Theology of Joshua Heschel

8/13/2019 Theology of Joshua Heschel

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The Theology ofAbraham Joshua Heschel

Reuven Kimelman

Judaism is not a doctrine but a lifethe continua

tion of the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Or

so Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) often

said. To learn Jewish theology, then, is to relive the his

tory of God's encounter with the Jewish people, for

theology and history are inseparable. What God

revealed to Israel through the prophets, the sages, and

the mystics is the "bold and dangerously paradoxical

idea" that God needs man.

Much of academic Jewish scholarship finds con

flicts between biblical Judaism and the rabbinic

Judaism of late antiquity as well as between rabbinic

Judaismand later kabbalistic-hasidic teaching. The aca

demic consensus sets up dichotomies between the legal

and the spiritual and between the rationaland the mys

tical. Heschel instead integrates biblical, rabbinic, and

kabbalistic sources into a unified vision of God's con

tinuing dialogue with the people of Israel. Indeed, Hes-

chePs scholarship, righdy understood, is inseparablefromhis theology, forhis scholarship seeks to re-create

the dialogue of the Jewish people with God.

While much of this was obvious to readers of Hes

chePs account of the classic rabbinical material in his

three-volume Hebrew treatiseTorahMin HaShamay-

im BeAsphqariahShelHaDorot, it only now becomes

available to Englishreadersthrough the translation and

REUVENKIMELMANisaprofessorof ClassicalJudaicaat Bran-dis University. He is the authoro/TheMystical Meaning ofLekhah Dodi and Kabbalat Shabbat,and the audiohooksThe

Moral Meaning of the BibleandThe Hidden Poetry of TheJewish Prayerbook.

abridgment titled Heavenly Torah as Refracted

Through the Generations.This presents an opportuni

ty to reflect on the role ofthistreatise within HescheFs

oeuvre and its place in HeschePs approach to theology.

HeschePs oeuvre traces the continuum of Jewish

religious consciousness from the biblical and rabbinic

periods through the kabbalistic and hasidic ones.

Despite their differences, Heschel argued that the

teachings of all these periods are unified by the theme

of God's concern for humanity. The different expres

sions of Judaismare not mutually exclusive but, rather,

moments in the dialectic of man's encounter with God.

Where others saw dichotomies, Heschel saw polarities.

Our inclination to understand Judaism or to approach

the divine through only one of the poles leaves us,

according to Heschel, with partial understandings of

Judaism and fragmentary visions of the divine. In con

trast, HeschePs theology offers a historical as well as

conceptual framework for maintaining the dialecticwithout reducing one pole to the other.

In this regard, Torah Min HaShamayim BeAs-

pUqariah Shel HaDorot qualifies as HeschePs mag

num opus. It guides the reader through the woof and

warp of the classic textsMan Is Not Alone and God

inSearchofManu&X.informhis writings on contem

porary theology. These books that made Heschel such

an insightful writer for the Jewishand, to a great

extent, for the Christianaudience restate his histori

cal-theological vision of Judaism. He presented this

visionfirstinThe Prophetsand subsequendy and more

extensively inTorah Min HaShamayim. This vision,which involves tracing the thread of God's interest in


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36 FIRST THINGS

man throughout the fabric of Judaism, is reflected

throughout his writing.

So much of HeschePs work is of one cloth.Man Is

Not Alone is subtitledA Philosophy of Religionwhile

God in Search of Man is subtitled A Philosophy of

Judaism.For Heschel, manisnot alone because God isin search of man. By virtually beginningGod inSearch

of Manwith the statement "Religion is an answer to

man's ultimate questions," Heschel underscores his

thesis that the philosophy of Judaism is an answer to

problems in the philosophy of religionindeed, its

ultimate problems. Not only do these two works on

contemporary theology fit together, theyalsoconverge

with his two major works of historical scholarship in

his statement that theideaof pathos inTheProphetsais

an explication of the idea of God in search of man."

