Beyond Vietnam, by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Peaceful relations among humans on earth, and peaceful relations between humans and the other life forms on the planet, are imperative for the survival of planet earth as a habitat for life as we know it. Making the achievement of peace an affirmative goal for all humanity is noble and essential.

Re: Beyond Vietnam, by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Postby admin » Thu Mar 28, 2019 12:16 am

William Sloane Coffin
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/27/19

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Image
William Sloane Coffin
Photo of The Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr. (1924-2006), Senior Minister of The Riverside Church, New York, NY (1977-87)
Coffin circa 1980
Church: United Church of Christ
Other posts: Riverside Church
Orders
Ordination: Presbyterian church
Personal details
Birth name: William Sloane Coffin Jr.
Born: June 1, 1924
Died: April 12, 2006 (aged 81)
Nationality: American
Denomination: Presbyterian, United Church of Christ
Spouse: Eva Rubinstein, Harriet Gibney, Virginia Randolph Wilson
Education: Yale College, Union Theological Seminary
Alma mater: Yale Divinity School

William Sloane Coffin Jr. (June 1, 1924 – April 12, 2006) was an American Christian clergyman and long-time peace activist. He was ordained in the Presbyterian Church, and later received ministerial standing in the United Church of Christ. In his younger days he was an athlete, a talented pianist, a CIA officer, and later chaplain of Yale University, where the influence of Reinhold Niebuhr's social philosophy led him to become a leader in the Civil Rights Movement and peace movements of the 1960s and 1970s. He also was a member of the secret society Skull and Bones. He went on to serve as Senior Minister at the Riverside Church in New York City and President of SANE/Freeze (now Peace Action), the nation's largest peace and social justice group, and prominently opposed United States military interventions in conflicts, from the Vietnam War to the Iraq War. He was also an ardent supporter of gay rights.

Biography

Childhood


William Sloane Coffin Jr. was born into the wealthy elite of New York City. His paternal great-grandfather William Sloane was a Scottish immigrant and co-owner of the very successful W. & J. Sloane Company. His uncle was Henry Sloane Coffin, president of Union Theological Seminary and one of the most famous ministers in the U.S. His father, William Sloane Coffin, Sr. was president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and an executive in the family business.[1]

His mother, Catherine Butterfield, had grown up in the Midwest, and as a young woman spent time in France during World War I providing relief to soldiers, and met her future husband there, where he was also engaged in charitable activities. Their three children grew up fluent in French by being taught by their nanny, and attended private schools in New York.

William Sr.'s father, Edmund Coffin, was a prominent lawyer, real estate developer, and reformer who owned a property investment and management firm that renovated and rented low-income housing in New York. Upon Edmund's death in 1928, it went to his sons William and Henry, with William managing the firm. When the Great Depression hit in 1929, William allowed tenants to stay whether or not they could pay the rent, quickly draining his own funds, and at a time when the family's substantial W. & J. Sloane stock was not paying dividends.

William Sloane Coffin, Sr. died at home on his oldest son Edmund's eleventh birthday in 1933 from a heart attack he suffered returning from work. After this, his wife Catherine decided to move the family to Carmel, California, to make life more affordable, but was able to do this only with financial support from her brother-in-law Henry. After years spent in the most exclusive private schools in Manhattan, the three Coffin children were educated in Carmel's public schools, where William had his first sense that there was injustice—sometimes very great—in the world.

A talented musician, he became devoted to the piano and planned a career as a concert pianist. At the urging of his uncle Henry (who was still contributing to the family's finances), his mother enrolled him in Deerfield Academy in 1938.

The following year (when Edmund left for Yale University), William moved with his mother to Paris at the age of 15 to receive personal instruction in the piano and was taught by some of the best music teachers of the 20th century, including Nadia Boulanger. The Coffins moved to Geneva, Switzerland, when World War II came to France in 1940, and then back to the United States, where he enrolled in Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.

