Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof Hero: Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel Social Justice Heschel had a major disagreement with much of the Jewish Theological Seminary faculty due to his views on the Hebrew prophets and social justice. He saw the teachings of the Hebrew prophets as a loud call for social action in the United States. Most of the faculty saw their job as academics and educators, and they left the world of social activism to pulpit rabbis and lay people.
Not all justice happens in the courtroom or the Congress. Some of it happens on the street. Abraham Joshua Heschel lived tzedek tzedek tirdof.
Heschel was active in the civil rights movement and marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the protest march at Selma, Alabama. He described the march in these words: “For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was both protest and prayer. Our legs uttered songs. I felt my legs were praying.”
the early years Abraham Joshua Heschel was born in 1907 in Warsaw, Poland. In his teens Heschel received a traditional yeshiva education and obtained rabbinic ordination. He then studied at the University of Berlin, where he obtained his doctorate and earned a second liberal rabbinic ordination at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. In 1939 World War II began. Many countries — among them Britain, France, the United States and Russia — were drawn into the war against the Nazis. Deported to Poland by the Nazis in 1938, Heschel taught for eight months at the Warsaw Institute of Jewish Studies. He then emigrated to England, where he established the Institute for Jewish Learning in London.
Civil rights leaders Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther king, Jr., former United Nations ambassador Ralph Bunche and rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (l-r) at the start of a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
Heschel spoke out for peace. He helped organize and served as co-chair of Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam, a group that represented the religious opposition to the war in Vietnam.
In 1940 he came to the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati (the main seminary for Reform Judaism), where he became associate professor of philosophy and rabbinics until the end of the war. In 1946 he came to the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
Heschel died on December 23, 1972. Four day schools and various organizations are named for him. Abraham Joshua Heschel taught the prophets and lived up to their ethical demands. He lived tzedek tzedek tirdof.
Heschel was a noted author of texts on Jewish life, including The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man, Man is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion and God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism. 57
