{"id":65595,"date":"2019-11-12T11:46:19","date_gmt":"2019-11-12T09:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=65595"},"modified":"2023-06-06T11:18:17","modified_gmt":"2023-06-06T08:18:17","slug":"prophets-of-today-rabbi-dr-abraham-joshua-heschel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/prophets-of-today-rabbi-dr-abraham-joshua-heschel\/","title":{"rendered":"Prophets of Today: Rabbi Dr. Abraham Joshua Heschel"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Abraham Joshua Heschel can be considered a kind of prophet himself. The main job of the prophets of the Bible, after all, is to hold their people\u2019s feet to the fire. Moses railed at the weak and foolish Israelites who strayed from the path the minute their leader ascended to the mountaintop to commune with God. [Martin Luther] King fulminated against the war in Southeast Asia as well as against the injustices rampant in white American culture toward those whom it had enslaved for hundreds of years. Heschel supported both these causes, incurring the disapproval of some Jewish leaders when he did not hesitate to vigorously excoriate U.S. involvement in Vietnam, preaching widely on the subject, writing letters to presidents, and being a spokesman for other religious leaders in meetings with high-level military strategists like Secretary of State Dean Rusk.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026Heschel, like King, had the charisma a prophet needs. He was impossible to dismiss, even when his message stung. The consummate gadfly, he shined a bright light on the ills of American society and also on those of American Judaism in the mid-20th century, which he saw as stultifying, airless, soulless, moribund. He was an outlier on one crisis we face today: how to make Judaism not only appealing but actually indispensable for Jews of future generations. His words were bracing and his exhortations powerful, but, rendered in such breathtakingly poetic language (as well as expressed verbally in his disarming Polish accent), they seem like a loving gift from a benevolent elder, not a rebuke: He even <\/span>warned<\/span><\/em> warmly. He was a Jew who had suffered and seen too much suffering, and who, unlike the rest of us, was capable of vision on a greater scale, the prophetic scale. He knew what he was talking about, and, like King, he believed people could rise up, be their best selves, and behave with righteousness and even with holiness.<\/span><\/p>\n

(quoted from: “King and Heschel and Moses”, by Si\u00e2n Gibby, January 15, 2016 –<\/span> https:\/\/www.tabletmag.com\/jewish-life-and-religion\/196332\/king-and-heschel-and-moses<\/span><\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n

Quotes on prophecy from Heschel:<\/span><\/p>\n

Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor. God is raging in the prophet\u2019s words. In speaking, the prophet reveals God. This is the marvel of a prophet\u2019s work: in his words, the invisible God becomes audible. Divine power bursts in his words. The authority of the prophet is in the Presence his words reveal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Daily we should take account and ask: “What have I done today to alleviate the anguish, to mitigate the evil, to prevent humiliation?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The prophet faces a coalition of callousness and established authority and undertakes to stop a mighty stream with mere words. The purpose of prophecy is to conquer callousness, to change the inner person as well as to revolutionize history. <\/span><\/p>\n

M<\/span>orally 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLet there be a grain of prophet in everyone!\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":65598,"id":65598,"title":"is15-heschel2","filename":"is15-heschel2.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/is15-heschel2.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/prophets-of-today-rabbi-dr-abraham-joshua-heschel\/is15-heschel2\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"is15-heschel2","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":65595,"date":"2019-11-12 09:44:45","modified":"2019-11-12 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