Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Wonder, Intuition, and the Path to God
2. Theological Method and Religious Anthropology: Heschel among the
Christians
3. Revelation and Co-Revelation
4. The Pathos of the Self-Transcendent God
5. "Awake, Why Sleepest Thou, O Lord?" Divine Silence and Human
Protest in Heschel's Writings
6. The Self that Transcends Itself: Heschel on Prayer
7. Enabling Immanence: Prayer in a Time of Divine Hiddenness
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
A critical appreciation of Heschel's thought
Shai Held is Dean and Chair of Jewish Thought at Mechon Hadar, an institute for Jewish prayer, personal growth, and Jewish study which he co-founded. He is winner of a 2011 Covenant Award for excellence in Jewish education, and Newsweek has twice named him one of America's most influential rabbis.
Shai Held's book is a master class in one of the most significant
Jewish voices of our time.
*Tablet*
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
Europe's greatest spiritual gifts to America' to the attention of a
new generation, which needs his warning and his vision.
*JNS.org*
In Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence, Held, a
Conservative rabbi, seeks to make the case for Heschel's
contributions to Jewish religious thinking. He succeeds in
distilling Heschel's wide-ranging, idiosyncratic, and sometimes
contradictory thought for the lay reader in clear and accessible
prose. Most refreshing, he is unafraid to criticize aspects of
Heschel's theology that deserve censure.
*Commentary*
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 activism—most of all for the
alliance between Jews and blacks.Feb. 14, 2014
*New York Times Sunday Book Review*
Shaid Held . . . offers a sympathetic, yet critical, examination of
the thought of this influential mid-twentieth century theologian,
scholar, and activist.
*New Books Network*
Held's study is a book to be savored: it is too richly detailed to
be absorbed in anything but short sittings. For the reader with the
patience and the necessary philosophical and theological
backgrounds, reading Held's work is a decadent and enormously
rewarding process to be treasured.
*Jewish Book Council*
Held has written a brilliant collection of essays that should help
both theologians . . . and philosophers connect to Heschel's work
for many years to come. It should be in most academic libraries and
all seminary libraries.
*AJL Reviews*
Held's study of Heschel's thought is a well-researched and
long-needed volume that presents a systematic account of Heschel's
ideas, clarifying many things that are obscure or difcult to
understand, pointing to both the strengths and the weaknesses of
his work.
*Jerusalem Post*
Held puts Heschel into dialogue with contemporary Jewish thinkers,
Christian theologians, devotional writers, and philosophers of
religion.11/12/13
*Menachem Mendel*
. . . [a] thoughtful, illuminating new study of Heschel's thought.
. . . It is one of the many virtues of Shai Held's book that it
helps us to place Heschel alongside not only Kaplan but Halevi,
Horovitz, and Rav Nahman—as well as the Psalmist.
*Jewish Review of Books*
I recommend this book with enthusiasm for anyone interested in
life's fundamental questions, as well as in specific issues of
faith, justice, and worship. The presentation is clear, careful,
and pedagogically friendly. Readers can benefit from an extensive
bibliography and especially the endnotes, richly argued and
carefully documented, as the author concisely continues his debates
with other interpreters and with Heschel himself. . . . Under the
guidance of Shai Held, readers can return with increased confidence
to Heschel's . . . own writings and thus trace, and perhaps
emulate, his devotion to God, amazement at existence itself, and
reverence for all humankind.
*Shofar*
Heschel's work had a profound impact on American Jewish readers,
and he was a social critic as well as a visionary theologian,
fighting for civil rights and fiercely condemning the Vietnam War.
The influence of Heschel's writings and activism thus extended
beyond the Jewish community. . . Shai Held's book, Abraham Joshua
Heschel: The Call of Transcendence, is a sophisticated
interpretation of Heschel's theology.35.2 May 2015
*Modern Judaism*
Held has reworked his dissertation into an accessible yet carefully
argued interpretation of Heschel's most fundamental anthropological
and theological intuitions.
*AJS REVIEW*
[Held] has written a clear, persuasive, argumentative book . . .
.April 2015
*Journal of Religion*
Rabbi Held's . . . writing style fits his subject. He's clear and
eloquent, attuned to capture and explicate Rabbi Heschel's
complexity.
*New York Jewish Week*
Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence is one of the
most important works of scholarship on Heschel, resulting from
serious, comprehensive, and sensitive reading. Unlike many Heschel
scholars, Held has clearly immersed himself in every word of his
works. At the same time, his own book is written in language that
makes it quite readable. . . . One of the great contributions of
Held's work is his summary and critique of the study of Heschel.
From now on, no one will be able to write any creditable academic
work about Heschel without referring to Held's words and notes.
*Tikkun*
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