Chronologically, The Prophets, based on hisGerman dissertation of the early 1930s, came

first, albeit published in its English form only

in the early 1960s. It was followed in the 1950s by his

two classic texts on theology. In the early 1960s, the

first two volumes of Torah Min HaShamayim were

published. Nonetheless, it is clear that his major schol

arship was conceptually first. For Heschel, scholarship

and theology are one.

Much of HeschePs work seeks to free Jewish theol

ogy from the constraints of Maimonides' philosophical

concept ofanabsolutely transcendent God whoisinde

pendent of humanity. Tothis,Heschel counterposes the

concept of divine pathosthatis,ofaGod who search

es for man, who, indeed, is in need of man. It empha

sizes the interdependency of the divine and the human.

To underscore the continuity ofthisunderstanding

from biblical to rabbinic to kabbalistic thinking, Hes

chel states:

In the phrasewe needeachotheris embedded inthe concept of Israel's power to diminish orenhance God's might This opinion, which servedas a cornerstone of kabbalistic teaching, is alreadyalluded to inahomilyinSifre(319):"Youneglected the Rock that begot you" P e u t 32:18). Thewordteshi("neglected")canbe understood in relation to the wordteshishut("feebleness"), whencethe interpretation "You weaken the power of the

One above "This approach achieved its classicformulationin themouth of R.Judahb.Simon, anamora of the third to fourth generation of EretzIsrael: "As long as therighteouscomply with theDivine will they augment the Power above, as itsays 'And now,Ipray Thee, let the strength of theLord be enhanced' (Num. 14:17). But ifnot,then,asit were, Tou enfeebledtheRockthatbegot you'

(Deut 32:18)." Similarly: "As long as Israel complies with the Divine will they augment the Power

above, as it says: 'In God we shall make [create]power' (Ps. 60:14); and if not, as it were, say, "andthey [i.e., Israel] are gone without strength beforethe pursuer" (Lam. 1:6). According to the Zohar(2:33a), this idea is intimated in the verse "GivepowertoGod"(Ps.68:35).

Both the ancientrabbis andthe medieval kabbalists,

contends Heschel, held that human compliance with

the divine will augments divine power. One might

think of the divine-human relationship as analogous to

that ofageneral and soldier where the power lies with

the general and the soldier merely follows orders. In

reality, every command implemented by the soldier

extends the general's power. The growth of the power

of the general thus corresponds to the increase in com

pliance by the soldier, and vice versa. An order that

commands no compliance isavoice in the wilderness.

Judaism is so commandment-oriented preciselybecause God's kingshipisrealized onearththrough the

fulfillment of the commandments. In fact, according to

the Midrash, God gave Israel so many commandments

because Israel had made God king first. Even more

striking is the rabbinical concept that it is human wit

ness that makes God real. Heschel often cites the

midrashic gloss to Isaiah 43:12, "So you are My wit

nessesdeclares the Lordand I am God," to wit:

"When you are my witnesses, then I am God, but

when you are not my witnesses, then I am, as it were,

not God."

The concept of divine-human partnership,

according to Heschel, weaves the thinking of

the prophets, the rabbis, and the medieval kab

balists into the whole cloth of Israel's historical rela

tionship with God. This distinguishes his scholarship

categorically from that of many ofhiscontemporaries.

Unlike Gershom Scholem and Martin Buber, who saw

in Kabbalah a gnostic phenomenon that deviated from

the biblical and rabbinic traditions, Heschel saw in this

body of medieval mysticism a reformulation of the

rabbis' concept of God's dependence on man.In the transcript ofatalk entitled "Jewish Theolo

gy," Heschel summarized his reading of the Jewish

sources: "Godisin need of man. The idea of God being

in need of man is central to Judaism and pervadesallthe

pages of the Bible and of Chazal [the rabbinic sages of

talmudic literature], and it is understandable in our

own time In the light of this idea, of God being in

need of man, you have to entirely revise all the clichs

that are used in religious language." Heschel then

referred to his workTorahMin HaShamayim, saying:

