freedom”, p.181, Macmillan

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• To abstain completely from all enjoyments may be easy. Yet to enjoy life and retain spiritual integrity - there is the challenge.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1973). “A Passion for Truth”, p.209, Macmillan

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• ...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

  Abraham Joshua Heschel, Harold Kasimow (1991). “No Religion Is an Island: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Interreligious Dialogue”, Orbis Books

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• When religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1955). “Insecurity of Freedom”, p.4, Macmillan

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• Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

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• Only those will apprehend religion who can probe its depth, who can combine intuition and love with the rigor of method

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1976). “God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism”, p.8, Macmillan

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• The work on weekdays and the rest on the seventh day are correlated. The Sabbath is the inspirer, the other days the inspired.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (2005). “The Sabbath”, p.34, Macmillan

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• (People) can never attain fulfillment, or sense of meaning, unless it is shared, unless it pertains to other human beings.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  People  

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• For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

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• Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1955). “Insecurity of Freedom”, p.86, Macmillan

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• We worship God through our questions.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

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• Our concern is not how to worship in the catacombs but how to remain human in the skyscrapers.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1955). “Insecurity of Freedom”, p.23, Macmillan

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• Self-respect is the root of discipline

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

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• The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Telegram to President John F. Kennedy, June 16, 1963.

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• When we pray, we bring G-d into the world

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

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• There is a built-in sense of indebtedness in the consciousness of man, an awareness of owing gratitude, or being caled upon at certain moments to reciprocate, to answer, to live in a way which is compatible with the grandeur and mystery of living.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

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• 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

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1997). “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays”, p.331, Macmillan

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• It is not enough for me to ask question; I want to know how to answer the one question that seems to encompass everything I face: What am I here for?

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1965). “Who is Man?”, p.53, Stanford University Press

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• Life is not meaningful...unle ss it is serving an end beyond itself; unless it is of value to someone else.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

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• To be spiritual is to be amazed.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  "Why is spirituality correlated with life satisfaction?" by Daniel José Camacho, www.theguardian.com. November 12, 2017.

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• A soul can create only when alone.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1973). “A Passion for Truth”, p.259, Macmillan

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• The supremacy of expediency is being refuted by time and truth. Time is an essential dimension of existence defiant of man's power, and truth reigns in supreme majesty, unrivaled, inimitable, and can never be defeated.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1965). “Who is Man?”, p.85, Stanford University Press

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• The anchor of meaning resides in an abyss, deeper than the reach of despair. Yet the abyss is not not infinite; its bottom may suddenly be discovered within the confines of a human heart or under the debris of might doubts. This may be the vocation of man: to say "Amen" to being and to the Author of being; to live in defiance of absurdity, notwithstanding futility and defeat; to attain faith in God even in spite of God.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1965). “Who is Man?”, p.80, Stanford University Press

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• The time for the kingdom may be far off, but the task is plain: to retain our share in God in spite of peril and contempt. There is a war to wage against the vulgar, the glorification of the absurd, a war that is incessant, universal. Loyal to the presence of the ultimate in the common, we may be able to make it clear that man is more than man, that in doing the finite he may perceive the infinite .

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1997). “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays”, p.11, Macmillan

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• In our daily lives we attend primarily to that which the senses are spelling out for us: to what the eyes perceive, to what the fingers touch. Reality to us is thinghood , consisting of substances that occupy space; even God is conceived by most of us as a thing. The result of our thinginess is our blindness to all reality that fails to identify itself as a thing, as a matter of fact.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Space  

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1955). “Insecurity of Freedom”, p.80, Macmillan

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• 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

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1997). “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays”, p.339, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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