266 - A Tribute To Abraham J. Heschel

A Tribute To Abraham J. Heschel

[Editor's note: Last March, 1973, an "Evening of Tribute to the late Abraham Joshua Heschel" was convened on the Princeton University campus. The tribute was sponsored by the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation, the Interfaith Council, Princeton Theological Seminary, the Department of Religion of the University, and the Princeton Jewish Center. Among the speakers on this occasion were Rabbi Hershel J. Matt (who appears in this issue by way of an article dedicated to Dr. Heschel, who was his teacher); Bernhard W. Anderson, Professor of Old Testament Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary; George F. Thomas, Professor of Religion, Emeritus, Princeton University. We are pleased to include these three authors in this issue of THEOLOGY TODAY.

Abraham Joshua Heschel was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1907. He received his doctorate at the University of Berlin and subsequently taught not only in Berlin but in Frankfurt and London. He came to the United States in 1940 at the invitation of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, where he served on the faculty for five years. From 1945 until his death, December 23, 1972, he was Professor of Ethics and Mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. He was the author of more than a dozen books on philosophy, prayer, symbolism, and Hebrew studies.

In recent years, he was widely known as the foremost Jewish spokesman on behalf of civil rights and social justice. He vigorously opposed the Vietnam war, and in all his social and political actions, his religious dedication was both patent and persuasive.]