Spiritual Radical EDWARD K. KAPLAN Yale University Press / New Haven & London [To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.] Spiritual Radical Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940–1972 Published with assistance from the Mary Cady Tew Memorial Fund. Copyright © 2007 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Set in Bodoni type by Binghamton Valley Composition. Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan Books, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kaplan, Edward K., 1942– Spiritual radical : Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940–1972 / Edward K. Kaplan.—1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-300-11540-6 (alk. paper) 1. Heschel, Abraham Joshua, 1907–1972. 2. Rabbis—United States—Biography. 3. Jewish scholars—United States—Biography. I. Title. BM755.H34K375 2007 296.3'092—dc22 [B] 2007002775 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. 10987654321 To my wife, Janna Contents Introduction ix Part One • Cincinnati: The War Years 1 1 First Year in America (1940–1941) 4 2 Hebrew Union College (1941–1943) 19 3 Institutional Struggles and World War (1942–1944) 35 4 Architecture of a New Theology (1944–1945) 51 Part Two • Rescuing the American Soul 67 5 First Years in New York (1945–1949) 70 6 Books of Spiritual Rescue (1948–1951) 97 7 Theological Revolution (1950–1952) 115 8 Critique of American Judaism (1952–1954) 137 9 A Jewish Summa Theologica (1952–1956) 157 Part Three • Spiritual Radical 175 10 Building Bridges (1956–1959) 178 11 A Prophetic Witness (1960–1963) 197 12 We Shall Overcome (1963–1966) 214 Part Four • Apostle to the Gentiles 235 13 Confronting the Church (1961–1964) 238 14 Vulnerable Prophet (1964–1965) 258 15 Interfaith Triumphs (1963–1966) 277 Part Five • Final Years 295 16 Vietnam and Israel (1965–1967) 298 17 Dismay and Exaltation (1968–1969) 319 18 Stronger Than Death (1969–1971) 338 19 Summation of a Life (1972) 358 20 A Pluralistic Legacy 376 Notes 387 References 467 Permissions and Credits 497 Acknowledgments 499 Index 503 viii CONTENTS Introduction Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) became a prophetic voice for Christians and Jews during three momentous decades in the United States. In the 1940s he countered the horrors of war and genocide with vivid essays on prayer, faith, and holiness. In the 1950s he became a public intellectual, pub- lishing books of constructive Jewish theology while launching a critique of re- ligious and ethical life. And in the turbulent 1960s Heschel was a widely publicized activist in civil rights, interfaith dialogue, and opposition to the Vietnam War. This volume is the sequel to Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness, written in collaboration with the late Samuel H. Dresner, which traced Hesch- el’s European journey from Hasidism to modernity. Born in Warsaw, Heschel was reared in a devout Jewish community and went on to earn a Ph.D. in phi- losophy from the University of Berlin. He experienced firsthand the rise of ix Hitler and taught at Martin Buber’s Lehrhaus (school for Jewish studies) in Frankfurt. After he was expelled by the Nazis, he was able to return to Warsaw in 1938. Heschel then sought an immigrant visa to the United States. In July 1939, just before Germany invaded Poland and the outbreak of World War II, he man- aged to obtain a position at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio, arriving there in 1940 after a brief stay in London, during which he founded the short- lived Institute for Jewish Learning. In the United States he mastered English with astonishing skill, rebuilt his career, and constructed a persona Americans could understand. Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America traces how this observant Jew became a “spiritual radical” who judged contemporary life from the uncompromising viewpoint of a Hebrew prophet. In 1951 Reinhold Niebuhr, America’s leading Protestant theologian, predicted that Heschel would “become a commanding and authoritative voice not only in the Jewish community but in the religious life of America.” By 1966 even popular maga- zines like Newsweek recognized that he had “built up a rich, contemporary Jewish theology that may well be the most significant achievement of modern Jewish thought.” Socially progressive and theologically conservative, Heschel did not speak for any single denomination. Instead he applied traditional Jewish sources to clarify pressing issues of personal piety, religious education, the relation be- tween Israel and the Diaspora, interfaith negotiations, the Holocaust, and more. In his biblical idiom, he denounced American racism, the cultural genocide of Soviet Jews, and the arrogance of military thinking. It was during the civil rights movement, when he marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., that Heschel became a media icon. Between 1962 and 1965, he sig- nificantly influenced the debates that resulted in the declaration on the Jews of the Second Vatican Council, and his impact on Protestants was consolidated by his appointment as Harry Emerson Fosdick Visiting Professor at Union Theo- logical Seminary. His final years were consumed by the religious movement to end the American intervention in Vietnam, a conflict he judged criminal. There was a public and a private Heschel. The public figure was a teacher and scholar, an audacious social critic, and a master of poetic prose who opened people’s consciousness to the divine presence. The private person was a mystic, inspired by the living God, a Hasidic prince, a man of prayer and inwardness, and a friend, husband, and father. x INTRODUCTION Heschel was also a vulnerable human being, who had been wounded by the destruction of the several cultures that made up his multiple Jewish identity. In Warsaw he was a child prodigy, in training to become a Hasidic rebbe who would succeed his father as the charismatic leader of their religious commu- nity. But he also embraced the Jewish secularism of the city and later that of Vilna, Lithuania. In Berlin, he came to appreciate modern Orthodoxy and mastered the Western humanistic canon. These cultures—along with numer- ous family members, teachers, and friends—were destroyed by Hitler. In the United States, although he was honored, even revered, by a variety of people, Heschel felt alone, torn by internal contradictions and ideological conflicts. Heschel did not keep a diary, though his emotions radiate from his prose, and it was only in his final book, A Passion for Truth, which was published after his death, that he admitted to the conflicting attitudes that drove him: sympathy and anger, reverence for all human beings and disgust at their untruth, medi- ocrity, greed, and violence. The key to Heschel’s personality lies in his two opposed “teachers”: the op- timistic, compassionate Baal Shem Tov, the eighteenth-century founder of Ha- sidism, and the melancholy, abrasive, judgmental rebbe of Kotzk, a dissident within this pietistic movement. Like the Kotzker rebbe, Heschel was dismayed by the pervasiveness of evil, moral apathy, and self-deception. Like the Baal Shem Tov, he remained awed by God’s concern for humankind. As a writer and an activist, Heschel drew from both, devoting his life to safeguarding human holiness while confronting our resolute barbarism. But these internal conflicts caused tremendous stress and probably contributed to his premature death at age sixty-five. There was no consensus among observers about Heschel’s personality, which was intense and changeable. He was variously perceived as courageous and shy, ambitious and humble, saintly and vain, a captivating mentor and a careless classroom pedagogue. He cannot be reduced to an ideal image, nor can his philosophy be distilled into a static system. This cultural and intellectual biography places Heschel’s ideas and actions within the flow of the events through which he lived. He pushed the bound- aries of Orthodoxy as well as of liberal Judaism, asserting the reality of divine revelation to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai and affirming the sacred au- thority of religious law (halakhah), while defending religious pluralism. This is why I call Heschel a spiritual radical. He went to the roots of faith in God, judging creeds as secondary. For Heschel, humility and contrition before the INTRODUCTION xi mystery, rather than dogma or institutional authority, was the standard for all religions. During the more than thirty years I have been studying Heschel’s works, I have remained fascinated by his literary style, by his gift for connecting mys- ticism and the moral life, and especially by his persistent faith in the living God and the relevance of religion to today’s dilemmas. What he called “radi- cal amazement” is a bulwark against the fanaticisms that tempt us to fear that all religion is destructive. I was educated in the Reform Judaism of the 1950s. But what I experi- enced in Sunday School was spiritually arid, despite the Reform movement’s interest in social justice. I also grew up immersed in the civil rights move- ment through my father, Kivie Kaplan, who was dedicated to the Reform movement and from 1950 was a leader of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), serving as its national president from 1966 until his death in 1975. I met such personalities as Thurgood Mar- shall, Martin Luther King, Jr., Roy Wilkins, Constance Baker Motley, and Myrlie Evers, and I became close to Howard Thurman.