Image from amazon.com
[This is from Interview at Notre Dame in the Appendices of MORAL GRANDEUR AND SPIRITUAL AUDACITY, essays edited by AJH’s daughter Susanah Heschel. We have featured bits and pieces of this’ MUST READ/MUST OWN book, downloadable as ebook on any kindle app. “I” stands for the Interviewer, not named but obviously a Catholic from Notre Dame. Reformatting and highlighting ours.]
———————–
AJH: [Excerpts from earlier questions not included here]
AJH: Is it really necessary for a Christian to believe that the Creator of heaven and earth has resigned His power to Jesus and that God Himself, Omnipotent Father, is unable to reach men directly? What of the psalmist? Would you be willing to say that the psalmist didn’t know how to pray? And what of those who do not accept the claim of the Church? Are the Jews and Mohammedans unable to pray or address themselves to God?
It is true that the “Hebrew Bible”—a term that should replace the condescending term “Old Testament”—stresses the relationship of immediacy between man and God. But I feel that within the new thinking that is taking place in the Church, there is a need of a further clarification on this question. I know that the Church stresses the centrality of Jesus in the process of Salvation. I do not think, however, it has had to stress the centrality of Jesus in the process of inspiration and worship.
We believe in an afterlife. We believe that every one of us individually will be called upon to give account of the life we lived. We are not saved by the synagogue; our destiny will be determined by what we do or fail to do. The commandment, the mitzvah, to serve God, is a term more central than the term “salvation.’
Q: What is the Jewish conception of the afterlife?
A: We have no information about it. The only thing we know is what is given to us in the Talmud in the name of one of the sages of the third century. We are told that the world to come is a sphere, a realm where the good people sit with crowns on their heads receiving joy of visio Dei –the joy of inhaling the glory of God’s presence. That’s all we know. We don’t know what the visio Dei means, or the significance of the “crowns.” So we must allegorize, and we say that a crown is made up of the good and sacred moments in our life here on earth and the good deeds that we do in this life.
Q: What happens to the evil man who rejects God?
A: From the Torah we know only so much about the will of God. The afterlife remains a mystery. But we can say that Jewish tradition certainly teaches that there is a way of survival for the wicked that we call Sheol.
Death is not seen as mere ruin and disaster. It is felt to be a loss of further possibilities to experience and to enhance the glory and goodness of God here and now. It is not a liquidation but a summation, the end of a prelude to a symphony of which we have only a vague inkling of hope. The prelude is infinitely rich in possibilities of either enhancing or frustrating God’s patient, ongoing efforts to redeem the world.
Death is the end of what we can do in being partners to redemption. The life that follows must be earned while we are here. It does not come out of nothing; it is an ingathering, the harvest of eternal moments achieved while on earth.
Unless we cultivate sensitivity to the glory while here, unless we learn how to experience a foretaste of heaven while on earth, what can there be in store for us in the life to come? The seed of life eternal is planted within us here and now. But a seed is wasted when placed on iron into souls that die while the body is still alive.
Q: What can Christianity learn from Judaism?
A: To be a witness to the God of Abraham, of Sinai, openness to God’s stake in the ongoing history of the Jewish people. There are many things that Judaism teaches:
- the importance of simple common deeds,
- sanctification of time,
- and a sense of wonder and radical amazement.
But all these things flow from the primary witness to the God of Abraham. The idea of witness, that is, sensitivity to God’s presence is, above all, the primary existential aspect of Judaism. Other things, such as the mysterious immediacy in relation to God, radical monotheism and the concept of man, are aspects of witness.
Q: Would you please explain the Judaic concept of man.
A. We start with the certainty that God is involved in human life. This means that the primary task of man is to realize that God has a stake in his life. We also believe that the Jewish people are not the same since Sinai. They are called upon to carry out the commandments of the Torah, the Law. Man is by his very being a man in travail with God’s dreams and designs.
In the Bible, we read about the creation of all other things:
“And then God said. And so it was.
But when God came to create man, He first had a vision of man. He said: Let us make man in our vision. In other words, the vision of man preceded the creation of man. We may say that God has a vision or expectation of man. It is our task to recover it. That’s why man is a messenger for God—the messenger.
God is in our midst. Our most important problem is the problem of responsiveness, obedience to the Law, openness, listening to Moses, Amos, Rabbi Akiba; our privilege is being a part of the Jewish community, past and present.
Q: I think that a Christian would agree with all you have said.
A: If he agrees with all that, then he is a Jew.
A: Perhaps this is what Pope Pius XI meant when he said, “Spiritually, we are Semites.”
A: But Christians leave out the possibility and the greatness of Mosaic Law. A Christian theologian would say that the Law is an imposition. We feel the blessing and the love of the Law; we sense God’s will. A Jew is committed to the idea that he is able to be attached to God directly. We have the certainty of being able to live a life that is compatible with His presence. In other words, the will of God is within the scope of human understanding. The Torah has not been abolished. We have the gift of the word. What is the Bible? The presence of God is found in many ways, but above all God is found in the words of the Bible. We believe that we are living in the ancient Covenant of Sinai. This is not a matter of feeling or even a matter of faith. It’s a reality. God is waiting for the sinner. Up to the last day, God is waiting for his return. Man has to respond. The question of original sin is not of primary importance for the Jew. The problem is not how shall I be saved. the problem is how shall I serve God at this very moment. My challenge is how can I be honest and helpful toward my neighbor in the presence of the Father.
Q: Surely the Hebrew Bible is an essential element of the total Christian view.
A: But what did you do to the Hebrew Bible? You made it an “old” book of Law that very few people read. I have encountered many wonderful priests whose spirituality I greatly admire who haven’t read the Hebrew Bible. Recently, a very fine, inspired priest, a man advanced in years, told me: “I am now reading for the first time the Hebrew Bible. What a great work it is.” The fact is that Catholics read only the Psalms from the Hebrew Bible. They read papal encyclicals, Christian authors, and, of course, the New Testament. But they forget the Hebrew Bible.
Q: What else does a Jew expect from Christianity?
A: We are a small group always in danger. History has shown that our situation has always been precarious—on the brink of disaster. For almost two thousand years, the Church has tried to understand itself as an antithesis to Judaism. I am not speaking about the results of such hostility. I am speaking about the scandal of rejecting the genuine roots of Christian belief. Jesus was a Jew. His disciples were Jews. Jesus prepared for the Sabbath, sanctified the Seventh Day, read the traditional prayers, and recited and interpreted the Bible.
To answer your question, I would say that the most that Christianity can do is to be faithful to its ultimate roots. Christians must abandon the idea that the Jews must be converted. This is one of the greatest scandals in history. It reminds me of a spiritual Oedipus complex. “Honor your father and mother.” Your mother and father were both Jews. The first thing you could do for us is to be genuine in your Christian faith and to be a witness to the God of Abraham. I recognize in Christianity the presence of holiness. I see it; I sense it; I feel it. You are not an embarrassment to us, and we shouldn’t be an embarrassment to you. We can help each other on many levels. The Jews have a good memory of what the Bible means. The Christians have had great experience in proclaiming the message of the God of Abraham to the Gentiles and have been able to preserve many ancient insights and loyalties in their spirituality. A Christian should realize that a world that does not have Israel will be a world without the God of Israel. A Jew, in his own way, should acknowledge the role of Christianity in God’s plan for the redemption of all men.
Q: What is the goal of Christian-Jewish cooperation?
A: The purpose of such interreligious cooperation is not mutual refutation. It is to help one another share insight and learning. We must also search for the sources of devotion and for the power of love and care for man. More than ever before we need each other’s help, and we need the courage to believe that the word of the Lord endures forever. We must keep ourselves sensitive to God around us and listen to His word in the Bible. Religion is a means, not an end. Over all stands the Creator and Lord of history. He who transcends all.
Q: Recently a New York minister suggested that Christians join Jews in observing Saturday instead of Sunday as the Sabbath. What do you think of this?
A: It should not be done just for ecumenical reasons. One should serve God not for the sake of the ecumenical movement but for His own sake. There is much involved here. What is the nature of the Christian faith? If it is a biblical faith, then you take the Ten Commandments seriously. So why did the Christians change the Holy Day? I cannot understand it. Historically, it was not necessarily done for spiritual reasons. My task is not to tell the Christian what to do. My task is to help him, not to debate with him.
Q: Your life has been dedicated to theology, the study of the word of God. What are the main characteristics of Jewish theology?
A: Jewish theology must never be detached from the human situation. The standard of Jewish theology is the degree to which it may affect the life of the Jew his thoughts as well as his concrete action. A person goes astray if his theory far outstrips his actions. It was a major principle in early Hasidism: Beware, lest your wisdom transcend your fulfillment or concrete service. With every new insight that comes to you, seek to carry out a new act of serving Him . . . As to the term itself, “theology” is not quite accurate to a Jewish thinker. I once said in my book Man is Not Alone that the Bible is not man’s book about God but rather God’s book about man. In this sense, the real concern is to discover what God requires of man—what is God’s expectation of man. Anthropology is central to theology. I often use the term “philosophy of religion,” but then I have to define it.
Q: What do you mean by philosophy of religion?
A: The term “religion” in the phrase “philosophy of religion” may be used either as an object or as a subject. In the first sense, philosophy of religion is a critique of religion; religion as a theme or object of examination. In this sense, we employ e.g. the term “philosophy of science.” In the second sense, philosophy has a meaning comparable to the meaning of a phrase such as the “philosophy of Kant” or the “philosophy of Plato.”
Now, Judaism is a source of ideas, basic insights, perspectives, and teachings. The task of the philosophy of Judaism is twofold: radical self-understanding in terms of its own spirit, as well as critical reassessment of Judaism from the point of view of both our total knowledge and our immediate situation.
Q: With this distinction in mind, how would you relate it to the contemporary theological quest?
A: We are challenged from two directions, by the insecurity of faith and by the earnestness of our commitment to the Bible. It is necessary to look at the Bible from the perspective of our situation and to look at our situation from the perspective of the Bible.
Modern theology must seek to recover the uniqueness of biblical thinking, of categories with which to face ultimate problems. the perspective from which we look at reality determines our way of formulating our problems. We have long been accustomed to search in the Bible for answers to non-biblical problems. The result is confusion. The Bible is the ancilla theologiae. What I plead for is a search for the intellectual relevance of the Bible.
Q: Do you have any observations about the direction this search should take?
A: Let us take, for example, the problem of being, which is the central metaphysical problem today. For the biblical mind, being is not the primary question. The Bible is concerned with creation, God’s care for creatures. To be or not to be is not the question. We have being. The problem is living. The whole conception of the person and of man has been distorted because we have overemphasize ontology. Biblical theology approaches man in a different way. The right question is not “How do I know God?” but “Am I known by God?” This is the basic issue. We have pagan questions, and we seek biblical answers. To understand the Bible, we must know that the Bible has answers to ultimate questions. But first of all, we must know what the ultimate questions are.
Q: Do you think that insensitivity to God is a major problem today?
A: Yes, it is. But to deal with sensitivity to God is already an advanced problem. We cannot begin with God until we have first dealt adequately with certain pre-theological presuppositions. The way I relate myself to this chair will determine the way I relate myself to God. We must analyze some basic core-theological directions or attitudes, such as the sense of wonder, reverence, and gratitude. These prerequisites are not cultivated in our society. Thus, the problem today is not sensitivity to God. We are not even sensitive to God’s creation. Unless we know how to be sensitive to God’s glory and know something of His presence in the world, we will never know anything about His essence.
Q: You spoke of the insecurity of faith. How should theology face this challenge?
A: First by saying mea culpa. Religion has been reduced to institution, symbol, theology. It does not affect the pre-theological situation, the pre-symbolic depth of existence. To redirect the trend, we must lay bare what is involved in religious existence: we must recover the situations that both precede and correspond to the theological formulations; we must recall the questions that religious doctrines are trying to answer, the antecedents of religious commitment, the presuppositions of faith. A major task of philosophy of religion is, as said before, to rediscover the questions to which religion is an answer. The inquiry must proceed both by delving into the consciousness of man and by delving into the teachings and the attitudes of the religious tradition.
The urgent problem is not only the truth of religion but man’s capacity to sense the truth of religion and the authenticity of religious concern. Religious truth does not shine in a vacuum. It is certainly not comprehensible when the antecedents of religious insight and commitment are wasted away; when the mind is dazzled by ideologies that either obscure or misrepresent man’s ultimate questions; when life is lived in a way that tends to abuse and to squander the gold mines, the challenging resources of human existence. The primary issue of theology is pre-theological; it is the total situation of man and his attitudes toward life and the world. I discussed this in my book The Insecurity of Freedom.
Q: Have you any suggestions how the churches may work to save man from destruction?
A: Responsible religious people should discover the real moral problems. The churches should be more concerned with how to save the humanity of man, God’s image within man. The prophetic dimension is indispensable. Looking at the past, we may think that the prophet was the most superfluous man that ever lived. The Law was given, the message was there. With the temple and the priests, why was there need for prophets? Apparently it was within the Divine Plan that besides the Law there also be some men who with prophetic vision could remind others of God’s message.
Q: What advice would you give those religious people who tend to become discouraged when they see so much evil in the world?
A: For man to be frustrated is a cardinal sin. Man is not alone in his concern for justice, God is with him. Therefore, we must continue to fight to the last breath. As a criticism, I must say that religious people are often too concerned with trifles and lose sight of greater issues. How can a religious community tolerate violence? This is one of the things I do not understand. I believe that church members can do much to overcome evil if they unite. Why don’t all those affiliated with churches—and synagogues—gather together some afternoon and fill the streets with one voice of protest against the killing of innocent civilians. the protest of these many millions of believers would have a great effect . . .They should not cease to utter their disgust that America permits civilians to be killed. This is one practical way to carry out the will of God.
Q: I once read that for the Jews a basic difficulty with Christianity is that the “God of Christians is humble, and we Jews cannot accept such humility.” Do you agree with this?
A: No. There is a passage in the Talmud that says just the opposite: “Wherever you find God’s grandeur, you find His humility.” The divine pathos is a basic category in our understanding of God. I have written about this in my books The Prophets and Theology of Ancient Judaism, Vol. 1. The issues between Jews and Christians are quite different. We reject the Incarnation, we insist on God’s transcendence, and we make absolute the difference between God and man. We don’t acknowledge the messiahship of Jesus, because we expected and continue to expect that the Messiah will bring about a radical change in concrete history. We cannot accept the Christian claim that Jesus abolished the Law. To us the Law continues to be valid.
Q: The Catholic Church certainly looks upon herself as the ecclesia, the sacred, worshipping community. The communitarian aspect is as strong in Christianity as in Judaism.
A: I wish it were, but it isn’t.
Q: Do you mean theologically or historically?
A: I am not competent to judge theologically, but historically. Christianity has not stressed the idea of community. Let me give you an example. In my childhood I could not understand how German and French soldiers, both claiming Christianity as their religion, could kill each other. You call this a community? Maybe you can give me a theological answer for this, but for me it is inconceivable that such a thing should happen in a community. It is fratricide. You are not one people if you kill each other. This is your challenge, and I pray that you can meet it. So far you have not.
Q: Do you have any observations concerning the role of the Jews in the present ecumenical dialogue?
We are now at the beginning of a new period in the history of religious cooperation between Christians and Jews. . . . I have had hundreds of conversations and meetings with Christians, and if I discovered that we have many disagreements, I also discovered that there is much upon which we can agree. It is true that our dogmas and ways of worship are different. But we both worship the God of Israel. We are both committed to the Hebrew Bible as the word of God, to some of the commandments as the will of God, to the sense of contrition, and to the conviction that without the holy, the good will be defeated. Our prayer is for Christians to continue to serve and to worship God.
However, I have one complaint. Give up the idea of the mission to the Jews, the idea of converting the Jews. It is arrogant to play God. Once the Christians give this up, much of the tension will be relieved. Christianity, as an expression of Providence, is not problem for us. It is true that you have a number of ideas that I wish you would modify, and in fact you are modifying many of them.
Q: Some Jews are suspicious of the ecumenical movement and fear that if all Christians unite, then the Jews will again be persecuted.
A: You can’t blame the Jews for such fear. I have been stoned and beaten up many times in Warsaw by young boys who had just come out of church. What do you expect the Jews to feel? Do you think I can forget the long history of my people and the horrible things that happened to us in the last thirty years? The Jew is afflicted with anxiety. The psalmist frequently reminds us that there is no security in this world. But I believe that God will purify the heart and will give wisdom and grace to His sons. I take consolation in the words of Rabbi Johanan Ha-Sandelar, a disciple of Rabbi Akiba, who said:
“Every community which is established for the sake of heaven will in the end endure, but one which is not for the sake of heaven will not endure in the end.”
