Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel presenting “Judaism and World Peace Award” to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., December 7, 1965,
When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people; as I grow older, I admire kind people. ―Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972)
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Abraham Joshua Heschel is my favorite rabbi—if you don’t count Jesus. The aphorism above is enough to win him a statue in my “Memorial Garden of Sages.”
I love a good aphorism.
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing. Socrates
If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair. Shirley Chisholm
The early bird catches the worm. If you’re a bird, rise early. If you’re a worm, sleep in. Shel Silverstein
We realize the importance of our voices only when they are silenced. Malala Yousafzai
Heschel had a knack for aphorisms.
Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.
But there’s more to him than aphorisms.
He was born in Warsaw. His father died when Heschel was nine years old. In 1940 he escaped the Holocaust and took refuge in the United States. (His mother and three sisters were captured and killed.)
He was a distinguished professor of Jewish ethics and mysticism for 27 years at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Over his lifetime, he combined activism with contemplative prayer. He walked with Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery and stood with him against the Vietnam War.
Beyond his classroom, he influenced Dorothy Day, Richard Rohr, Reinhold Niebuhr and countless others, including me and a host of baby boomers preparing to be ministers, priests, and rabbis.
His book The Prophets awakened me from my evangelical dogmatism. The Hebrew prophets were not psychics predicting the birth of Jesus or the end of the world, as I assumed. Prophets spoke truth to power.
Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silenced, a voice to the plundered poor, against profane riches. Prophecy is a crossing of God and man. God is raging in the prophet’s words.
Rabbi Heschel helped me hear, for the first time, the cry for justice in the prophet Amos.
I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
But let justice roll down like water
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
I recently watched Nuremberg, the 2025 film dramatizing the trial of the Nazi leader Hermann Göring. Alas, it brought to mind the genocide of native Americans, African American enslavement, our militarized nation, and the degradation of the earth. And then I heard the voice of my favorite rabbi.
Few are guilty, but all are responsible.
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To learn more, read Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: A Life of Radical Amazement, by Julian E. Zelizer