Early adulthood

Having graduated from high school in 1942, William enrolled at Yale College and studied in the School of Music. While continuing his pursuit of the piano, he was also excited by the prospect of fighting to stop fascism and became very focused on joining the war effort. He applied to work as a spy with the Office of Strategic Services in 1943, but was turned down for not having sufficiently "Gallic features" to be effective. He then left school, enlisted in the Army, and was quickly tapped to become an officer. After training, he was assigned to work as liaison to the French and Russian armies in connection with the Army's military intelligence unit, and where he heard first-hand stories of life in Stalin's USSR.

After the war, Coffin returned to Yale, where he would later become President of the Yale Glee Club. Coffin had been a friend of George H. W. Bush since his youth, as they both attended Phillips Academy (1942). In Coffin's senior year, Bush brought Coffin into the exclusive Skull and Bones secret society at the university.

Upon graduating in 1949, Coffin entered the Union Theological Seminary, where he remained for a year, until the outbreak of the Korean War reignited his interest in fighting against communism. He joined the CIA as a case officer in 1950 (his brother-in-law Franklin Lindsay had been head of the Office of Policy Coordination at the OSS, one of the predecessors of the CIA) spending three years in West Germany recruiting anti-Soviet Russian refugees and training them how to undermine Stalin's regime.
[1] Coffin grew increasingly disillusioned with the role of the CIA and the United States due to events including the CIA's involvement in overthrowing Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran in 1953, followed by the CIA's orchestration of the coup that removed President Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala in 1954.

Ministry and political activism

After leaving the CIA, Coffin enrolled at Yale Divinity School and earned his Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1956, the same year he was ordained a Presbyterian minister. This same year he married Eva Rubinstein, the daughter of pianist Arthur Rubinstein, and became chaplain at Williams College. Soon, he accepted the position as Chaplain of Yale University, where he remained from 1958 until 1975. Gifted with a rich bass-baritone voice, he was an active member of the Yale Russian Chorus during the late 1950s and 1960s.

With his CIA background, he was dismayed when he learned in 1964 of the history of French and American involvement in South Vietnam. He felt the United States should have honored the French agreement to hold a national referendum in Vietnam about unification. He was in early opposition to the Vietnam War and became famous for his anti-war activities and his civil rights activism. Along with others, he was a founder in the early 1960s of the Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam, organized to resist President Lyndon Johnson's escalation of the war.[1]

Coffin had a prominent role in the Freedom Rides challenging segregation and the oppression of black people. As chaplain at Yale in the early 1960s, Coffin organized busloads of Freedom Riders to challenge segregation laws in the South. Through his efforts, hundreds of students at Yale University and elsewhere were recruited into civil rights and anti-war activity. He was jailed many times, but his first conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court.[1]

In 1962, he joined SANE: The Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy,[2] an organization he would later lead.[3]

Approached by Sargent Shriver in 1961 to run the first training programs for the Peace Corps, Coffin took up the task and took a temporary leave from Yale, working to develop a rigorous training program modeled on Outward Bound and supervising the building of a training camp in Puerto Rico. He used his pulpit as a platform for like-minded crusaders, hosting the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Nelson Mandela, among others.
Fellow Yale graduate Garry Trudeau has immortalized Coffin (combined with Coffin's protege Rev. Scotty McLennan) as "the Rev. Scot Sloan" in the comic strip Doonesbury. During the Vietnam War years, Coffin and his friend Howard Zinn often spoke from the same anti-war platform. An inspiring speaker, Coffin was known for optimism and humor: "Remember, young people, even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat."[4]

By 1967, Coffin concentrated increasingly on preaching civil disobedience and supported the young men who turned in their draft cards. He was, however, uncomfortable with draft-card burning, worried that it looked "unnecessarily hostile".[5][6] Coffin was one of several persons who signed an open letter entitled "A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority", which was printed in several newspapers in October 1967. In that same month, he also raised the possibility of declaring Battell Chapel at Yale a sanctuary for resisters, or possibly as the site of a large demonstration of civil disobedience. School administration barred the use of the church as a sanctuary. Coffin later wrote, "I accused them of behaving more like 'true Blues than true Christians'. They squirmed but weren't about to change their minds.... I realized I was licked."[7]

