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.

Abraham Joshua Heschel was descended from preeminent European rabbis on both sides of the family.

Heschel saw the teachings of the Hebrew prophets as a clarion call for social action in the United States and worked for black civil rights and against the Vietnam War Heschel was an activist for civil rights in the United States.

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.

In the early 1980s, when speaking at Oberlin College Hillel, Susannah Heschel was introduced to an early feminist Haggadah that suggested adding a crust of bread on the seder plate, as a sign of solidarity with Jewish lesbians ( as some would say there's as much room for a lesbian in Judaism as there is for a crust of bread on the seder plate ).

Equally important was Abraham Joshua Heschel, a Holocaust refugee and scion of Hasidic royalty, who began his academic career in America with a life-saving but difficult wartime stint at HUC.

As the 1960s began, Heschel was achieving increasing recognition as a theologian of stature with the publication of his books God in Search of Man and The Prophets.

Kaplan further acknowledges that the kiss and tell book about the internal workings of the Council, The Pilgrim by Michael Serafian, was requested from Martin by Abraham J. Heschel, who also arranged the book to be published by Roger W. Straus, Jr .' s Farrar, Straus and Giroux printing company.

Notable faculty members have included Judah Magnes, who was also the founding chancellor and president of Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rabbi Abraham Cronbach, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Nelson Glueck, Moses Buttenweiser, Eugene Borowitz, Jacob Z. Lauterbach, Lawrence A. Hoffman, Steven M. Cohen, Moses Mielziner, and Debbie Friedman.

His admiration for the gaon was boundless, and after his death R. Chaim virtually acknowledged no superior ( see Heschel Levin's " Aliyyot Eliyahu ", pp. 55-56, Vilna: 1889 ).

There have been many biographical and research texts about him, such as the work Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus by Susannah Heschel ( 1998 ), which chronicles Geiger's radical contention that the New Testament illustrates Jesus was a Pharisee teaching Judaism.

R ' Yehoshua Heschel of Crakow, the author of Maginne Shelomoh, was head of the yeshiva there.

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.

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.

* 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 position that " Christian theological anti-Judaism is a phenomenon distinct from modern antisemitism, which is rooted in economic and racial thought, so that Christian teachings should not be held responsible for antisemitism " has been articulated, among other places, by Pope John Paul II in ' We Re member: A Reflection on the Shoah ,' and the Jewish declaration on Christianity, Dabru Emet .. Several scholars, including Susannah Heschel, Gavin I Langmuir and Uriel Tal the General Synod has affirmed that " the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ is for all and must be shared with all including people from other faiths or of no faith and that to do anything else would be to institutionalize discrimination ".

The Friday night gathering included speeches by Martin Luther King III and Susannah Heschel ( whose father, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, had been a close comrade of Dr. King ).

His father, Moshe Mordechai Heschel, died of influenza in 1916.

******* Grand Rabbi Yehoshua Heschel Rosenbaum of Cleveland present Clevelander Rebbe of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, son of Rabbi Usher Mordechai Rosenbaum of Cleveland-Stroznitz

Well-known non-Orthodox Jewish philosophers include Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Mordecai Kaplan, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Will Herberg, and Emmanuel Lévinas.

In the twentieth century, Jewish theologians — notably Abraham Joshua Heschel, Arnold Jacob Wolf, Arthur Waskow and Mordecai Kaplan, more recently Michael Lerner and Daniel Boyarin — have emphasised these social justice aspects of the religion.

In his 2007 book Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, Edward K. Kaplan confirmed that Martin cooperated with the American Jewish Committee during the Council for a mixture of motives, both lofty and ignoble.

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

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.

: 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.

Heschel felt that to put bread on the seder plate would be to accept that lesbians and gay men violate Judaism like chametz violates Passover.

Neo-Hasidism is a name frequently given to the significant revival of interest in Hasidic Judaism on the part of non-Orthodox Jews in different decades due to the writings of non-Orthodox teachers of Hasidic Judaism like Martin Buber, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Lawrence Kushner, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Arthur Green.

Lest this statement be construed as anti-religion, he cites Paul Tillich ( Protestantism ), Gustav Weigel ( Catholicism ), and Abram Heschel ( Judaism ) as noted religious scholars who are also in agreement with him on this point.

Heschel explicated many facets of Jewish thought including studies on medieval Jewish philosophy, Kabbalah, and Hasidism.

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.

It is alleged that Hutner once slapped a student who made a remark about a religious issue, saying to the student " You read that in Heschel!

Heschel analyses that, while the prophet can only give Israel a new word, it is God himself who will give man a new heart: The " new covenant " will accomplish the complete transformation of every individual.

Located in Manhattan, the school seeks to follow the example of its namesake, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who sought to make the world a better place for members of the community, Jews, and everyone throughout the world.

* Praying with their Feet: Remembering Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Luther King

As a result of this, Martin became well acquainted with prominent Jewish leaders, such as Rabbi Abraham Heschel, during 1961 and 1962.

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.

Heschel later taught Talmud there.

Heschel arrived in New York City in March 1940.

Heschel married Sylvia Straus, a concert pianist, on December 10, 1946, in Los Angeles.

Their daughter, Susannah Heschel, is a Jewish scholar in her own right.

Heschel is among the few widely read Jewish theologians.

At the Vatican Council II, as representative of American Jews, Heschel persuaded the Roman Catholic Church to eliminate or modify passages in its liturgy that demeaned the Jews, or expected their conversion to Christianity.

In this book Heschel discusses the nature of religious thought, how thought becomes faith, and how faith creates responses in the believer.

In it Heschel forwards 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.

Heschel demonstrated that this view is not altogether accurate.