Abraham Joshua Heschel The Call of Transcendence [Hardcover]

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 Heschels incisive and insightful thought. Focusing on the idea of transcendenceor the movement from self-centeredness to God-centerednessHeld puts Heschel into dialogue with contemporary Jewish thinkers, Christian theologians, devotional writers, and philosophers of religion.

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 activismmost of all for the alliance between Jews and blacks.Feb. 14, 2014In this lucid and learned account, Abraham Joshua Heschel emerges as a dialectical thinker who holds together such opposites as theology and spirituality, the transcendence and self-transcendence of God, the presence and absence of God, the humanity and divinity of the Bible, and prayer as praise and lament. ?A powerful challenge to Jewish and Christian readers as well as those who stand outside biblical traditions, including secular readers.Shaid Held . . . offers a sympathetic, yet critical, examination of the thought of this influential mid-twentieth century theologian, scholar, and activist.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 Europes greatest spiritual gifts to America' to the attention of a new generation, which needs his warning and his vision.Shai Helds book is a ló-