And so on January 5, 1968, Coffin, Dr. Benjamin Spock (the pediatrician and baby book author who was also a Phillips Academy alumnus), Marcus Raskin, and Mitchell Goodman (all signers of "A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority" and members of the anti-war collective RESIST[8]) were indicted by a Federal grand jury for "conspiracy to counsel, aid and abet draft resistance". All but Raskin were convicted that June, but in 1970 an appeals court overturned the verdict. Coffin remained chaplain of Yale until December 1975.[1]

In 1977, he became senior minister at the Riverside Church—an interdenominational congregation affiliated with both the United Church of Christ and American Baptist Churches—and one of the most prominent congregations in New York City. He was a controversial, yet inspirational leader at Riverside. He openly and vocally supported gay rights when many liberals still were uncomfortable with homosexuality. Some of the congregation's socially conservative members openly disagreed with his position on sexuality.[1]

Nuclear disarmament

Coffin started a strong nuclear disarmament program at Riverside, and hired Cora Weiss (a secular Jew he had worked with during the Vietnam War and had traveled with to North Vietnam in 1972 to accompany three released U.S. prisoners of war), an action which was uncomfortable for some parishioners. Broadening his reach to an international audience, he met with numerous world leaders and traveled abroad. His visits included going to Iran to perform Christmas services for hostages being held in the U.S. embassy during the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 and to Nicaragua to protest U.S. military intervention there.

In 1987, he resigned from Riverside Church to pursue disarmament activism full-time, saying then that there was no issue more important for a man of faith. He became president of SANE/FREEZE[9] (now Peace Action), the largest peace and justice organization in the United States. He retired with the title president emeritus in the early 1990s, and then taught and lectured across the United States and overseas. Coffin also wrote several books. He cautioned that we are all living in "the shadow of Doomsday", and urged that people turn away from isolationism and become more globally aware. Shortly before his death, Coffin founded Faithful Security, a coalition for people of faith committed to working for a world free of nuclear weapons.[1]

Personal life

Coffin was married three times. His first two marriages, to Eva Rubinstein and Harriet Gibney, ended in divorce. He was survived by his third wife, Virginia Randolph Wilson (called "Randy").[10] Eva Rubinstein, his first wife and the mother of his children, was a daughter of pianist Arthur Rubinstein. The loss of their son Alexander in a car accident in 1983 inspired one of Coffin's most requested sermons.

He was given only six months to live in early 2004 due to a weakened heart. Coffin and his wife lived in the small town of Strafford, Vermont, a few houses away from his brother Ned, until his death nearly two years later at age 81.

Military awards

• American Campaign Medal
• European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal
• World War II Victory Medal
• Army of Occupation Medal with "Germany" clasp

Books

By Coffin


• Letters to a Young Doubter, Westminster John Knox Press, July 2005, ISBN 0-664-22929-8
• Credo, Westminster John Knox Press, December 2003, ISBN 0-664-22707-4
• The Heart Is a Little to the Left: Essays on Public Morality, Dartmouth College, 1st edition, October 1999, ISBN 0-87451-958-6
• The Courage to Love, sermons, Harper & Row, 1982, ISBN 0-06-061508-7
• Once to Every Man: A Memoir, autobiography, Athenaeum Press, 1977, ISBN 0-689-10811-7

About Coffin

• William Sloane Coffin, Jr.: A Holy Impatience, by Warren Goldstein, Yale University Press, March 2004, ISBN 0-300-10221-6
• The Trial of Dr. Spock, William Sloane Coffin, Michael Ferber, Mitchell Goodman, and Marcus Raskin, by Jessica Mitford, New York, Knopf, 1969 ISBN 0-394-44952-5