In volume I there is an entire section dealing withthe Tart Hashekmah.Without the principle of


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Godinsearch of man, the whole idea ofshekinahisnot intelligible It permeates rabbinic literatureand post-rabbinic thought in Judaism, and it ismissing in our discussion and in Maimonides's listof dogmas. Actually the idea ofpathos,which Iconsider to be the centralidea inprophetic theolo

gy, contains the doctrine oftheshekinah... Without an understanding of the idea ofshekinahwe failcompletelytounderstandthefieldofJewishtheology or the theme of God in search ofmanwhich Iconsider to be the summary of Jewish theology.

God's indwelling on earth is the fulcrum of Hes-

chel's theology. Man's capacity to approach God arises

from God's indwelling in his people Israel, in the form

of a divine presence that Israel re-creates through the

performance ofthe mitzvot.

In the same lecture, Heschel protested that the con

cept ofshekinahbecomes "so terribly Hellenized" inthe hands of scholars who fail to see its foundation in

divine pathos. The "Hellenized," or rationalist, preju

dice of mainstream academics tends to deprecate the

medieval Jewish mysticism characterized by the term

Kabbahh. In doing so, scholars betray a radicallydif-

ferent reading of rabbinical Judaismandthe Bibleitself.

The Jewish mystics, Heschel wrote,

are inspired by a bold and dangerously paradoxicalideathat not onlyisGod necessary to man butman is also necessary to God, to the unfolding of

his plans in this world. Thoughts of this kind areindicated and even expressed in various rabbinicsources In the Zonarthis idea isformulated inamore specific way.... The Holy One,as itwere,said: "When Israel is found to be worthy below,my powerprevails inthe universe; but whenIsraelis found to be unworthy, she weakens my powerabove,andthe powerorsevere judgment predominates intheworld."

The mystics, Heschel emphasizes, stated the bibli

cal-rabbinic implication of divine pathos in an even

more specific way. Nothing could be further from the

prevailing view in academic Jewish scholarship, beginning with the great researcher and founder of the

Jewish Theological Seminary, Solomon Schechter

(1847-1915). Schechter treats Kabbalah as a body of

work alien to the rabbinical Judaism of the Talmud,

even though occasional insights in his own writings

show that he sometimes saw a connection. He writes,

for example:

He (God) needs us even as we need him" was afavorite axiom with certain mystics. In the language of the rabbis we should express the samesentiment thus, "One GodthroughIsrael,andone

Israel through God. They are his selected people,andhe is their selected portion.

This is exactly Heschel's point of emphasis.

Schechter, despite being a careful student of Kabbalah,

could not see with Heschel's degree of clarity that kab

balistic theology is a flowering of a branch of rabbinic

theology.

Themidrashimcited by Heschel above also appearjuxtaposed in Ephraim Urbach's classic monograph

The Sages.Urbach, who until his death in 1991 was

Israel's preeminent scholar of classical Jewish sources,

cites many of the same texts that undergird Heschel's

reading, but from a very different standpoint. With

regard to the comment in Sifrei Deuteronomy quoted

above by Heschel, Urbach writes, rather apologetically:

This dictum is directed against oversimplifiedfaith. The non-manifestation of God's power isnot indicative of the absence of that power, andone must not come to God with the complaint

"where is Thy power?" but there is a nexusbetween the revelation of this power and theactions ofhumanbeings.

Elsewhere, Urbach writes in a manner reminiscent of

Heschel without, however, the linkage to Kabbalah:

Evil deedsandtransgressionscanbanish theshekinah,as itwere,fromtheworld.In theview of theSages, the ethical and religious conduct of mandetermines both the manifestation of God's presence in this world and the revelation ofhispowerand might.

Perceiving a chasm between rabbinic and kabbalis

tic thought, neither Schechter nor Urbach could see

what for Heschel was obvious, namely, that with

regardto the divine-human relationship Kabbalahrep

resents a "more specific" statement of the rabbinic

perspective.

