{"id":128,"date":"2020-09-29T15:59:47","date_gmt":"2020-09-29T15:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/resistingcallousness.com\/?p=128"},"modified":"2020-09-29T16:02:13","modified_gmt":"2020-09-29T16:02:13","slug":"heschels-activism-religion-and-race-the-meaning-of-this-war-wwii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/resistingcallousness.com\/?p=128","title":{"rendered":"Heschel’s Activism: Religion and Race; The Meaning of This War (WWII)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Downtown Presbyterian Church Forum, 9\/29\/2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Good morning again. We have spent two Sundays encountering the writings and philosophy of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. The reactions to him have been positive: I believe he has moved you as he has moved me with his words and his insights. His philosophy appreciates that the world is full of wonders, and that reason can only go so far in appreciating the magnitude of reality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe search of reason ends at the shore of the known; on the immense expanse beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide. It alone knows the route to that which is remote from experience and understanding. Neither of them is amphibious: reason cannot go beyond the shore, and the ineffable is out of place where we measure, where we weigh.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we retain and value the sense of wonder, it can lead to a realization that all we see in the world is not all there is to the world. Maintaining wonder (asking with a smile and a shake of the head – \u201chow is this possible, too?\u201d) does not preclude scientific examination. But it does require a leap of faith that we are better off with radical amazement at the wondrousness of the world, rather than being indifferent to wonder, or complacent or smug with the answers that human reason provides. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If one can accept that understanding is not only rational and logical, then we come to the questions that religions try to address. They are not conceptual questions any longer: the tragedies of the 20th century (Auschwitz and Hiroshima among others) force religions to re-investigate their assumptions and their responses. The situational questions that have always been part of religions need to be re-discovered, and then re-answered. How should we live with one another? What makes a life worth living? What is evil and what do we do with it? How do we find Truth? Heschel believes that religions share a starting point of understanding that mankind is small compared to something much greater, and that human understanding is inadequate to appreciate all of reality.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heschel\u2019s God is both creator and partner. \u201cThe universe is done. The greater masterpiece still undone, still in the process of being created, is history. For accomplishing His grand design, God needs the help of Man.  \u2026 Life is clay, and righteousness the mold in which God wants history to be shaped.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Living with this kind of awareness leads to the possibility of sacred humanism. Honoring human nature and human beings, preserving one\u2019s own dignity and the dignity of others is humanism. Adding a religious dimension makes the humanism sacred: our being here and our being together includes the presence, support and expectations of a God. Heschel\u2019s views of a God of the prophets can coexist well with Christian views: depth theology brings religions together, even if creeds separate them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Today I want to remind us of Rabbi Heschel\u2019s contribution to political life in his time: that is, how his sacred humanism moved him to connect religion with activism: \u201cI\u2019ve learned from the prophets that I have to be involved in the affairs of man, in the affairs of suffering man.\u201d Justice and compassion are needed not only in private affairs, but in public life and policy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 1962 Heschel had established a reputation as a philosopher and theologian, as one of his reviewers said, using language and intuition to coax truth out of the universe. His depth theology was trying to build bridges between religions (recall in 1960 JFK\u2019s Catholicism was a matter of concern).  Theologies can divide: dogma is \u201ca poor man\u2019s share of the divine. A creed is all a poor man has. Skin for skin, he will give his life for all that he has.\u201d Depth-theology sought to find common grounds among religions: \u201cTheology is in the books; depth-theology is in the hearts.\u201d All religions are trying to seek, find and share answers to humanity\u2019s embarrassment, indebtedness, and sense of mystery before the Ineffable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 1960s would see Heschel\u2019s involvement in confronting (eloquently) difficult social questions: racism in America, inter-religious dialogue (including Catholic doctrine about conversion of Jews), Jews in Russia, Israel\u2019s existence, the war in Vietnam, nuclear disarmament, consumerism in America. How should religions function in a free society? Do they compete or do they cooperate? He stated emphatically and repeatedly, religion needed to speak to absolute values, first of all to the holiness of humankind. \u201cSocial ills were due in large part to the trivialization of the human image and the degradation of language \u2026\u201d Heschel was moved to participate in the paradox of living: there could be a possibility of experiencing Heaven on earth, and there could be horror at \u201cdiscovering Hell in the alleged Heavenly places in our world.\u201d  He did not stay in his study. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe purpose of prophecy is to conquer callousness, to change the inner man as well as to revolutionize history.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He applies his depth theology: this is an understanding of God starting with radical amazement at the Ineffable, and leading to understanding of the Jewish God as a God of pathos, working through history to call mankind to be a partner in justice and compassion. Heschel asks us to overcome the root of evil, which is callousness, hard-heartedness. And I think we need to challenge ourselves with a difficult question: the social justice and progressive movements can be secular and humanist. Is it sufficient to place faith in human reason and human effort? Or is it necessary to develop a sacred humanism? And if so, then we, those who go to church, have a huge challenge: how do we undo the stigma that religion is irrelevant, dull, oppressive and insipid? These are examples of the situational questions that Heschel insists we ask. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Heschel was exposed to American racism as soon as he arrived in Cincinnati in 1940. He began to speak publicly on this subject in 1958. It was this speech in January 1963 that introduced him to Martin Luther King. He was in fact the keynote speaker at this first interdenominational conference on religion and race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heschel is known for his poetic writing, and his philosophical and theological organization often gets obscured by his poetry. It was a frustration to academics that he mixed philosophy and theology, analysis with piety. Here we see his poetry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Let me use my professor\u2019s themes for Heschel: Remembrance, Reverence, Resistance. Let\u2019s use these themes to make Heschel more accessible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heschel uses secular and religious sources to remind us of the traditions and ideals that we value. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remembrance<\/p>\n\n\n\n