See also

• List of peace activists

References

1. Goldstein, Warren. William Sloane Coffin Jr.: A Holy Impatience (2005).
2. "Service for William Sloane Coffin to be Held at Yale". Yale News. Retrieved 2017-02-12.
3. Charney, Marc D. (2006-04-13). "Rev. William Sloane Coffin Dies at 81; Fought for Civil Rights and Against a War". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-02-12.
4. Rick Perlstein (2015). The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan. Simon and Schuster. p. 131.
5. “Interview with William Sloane Coffin, 1982.”, August 30, 1982. WGBH Media Library & Archives. Retrieved November 9, 2010.
6. Foley, M.S. (2003). Confronting the War Machine: Draft Resistance During the Vietnam War. University of North Carolina Press. p. 120. ISBN 978-0-8078-5436-5.
7. Geoffrey Kabaservice (2005). The Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment. Henry Holt. p. 320.
8. Barsky, Robert F. Noam Chomsky: a life of dissent (M.I.T. Press, 1998) online Archived 2013-01-16 at the Wayback Machine
9. SANE: The Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy merged with the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign in 1987 and was renamed SANE/FREEZE; it was renamed Peace Action in 1993.
10. Schudel, Matt; Bernstein, Adam (April 16, 2006). "The Rev. William Sloane Coffin made his mark as activist, rebel". The Seattle Times. Retrieved 2017-02-12.

Sources

• Once to Every Man: A Memoir (1977)
• William Sloane Coffin, Jr.: A Holy Impatience (2004)
• Passion for the Possible: A Message to U.S. Churches

External links

• Interview from 1982 with William Sloane Coffin on Vietnam and the Anti-War movement WGBH Educational Foundation
• A Politically Engaged Spirituality Video and transcript of Coffin's April 2005 speech at Yale Divinity School
• Interview with William Sloane Coffin from Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, August 2004
• William Sloane Coffin: A Lover's Quarrel With America Video interview from Old Dog Documentaries
• William Sloane Coffin - Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword Sermon and interview.
• A film clip "The Open Mind - A Man for All Seasons (1986)" is available at the Internet Archive
• Profile of Coffin from Yale Alumni Magazine, March 2004
• Personal papers archive at Yale University
• Selected writings (PDF)
• Peace Action (formerly SANE/Freeze, the merger of SANE and the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign)
• Faithful Security
http://www.williamsloanecoffin.org This is the complete digital collection of William Sloane Coffin's sermons preached from the pulpit of New York City's Riverside Church 1977–1987.
• Speech "Who Is the Enemy?" delivered April 8, 1983 at a symposium in Kansas City.

Memorials

• Obituary from the New York Times
• Obituary from the Los Angeles Times
• Obituary from The Guardian
• Obituary from the Associated Press
• Remembrance from the United Church of Christ (article and video)
• Remembrance from The Nation
• Remembrance by William F. Buckley Jr. in the Yale Daily News
• The Legacy of William Sloane Coffin by Rev. Scotty McLennan
• Tribute of Yale Class of 1968 to its "Permanent Chaplain "
• Obituary on Commondreams.org
• Photo gallery of Coffin from The Washington Post
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Re: Beyond Vietnam, by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Postby admin » Thu Mar 28, 2019 1:15 am

Abraham Joshua Heschel
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/27/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Image
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Heschel in 1964
Personal
Born January 11, 1907
Warsaw, Poland
Died December 23, 1972 (aged 65)
New York City, New York, U.S.
Religion Judaism
Spouse Sylvia Straus (m. 1946)
Children Susannah
Denomination Orthodox, Conservative
Alma mater
University of Berlin
Higher Institute for Jewish Studies
Profession Theologian, philosopher
Jewish leader
Profession Theologian, philosopher

Abraham Joshua Heschel (January 11, 1907 – December 23, 1972) was a Polish-born American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. Heschel, a professor of Jewish mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, authored a number of widely read books on Jewish philosophy and was active in the civil rights movement.[1][2]

Biography

Abraham Joshua Heschel was born in 1907 as the youngest of six children of Moshe Mordechai and Reizel Perlow. He was descended from preeminent European rabbis on both sides of his family.[3] His paternal great-great-grandfather and namesake was Rebbe Avraham Yehoshua Heshel of Apt in present-day Poland. His mother was also a descendant of Avraham Yehoshua Heshel and other Hasidic dynasties. His siblings were Sarah, Dvora Miriam, Esther Sima, Gittel, and Jacob. Their father Moshe died of influenza in 1916 when Abraham was nine.

