[This is a revisit; first posted 2012; part of a series from No Religion is an Island by Abraham Joshua Heschel (AJH). Related posts are:
- Revisit: No Religion is an Island – Abraham Joshua Heschel
- Revisit: No Religion is an Island – 2 – “To equate religion and God is idolatry” – AJHeschel
Our most recent acquisition by AJH is Man is not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion. We will feature excerpts from that book soon.
Meanwhile, here’s the original INTRODUCTION in 2012:
Image from www.quotessays.com
Words of great men preserved for posterity continue to teach later generations even when the speakers/writers have finished their appointed time on earth. We are grateful to Susanah Heschel for the publication of the collection of essays and speeches of her father, Abraham Joshua Heschel, whose writings in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity have greatly inspired us to expand our thinking beyond the religious boundaries we finally overstepped and moved on from. This concludes random excerpts from the speech delivered by AJH in 1965 to a congregation of Christian theologians. It is our hope that as we continue featuring the mind of this great Jewish philosopher through his words, readers will be curious to read more and purchase personal copies of his books. Reformatting and highlighting and chosen illustrations added. —Admin1.]
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Image from ironline.american.edu
A major factor in our religious predicament is due to self-righteousness and to the assumption that faith is found only in him who has arrived, while it is absent in him who is on the way. Religion is often inherently guilty of the sin of pride and presumption. To paraphrase a prophet’s words, the exultant religion dwelt secure and said in her heart: “I am, and there is no one besides me.”
Humility and contrition seem to be absent where most required—in theology. But humility is the beginning and end of religious thinking, the secret test of faith. There is no truth without humility, no certainty without contrition.
Ezra the Scribe, the great renovator of Judaism, of whom the rabbis said that he was worthy of receiving the Torah had it not been already given through Moses, confessed his lack of perfect faith. He tells us that after he had received a royal firman from King Artaxerxes granting him permission to lead a group of exiles from Babylonia:
I proclaimed a fast there at the river Ahava, that we might afflict ourselves before our God, to seek of Him a right way for us, and for our little ones, and for all substance. For I was ashamed to require of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy in the way: because we had spoken unto the king, saying, “The hand of God is upon all them for good that seek Him” (8:21-220).
Human faith is never final, never an arrival, but rather an endless pilgrimage, a being on the way. We have no answers to all problems. Even some of our sacred answers are both emphatic and qualified, final and tentative; final within our own position in history, tentative because we can speak only in the tentative language of man.
Heresy is often a roundabout expression of faith, and sojourning in the wilderness is a preparation for entering the Promised Land.
Is the failure, the impotence of all religions, due exclusively to human transgression? Or perhaps to the mystery of God’s withholding His grace, of His concealing even while revealing? Disclosing the fulness of His glory would be an impact that would surpass the power of human endurance.
His thoughts are not our thoughts. Whatever is revealed is abundance compared with our soul and a pittance compared with His treasures. No word is God’s last word, no word is God’s ultimate word.
Following the revelation at Sinai, the people said to Moses:
You speak to us, and we will hear; let not God speak to us, lest we die (Exodus 20:19).
The Torah as given to Moses, an ancient rabbi maintains, is but an unripened fruit of the heavenly tree of wisdom. At the end of days, much that is concealed will be revealed.
The mission to the Jews is a call to the individual Jew to betray the fellowship, the dignity, the sacred history of his people. Very few Christians seem to comprehend what is morally and spiritually involved in supporting such activities. We are Jews as we are men. The alternative to our existence as Jews is spiritual suicide, extinction. It is not a change into something else. Judaism has allies but no substitutes.”
The wonder of Israel, the marvel of Jewish existence, the survival of holiness in the history of the Jews is a continuous verification of the marvel of the Bible. Revelation to Israel continues as a revelation through Israel.
The Protestant pastor Christian Furchtegott Gellert was asked by Frederick the Great, “Herr Professor, give me proof of the Bible, but briefly, for I have little time.” Gellert answered, “Your Majesty, the Jews.”
Indeed, is not the existence of the Jews a witness to the God of Abraham? Is not our loyalty to the Law of Moses a light that continues to illumine the lives of those who observe it as well as the lives of those who are aware of it.
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None of us pretends to be God’s accountant, and His design for history and redemption remains a mystery before which we must stand in awe. It is as arrogant to maintain that the Jews’ refusal to accept Jesus as the Messiah is due to their stubbornness or blindness as it would be presumptuous for Jews not to acknowledge the glory and holiness in the lives of countless Christians.
The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth (Psalm 145:18).
. . . The ancient rabbis proclaimed:
“Pious men of all nations have a share in the life to come.” . . .
Holiness is not the monopoly of any particular religion or tradition. Wherever a deed is done in accord with the will of God, wherever a thought of man is directed toward Him, there is the holy.
The Jews do not maintain that the way of the Torah is the only way of serving God.
Let all the peoples walk each one in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever (Micah 4:5).
. . . Conversion to Judaism is no prerequisite for sanctity. In His Code Maimonides asserts:
“Not only is the tribe of Levi (God’s portion) sanctified in the highest degree, but any man among the dwellers on earth whose heart prompts him and whose mind instructs him to dedicate himself to the services of God and to walk uprightly as God intended him to and who disencumbers himself of the load of the many pursuits which men invent for themselves. . . God asks for the heart, everything depends upon the intention of the heart . . . all men have a share in eternal life if they attain according to their ability knowledge of the Creator and have ennobled themselves by noble qualities. There is no doubt that he who has thus trained himself morally and intellectually to acquire faith in the Creator will certainly have a share in the life to come. This is why our rabbis taught: A Gentile who studies the Torah of Moses is (spiritually) equal to the High Priest at the Temple in Jerusalem.”
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Image from www.brandeis.edu
Christianity and Islam, far from being accidents of history or purely human phenomena, are regarded as part of God’s design for the redemption of all men. Christianity is accorded ultimate significance by acknowledging that
“all these matters relating to Jesus of Nazareth and [Mohammed] . . . served to clear the way for King Messiah.”
In addition to the role of these religions in the plan of redemption, their achievements within history are explicitly affirmed. Through them
“the messianic hope, the Torah, and the commandments have become familiar topics . . . (among the inhabitants) of the far isles and many peoples.”
Elsewhere Maimonides acknowledges that
“the Christians believe and profess that the Torah is God’s revelation (torah min ha-shamayim) and given to Moses in the form in which it has been preserved; they have it completely written down, though they frequently interpret it differently.”
.[Rabbi Jacob Emden]
” . . they have emerged out of Judaism and accepted “the fundamentals of our divine religion . . . to make known God among the nations . . . to proclaim that there is a Master in heaven and earth, divine providence, reward and punishment . . . Who bestows the gift of prophecy . . . and communicates through the prophets laws and statutes to live by . . . This is why their community endures . . . . Since their intention is for the sake of heaven, reward will not be withheld from them.”
He also praises many Christian scholars who have come to the rescue of Jews and their literature.
What, then, is the purpose of interreligious cooperation?
It is neither to flatter nor to refute one another, but to help one another; to share insight and learning, to cooperate in academic ventures on the highest scholarly level and, what is even more important, to search in the wilderness for wellsprings of devotion, for treasures of stillness, for the power of love and care for man. What is urgently needed are ways of helping one another in the terrible predicament of here and now by the courage to believe that the word of the Lord endures forever as well as here and now; to cooperate in trying to bring about a resurrection of sensitivity, a revival of conscience; to keep alive the divine sparks in our souls, to nurture openness to the spirit of the Psalms, reverence for the words of the prophets, and faithfulness to the Living God.
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