Abraham Joshua Heschels

Critique of Modern Society

Rabbi Dr. Einat Ramon

Schechter Insitute of Jewish Studies

(Former Dean of Schechter Rabbinical Seminary)1

A. Introduction:
According to Heschel, the world of the Enlightenment had deceived
humanity and betrayed God. While offering humanity promises of equality,
justice and the superficial supplying of material goods, it had produced
exceedingly more violence, bloodshed and degradation of human dignity
than any other culture, all in the nameof many noble causes.
Heschel believed that despite the imperfections of the vanished Jewish
civilization of pre-Holocaust, pre-communist Eastern European Jewry, of
which, as we shall see, he was quite aware, it had contained a unique spiritual
and moral voice. If we modern, post-Holocaust Jews, dare to follow it, we
would, according to Heschel, save Judaism and humanity.
My comments in the following paper will be based primarily on two
essays, written by Heschel in the late nineteen-forties: The Earth is the Lords
(1950, first delivered as a speech in YIVO in 1945 and published in Yiddish
a year later, in 1946, under the name Der MizrakhEyropeisher Yid and
Pikuach Neshamah, published in Hebrew in 1949.2 Both essays responded to
the two major events in recent twentieth century Jewish history: the Shoah and
establishment of the State of Israel. The languages in which he wrote them,
Yiddish and Hebrew, indicated that they were directed at those coming from
a background similar to his own, Eastern European, post- Holocaust Jews
who migrated to America. Both are, therefore, indicative of Heschels own
soul searching as a witness to the vanished Eastern European Jewry, who had
survived the its unimagined, abrupt destruction, a generation disillusioned
by the Enlightenment, that nevertheless held the key to the continuity of
Judaism in the next generation. One might further argue that these two essays,
written only a number of years following his arrival in the U.S. in the 1940s,
following his physical, and one might argue also ideological transition from
HUC to JTS,3 serve as a blueprint for much of his later theological-educational
agenda in North America.
1This article is dedicated to Rabbi Professor Ismar Schorsch, sixth Chancellor of the Jewish Theological
Seminary.
2I wish to thank Professor Emeritus Avraham Shapira of Tel Aviv University for bringing Pikuach Neshamah
to my attention, for providing me a copy of its original copy in Hebrew.
3Edward K. Kaplan, Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America 1940- 1972, New Haven &London:
Yale University Press, 2007 pp.59- 65.

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Rabbi Dr. Einat Ramon

In the following pages, I examine the details of Heschels critique of
modern society in general and of modern Diasporic Jewish society in particular
in these two essays. I highlight his call to members of his generation to bring
the spiritual world of their childhood back to life and rekindle the light of
Eastern European Jewry, as they are the last generation of witnesses to that
world. In the third section of this essay I wish to demonstrate how he employs
theological/spiritual portraits of Eastern European Jews as role models for
a postHolocaust Judaism. While much in the political reorganization of the
post Cold War Western society has changed, I shall argue that perhaps only
under our current circumstances of a globalized consumerist society can we
better appreciate Heschels educational agenda. Furthermore, it seems that
many of the ideas later developed in his thought in the 1950s and 1960s are
encapsulated in these two essays that he wrote at a major juncture in his life
and in the history of the Jewish People.

B. The Essence of Modern Western Culture

How did Heschel characterize the modern world? His words in Pikuach
Neshamah are quite clear:
These days even an infant can see that humanity stands at the edge
of the abyss. We have learned that one can be a villain even though very
cultured and expert in science []4
Western culture, which prides itself on its scientific sophistication and
aesthetic achievements, concealed, according to Heschel, the most vicious
grains of evil and dehumanization, not despite but because of its overly
rationalistic, utilitarian nature. His personal note in the introduction to the
English version of his dissertation, The Prophets, resonated with many of the
statements written earlier in The Earth is the Lords and in Pikuach Neshamah.
In 1962 Heschel had summarized his motivation to study the phenomenon of
the prophets and prophecy in the academic context of Berlin as follows:
What drove me to study the prophets? In the academic environment in
which I spent my student years philosophy had become an isolated, selfsubsisting,
selfindulgent entity, a Ding a sich, encouraging suspicion instead of love of
wisdom. The answers offered were unrelated of mans suspended sensitivity in
the face of stupendous challenge, indifferent to a situation, in which good and
evil became irrelevant, in which man became increasingly callous to catastrophe
and ready to suspend sensitivity in the face of truth. I was slowly led to the
realization that some of the terms, motivations, and concerns which dominate
our thinking may prove destructive of the roots of human responsibility and
treasonable to the ultimate ground of human solidarity.5
4Abraham Joshua Heschel, Pikuach Neshamah, in: Susannah Heschel, (ed.) Moral Grandeur and Spiritual
Audacity: Abraham Joshua Heschel, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996, p. 58. (hereafter cited as Pikuach
Neshamah).
5Abraham J. Heschel, Introduction The Prophets ( New York: Jewish Publications Society, 1962), p. xviii.