After a traditional yeshiva education and studying for Orthodox rabbinical ordination semicha, Heschel pursued his doctorate at the University of Berlin and a liberal rabbinic ordination at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. There he studied under some of the finest Jewish educators of the time: Chanoch Albeck, Ismar Elbogen, Julius Guttmann, and Leo Baeck. His mentor in Berlin was David Koigen.[4] Heschel later taught Talmud at the Hochschule. He joined a Yiddish poetry group, Jung Vilna, and in 1933, published a volume of Yiddish poems, Der Shem Hamefoyrosh: Mentsch, dedicated to his father.[3]

In late October 1938, when Heschel was living in a rented room in the home of a Jewish family in Frankfurt, he was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Poland. He spent ten months lecturing on Jewish philosophy and Torah at Warsaw's Institute for Jewish Studies.[3] Six weeks before the German invasion of Poland, Heschel left Warsaw for London with the help of Julian Morgenstern, president of Hebrew Union College, who had been working to obtain visas for Jewish scholars in Europe.[3]

Heschel's sister Esther was killed in a German bombing. His mother was murdered by the Nazis, and two other sisters, Gittel and Devorah, died in Nazi concentration camps. He never returned to Germany, Austria or Poland. He once wrote, "If I should go to Poland or Germany, every stone, every tree would remind me of contempt, hatred, murder, of children killed, of mothers burned alive, of human beings asphyxiated."[3]

Heschel arrived in New York City in March 1940.[3] He served on the faculty of Hebrew Union College (HUC), the main seminary of Reform Judaism, in Cincinnati for five years. In 1946, he took a position at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS) in New York City, the main seminary of Conservative Judaism. He served as professor of Jewish ethics and Mysticism until his death in 1972.

Marriage and family

Heschel married Sylvia Straus, a concert pianist, on December 10, 1946, in Los Angeles. Their daughter, Susannah Heschel, became a Jewish scholar in her own right.[5] Heschel's papers are held in the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University.[6]

Ideology

Image
Heschel (2nd from right) in the Selma Civil Rights march with Martin Luther King, Jr. (4th from right). Heschel later wrote, "When I marched in Selma, my feet were praying."

Heschel explicated many facets of Jewish thought, including studies on medieval Jewish philosophy, Kabbalah, and Hasidic philosophy. According to some scholars[who?], he was more interested in spirituality than in critical text study; the latter was a specialty of many scholars at JTS. He was not given a graduate assistant for many years and was relegated to teach mainly in the education school or Rabbinical school, not in the academic graduate program. Heschel became friendly with his colleague Mordecai Kaplan. Though they differed in their approach to Judaism, they had a very cordial relationship and visited each other's homes from time to time.

Heschel believed the teachings of the Hebrew prophets were a clarion call for social action in the United States and worked for African Americans' civil rights and against the Vietnam War.[7]

He also specifically criticized what he called "pan-halakhism", or an exclusive focus upon religiously compatible behavior to the neglect of the non-legalistic dimension of rabbinic tradition.[citation needed]

Influence outside Judaism

Image
Heschel, left, presenting the Judaism and World Peace Award to Martin Luther King Jr., December 7, 1965

Heschel is a widely read Jewish theologian whose most influential works include Man Is Not Alone, God in Search of Man, The Sabbath, and The Prophets. At the Vatican Council II, as representative of American Jews, Heschel persuaded the Catholic Church to eliminate or modify passages in its liturgy that demeaned the Jews, or referred to an expected conversion to Christianity. His theological works argued that religious experience is a fundamentally human impulse, not just a Jewish one. He believed that no religious community could claim a monopoly on religious truth.[8]

Published works

The Sabbath (1951)


The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man is a work on the nature and celebration of Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath. This work is rooted in the thesis that Judaism is a religion of time, not space, and that the Sabbath symbolizes the sanctification of time.

Man Is Not Alone (1951)

Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion offers Heschel's views on how people can comprehend God. Judaism views God as being radically different from humans, so Heschel explores the ways that Judaism teaches that a person may have an encounter with the ineffable. A recurring theme in this work is the radical amazement that people feel when experiencing the presence of the Divine. Heschel then goes on to explore the problems of doubts and faith; what Judaism means by teaching that God is one; the essence of humanity and the problem of human needs; the definition of religion in general and of Judaism in particular; and human yearning for spirituality. He offers his views as to Judaism being a pattern for life.

