“Understanding God is not attained by calling into session all arguments for and against Him, in order to debate whether He is a reality or a figment of the mind.”

In any free society where terrible wrongs exist, some are guilty – all are responsible.

Instead of indulging in jealousy, greed, in relishing themselves, there are men who keep their hearts alert to the stillness in which time rolls on and leaves us behind.

Religion has become an impersonal affair, an institutional loyalty. It survives on the level of activities rather than in the stillness of commitment.

In our daily lives we attend primarily to that which the senses are spelling out for us: to what the eyes perceive, to what the fingers touch.

Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state–it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle.

to become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words…the tangent to the curve of human experience lies beyond the limits of language.

Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.

Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions. Source: The Wisdom of Heschel

There is a built-in sense of indebtedness in the consciousness of man, an awareness of owing gratitude, or being caled upon at certain moments to reciprocate

We forfeit the right to worship God as long as we continue to humiliate negroes. … The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.

Indeed, the sort of crimes and even the amount of delinquency that fill the prophets of Israel with dismay do not go beyond that which we regard as normal, as typical ingredients of social dynamics.

In the second way he sees in what surrounds him things to be acknowledged, understood, valued or admired.

We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers.

Wonder, 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.

feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal

Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time; to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year.

Once the pursuit of truth begins to haunt the mind, it becomes an ideal never wholly attained.