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Abraham Joshua Heschels Critique of Modern Society

The implications of Heschels remarks on his intellectual odyssey into
Berlin and away from it were similar to that of the contemporary thinker
Zigmunt Bauman, namely that the Holocaust was the epitome of modernity,
one that clearly rested upon modern thinking, modern sociology and certainly
upon modern technology. The placing of rationality above values such as
sensitivity, personal responsibility and human solidarity reflected the human
values promoted by the project of the Enlightenment. The detachment of
academic learning from human life created a dichotomy, in his view, between
thinking and wisdom. A detached, alienated logic led to an alienated,
dehumanizing society, oblivious to the distinction between good and evil.
In Pikuach Nshamah Heschel explicitly blamed the Satanic phenomenon
of the extermination camps not only on the German people or on the Nazi Party
alone but on Western society in general: its apathy, its highly individualistic
focus and thus its pagan and idolatrous orientation. While the separation
between rationality and wisdom, between inquiry and personal solidarity
was and is a sickness of the academic world, the major ills of Western popular
culture as Heschel regarded it, concerned the centrality of brainwashing
through publicity, public relations, and commercialism and the pursuit of
fame that characterized the Westernmodern mind.
How easy it is to be attracted to outward beauty and how hard it is to
remove the mask and penetrate that which is inside []6 The Satan of publicity
dances at the crossroads, moving with full strength. Who is the wise man who has
not gone out after him, following his drums and dances? We tend to lick the dust
of his feet in order to gain fame. In truth, the soul has only that which is hidden
in its world, that which is sealed in its treasure houses.7
If we wish to look at the intellectual and spiritual sources of the
Holocaust, then, writes Heschel, we must observe the combination of
academic aloofness and popular cultures fascination with physical beauty.
Common appreciation of beauty alongside superficial apathy to the dangers
of the Nazis created the political shortsightedness that had caused the
Holocaust. He called our attention to the fact that
When the annual congress of the Nazi Party convened in Nurenberg in 1937,
journalists from all over the world, such as the Times of London, described and
celebrated with enthusiasm the demonstrations of the various Nazi organizations.
They could not find enough adjectives to praise the physical beauty, the order, the
discipline, and the athletic perfection of tens of thousands of young Nazis who
marched ceremoniously and festively before the leader of the movement. These
writers who were so excited by the exterior splendor lacked the ability to see snakes
in the form of humans - the poison that coursed through their veins, which not
long after would bring death to millions of people.8
6Abraham Joshua Heschel, Pikuach Neshamah, p. 58.
7Abraham Joshua Heschel, Pikuach Neshamah, p. 56.
8Ibid. pp. 58-59.

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Rabbi Dr. Einat Ramon

The echoes of the terrible cries that came from the gas chambers,
screams the like of which had never been heard in the course of human
history, are too horrible to bear,9 he cried. A deceiving Western ideology
was to be blamed, he felt, a superficial ideology rooted in the idolatrous
Hellenistic culture, one that celebrated aesthetics at the cost of ethics. Judaism,
he concluded always asserted that beauty which is acquired at the cost of
justice is an abomination.10 Pagans exalt sacred things he wrote in The
Earth Is the Lords. The Prophets extol sacred deeds.11 Thus evaluating a
given society by the quality of the books, by the number of universities, by
the artistic accomplishments, and by scientific discoveries made therein are
pagan criteria.12
Therefore, when determined to venture an appraisal of East European
Jewry he sets a different criterion, one determined by the Prophets: Jews
gauge culture by the extent to which a whole people, not only individuals,
live [] or strive for spiritual integrity.13

C. Features of Eastern European Jewish

Civilization.
Heschel thought that many of the positive qualities such as democracy,
intellectual breadth and freedom, signifying the ideologies that drove his
own generation out of the Jewish Ghetto and into the 20th century, had
existed in pre-Modern Ashkenazic culture. The cosmopolitan breeze of
the Enlightenment blowing from the West with its optimistic message of
emancipation for all people brought a flash of hope into Jewish communities,14
he summarized at the conclusion of The Earth Is the Lords. Yet, the entire
book is aimed at demonstrating that many of the features that attracted his
generation to the universities were features of the Jewish civilization that
perished. Everyones share in learning and observing the Torah, the sociology
of learning and praying, created, according to Heschel, a far greater level of
human Emancipation within the context of the community than the various
social orders that followed the emancipation. That traditional form of
human equality was not, in his mind, nearly as alienated as the new, rational,
individualistic version of equality.
What were his various proofs and examples for that worldview?
Heschel regarded the three spiritual pillars of Jewish Ashkenazi civilization,
Rashi, Judah the Pious (Yehuda ha-Hasid) and the Baal Shem Tov, as the
leaders whose main thrust was to bring Torah and thus, also God and Gods
9Ibid. p. 66.
10Ibid. p.59.
11Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Earth Is the Lords: The Inner World of the Jew in East Europe, (New York:
Abelard-Schuman, 1950/1956), 14.
12Ibid. p.9.
13Ibid. p.9.
14The Earth is the Lords, p. 103.

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Abraham Joshua Heschels Critique of Modern Society

values of gentility and solidarity, down to the people. It was particularly
Rashi, observed Heschel, who brought intellectual emancipation to the
people. Without a commentary, the Hebrew Scripture and particularly the
Talmud are accessible only to the enlightened few. Rashi democratized
Jewish education, brought the Bible, the Talmud, and the Midrash to the
people. He made the Talmud a book, everymans book. Learning ceased to
be a monopoly of the few.15 It was thanks to that worldview that, according
to Heschel, learning and intellectual pursuit were the legacy of the entire
people, not just the intellectuals, noting that he found at YIVO a book that
bears the stamp Society of Wood-Choppers for the Study of Mishna in
Berditchev.16
As Rashi democratized Jewish education, so in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, Rabbi Jehuda he-Hasid and his circle of Hasidim, the
pious democratized the ideals of mystic piety.17 And lastly, the Baal Shem
Tov democratized human joy and happiness. Heschels words describe it in a
poetic manner: Then came Rabbi Israel Baal Shem, in the eighteenth century,
and brought heaven down to earth. He and his disciples, the Hasidim,
banished melancholy from the soul and uncovered the ineffable delight of
being a Jew.18 The essence of Hasidism was, according to Heschel, freedom
of sadness.19
To conclude, then, Heschel evaluated the two cultures, modern Western
culture and traditional Jewish culture, contrary to how his fellow Maskilim and
non-Orthodox Jews evaluated them. This, perhaps was one more example
of what Robert McAfee Brown had observed as the fundamental nature of
Heschels moral madness.
We, who share the majority viewpoint, upheld by the status quo, can
confidently thrust aside these rude and uninviting fellows, and can tell ourselves
that madness and sanity are determined by majority consensus, there still remains
the nagging and disturbing question: What if we have things reversed? What if the
minority viewpoint is, in fact, the true one? What if the ones we call mad are really
sane? What if the rest of us are the ones who fail to see the world as it truly is?20
Once again had Heschel struck as the upholder of a minority opinion who
dared to look at modernity not as a source of hope and light but as a great
danger to human destiny and future. Traditional Jewish culture from his
perspective promoted more freedom, human dignity and intellectual depth
than the philosophers of the Enlightenment. Unlike the great Rabbis, they
wrote elitist works, thus neglecting the impoverished masses, leaving them
to stumble in the dark of their daily struggles.
15Ibid. pp. 40- 41.
16Ibid. pp. 46- 47.
17Ibid, p. 65.
18Ibid. p. 76.
19Ibid. pp. 46-47.
20Robert McAfee Brown, Some Are Guilty, All Are Responsible: Heschels Social Ethics, in: John C.
Merkle, Abraham Joshua Heschel: Exploring His Life and Thought, ( New York and London: Collier Macmillan
Publishers, 1985), p. 134.

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Gvanim Volume 6, No. 1 (5770/2010)


Rabbi Dr. Einat Ramon
" : ,
1
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D. A Critique of Eastern European Judaism

But wouldnt
we-
consider
a worldview
to be
Orthodox?
.
such
-

For
one thing, Heschel overlooked the fact that the intellectual and spiritual
democratization of Eastern European Jewry concerned men alone, and did
not address women at all. The two essays slightly reflected Eastern European
,

spirituality


Jewrys
appreciation
of ,
womens
in the sense
that
they knew
. ; 21
that there was in it the charity of Abraham and
the
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In
2
.
the orginal Hebrew version of Pikuach Neshamah, he mentioned the humility
that signified his mothers as well as other mothers virtuous behavior:

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[Our mothers knew the value of humility and when they erred and told
their friends about their good deeds done in private, immediately following they
.
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used to say:
It
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have not
told
that at
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Yet, an appreciation of womens spiritual qualities is not the same as
admitting that the exclusion of women from Torah study and public prayer
,

,

doors
towards

was
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During
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the opening
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participation
.

;new

womens
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secular
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intellectual
2
.

opportunities for Jewish women, like his own
cousin
and
fiance,
Gittle
(Tova) Perlow who had studied for her doctoral degree at the Sorbonne in
the 1930s.23
However, no or very few Jewish thinkers and writers of the early
nineteenth century, whether liberal and Marxist or Zionist Jewish thinkers,
were very concerned with the Jewish womens question, thus Heschel was
not an exception in that regard. In fact, very few of those thinkers included
comments like Heschels concerning traditional womens and Biblical
Matriarchs spiritual values from which we, moderns, could learn. Most
modern Jewish thinkers were influenced by socialism and concerned with
economic inequality or with the scientific precision of Judaism. Thus,
Heschel responded to them by demonstrating the dimension of traditional
Torah learning, which was more just than the distribution of knowledge and
education in the modern world.
21Ibid, p. 96.
22 :" , : " ,
. 2 ' , "
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23Edward K, Kaplan & Samuel E.Dresner, Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness, ( New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 72.