God in Search of Man (1955)

God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism is a companion volume to Man Is Not Alone. In this book Heschel discusses the nature of religious thought, how thought becomes faith, and how faith creates responses in the believer. He discusses ways that people can seek God's presence, and the radical amazement that we receive in return. He offers a criticism of nature worship; a study of humanity's metaphysical loneliness, and his view that we can consider God to be in search of humanity. The first section concludes with a study of Jews as a chosen people. Section two deals with the idea of revelation, and what it means for one to be a prophet. This section gives us his idea of revelation as an event, as opposed to a process. This relates to Israel's commitment to God. Section three discusses his views of how a Jew should understand the nature of Judaism as a religion. He discusses and rejects the idea that mere faith (without law) alone is enough, but then cautions against rabbis he sees as adding too many restrictions to Jewish law. He discusses the need to correlate ritual observance with spirituality and love, the importance of Kavanah (intention) when performing mitzvot. He engages in a discussion of religious behaviorism—when people strive for external compliance with the law, yet disregard the importance of inner devotion.

The Prophets (1962)

This work started out as his PhD thesis in German, which he later expanded and translated into English. Originally published in a two-volume edition, this work studies the books of the Hebrew prophets. It covers their lives and the historical context that their missions were set in, summarizes their work, and discusses their psychological state. In it Heschel puts forward what would become a central idea in his theology: that the prophetic (and, ultimately, Jewish) view of God is best understood not as anthropomorphic (that God takes human form) but rather as anthropopathic—that God has human feelings.

In his book The Prophets, Abraham Joshua Heschel describes the unique aspect of the Jewish prophets as compared to other similar figures. Whereas other nations have soothsayers and diviners who attempt to discover the will of their gods, according to Heschel the Hebrew prophets are characterized by their experience of what he calls theotropism—God turning towards humanity. Heschel argues for the view of Hebrew prophets as receivers of the "Divine Pathos", of the wrath and sorrow of God over his nation that has forsaken him. In this view, prophets do not speak for God so much as they remind their audience of God's voice for the voiceless, the poor and oppressed.

He writes:

Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profane riches of the world. It is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man. God is raging in the prophet's words.[9]


Torah min HaShamayim (1962)

Many consider Heschel's Torah min HaShamayim BeAspaklariya shel HaDorot, (Torah from Heaven in the mirror of the generations) to be his masterwork. The three volumes of this work are a study of classical rabbinic theology and aggadah, as opposed to halakha (Jewish law.) It explores the views of the rabbis in the Mishnah, Talmud and Midrash about the nature of Torah, the revelation of God to mankind, prophecy, and the ways that Jews have used scriptural exegesis to expand and understand these core Jewish texts. In this work, Heschel views the 2nd century sages Rabbi Akiva and Ishmael ben Elisha as paradigms for the two dominant world-views in Jewish theology

Two Hebrew volumes were published during his lifetime by Soncino Press, and the third Hebrew volume was published posthumously by JTS Press in the 1990s. An English translation of all three volumes, with notes, essays and appendices, was translated and edited by Rabbi Gordon Tucker, entitled Heavenly Torah: As Refracted Through the Generations. In its own right it can be the subject of intense study and analysis, and provides insight into the relationship between God and Man beyond the world of Judaism and for all Monotheism.

Prophetic Inspiration After the Prophets (1966)

Heschel wrote a series of articles, originally in Hebrew, on the existence of prophecy in Judaism after the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE. These essays were translated into English and published as Prophetic Inspiration After the Prophets: Maimonides and Others by the American Judaica publisher Ktav.

The publisher of this book states, "The standard Jewish view is that prophecy ended with the ancient prophets, somewhere early in the Second Temple era. Heschel demonstrated that this view is not altogether accurate. Belief in the possibility of continued prophetic inspiration, and in its actual occurrence appear throughout much of the medieval period, and even in modern times. Heschel's work on prophetic inspiration in the Middle Ages originally appeared in two long Hebrew articles. In them he concentrated on the idea that prophetic inspiration was possible even in post-Talmudic times, and, indeed, had taken place at various times and in various schools, from the Geonim to Maimonides and beyond."

