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Abraham Joshua Heschel
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Courtesy of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
by Padraic O'hare
During the last two years, a time of crisis for the Catholic Church, a book research project has engaged my energies. The manuscript--on interreligious relations--derives its title from words of the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. It is called Searching in the Wilderness. ("What then is the purpose of interreligious cooperation?" asked Heschel. It is "to search in the wilderness for the wellsprings of devotion.") Heschel's thought features prominently in my work, and he is for me a great guide in the current wilderness.
To the extent that I need consolation, it is for a heart sick over Catholicism's spiritual and theological richness being eclipsed—and its efficacy questioned—by identification with the malfeasant and triumphal actions of Church officials. What is breathtaking about the crisis, beyond even the sexual predation of children and teenagers by priests, is that virtually no bishop honored himself by acting with justice and compassion.
My consolation rests in the distinction that many before me have drawn between religion and spirituality. This differentiation, between religious community and a personal spiritual path, was a rich and generative theme in the life and work of Rabbi Heschel.
Abraham Joshua Heschel was born in Poland in 1907, scion of a line of great Hasidic rabbis. He studied Jewish wisdom in Vilna and secular thought in Berlin. For a time he succeeded the philosopher Martin Buber as the leader of Jewish education in Frankfurt. With the advent of Nazism, he made his way to England in 1939, and in 1940 he came to the United States. Most of his remaining years, until his death in 1972, were spent teaching at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City.
During those years, Heschel's became the principle voice calling Jews, and an ever-widening circle of Christians, to a joyful, loving, and morally challenging spirituality, one founded on an awe-filled response to what he called the "Divine pathos," the Holy One's incalculable love for all creation. His philosophical writings defended human dignity and freedom in the face of contemporary materialism. And his professions of moral responsibility, most famously in his epic two-volume study, The Prophets (1936), but also in his many public speeches and protests, were a profound call to tikkun olam, to "heal the world." He himself answered by becoming a leader in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Heschel's was a uniquely effective voice calling for reverence among people in differing religious community, insisting that "God is either the Father of all men or of no men."
HESCHEL DISTINGUISHED between religion and spirituality by referring to theology and what he called "depth theology." "The theme of theology," he wrote, "is the content of believing. The theme of depth theology is the act of believing." He elaborated: "Theology is like sculpture; depth theology like music. Theology is in books; depth theology is in hearts. The former is doctrine, the latter is events."
The distinctions are useful, but imperfect. For it is from the music of Heschel's heart that we receive such bracing and timely words as these: "Religion is for God's sake. The human side of religion, its creeds, rituals, and instructions, is a way rather than a goal." And the goal, according to Heschel, quoting the prophet Micha, is "to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God."
"Religion for religion's sake," when the human side becomes the object, "is idolatry," said Heschel. Real spiritual practice means searching in the wilderness. And Rabbi Heschel insisted that we are required to search together, rooted in our communities of primary religious affiliation, but sustaining one another with "the courage to believe that the word of God 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 spark in our souls; to nurture openness to the spirit of the Psalms, reverence for the words of the Prophets, and faithfulness to the will of God."
THIS WILDERNESS into which we Catholics have been brought by our leaders is removed from the conciliar reform and renewal of the Church and from the vision of Pope John XXIII. We have been led away from an ecclesiology that speaks of the people of God and back to autocracy; away from an inclusive vision of revelation inspired by the yearnings of our own times (what the Second Vatican Council called the "signs of the times") and toward a kind of fundamentalism, in a Church that has no place for certain others: for the divorced; for those who in conscience do not share confidence in official teaching on sexual and reproductive ethics; for women who seek roles of leadership in service; for persons who are gay and lesbian.
This wilderness in which we now dwell, fairness and accuracy requires it be said, we have entered in part by our own complicity. As the author James Carroll (Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews, A History) and others have pointed out, whenever we the people have remained silent and pliant, we have built up this sculpture, this idol. Further, the Catholic Church, even in crisis, is by no means all wilderness. Many Catholics of courage and priests of integrity simply function as if listening to different music, with joy and reverence, with gratitude and compassion, praising the Holy One and serving their neighbor.
We Catholics will escape this wilderness by refusing to live as if the "boring administration" of the Church, as Karl Rahner, SJ, put it 30 years ago, were the whole of Catholicism. We will escape by becoming ever more filled with prayer that deepens our hunger for justice and compassion and also enables us to be in conflict but remain in charity. Above all, we will escape by becoming accustomed to asking of each new ecclesiastical assertion, as the writer Andrew Sullivan has suggested, "Is it True?"
But for as long as we remain in terrain that is chiefly wilderness, we can hear few words more consoling than those of Rabbi Heschel: "God is greater than religion . . . faith is greater than doctrine."
Padraic O'Hare is a professor of religious studies and the director of the Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations at Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts. To learn more of Heschel's views, he recommends God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (1955), The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence (1966), and Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (Susannah Heschel, ed., 1996).
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