Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (and more)

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

This weekend (January 16, 1998) marks both the birthday of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and the 25th anniversary of the death of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Though the two men came from different worlds and were generations apart they shared much in terms of their world view.

I owe much to each of them. Though I can't point to specifics of how King affected my life, I do recall sitting on the grass by the dorms at UCLA reading the books of Heschel during the late sixties (in the last few years before he died) and thinking how much I appreciated his thinking and poetic writing. Heschel is among those rabbis whose lives directed me to become a rabbi myself.

I have searched the WWW for resources about Heschel and found very little. (Surprisingly enough, I found nothing about Heschel on the WWW sites of any of the Heschel schools!) I am also surprised that I could not find this photograph. (Supplied by ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal - I presume that it is in the public domain because I received it with instructions to reproduce it.) (As usual, click the thumbnail for a larger version (482x386 pixels & 66K))

The photo was taken in Selma, Alabama during the "infamous" march there. (King is in the center and Heschel is the second man to his left (with the beard). Sorry, if anyone can help identify the others in the photo, please do.)

As of 1999, only a few (unannotated) links to Heschel and King appeared on the Web:

The Hurvitz Family Yom Kippur leaflet regarding the Vietnam War distributed in 1966 quoted from Heschel.
The Jewish Communications Network Heschel Memorium (now defunctÉ though the URL serves as a portal for Jewish singles) was very thorough.
More about Heschel and King.
Regarding Heschel and economics.
Heschel at the core of Conservative Judaism; no longer an active link: http://www.jtsa.edu/pubs/schorsch/core.html.
"Writing Heschel"; again, no longer an active link: http://www.jtsa.edu/masoret/vol4/iss1/theacademy.html.
A Continuing Survey of Religion and Public Life, by Richard John Neuhaus; no longer an active link: http://www.catholic.net/RCC/Periodicals/PublicSquare/1996/psq9603.html.

Now, 2009, however, when you do a Google search for
abraham heschel martin luther king
over 12,000 items appear in the list.

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