Man’s sin is in his failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that he is the servant of God.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELMan’s sin is in his failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that he is the servant of God.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELFor many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELFriendship, a puzzle to the syllogistic and critical mentality, is not based on experiments or tests of another person’s qualities but on trust.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELGod is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. He is not something to be sought in the darkness with the light of reason. He is the light.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELThe meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELBeing is transcended by a concern for being. Our perplexity will not be solved by relating human existence to a timeless, subpersonal abstraction which we call essence.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELMan is naturally self-centered and he is inclined to regard expediency as the supreme standard for what is right and wrong.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELWe worship God through our questions.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELFaith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELWonder, or radical amazement, is a way of going beyond what is given in thing and thought, refusing to take anything for granted, to regard anything as final.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELWe can never sneer at the stars, mock the dawn, or scoff at the totality of being.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELReligion has become an impersonal affair, an institutional loyalty. It survives on the level of activities rather than in the stillness of commitment.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELTo become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELI have one talent, and that is the capacity to be tremendously surprised, surprised at life, at ideas. This is to me the supreme Hasidic imperative: Don’t be old. Don’t be stale.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELGod is not nice. God is not an uncle. God is an earthquake.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELOur concern is not how to worship in the catacombs but how to remain human in the skyscrapers.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL