Abraham Joshua Heschel

Heschel entered the wedlock with Sylvia Strauss in 1946. She was a concert pianist by profession.

Ten years later in 1956, the couple was blessed with a daughter. Susannah Heschel, who is a noted Jewish feminist, carried forward her father’s religious legacy

Descending from a lineage of prominent Hasidic families of Europe, Abraham Joshua Heschel was born in the town of Warsaw, Poland, on 11th January 1907. He was one of the six children born to his parents Moshe Mordechai and Reizel Perlow. In 1916, the children lost their father Mordechai, who was suffering from Influenza.

In tune with the family traditions, Joshua received education in a conventional Jewish institution, commonly known as ‘Yeshiva’, and later pursued his doctorate in formal Semicha (Rabbi Ordination), from the ‘University of Berlin’, in 1934. He further continued his theological studies at the ‘Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums’ (Higher Institute for Jewish Studies), an institution situated in Berlin.

He stated his career in 1933 with a poetry group named ‘Jung Vilna’, and came up with a collection of poems called ‘Der Shem Hamefoyrosh: Mentsch’ in the traditional Jewish language. He dedicated this Yiddish compilation to his father.

In 1937, Abraham headed the ‘Judisches Lehrhaus’, an important adult education centre of Jewish learning, in Frankfurt. The institution aimed at propagating Judaism among the youth.

Before the onset of World War II, when Germany was abolishing the Jews from the country, the Rabbi was deported to Poland in 1938. He took up a teaching job at the ‘Institute for Jewish Studies’, where he imparted knowledge on the ways of ‘Judaism’, and ‘Torah’- the religious scripture of Jews.

He was successful in escaping from Poland to London before the Nazi invasion of 1939, but he lost most of his family in the war, who were either tortured or killed by the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police force. The incidents disturbed Herschel deeply and he never set foot on Germany or Poland again in his life.

After a brief stay in London, he moved to New York City in 1940, where he taught at the ‘Hebrew Union College’. His association with the faculty of the college dated back to the time when he was trying to escape from Poland. Julian Morgenstern, who was then a President of the institute, arranged a visa for Abraham.

‘Torah min HaShamayim’, a book in which Heschel compares the two existing ideologies in Judaism is considered one of his major works. The literary work has been a topic of analysis and research by scholars of Jewish theology.