Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence - Softcover

Held, Shai

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0253017149 ISBN 13: 9780253017147

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 2015

Synopsis

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) was a prolific scholar, impassioned theologian, and prominent activist who participated in the black civil rights movement and the campaign against the Vietnam War. He has been hailed as a hero, honored as a visionary, and endlessly quoted as a devotional writer. In this sympathetic, yet critical, examination, Shai Held elicits the overarching themes and unity of Heschel’s incisive and insightful thought. Focusing on the idea of transcendence―or the movement from self-centeredness to God-centeredness―Held puts Heschel into dialogue with contemporary Jewish thinkers, Christian theologians, devotional writers, and philosophers of religion.

About this title

About the Author:

Shai Held is Dean and Chair of Jewish Thought at Mechon Hadar, an institute for Jewish prayer, personal growth, and Jewish study which he co-founded. He is winner of a 2011 Covenant Award for excellence in Jewish education, and Newsweek has twice named him one of America's most influential rabbis.

Review:

From his perch at the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York, the Warsaw-born rabbi [Abraham Joshua Heschel] cast a long shadow over American Jewry, especially its Conservative variant, during the quarter-century after World War II. He also became a byword for American Jewish social-justice activism―most of all for the alliance between Jews and blacks.Feb. 14, 2014 (New York Times Sunday Book Review)

Shaid Held . . . offers a sympathetic, yet critical, examination of the thought of this influential mid-twentieth century theologian, scholar, and activist. (New Books Network)

This is an important book for everyone who wants to understand one of the most significant religious thinkers of modern times. It brings the man whom Reinhold Neibuhr described as 'one of Eastern Europe’s greatest spiritual gifts to America' to the attention of a new generation, which needs his warning and his vision. (JNS.org)

Shai Held’s book is a master class in one of the most significant Jewish voices of our time. (Tablet)

[Held] has written a clear, persuasive, argumentative book . . . .April 2015 (Journal of Religion)

Held has written a brilliant collection of essays that should help both theologians . . . and philosophers connect to Heschel’s work for many years to come. It should be in most academic libraries and all seminary libraries. (AJL Reviews)

Held has reworked his dissertation into an accessible yet carefully argued interpretation of Heschel’s most fundamental anthropological and theological intuitions. (AJS REVIEW)

In Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence, Held, a Conservative rabbi, seeks to make the case for Heschel’s contributions to Jewish religious thinking. He succeeds in distilling Heschel’s wide-ranging, idiosyncratic, and sometimes contradictory thought for the lay reader in clear and accessible prose. Most refreshing, he is unafraid to criticize aspects of Heschel’s theology that deserve censure. (Commentary)

Heschel’s work had a profound impact on American Jewish readers, and he was a social critic as well as a visionary theologian, fighting for civil rights and fiercely condemning the Vietnam War. The influence of Heschel’s writings and activism thus extended beyond the Jewish community. . . Shai Held’s book, Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence, is a sophisticated interpretation of Heschel’s theology.35.2 May 2015 (Modern Judaism)

I recommend this book with enthusiasm for anyone interested in life’s fundamental questions, as well as in specific issues of faith, justice, and worship. The presentation is clear, careful, and pedagogically friendly. Readers can benefit from an extensive bibliography and especially the endnotes, richly argued and carefully documented, as the author concisely continues his debates with other interpreters and with Heschel himself. . . . Under the guidance of Shai Held, readers can return with increased confidence to Heschel’s . . . own writings and thus trace, and perhaps emulate, his devotion to God, amazement at existence itself, and reverence for all humankind. (Shofar)

About this edition

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0253017149
• ISBN 13: 9780253017147
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352