Commemoration

Image
The Abraham Joshua Heschel School in Manhattan

Four schools have been named for Heschel, in the Upper West Side of New York City, Northridge, California, Agoura Hills, California, and Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 2009, a highway in Missouri was named "Dr. Abraham Joshua Heschel Highway" after a Springfield, Missouri area Neo-Nazi group cleaned the stretch of highway as part of an "Adopt-A-Highway" plan. Heschel's daughter, Susannah, has objected to the adoption of her father's name in this context.[10]

Selected bibliography

• The Earth Is the Lord's: The Inner World of the Jew in Eastern Europe. 1949. ISBN 1-879045-42-7
• Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion. 1951. ISBN 0-374-51328-7
• The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man. 1951. ISBN 1-59030-082-3
• Man's Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism. 1954. ISBN 0-684-16829-4
• God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism. 1955. ISBN 0-374-51331-7
• The Prophets. 1962. ISBN 0-06-093699-1
• Who Is Man? 1965. ISBN 0-8047-0266-7
• Israel: An Echo of Eternity. 1969. ISBN 1-879045-70-2
• A Passion for Truth. 1973. ISBN 1-879045-41-9
• Heavenly Torah: As Refracted Through the Generations. 2005. ISBN 0-8264-0802-8
• Torah min ha-shamayim be'aspaklariya shel ha-dorot; Theology of Ancient Judaism. [Hebrew]. 2 vols. London: Soncino Press, 1962. Third volume, New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1995.
• The Ineffable Name of God: Man: Poems. 2004. ISBN 0-8264-1632-2
• Kotsk: in gerangl far emesdikeyt. [Yiddish]. 2 v. (694 p.) Tel-Aviv: ha-Menorah, 1973. Added t.p.: Kotzk: the struggle for integrity (A Hebrew translation of vol. 1, Jerusalem: Magid, 2015).
• Der mizrekh-Eyropeyisher Yid (Yiddish: The Eastern European Jew). 45 p. Originally published: New-York: Shoken, 1946.
• Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness & Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940–1972, biography by Edward K. Kaplan ISBN 0-300-11540-7
• "The Encyclopedia of Hasidism" edited by Rabinowicz, Tzvi M.: ISBN 1-56821-123-6 Jason Aronson, Inc., 1996.

References

1. "The Legacy of Abraham Joshua Heschel." Tikkun. Accessed May 25, 2014.
2. "A Rabbi of His Time, With a Charisma That Transcends It." The New York Times. Accessed May 25, 2014.
3. Abraham Joshua Heschel Archived September 26, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
4. Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness, Edward Kaplan
5. Interview with Susannah Heschel Archived May 6, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
6. Duke to Acquire Papers of Rabbi Heschel, Influential Religious Leader, Duke University, August 2012
7. Dreier, Peter (January 17, 2015). "'Selma's' Missing Rabbi". Huffington Post. Retrieved March 13, 2015.
8. Gillman, Neil (1993). Conservative Judaism: The New Century. Behrman House Inc. p. 163.
9. The Prophets Ch. 1
10. Cooper, Michael (June 23, 2009). "Daughter Against Use of Father's Name to Subvert Neo-Nazis". The New York Times. Retrieved March 26, 2010.

Further reading

• Kaplan, Edward K.; Samuel H. Dresner (1998). Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-07186-3.
• Kaplan, Edward K. (2007). Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940–1972. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-13769-9.

External links

• Media from Wikimedia Commons
• Quotations from Wikiquote
• Data from Wikidata
• Guide to the Abraham Joshua Heschel Papers, Rubenstein Library, Duke University.
• Heschel's role in Vatican II and his advocacy of interreligious respect
• Alan Brill Review of Heavenly Torah
• Arnold Jacob Wolf Review of Heavenly Torah
• David Blumenthal review of Heavenly Torah
• About Rabbi A. J. Heschel The Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership
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