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Abraham Joshua Heschels Critique of Modern Society

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i
r
e
r
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t
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t
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e
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.(f
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o
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e
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n
g
l
i
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h
v
e
r
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i
o
n
Heschels
work
was
aimed
at
gaining
a
more
sympathetic
look
at
traditional
2
5
e
e
v
e
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s
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l
e
c
t
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Me
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hequot
e
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e
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l
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s
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o
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t
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r
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c
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y
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r
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h
Jewry from a non-Orthodox angle. It is important to recall at this point, that
24
24
n
o
n
O
r
t
h
o
d
o
x
a
n
g
l
e
.
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t
wi
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hY
os
ef
Ha
i
m Brnner
'
sto
v
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c
i
ousa
ta
c
konHassidic
t
r
a
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t
i
n
a
lJ
e
w
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y
,a
n
a
t
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h
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.(oe
l
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mi
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om
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h
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e
mi
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t
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r
omat
h
eE
ngl
i
s
hordination
v
e
r
s
i
on
in
addition
Heschels
smicha
he
had
obtained
liberal
26
2
5
d
i
c
s
mi
c
h
a
h
e
h
a
d
og
bHochschule
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a
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h
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Me
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i
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r
e
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mp
a
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c
from
the
in
Berlin.
ordination
had
excluded
him
forever
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s
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he
l
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e
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pon
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a
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r
e
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ty
e
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s
h
from
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rabbinic
establishment.
i
n
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l
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es
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mpa
t
he
t
i
c
Heschel
admitted
clearly
and
openly
that
there
were
immoral
people
26
h
a
t
o
r
d
i
n
a
t
i
o
n
h
a
d
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x
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l
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b
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u
l
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i
n
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e
r
l
i
n
.
and
abuses
among
Eastern
European
Jews.
t
r
a
d
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t
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o
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a
l
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w
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i
mmo
r
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o
p
l
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a
n
d
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b
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s

Not
Jews
could
devote
themselves
to
the
Torah
and
service
God,
t
i
on t
o He
s
c
he
l
'
sa
H
a
s
s
dn
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call
s
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ome
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dr
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r
omoft
h
e
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t
a
b
l
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s
h
n
t
.the
a
mongE
a
s
t
e
r
nE
ur
ope
a
nJ
e
ws
not
all
of
their
old
men
had
the
faces
of
prophets;
there
were
not
only
Hasidim
26
26
T
h
a
t
o
r
d
i
n
a
t
i
on
h
a
d
e
x
c
l
u
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d
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m
f
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v
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t
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O
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t
h
o
d
o
x
r
a
b
b
i
n
i
ct
h
u
l
ei
n
B
e
r
l
i
n
.
T
h
a
t
o
r
d
i
n
a
t
i
on
h
a
d
e
x
c
l
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d
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d
h
i
m
f
o
r
e
v
e
r
f
r
o
m
heOr
t
hodoxr
a
bbi
ni
c
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o
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s
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h
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e
r
l
i
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a
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mi
t
t
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d
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l
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l
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p
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h
a
t
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r
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w
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r
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r
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b
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s
l
d
de
v
o
t
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t
h
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e
l
v
e
so
t
o
t
h
e
T
o
r
a
h
a
n
d
s
e
r
v
i
c
eo
f and
and
Kabbalists,
but
also
yokels
tramps.[] There were always moralists who

.e
s
t
a
b
l
i
s
h
me
nt
.es
t
a
b
l
i
s
h
me
nt
rol
dmen
ha
dt
hef
a
c
e
s
ofpr
op
he
t
s
;t
he
r
ewe
r
ethat
.amo
ngE
a
s
t
e
r
nE
u
r
o
p
e
a
n
J
e
ws
publicly
branded
the
abuses
arose
in
the
Jewish
communities
and
hurled

27
" : ,
."
mor
a
l
i
s
t
s
w
h
o
po
uf
b
l
i
c
l
y
b
r
a
n
d
e
d
ha
e
a
b
u
s
e
s
t
h
a
tf
G
o
d
,
n
o
t
a
l
l
t
h
e
i
r
o
l
d
me
nt
d
t
h
e
f
a
c
e
s
o
pr
op
e
t
s
;
t
he
r
e
w
e
r
e
.h
a
mo
n
g
E
a
s
t
e
r
n
E
ur
ope
n
J
e
w
s
.a
a
mo
n
g
E
a
s
t
e
r
nE
u
r
ope
a
nJ
e
ws
In
the
Hebrew
version
and
not
in
the
English
version
of
The
Earth
Is the
c
ommu
n
i
t
i
e
s
a
n
d
h
ur
l
e
d
f
a
mi
n
g
d
e
n
u
n
c
i
a
t
i
o
n
s
Lords
there
appeared
also
the
following
critique
of
East
European
Jewry:
no
t
o
n
l
y
H
a
s
i
d
i
m
a
n
d
K
a
b
b
a
l
i
s
t
s
,
b
u
t
a
l
s
o
y
o
k
e
l
s
a
n
d
t
r
a
mp
s
.
[
]
Nota
l
l
t
heJ
ewsc
oul
dd
e
v
o
t
e
e
l
v
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s
t
o
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h
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r
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J
ew
s
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o
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ms
e
l
v
e
s
t
o
t
heT
or
a
ha
nds
e
r
v
i
c
eof

flaming
denunciations
at
those
who
sat
above,
unconcerned
with
justice.
l
a
t
t
e
d
c
l
e
a
r
l
y
a
n
d
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r
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ep
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r
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y
h
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r
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r
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mmo
r
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lpe
opl
e
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e
s
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n
dmi
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a
b
b
a
l
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t
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b
u
t
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l
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o
y
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k
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s
a
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r
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mp
s
.
[
]
N
o
t
a
l
l
t
h
e
J
e
w
s
c
o
u
l
d
d
e
v
o
t
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e
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v
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el
T
ot
r
a
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n
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r
v
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f
1a

t
h
e
r
e
w
e
r
e
a
l
w
a
y
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mo
r
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l
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t
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b
l
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c
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r
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n
c
o
n
c
e
r
n
e
d
w
i
t
h
j
u
s
t
i
c
e
28
G
o
d
,
n
o
t
l
l
o
f
t
h
e
i
r
o
l
d
me
n
h
a
d
t
h
e
f
a
c
e
s
o
f
p
r
op
h
e
t
s
;
r
e
w
e
r
e
G
o
d
,
o
t
a
l
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o
f
t
h
e
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r
o
l
d
me
n
h
a
d
t
h
e
f
a
c
e
s
ofpr
ophe
t
s
;t
he
r
ewe
r
e

. - -

r
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28

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forbidden and whatever is permitted is also forbidden.

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28
.
2 the spirit of Liberal Judaism
version
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that observation
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24
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Hebrew likewise only during Heschels lifetime) on the relationship between

the past and the present: We are not of the opinion
that everything that
24
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6, No. 1 (5770/2010)
Page
34 p. ix
Gvanim
Volume
ix
.1996,
27
m Joshua Heschel,
The Earth
is theHeschel,
Lord's, The
p. 101
.Abraham
Joshua
Earth
is the Lord's, p. 101 27
28

28

 " : ,
1
."

Rabbi Dr. Einat Ramon

-
Interestingly,

been worn.
out,
and
many
areas
have
been-
destroyed.
another
passage eliminated from the English version of The Earth is the Lords was one
severely critical of modern Jews:
, ,
. ;
292
.
.29
Jews like that are not concerned when evil laughs at them. They knew the
world and did not make it an idol to worship. Progress did not falsely tempt them.
The enchanting twentieth century did not blind their eyes.
The slight difference between the Hebrew and English versions of the
book, both published in his lifetime, testify that Heschel, like many multilingual Jewish writers of his time and earlier (Mendele and Berdichevsky
for example) was very conscious of what could and could not be heard and
internalized within different audiences. His English readers could misuse
the statement admitting the unnecessary stringencies of halachah, yet could
be upset by comparing Western civilization to idolatry, a comparison that
is widely repeated, once again, in his Hebrew essay, Pikuach Neshamah. In
either case, the point of the whole essay was to awaken in his generation
their sense of teshuvah concerning harsh criticism of traditional Judaism and
blindness regarding the darkness of the Enlightenment. That call is found
mainly in the last chapter of the book.

E. The weaknesses of the Modern Judaism:

Heschels words in 1945, directed at his own generation awakened
by the horrors of the Holocaust, seem very much like his own, personal
confession written around the time in which he had made the transition from
HUC to JTS. Thus, in 1945, he observed:
In the spiritual confusion of the last hundred years, many of us overlooked
the incomparable beauty of our old, poor homes. We compared our fathers and
grandfathers, our scholars and rabbis, with Russian or German intellectuals. We
preached in the name of the twentieth century, measured the merits of Berditchev
and Ger with the standards of Paris and Heidelberg. Dazzled by the lights of the
metropolis, we lost at times the inner sights. The luminous visions that for so
many generations shone in the little candles extinguished for some of us.30 []
In our zeal to change, in our passion to advance, we ridiculed superstition
until we lost our ability to believe. We have helped to extinguish the light our
fathers had kindled. We have bartered holiness for convenience, loyalty for success,
wisdom for information, prayers for sermons, tradition for fashion.31
:" , : " ,

29Ibid., 79.
. 2 ' , "
30Ibid.
.79 ' ,
31Ibid. 106.

1
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Abraham Joshua Heschels Critique of Modern Society

When Heschel had criticized the striving for extreme rationality, he
may have been engaging in a polemic with the Reform movement and/
or with with Mordecai Kaplan at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Yet, his
call goes further than that. He certainly considered himself among those
taken by the false idols of modernity. He did not overlook the attempts of
Jewish renewal in Germany of which he was part. Yet he was critical of those
attempts as well. Gradually, the beauty of the old days and the emptiness of
present-day civilization have been disclosed. But the time has been too short
and the will too weak. Clarity and solidarity have been lacking not only in
the spiritual but also in political matters.32
One wonders what Heschel meant by the statement concerning the
absence of clarity and solidarity. Did he refer to the lack of solidarity of Western,
mostly, liberal Jews towards Eastern European Jewry? Or was he alluding to
something else? In any case, the movement for Jewish renewal in the end, did
not preserve, according to Heschel, the light we ought to preserve.
He, like many leading Jewish intellectuals at his time, had turned to
Berlin, the capital of the Jewish Enlightenment, and was taken by the city
that had symbolized, for that generation, the cosmopolitan breeze blowing
from the West.33 It was for the sake of finding the metaphysical truth in the
writings of leading German intellectuals that his soul yearned to be there.
It was his generation, many of them present in the audience in YIVO in 1945,
that sought, like him, to exchange the world of Berdichev and Ger with the
world of Kant, Hegel, Husserl or Heidegger, and the result was, helping to
extinguish the light our fathers kindeled.
Heschel essentially wondered how we did not realize that the evils
produced by traditional Jews due to their one-sidedness of learning, neglect
of manners, provincialism as well as abuses that arose in the Jewish
community34 were insignificant when compared to the enormous evils and
crimes emerging out of Europe [] the twentieth century and [] Western
Civilization?35 For precisely that reason, it was easier for him to appraise
the beauty of traditional Jewish life than the revolutionary spirituality of
modern Jews.

F. The Call to Modern Jews:

This soul-searching was not aimed at creating guilt feelings but at
calling Jews to action: All that remains is a sanctuary hidden in the realm of
spirit, he wrote. We of this generation are still holding the key. Unless we
remember, unless we unlock it, the holiness of ages will remain the secret of
God The tasks begun by the patriarchs and prophets and continued by their
32Ibid, p. 106.
33Ibid, p. 103.
34Ibid, pp. 100- 101.
35Ibid. pp. 104.

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Rabbi Dr. Einat Ramon

descendents are now entrusted to us he wrote. We are either the last Jews
or those who will hand over the entire past to the generations to come.36
It is only in the context of demonstrating the idolatrous and violent
nature of Western European secular civilization, alongside the relatively
minor shortcomings of Eastern European Jewry that Heschel could make his
intellectual plea for the preservation of that spirit within the new centers of
modern Jewry. It is in these two essays, written four years apart, in 1945 and
1949 where, step by step, he clearly his educational and spiritual agendas: to
demonstrate the idolatrous nature of Western secular civilization, to awaken
memories of the Jewish past, and to call upon Jews to make Judaism and the
Jewish People a sign of Gods presence in the world. In these two essays, in
his unique poetic way, he laid down, almost point by point, the elements of
the Eastern European Era in Judaism that could and must continue to live
through us. In order to unearth them we could go back from the end of The
Earth is the Lords to its beginning while comparing it to Pikuach Neshamah
and see what elements of Jewish life in Eastern Europe could continue in the
two new Jewish centers: Israel and the United States. The themes that he had
emphasized in the essays appeared later in his works as part of the zeal to
rekindle the light extinguished by the Holocaust.

G. Reviving The Spirit of Eastern European

Jewry: An Authentic Jewish Response to
Modernity
1. The Sabbath.
As I have earlier argued, the two essays, The Earth is the Lords and
Pikuach Neshamah, both theological biographies of an endangered culture,
include many themes that Heschel later developed in his books. The first
one is his emphasis on the Sabbath as a conceptual pillar of Judaism. The
comments scattered on the Sabbath are worth paying attention to, as he would
further develop them in his book, The Sabbath, which appeared in 1951, two
years following the publication of Pikuach Neshamah.
The Jews had always known piety and Sabbath holiness. The new thing in
Eastern Europe was that somewhat of the Sabbath was infused into every day[]
There were no operas in their little town; yet what they felt when attending the
Third Sabbath Meal, no songs were eloquent enough to express. Jews did not build
magnificent synagogues; they built bridges leading from the heart to God.37
The millions of Jews who were destroyed bear witness to the fact that as long
as people do not accept the commandment Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy,
the commandment Though shalt not kill will likewise fail to be operative in life
36Ibid. p. 107.
37Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Earth Is the Lords, pp. 97-98.

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Abraham Joshua Heschels Critique of Modern Society

[] The human species is on its deathbed. In order to seek cure, we should not
desecrate the Sabbath, rather it is incumbent upon us to sanctify the weekdays.38
Two implications of these passages are worth noting. One, that Heschel
considers the self-restraint that the Sabbath teaches an irreplaceable
educational vehicle to teach self-restraint in interpersonal human relations.
Thus, he directly links together the two commandments prohibiting murder
and desecration of the Sabbath as a statement concerning the intertwining
of Jewish survival with universal ethics. The second point concerns the
timing in which the book The Sabbath was first conceived and published.
These were the years of Heschels transition to JTS and the years in which the
Conservative Movements Law Committee passed the decision permitting
driving to the synagogue on Shabbat.39 Heschels book should perhaps be
seen a theological response to prevent or reverse the reality permitting rabbis
to drive on Shabbat and making driving on Shabbat a religious norm in the
Conservative Movement. The method he chose, a book on the philosophical
and moral value of Shabbat, was non-polemical and educational. That is
because, unlike in Christianity as Heschel understood it, sin in Judaism has
only a negative connotation: to sin means to fail, to take an inappropriate
step.40 Driving on the Sabbath is therefore a simple misunderstanding of
the deep educational and moral meanings of the commandment to keep the
Sabbath.
2. Sexual Discipline.
Likewise at the end of the nineteen sixties, with the spread of the new
ethic of sexual freedom and free love, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
dared to ponder the relevance of the ideal of sexual continence in an age
when the media inundate the public with a profuse amount of blatant sexual
imagery. In his work, A Passion for Truth, a comparison of the philosophies of
the founder of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov, the Danish-Christian theologian
Soren Kierkegaard, and the Hasidic spiritual leader, the Kotzker Rabbi,
Heschel devotes one chapter to the issue of sex and sexuality.41 In describing
the period when the Kotzker Rabbi withdrew from society, remaining celibate,
Heschel writes the following:
Like Kiergegaard, the Kotzker saw human sexuality as the opposite of
spirituality. Yet, by contrast, he did not discourage marriage, since Judaism sees
celibacy as unnatural He could not discourage marriage which Judaism sees as a
divine commandment Opposition to marriage would have implied a repudiation
of nearly all the Biblical and rabbinic personalities, who were passionately attached
and never ceased to exalt marriage. They never maintained that love between a
man and woman is incompatible with a love of God.42
38Abraham Joshua Heschel, Pikuach Neshamah, pp. 66-67.
39Teshuva by Rabbis Morris Adler, Jacob Agus and Theodore Friedman, Proceedings of the R.A. 1950, pp. 11237.
40Abraham Joshua Heschel, Pikuach Neshamah, p. 62.
41I wish to thank Rabbi Dr. Michael Marmur for pointing out that theme in Heschels latest book.
42Abraham Joshua Heschel, A Passion for Truth, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973), p. 221.

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Gvanim Volume 6, No. 1 (5770/2010)

Rabbi Dr. Einat Ramon

Heschel, like many other thinkers before him, presents marriage and
procreation as the only sexual lifestyle sanctioned by Judaism due to his
polemic against Christianity (embodied in the description of Kiergegaards
character). Yet in his description of the Kotzker Rabbi, Heschel wished, first
of all, to emphasize the importance of marriage. Simultaneously, he wanted
to show a generation that had grown up during the sexual revolution of the
1960s the need for a different and more restrained outlook on the importance
of sex, sexual satisfaction, and sexuality in ones life. He sought to show
that the primary goal of marriage is to provide a framework for men and
women to raise children together, in an atmosphere of mutual respect and
warmth shared by men and women. Sexual and emotional satisfaction was
only a secondary goal. Through the personality of the Kotzker Rabbi, Heschel
wanted to emphasize that deprived of biological release, the body might
weep, but the imagination would remain fresh and pure.43
3. Breaking social alienation through learning and mitzvot.
Heschel did not provide a random report of the details of Jewish
life in Eastern Europe. His hope that many elements of that life would be
resurrected and incorporated into the Jewish lives at the new Jewish centers
was reflected in his attempt to demonstrate how sharing of the Torah, both
in the sense of learning and practicing, created a community of people who
cared for each other and for the world. Mitzvah in Yiddish means to do
what is good in a positive concrete sense he wrote, noting that it is a way to
create a society with internal radiance, an instrument to create a human fabric
that brings holiness to the world.44 Every people has a religion which it has
received from others, but we are the only people which is unified with our
Torah: all parts of the nation, not only the elite few he emphasized. In this
last remark he perhaps criticized the Orthodox again for setting themselves
aside from the rest of the Jewish People.
4. Tradition.
Heschel advocated a way of thinking that was independent and free of
modern biases. In that regard we hear an echo of his criticisms of Reform Jewry.
Throughout his works Heschel preached an approach of gratitude towards
life, together with appreciation of historical Judaism. He never neglected,
and recommended that we never neglect, skepticism towards superficial
beauty promoted by modern culture as a cover-up for modernitys alienation
and violence. Willingness to change halachah when possible and necessary
must be modified, according to him, by those attitudes. The principle for
halachic change should be as follows:
Most people [] tend to look upon everything in the past as useless, and
they are willing to exchange the glory of ancient days for the shiny newness of
43Ibid.
44Abraham Joshua Heschel, Pikuach Neshamah, p. 63.

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Abraham Joshua Heschels Critique of Modern Society

today. They forget that it is not within the power of one individual or within the
power of a single generation to construct a bridge that leads to the Truth. Let us
not discriminate against the structure which many generations have nourished
and built up. The sacred entities of the children of Israel do not profane them!
(Numbers 18:32).45
5. Jewish Solidarity.
A sense of Jewish solidarity and love of all Jews in all generations is the
foundation of the idea and the reality of the Torah shared by all the People
of Israel. Heschel, once again, indirectly rebukes the Jewish enlightenment
of Western Europe and North America for being too individualistic, thus
destroying the organic nature necessary for maintaining a thriving Jewish
life. Even heretics, Marxists and socialists among Eastern European Jewry
were part and parcel of the solidarity of Jewish life there.
The masses of East European Jews repudiated Emancipation when it was
offered at the price of disloyalty to Israels traditions. Both pious and free-thinking
Jews fought for a dignified existence, striving to assure the rights of the community,
not only the individual. They manifested a collective will for collective aim. With
lightning rapidity, they straightened their backs and learned to master the arts
and sciences [] Three thousand years of history has not made them weary.
Their spirits were animated by a vitality that often drove them into opposition to
accepted tenets.46
It is for that reason that the very last passage of Pikuach Neshamah emphasized
that not only the children of Israel in a single generation but all the children
of Israel in all generations comprise the nation. We share a single status and
destiny The love of the people of Israel is inconceivable if we dont walk
with the generations that produced us, and vice versa: without love for the
Jews of our time including even the frivolous and vacuous among them.
6. Zionism.
It is now clear why, in both of these essays, Heschel endorsed Zionism.
Although he bemoaned the fact that the Zionists had deserted religion, he
definitely maintained a much more favorable attitude towards the founders of
the Jewish center in Israel than towards the Western Jewish Enlightenment.47
His voice on that matter is clear and unambivalent. The commitment to the
building of Eretz Yisrael was in his mind incumbent upon all Jews. It is in
Israel that he thought an organic mode of Jewish life could continue. The
secular Zionists were in his mind modern-day Hassidim who offered their
souls and lives to the Jewish People.48 At the end of Pikuach Neshamah he offers
a story of a shoemaker who fixed the shoes of a Keren Kayemet fundraiser,
45Abraham Joshua Heschel, Pikuach Neshamah, p. 65.
46Ibid. p. 105
47Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Earth is the Lords, p. 64.
48Ibid. p. 103.

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Gvanim Volume 6, No. 1 (5770/2010)

Rabbi Dr. Einat Ramon

since he had no money to donate to the rebuilding of Eretz Yisrael. Heschel
regarded the story as a model of ultimate dedication and self-sacrifice by a
simple man for the survival of the Jewish People, since, according to him,
the primary concern of the Jew is [] that he assure the continued existence
of the people of Israel. 49 Just as it is incumbent upon us to be human
beings, he wrote, so it is our obligation to be Jews.50 For that reason, he
concluded, we are called upon to be pioneers for the Torah of Israel and for
the Land of Israel and bring their power to all the regions of the Diaspora.51
It seems that there is no better way to describe his life and thought than this
declaration. Unlike many of his close friends, though, for various reasons
he himself chose to live in New York. There he saw himself as a pioneer as a
transmitter of a vanished, precious world to those who had no clue what that
life really meant. He was hoping that his readers and students would take
it upon themselves to live their lives like their ancestors, to make their lives
Torah. And Torah as he understood it was by definition intertwined with
Eretz Yisrael and its rebuilding, no matter where the Jew ends up living.

F. Conclusion and Evaluation

To conclude, Heschel emerges from these two essays as a middleof-the-road thinker. Critical of the Zionists for forsaking religion, critical
of the Orthodox for clinging to the past and to halachic stringencies, and
for isolating themselves from the People of Israel, and critical of the Reform
Movement and perhaps also the Conservative Movement for being taken in
by modernitys idolatry. One can understand why his biography, written by
Edward Kaplan, suggests that he was at times such a lonely man of faith.52
One might argue that at the beginning of the 21st century, with the rise of
Islamic fundamentalism as a frightening political threat, and the fall of the
two major secular ideologies (Fascism and Communism), his critique of the
Western World is no longer valid. Yet, we should remember that even in the
face of the Fascist ideology Heschel continued to be a Zionist, and in the face of
a Communist and socialist intelligentsia he continued to be an observant Jew.
Likewise, Heschel would argue that, with all its faults and discriminations, the
traditional Jewish world of today produces far less violence and inflicts less
suffering on human beings than either Islamic fundamentalism or Western
global imperialistic capitalism. One may therefore conclude that in that sense
both The Earth Is the Lords and Pikuach Neshamah are truly prophetic works.

49Abraham Joshua Heschel, Pikuach Neshama, p. 65.

50Ibid. p. 66.
51Ibid. p. 67.
52Bari Weiss, The Lonely Man of Faith, Haaretz, 9.12.07, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.
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