Heavenly Torah: As Refracted through the Generations

Rabbi, theologian, philosopher, poet, and social activist Abraham Joshua Heschel was born in Warsaw, a descendant of two prominent Hasidic families. Following Orthodox rabbinic ordination, he moved to Berlin, where he studied philosophy at the university and enrolled at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Higher Institute for Jewish Learning). Heschel obtained his doctorate at the University of Berlin in 1934 and went on to teach at the Jüdisches Lehrhaus (Jewish House of Learning) in Frankfurt, where he succeeded the philosopher Martin Buber as director. Heschel remained in Germany until 1938, when he was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Poland. In 1939, he found refuge in England and in 1940, through the intervention of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, obtained a visa to the United States. Heschel taught philosophy and rabbinics for five years at Hebrew Union College, and then spent the remainder of his career at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York, where he was professor of Jewish ethics and mysticism. He was one of the most widely read philosophers of religion in the United States, his work known in both Jewish and Christian circles. He also played a prominent role in the civil rights and peace movements in the United States in the 1960s, most notably marching alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Selma to Montgomery protest march in 1965.