Heschel's work on rabbinic thought continues

his work on biblical thoughtwhat Heschel

called "God's anthropology." Both focus on

the category of pathos in the divine-human relationshipand on how revelation involves the interaction of the

divine and human. Although Heschel's biblical com

mentaryisconcerned with the prophetic understanding

of the divine,and hisrabbinic scholarshipdealswith the

rabbinic understanding of Torah andshekinah,the two

presentations overlap. In a sense, Heavenly Torah

serves as the sequel toThe Prophets.The latter and the

first two volumes of the original Hebrew edition of

Heavenly Torahwere published in 1962.The Prophets

concludes with a chapter entitled "The Dialectic of the

Divine-Human Encounter." The third volume of

Heavenly Torahopens with the chapter "It Is Not inthe Heavens"; its opening subsections are "Without


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38 FIRST THINGS

Sages There IsNo Torah,"and "The Sages Are theFinishing and theCompletionto theTorah."Thislast volumeoHeavenlyTorah,inshort,begins just whereThe

Prophetsends, identifyingthe sages asthe successors oftheprophets. This supports Heschel's overarching the

sis that, as prophecy emerges from the encounterbetween prophet and God, so rabbinic Judaismemerges from theencounterbetween sageand Torah.

HeavenlyTorahdiffers frommainstreamacademicapproachesin itscontentaswellas itsmode of presentation. Where the academics seek to summarize rabbinic thinking, Heschel draws the reader inside it,exegeting it from within, as it were. Not only doesHeschel condense the crucial debates over immanenceand transcendence into sharp juxtapositions; he composes histreatisein rabbinicHebrewandemploysreligious categories native to it. The subsections of the

treatisefrequentlyaretitledwith rabbinic quotations.Unlike the academics, who stand outside rabbinicthinking to comment onit,Heschel's exegesis remainsin dialogue with the sages of late antiquity.HeavenlyTorahisnotacommentaryon the rabbinic sourcesbutrather anextensionof them. Justastheologyandscholarship are cutofonecloth,the language andthoughtofthe classical Jewish sourcesareinseparablyunited.Heorganizes his presentation according to rabbinic categories so that the language and structure of the bookenable the reader to engage the mindsof the sages.

AresultofHeschel'sdaring procedureisthe discovery that the Jewish sages rarely were of one mind. Onthecontrary,on most theologicalissues there areat leasttworesolutions,frequentlyat odds with eachother.

Heschel portrays this characteristic oppositionof two schools of thought under the rubricsof Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael. These

oftenareused historically, but,atother times, Heschelemploys them typologically. The heaven-boundschool of Akiva, with its emphasis on theshekinah,stands in contrast to the more mundane school ofIsh

mael. The Akivan perspective was mystical, possiblyeschatological, unbounded,andoften paradoxical. TheIshmaelite perspective was more critical, rationalistic,restrained, and pellucid. Together, according toHeschel,they form adialectic,not just a dyad, in whichplays outthe humanencounter withthedivine.

A case in point is Akiva's focus on the biblicalinstances of God's immanence and Ishmael's focus onthose of God's transcendence.Thepointisnoteither-or,butbotb-and;as Heschel says, "the dichotomy oftranscendence and immanence is an oversimplification," for "God remains transcendent in his imma

nence,and related in histranscendence."By contrasting the sides of an issue under the

rubrics of Rabbi Ishmael or Rabbi Akiva, the readerworks throughadebaterather than adoctrine.Sometimes whole chapters are in dialectical relationship.Forinstance,chapter2of volume2,"Moses' Ascent toHeaven," contains the subsections "Rabbi Akiva's

View: Moses Was in Heaven," "Moses Ascended toHeaven," "Moses Did Not Ascend to Heaven," and"How Could a Person Ascend to Heaven?" On amore mundane level, chapter5of volume3contains asubsection called "Against Those Who Are Stringent," whereas chapter 6 begins with "Beloved AreProhibitions."

Heschel's perspective is expressed in the terminology of polarity. Fritz Rothschild, in hisintroductiontoa collection of Heschel's writ

ings titledBetween God and Man,called such terms

"scissors words," since they only cut together, like apair of scissors, and not singly, like a knife. AlthoughHeschel's pedagogy speaks of "a covenant betweenopposites"or a"melding of opposites,"he isnonetheless quite cognizant of the impossibility of holdingboth ends of a stretched rope. For Heschel, "there isalwaysapolarity oftwoprinciples."Neitherthepractical, this-worldly pole represented by the school ofIshmael nor the mystical sense of God's need for manrepresented by the school of Akiva can be reduced totheother.Nor can they be fullyintegrated.Itis thelimitation ofhumanvision that causes us to see God andthe world intwo different waysatdifferent times.

The goalof Heschel's presentationisnot to summarize Jewish theology butratherto re-create the experience of God's encounter with the Jewish people byreliving thedebatesof the sages. Heschel's theology ultimately is Akivan, responding to a God who searches forman because he is in needofman.But thisGodmay beapproached only through an encounter in which manconsiders his dependence on the absolutely transcendentGod propoundedbyIshmael.Eachpole needstheother to correctitself.Only together do they embrace

thefull reality oftheencounterwith thedivinea gateto Godthat always swings on twohinges.The third volume ofHeavenly Torahis subtitled,

and chapter 36tided,"Both TheseandThose Are theWords of the Living God." Sometimesadifferent perspectiveindeed, a competing onecan supplementone's understanding of the truth. Since the fullness ofthe divine wordcannotbecontainedin a singlehumanperspective,aplurality of understandings is needed tofill out the human grasp of divine truth. The wholetruth remains elusively human, exclusively divine.Accordingly, the rabbis designated truthasGod's sig

naturethatis,a uniquecharacteristic ofdivinecognition that exceeds the human grasp. In fact, since any


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human perspective is necessarily limited to part of thetruth, the whole truth may not be humanly accessiblewithout contradiction.

This underlying insight allowed Heschel to understand the Jewishclassics from the inside, in contradistinction to the conventional assertions of modernscholarship. Italsoexplainshisgenerosity toward alternative theological viewpoints. Itwasnot so much thatthe various scholars were wrong in their analysis ofbiblical, rabbinic, kabbalistic, or hasidic theology asthat they saw only part of the picture. Rather thanfaultingthemforpartialvision, Heschel soughttocorrect their understanding by providingthemissing partsofthepicture.

Advent Carol

Hush that anguished hymn you're humming:

"Come, O Come, Emmanuel."

TrumpetChristmas!Fix his coming

firmly at "The First Nowell."

He'salreadycome in glory!

Why plead, "Savior, come at last"?

Let's talkChristmas!Tellastorysafely in the distant past.

Drown out John the Baptist. Edit

out"Prepare!Make straight the way!"

Cut to Christmas! Buy on credit.

Square things up another day.

Advent's dreary. Let's start living

ChristmasnowlWearred and green!

While we're at it, skip Thanksgiving!Deck the halls at Halloween!

Then, when the Incarnate Verb

overnight becomes pass,

carry Christmas to the curb.

Pack the Prince of Peace away.

Heschel'sconcept of theology as participation in theunfolding ofrevelation has aninherent affinity for collaborative pluralismwhich contributed to his opennessto Jewish-Christiandialogue.For a pluralismto becollaborative, however, the convergence of ends mustexceed the divergence of means. Heschel's pluralism isfirmly boundedbytheclassicalJewishtexts:Heunderstandstradition itselftobe an aspect ofGod'sencounterwith the people of Israel. His pluralism reflects hisunderstanding ofboth thedialectic of the traditionandthe divine-humanrelationship.Heschel asksusto relivetherevelation recordedin thehistory ofJewishtheologizing, which epitomizes God's conversation withhumanity. EI

Julie Stoner


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Theology of Joshua Heschel