We use words as tools. We forget that words are a repository of the spirit. The tragedy of our times is that the vessels of the spirit are broken.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELWe use words as tools. We forget that words are a repository of the spirit. The tragedy of our times is that the vessels of the spirit are broken.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELLife goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELFaith is an awareness of divine mutuality and companionship, a form of communion between God and man.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELTime is an essential dimension of existence defiant of man’s power, and truth reigns in supreme majesty, unrivaled, inimitable, and can never be defeated.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELUltimately there is no power to narcissistic, self-indulgent thinking. Authentic thinking originates with an encounter with the world.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELJust to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELIt is as if He were waiting to enter our empty, perishing lives.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELMorally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELThe degree to which one is sensitive to other people’s suffering, to other (people’s) humanity, is the index of one’s own humanity
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELIndifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. It is a silent justification affording evil acceptability in society.
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 HESCHELEverything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELTo us a single act of injustice–cheating in business, exploitation of the poor–is slight; to the prophets, a disaster.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELOnly in His presence shall we learn that the glory of humankind is not in its will to power but in its power of compassion.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELTo us injustice is injurious to the welfare of the people; to the prophets it is a deathblow to existence: to us, an episode; to them, a catastrophe, a threat to the world.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELThere is no answer to Auschwitz…To try to answer is to commit a supreme blasphemy. Israel enables us to bear the agony of Auschwitz without radical despair
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL