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De mens is niet alleen
Man Is Not Alone is a profound, beautifully written examination of the ingredients of piety: how man senses God's presence, explores it, accepts it, and builds life upon it. Abraham Joshua Heschel's philosophy of religion is not a philosophy of doctrine or the interpretation of a dogma. He erects his carefully built structure of thought upon foundations which are universally valid but almost generally ignored. It was Man Is Not Alone which led Reinhold Niebuhr accurately to predict that Heschel would "become a commanding and authoritative voice not only in the Jewish community but in the religious life of America." With its companion volume, God in Search of Man, it is revered as a classic of modern theology.
271 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1951
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About the author
Abraham Joshua Heschel
77 books626 followersHeschel was a descendant of preeminent rabbinic families of Europe, both on his father's (Moshe Mordechai Heschel, who died of influenza in 1916) and mother's (Reizel Perlow Heschel) side, and a descendant of Rebbe Avrohom Yehoshua Heshl of Apt and other dynasties. He was the youngest of six children including his siblings: Sarah, Dvora Miriam, Esther Sima, Gittel, and Jacob. In his teens he received a traditional yeshiva education, and obtained traditional semicha, rabbinical ordination. He then studied at the University of Berlin, where he obtained his doctorate, and at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, where he earned a second liberal rabbinic ordination.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 54 reviews
October 16, 2011
This is not the sort of book one reads and then shoves back on the shelf to collect dust. It is, instead, one of those rare works which will constantly call the reader back, if only to glance over a page or two. Heschel's book is subtitled A Philosophy of Religion but it might have as accurately been subtitled A Poetics of Religion. Heschel is very much the philosopher poet.
Heschel is the sort of theologian the modern world needs. He is a deeply religious man who has no illusions about the difficulties of accessing faith and the ability to sense God. This is not the sort of theological work that is going to bother providing "proofs" for the existence of God. God is, after all, the Ineffable. Like the very weirdness of our existence itself. Heschel is not interested in proving God's existence - and would likely consider such an act to be rather pointless - instead he meditates on what this existence means for us as self-aware beings. Without driving a particular dogma or doctrine, Heschel makes a case for the need to live a life based on something more than the small vanities that constantly entice us to focus on the small and trivial details of existence.
That said, this is the sort of book that defies any easy summation or synopsis. Heschel is a deep, complicated thinker and this book is a deep, complicated book. Heschel is a truly gifted writer, and he conveys his ideas in an easily accessible prose. But it is these ideas, nuanced and convoluted, that demand more than a single read. Man is Not Alone is the sort of book that the serious reader will never feel he has thoroughly completed.
Heschel is the sort of theologian the modern world needs. He is a deeply religious man who has no illusions about the difficulties of accessing faith and the ability to sense God. This is not the sort of theological work that is going to bother providing "proofs" for the existence of God. God is, after all, the Ineffable. Like the very weirdness of our existence itself. Heschel is not interested in proving God's existence - and would likely consider such an act to be rather pointless - instead he meditates on what this existence means for us as self-aware beings. Without driving a particular dogma or doctrine, Heschel makes a case for the need to live a life based on something more than the small vanities that constantly entice us to focus on the small and trivial details of existence.
That said, this is the sort of book that defies any easy summation or synopsis. Heschel is a deep, complicated thinker and this book is a deep, complicated book. Heschel is a truly gifted writer, and he conveys his ideas in an easily accessible prose. But it is these ideas, nuanced and convoluted, that demand more than a single read. Man is Not Alone is the sort of book that the serious reader will never feel he has thoroughly completed.
August 17, 2015
Oh. my. goodness.
Heschel takes reason and the ineffable, God and man, faith and reality and life ... and writes about them in a way we all recognize and yet that opens my mind anew. I read some paragraphs two or three times, feeling them sink in deeper each time.
Heschel takes reason and the ineffable, God and man, faith and reality and life ... and writes about them in a way we all recognize and yet that opens my mind anew. I read some paragraphs two or three times, feeling them sink in deeper each time.
The search of reason ends at the shore of the known; on the immense expanse beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide. It alone knows the route to that which is remote from experience and understanding. Neither of them is amphibious: reason cannot go beyond the shore, and the sense of the ineffable is out of place where we measure, where we weigh.I can't wait to read more of this book, but am going to savor it slowly.
We do not leave the shore of the known in search of adventure or suspense or because of the failure of reason to answer our questions. We sail because our mind is like a fantastic sea shell, and when applying our ears to its lips we hear a perpetual murmur from the waves beyond the shore.
August 25, 2009
It's been over half a year now since I last reviewed anything here on Goodreads. There are a number of things that have kept me away (moving across the country, working on a novel, having a baby, etc.) but mainly -- if I'm honest -- the thing that's kept me silent has been the prospect of critiquing this book.
For one thing, I'm about as qualified to comment seriously on a treatise on Jewish theology as I am to, let's say, fact-check a textbook about string theory. For another, it's the thought of Dr. Heschel himself that I find daunting: dear deceased A.J. with his mad prophet's beard and his saintly demeanor and his Walt Whitman stare, sadly shaking his head at my fumbling misunderstandings. (Take a look at the NYT article on Heschel at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/art... if you don't know what I mean -- yes, that's the good rabbi standing next to Martin Luther King, Jr. in the topmost photo.)
Nonetheless, I'm feeling exhausted and hazy enough today (see note re: baby, above) that somehow none of this is enough to stop me from giving this long-overdue review a try.
Although this volume is subtitled "a philosophy of religion," in many ways it reads more like poetry than a work of epistemology or metaphysics. This is intentional on Heschel's part: rather than being an argument for faith, Man Is Not Alone functions more as a description of faith and of the encounter between ourselves and the "ineffable." For example, Heschel writes:
There is no answer in the world to man's radical wonder. Under the running sea of our theories and scientific explanations lies the aboriginal abyss of radical amazement.... To live only on that which we can say is to wallow in the dust, instead of digging up the soil.... The essence, the tangent to the curve of human experience, lies beyond the limits of language.... All we know if the self is its expression, but the self is never fully expressed. What we are, we cannot say; what we become, we cannot grasp... the self is something transcendent in disguise.
In this excerpt, which begins to convey the beauty of Heschel's language, the outlines of his argument become visible. Actually, "argument" may be the wrong word here because Heschel contends that applying rational analysis to the divine is an intellectual error. Instead, he suggests, our awareness of the divine is an immediate, given, experiential fact; it doesn't need to be "proved" any more than our awareness of red needs to be proven.
This comparison -- between Heschel's descriptions of the divine and our awareness of the color red -- is in fact a useful one. When it comes to "red," we are able to scientifically demonstrate a number of facts: eg, that there is a spectrum of visible light in the wavelength range of roughly 625-750 nanometers, that seeing this wavelength causes certain sorts of neural activity in a majority of individuals, etc. etc. What these facts capture is not, however, the color "red" -- they capture a number of physical/chemical details about the universe. But everything that constitutes the redness of red -- how it evokes images of love, passion, violence, associations with roses, looks good with black and white, etc. -- all these things are products of our subjective experience, rather than externally demonstrable facts. Indeed, it is this tendency to have a certain kind of cognitive response to certain conditions that comprises the entire existence of "red" as an experiential phenomenon.
Similar to our experience of the color red, Heschel argues, each of us has experiences of the "ineffable" -- that is, something that the theory-inclined might call the sublime, while others might describe as the divine. To write off this experience as meaningless because it is "only" a subjective awareness would be as silly as writing off the color red (vs. a certain wavelength of light) as meaningless because it is "only" a product of our subjectivity.
This much of Heschel's argument is, to me, quite interesting and much more original than the standard tactic of trying to demonstrate the existence of God via some rational construct (eg infinity, absolute goodness, etc). And much of this book is structured like a koan, insofar as it is designed to elicit the kind of "ineffable" experience it describes.
At the same time, Heschel never adequately deals with the inconvenient fact that God, unlike red, seems to have no consistent physical correlate for our experience -- and things go from bad to worse when he makes the transition from "the ineffable" to "God," beginning to assign determinate attributes to what was, thus far in his argument, a private sparkle in the brain.
It may be, of course, that I am misunderstanding the nuances of Heschel's argument. From my admittedly simplistic reading however, I came away from this book deeply impressed with Heschel's commitment to understanding our unspoken yearnings, and his beautifully written descriptions of sensations that lie at the outer borders of language; less impressive, however, was his attempt to articulate these subjective subtleties in the terms of conventional monotheism.
For one thing, I'm about as qualified to comment seriously on a treatise on Jewish theology as I am to, let's say, fact-check a textbook about string theory. For another, it's the thought of Dr. Heschel himself that I find daunting: dear deceased A.J. with his mad prophet's beard and his saintly demeanor and his Walt Whitman stare, sadly shaking his head at my fumbling misunderstandings. (Take a look at the NYT article on Heschel at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/art... if you don't know what I mean -- yes, that's the good rabbi standing next to Martin Luther King, Jr. in the topmost photo.)
Nonetheless, I'm feeling exhausted and hazy enough today (see note re: baby, above) that somehow none of this is enough to stop me from giving this long-overdue review a try.
Although this volume is subtitled "a philosophy of religion," in many ways it reads more like poetry than a work of epistemology or metaphysics. This is intentional on Heschel's part: rather than being an argument for faith, Man Is Not Alone functions more as a description of faith and of the encounter between ourselves and the "ineffable." For example, Heschel writes:
There is no answer in the world to man's radical wonder. Under the running sea of our theories and scientific explanations lies the aboriginal abyss of radical amazement.... To live only on that which we can say is to wallow in the dust, instead of digging up the soil.... The essence, the tangent to the curve of human experience, lies beyond the limits of language.... All we know if the self is its expression, but the self is never fully expressed. What we are, we cannot say; what we become, we cannot grasp... the self is something transcendent in disguise.
In this excerpt, which begins to convey the beauty of Heschel's language, the outlines of his argument become visible. Actually, "argument" may be the wrong word here because Heschel contends that applying rational analysis to the divine is an intellectual error. Instead, he suggests, our awareness of the divine is an immediate, given, experiential fact; it doesn't need to be "proved" any more than our awareness of red needs to be proven.
This comparison -- between Heschel's descriptions of the divine and our awareness of the color red -- is in fact a useful one. When it comes to "red," we are able to scientifically demonstrate a number of facts: eg, that there is a spectrum of visible light in the wavelength range of roughly 625-750 nanometers, that seeing this wavelength causes certain sorts of neural activity in a majority of individuals, etc. etc. What these facts capture is not, however, the color "red" -- they capture a number of physical/chemical details about the universe. But everything that constitutes the redness of red -- how it evokes images of love, passion, violence, associations with roses, looks good with black and white, etc. -- all these things are products of our subjective experience, rather than externally demonstrable facts. Indeed, it is this tendency to have a certain kind of cognitive response to certain conditions that comprises the entire existence of "red" as an experiential phenomenon.
Similar to our experience of the color red, Heschel argues, each of us has experiences of the "ineffable" -- that is, something that the theory-inclined might call the sublime, while others might describe as the divine. To write off this experience as meaningless because it is "only" a subjective awareness would be as silly as writing off the color red (vs. a certain wavelength of light) as meaningless because it is "only" a product of our subjectivity.
This much of Heschel's argument is, to me, quite interesting and much more original than the standard tactic of trying to demonstrate the existence of God via some rational construct (eg infinity, absolute goodness, etc). And much of this book is structured like a koan, insofar as it is designed to elicit the kind of "ineffable" experience it describes.
At the same time, Heschel never adequately deals with the inconvenient fact that God, unlike red, seems to have no consistent physical correlate for our experience -- and things go from bad to worse when he makes the transition from "the ineffable" to "God," beginning to assign determinate attributes to what was, thus far in his argument, a private sparkle in the brain.
It may be, of course, that I am misunderstanding the nuances of Heschel's argument. From my admittedly simplistic reading however, I came away from this book deeply impressed with Heschel's commitment to understanding our unspoken yearnings, and his beautifully written descriptions of sensations that lie at the outer borders of language; less impressive, however, was his attempt to articulate these subjective subtleties in the terms of conventional monotheism.
April 11, 2023
I saw this recommended as one of the finest books of Reform Jewish theology around. And it is definitely inspiring and poetic. It is also not particularly Jewish, though someone with a wider theological background may disagree. Certainly, I think most members of Abrahamic faiths would find it generally applicable. But as a work of theology, I find it question begging, and not persuasive enough to oust me out of my secular materialism.
Heschel begins with the ineffable, the idea that there is something sublime out there that we can all feel at moments. This ineffable is the touch of God, that which created the universe, which penetrates everywhere. Man is not alone, because God created us out of love, desires us to be righteous, feels us passionately, and we can find piety in every moment of our life.
On the one hand, it is preposterous to say that the universe was created by chance, that chance lead to this moment of sentience on a tiny ball of rock hurling through space. But is it less preposterous to say that there exists an ineffable, insubstantial, omniscient and omnipotent being who created the universe and our souls, who we can commune with but only on a spiritual level and not in any pragmatic suffering-alleviating sense. I've felt a sense of divine communion a handful of times before, at the birth of my son and previously with hefty chemical enhancement. And while I don't need that same high constantly, Heschel has a point that it'd be nice to feel it more often.
Yet the path is also ineffable. Either you get it, or you don't. Heschel is a modern theologian, and by that I mean he wrote in the shadow of Auschwitz and the mushroom cloud. But while he advocates for communion, in practical terms I think he also advocates for retreat.
Heschel begins with the ineffable, the idea that there is something sublime out there that we can all feel at moments. This ineffable is the touch of God, that which created the universe, which penetrates everywhere. Man is not alone, because God created us out of love, desires us to be righteous, feels us passionately, and we can find piety in every moment of our life.
On the one hand, it is preposterous to say that the universe was created by chance, that chance lead to this moment of sentience on a tiny ball of rock hurling through space. But is it less preposterous to say that there exists an ineffable, insubstantial, omniscient and omnipotent being who created the universe and our souls, who we can commune with but only on a spiritual level and not in any pragmatic suffering-alleviating sense. I've felt a sense of divine communion a handful of times before, at the birth of my son and previously with hefty chemical enhancement. And while I don't need that same high constantly, Heschel has a point that it'd be nice to feel it more often.
Yet the path is also ineffable. Either you get it, or you don't. Heschel is a modern theologian, and by that I mean he wrote in the shadow of Auschwitz and the mushroom cloud. But while he advocates for communion, in practical terms I think he also advocates for retreat.
January 9, 2021
After being entangled with this book for a little over a year, the prospect of writing about it brings me to the same point of silent-awe that the text did, chapter after chapter, line after seemingly simple line. Here lies maybe the greatest commentary on the Quran I've ever read, an urgent resurrection for the decaying (physical, spiritual) ethical landscape of our modern world, an exegesis of the essential Mystery and its call to action...
I wonder what it would have been like to read this while I was still studying philosophy of religion. I can barely imagine the ecstasy these pages would have lent me, slicing as they do through the opaque thoughts and words of lesser philosophers, of less existentially-concerned authors—without effort, with grace, with selfless solemnity.
For someone whose entire philosophy is built around religion's call for response, around a piety of service and self-transcendence, we might wonder why Heschel devotes these hundreds of pages to explanation, to (often intense) logical argumentation, to the deconstruction and reconstruction of our very premises, the ways of knowing we might take for granted.
The answer lies, perhaps, in the natural-but-not-neutral, fluid continuity between knowing and doing, between naming and being, that Heschel's work not only explicates but luminously embodies. Man "has to understand in order to believe, to know in order to accept." Though it is abundantly clear, early on, that this is not a philosophy that ends in the world of philosophy—rather, pulling the pious (wo)man beyond itself, to a higher level of being, a deeper tone of longing—it is also true that the correct response to life is built from the raw material of a correct understanding, albeit one rooted in the heart, embodied in the flesh, flowering in the mind.
Heschel weaves an entire world of meaning from the simple thread of Oneness—from this slim and endless thread emerges a tapestry which offers images, meanings, stories, guidelines, philosophies, and even a poetics of what it means to be a person in the world, what it means to be pious in life, what it means to be enduring in death. Here is a religious philosophy of longing, of desire for, and to be—not to penetrate, as Heschel says, but to be penetrated by, to submit to—the Mystery, the perpetuity of the Divine, the One.
I've been approaching the end of this book both with anticipation and sadness. Every chapter felt—feels—like communing with something beyond oneself, like a hopeful invitation for transformation, like a reminder that the infinite lies in the finite, that the very tangle of nerves and tissues that pull the eyes across the page are gifted, are gifts, are grace, are questions that demand response.
To finish this book—to finish this book is to be pulled right back to its beginning, to be pulled endlessly into the perpetual now of living. Heschel tells us that "eternity is not perpetual future but perpetual presence"—that "the world to come is not only a hereafter but also a herenow." This read feels like a stepping-stone, like one more stepping-stone, on the endless path to building a perpetual presence, on the endless road to awe. What a gift.
I wonder what it would have been like to read this while I was still studying philosophy of religion. I can barely imagine the ecstasy these pages would have lent me, slicing as they do through the opaque thoughts and words of lesser philosophers, of less existentially-concerned authors—without effort, with grace, with selfless solemnity.
For someone whose entire philosophy is built around religion's call for response, around a piety of service and self-transcendence, we might wonder why Heschel devotes these hundreds of pages to explanation, to (often intense) logical argumentation, to the deconstruction and reconstruction of our very premises, the ways of knowing we might take for granted.
The answer lies, perhaps, in the natural-but-not-neutral, fluid continuity between knowing and doing, between naming and being, that Heschel's work not only explicates but luminously embodies. Man "has to understand in order to believe, to know in order to accept." Though it is abundantly clear, early on, that this is not a philosophy that ends in the world of philosophy—rather, pulling the pious (wo)man beyond itself, to a higher level of being, a deeper tone of longing—it is also true that the correct response to life is built from the raw material of a correct understanding, albeit one rooted in the heart, embodied in the flesh, flowering in the mind.
Heschel weaves an entire world of meaning from the simple thread of Oneness—from this slim and endless thread emerges a tapestry which offers images, meanings, stories, guidelines, philosophies, and even a poetics of what it means to be a person in the world, what it means to be pious in life, what it means to be enduring in death. Here is a religious philosophy of longing, of desire for, and to be—not to penetrate, as Heschel says, but to be penetrated by, to submit to—the Mystery, the perpetuity of the Divine, the One.
I've been approaching the end of this book both with anticipation and sadness. Every chapter felt—feels—like communing with something beyond oneself, like a hopeful invitation for transformation, like a reminder that the infinite lies in the finite, that the very tangle of nerves and tissues that pull the eyes across the page are gifted, are gifts, are grace, are questions that demand response.
To finish this book—to finish this book is to be pulled right back to its beginning, to be pulled endlessly into the perpetual now of living. Heschel tells us that "eternity is not perpetual future but perpetual presence"—that "the world to come is not only a hereafter but also a herenow." This read feels like a stepping-stone, like one more stepping-stone, on the endless path to building a perpetual presence, on the endless road to awe. What a gift.
October 1, 2010
Amazing book, stirred me to my soul. I feel quite under-qualified to give anything more than a personal impression, and even for that I think I should read the book again, and more in depth.
"Walking upon a rock that is constantly crumbling away behind every step, man cannot restrain his bitter yearning to know whether life is nothing but a series of momentary physiological and mental processes, actions, and forms of behavior, a flow of vicissitudes, desires and sensations, running like grains through an hourglass, marking time only once and always vanishing... Is life nothing but a medley of facts, unrelated to one another; chaos camouflaged by illusion?"
I think this book gives that question some of the best answers I've ever encountered.
Heschel lays out many powerful ideas, and one of the unique things to me is that many of them are timeless (ever-relevant today) and universal- to any human out there, regardless of faith.
The writing style is beautiful and often I had the feeling of being "blown away."
It's a very complex book, and I still don't understand many of the concepts in it. One central concept I didn't completely understand is that of the development of religion- Heschel claims religion could not be created by man ("it would not rule the heart if it were simply an achievement of his [man's] mind or outgrowth of sentiment.")
I highly recommend the book to anyone, you'd have to be pretty cynical for it not to mean anything at all.
Ideally, it should be read slowly and maybe even with a study partner/group.
"Walking upon a rock that is constantly crumbling away behind every step, man cannot restrain his bitter yearning to know whether life is nothing but a series of momentary physiological and mental processes, actions, and forms of behavior, a flow of vicissitudes, desires and sensations, running like grains through an hourglass, marking time only once and always vanishing... Is life nothing but a medley of facts, unrelated to one another; chaos camouflaged by illusion?"
I think this book gives that question some of the best answers I've ever encountered.
Heschel lays out many powerful ideas, and one of the unique things to me is that many of them are timeless (ever-relevant today) and universal- to any human out there, regardless of faith.
The writing style is beautiful and often I had the feeling of being "blown away."
It's a very complex book, and I still don't understand many of the concepts in it. One central concept I didn't completely understand is that of the development of religion- Heschel claims religion could not be created by man ("it would not rule the heart if it were simply an achievement of his [man's] mind or outgrowth of sentiment.")
I highly recommend the book to anyone, you'd have to be pretty cynical for it not to mean anything at all.
Ideally, it should be read slowly and maybe even with a study partner/group.
July 21, 2014
The majority of this book is note-taking fodder for the soul. The parts that I took exception to were few and not worth discounting the brilliance of this work. Such as this, p.245, "There is an eternal cry in the world: God is beseeching man. Some are startled; others remain deaf. We are all looked for. An air of expectancy hovers over life. Something is asked of man, of all men."
Good stuff =)
Good stuff =)
December 16, 2019
Good Jewish rabbi/scholar. Hard at some points. Very uplifting.
September 9, 2015
About 3.9 stars I'd say (just...this five star system does not work for me. I'd love a ten star system)
In the realm of philosophy and theology, Heschel's writing isn't as riveting or entertaining as, say, Lewis' or Chesterton's, but it is strong and purposeful. I really appreciate his books. This was a very slow read for me, but a good one and I do recommend it. It has some loose (very loose) parallels to Mere Christianity (Mere Judaism?) in that it goes from why anyone would believe in the supernatural in the first place, then to 'why a loving God', to 'why a pious life.'
A few condensed quotes:
"[awareness of God] comes when, drifting in the wilderness, having gone astray, we suddenly behold the immutable polar star."
"When mind and soul agree, belief is born. But first our hearts must know the shudder of adoration."
"For as we have seen, whatever man does to man, he also does to God."
"All being obey the law; man is able to sing the law. His ultimate legacy is in his composing a song of deeds which only God fully understands."
Recommended, noting that it requires attentiveness and patience.
In the realm of philosophy and theology, Heschel's writing isn't as riveting or entertaining as, say, Lewis' or Chesterton's, but it is strong and purposeful. I really appreciate his books. This was a very slow read for me, but a good one and I do recommend it. It has some loose (very loose) parallels to Mere Christianity (Mere Judaism?) in that it goes from why anyone would believe in the supernatural in the first place, then to 'why a loving God', to 'why a pious life.'
A few condensed quotes:
"[awareness of God] comes when, drifting in the wilderness, having gone astray, we suddenly behold the immutable polar star."
"When mind and soul agree, belief is born. But first our hearts must know the shudder of adoration."
"For as we have seen, whatever man does to man, he also does to God."
"All being obey the law; man is able to sing the law. His ultimate legacy is in his composing a song of deeds which only God fully understands."
Recommended, noting that it requires attentiveness and patience.
December 11, 2013
Abraham Heshel in this novel brings to light the intricate values of faith, specifically for Judaism. I have learned much from reading this book in regards to my own spiritual journey and in regards to my relationships with others. I checked out this book from the library, but will definitely have to buy a copy for myself, for there were many quotes, ideas and Scriptures mentioned throughout the book that I would like to always have immediate access to. If there is anyone out there trying to answer the tougher questions around faith and your purpose I would definitely recommend reading this book.
Peace & Love.Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion
Peace & Love.Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion
September 26, 2018
The best articulation of the religious experience I have yet read. The first part of the book, "The Problem of God," begins, as we all do, in wonder at all that is beyond words. From this start, Heschel develops an understanding of faith that is much more complete than others I've encountered. While the second part, "The Problem of Living," lapses occasionally into "Great Chain of Being" thinking, where humans are considered as above other creatures, on the whole (especially in the final chapter), it outlines a way of life that is deeply needed in the world.
January 1, 2009
I liked this book for its simplicity and its truth. It does keep saying the same thing over and over again, but that's only because anything is everything else in disguise. The unique things it says informed me more fully as to the particular strengths of Judiasm. I am looking forward to reading the companion book "God in Search of Man."
June 26, 2012
Somewhat easier reading than its big brother, "God in Search of Man". I still needed a dictionary open while reading it.
I was surprised how Rabbi Heschel can stay clear of specific religious issues and just deal with our common humanity, and God's role in it, as well as our role in God's plan and creation.
Heschel's writings seem to appeal to Christians as well as Jews, and this book is likely to appeal to anyone who is interested in spirituality.
I was surprised how Rabbi Heschel can stay clear of specific religious issues and just deal with our common humanity, and God's role in it, as well as our role in God's plan and creation.
Heschel's writings seem to appeal to Christians as well as Jews, and this book is likely to appeal to anyone who is interested in spirituality.
January 2, 2014
Heschel puts together a full and complex portrait of religion and the Jewish religion. Not an easy read at all, but it surely elucidates many questions about religion and puts some clarity for those who want to understand better those who believe in religion.
Central ideas like monotheism, ethics, the ineffable, morality, are all present here in their universal and Jewish versions. Liked the book. Some parts could be used to elucidate and inspire most people, some parts are not for everyone.
Central ideas like monotheism, ethics, the ineffable, morality, are all present here in their universal and Jewish versions. Liked the book. Some parts could be used to elucidate and inspire most people, some parts are not for everyone.
January 13, 2020
The was my third reading of a book given to me by my friend and fellow writer, environmentalist Mitchell Thomashow, who rightly imagined that I would be engaged by the writing of the great Jewish theologian, Abraham Heschel. While I lack Heschel's erudition and his confidence in addressing religious questions, I share his sense that the universe arises from and is sustained by a divine Source, which goes by many names, and which we may perceive in the living world and in our own depths.
February 17, 2017
I feel like I read the end of this book after too long a gap from the rest of it but every page was still Heschel through and through- piercingly confident descriptions that challenge you on every page to either agree with his (often inspiring) perspective or to carefully examine the source of the disagreement.
July 1, 2018
This book started a bit slow for me but as I neared the end it once again shined as another masterpiece from R’ Heschel! My favorite chapter is the last one, The Pious Man. As R’ Heschel would say it is sublime! So many great quotes in this book. I wish I had the patience to type them up right now. But I don’t, so I won’t.
December 30, 2018
As my marginalia, underlining, passages copied in my personal journal, and time spent contemplating lines indicate, I love this book. If someone wanted a book that captures the religious perspective to which I'm most drawn, I would hand them this one.
October 25, 2007
A great philosopher teacher who shares his insights. I use this often.
December 27, 2025
Several insights of about noble, elevated matters.
Abraham's rhetoric is powerful, elucidative and provoking.
Reading these words ignites a freshness to faith and to general way of living.
Abraham's rhetoric is powerful, elucidative and provoking.
Reading these words ignites a freshness to faith and to general way of living.
January 8, 2014
Poetic and sober observations of the human condition while pointing to an ineffable reason for hope.
October 18, 2017
Wow. Read this book. A hefty feast for your soul.
March 10, 2018
Rich, dense, brilliant. Heschel's books should be read a paragraph or a page at a time.
June 21, 2018
Endeavoring to read from a variety of religious traditions is highly valuable for spiritual growth. Heschel’s gift of prose is deployed magnificently here in explanation of the Jewish faith, resulting in a beautifully written and poetic book. But this is truly a book, not only for Judaism, but for all seekers of God.
Acknowledging the Ineffable
In this book, Heschel makes plain what too many religious people refuse to do, which is to admit that God is something so far beyond us that religions are incapable of defining It. God is ineffable, something that we can sense but cannot adequately say.
We struggle in sensing the ineffable because of our tendency to first view things within the scope of remembrance. We generally remember before we think. We see things first in the light of what we already know, forever comparing instead of penetrating, categorizing before discerning. This tendency to judge and fit everything into predefined boxes severely restricts our perceptions.
Our endeavors to describe our perceptions with words and labels that are derived from our limited past knowledge makes us accept them for less than what they really are. Because of this, our perceptions are constantly prejudiced by past indoctrination.
Because the ineffable goes beyond what we know, we err in our attempts to confine it within prejudicial categories, which is exactly what we do within our religions. Our cognitive abilities are incapable of boxing God within a cage of finite description. We are unable to judge God.
Responding With Awe
Accepting Heschel’s premise that God is ineffable resigns us to understanding that the only legitimate approach to God is through awe, wonder and amazement. Wonder involves looking at something without using the filters of our memorized knowledge and accepting that it is infinitely beyond us.
When we approach God with wonder, we become radically amazed, not only by what we see, but also by the very fact that we are seeing. Perhaps the most incomprehensible fact is the fact that we comprehend at all. To be alive, aware, and filled with this sort of amazement alerts us to the sacredness of life.
This does not mean that we hush the quest for thought. The approach to the ineffable leads through the depth of knowledge, not through ignorant, animal-like gazing. But we have to refrain from the mistake of imposing the known world upon what is unknown. We must stop stifling our wonder with dogmatic religious explanations about things we can truly only be in awe about. I’m talking here about the tendency of fundamentalists to impose their half-cocked religious explanations upon an enigma they really can’t understand.
To assume that man stands before God only for the duration of some ostentatious ritual is absurd. The Godly man’s relation to the ineffable is not an isolated event but rather something that is lifelong. It is a mistake to think of some vow or conversion experience as limited engagement with God. All deeds, thoughts, feelings, and events are Gods concern.
Our response to God, if authentic, should be awe. We find ourselves in awe when we accept wonder as our compass instead of the rambling of verbose theologians. God is beyond the limits of our language. Immense freedom and wisdom comes to us when we jettison theological baggage and instead listen directly to God.
Reverent Awe Brings Insight Instead of Idolatry
When we stop judging the ineffable within the confinement of our past experiences, we are able to derive exciting insights from It. This is exemplified in the sort of creative newness that emerges in art, philosophy, and religion. It is a creative newness that grows humanity forward instead of stifling it within the religious indoctrinations instituted by primitive cultures. The infinity of God introduces us to artful newness, diverse emotions, and unanticipated visions.
All men are endowed with the ability to know that they don’t know everything. It is not difficult to recognize the immense preciousness of being. This sort of reverence is indigenous to the human consciousness. But our attempts to explain the unknown devolve into such a myriad array of culturally diversified explanations that we often end up profaning it. We seek to capture the ineffable within the confines of our reason and reduce it into something tangible, like a totem, sculpture, or profound theoretical dogma. The idol worshippers error lies in trying to specify that which is beyond his grasp.
No thing, in and of itself, can serve as a symbol or likeness of God, not even the multitudes of words that we fashion into idolatrous doctrines. Our wisdom is like dust in comparison to the Ineffable. We should revere that which surpasses us instead of judging It. When we stand in authentic awe, our lips will not demand speech, for we will know that if we spoke, we would only deprave It. All we can really do is pause, to be still in the moment, perhaps to only whisper : “I love you”.
Common men generally tend toward self expression instead of expressing an absolute awe of the creation. Conversely, the artist allows the creation to convey meaning to him, realizing that it holds more significance than he is able to absorb. To a mind unwrapped from indoctrination, there is no dogma, only wonder and the realization that the world is just too incredible. Definitions are like taking the name of God in vain.
We Are Part of the Amazing Creation
Understanding ourselves as part of the creation renders our respect for it and helps us to stop constantly measuring it only by its worth to us. We can go out to meet the world in a way other than as a source of supply for our industries. We can stop going out like a hunter seeking prey and instead go out like a lover anxious to reciprocate love. We can go out to meet the world with wonder. When we do this, the familiar retires from our sight and the beauty emerges more distinctly.
We are one with the creation, not separate. We become truly alive when we are in fellowship with the creation. Strife comes with our attempts to conform the creation to our ego instead of appreciating the magnificent gifts it bears to us. Who are we to have the service of the spring for our survival? How can we ever reciprocate for breathing, thinking, seeing, and hearing? Who are we to be the witness of stars and the settings of the sun? Must we allow the extravagant gift of life to become overwhelmed by our desire to possess frivolous trinkets?
Thankfulness should be stronger than our wants and desires. Gloom implies that man thinks he has a right to a better, more pleasing world. Gloom is a snub, not an appreciation. We must stop allowing arrogance to jam our ability to perceive.
When we get carried away in our wonder, we come to understand that we too may perform acts of wonder. God wants us to carry wonder into our actions. Others are lead toward the sense of awe when we artfully demonstrate the joyful wonder of just living and appreciating. Others are lead to the questions: Who made us aware? Who lit the wonder before our eyes? Who said: “let there be light”?
Awe is Not Paralyzing
But what do we do with this awe? Praise is our first answer to wonder. We praise God for the ability we have to see. We become thankful for God’s patience in waiting for us to awaken. God goes out to meet us as soon as we long to know God. We cease to see the trees for the forest.
Within our awe we begin to see tasks. The more deeply we listen, the more we become stripped of arrogance and callousness and gain marvel over the miracle of our awareness. The ineffable enters our consciousness like a ray of light passing into a lake. We are penetrated by insight. We openly embrace this Thing that has struggled so persistently to awaken our awareness to the realization of our greater spiritual powers: powers to help heal what is broken in the world, powers to create within the worldly medium, powers to establish good incidents and powers to brandish our creative insights.
But we have to decide whether we wish to continue to feed our mind on traditional conceit or to actually mean what we truly sense in the inspiration for goodness that is afforded to us. We are incapable of grasping the divine until we grow sensitive to Its supreme relevance and cease stifling our mind with half-truths.
We come to recognize God because we are in awe of God, not for any personal reward. Just as we are not redeemed by a stone idol, so we are not redeemed by elaborate doctrine. But daily, if we will but look, we will witness miracles sufficient to overwhelm us. We cannot know “what” He is; we only know “that” He is. The mind surrenders in love.
Awe and Reason
Reason may aid the mind in acceptance, but from where comes the impetus that makes us love to do what we ought to do? That love is the spark of the divine within. We must desire not only to know more, but to be more.
Reason prompts us with questions about God, but then we find that God has questions for us, such as: Why would we refrain from endeavoring to instill goodness in the hearts of all men? Why would we conceive of the world as only material for our own fulfillment? Why would we rise and fight one another when competitive civilizations simply come and go, eventually sinking into the abyss of oblivion? Why would we adapt religions to meet our selfish needs: to condone slavery, to allow the marketing of indulgences, to justify genocide, to murder heretics? How can we accept such absurdities over the ineffable?
Moral sentiments do not originate in reason: a most learned man may be wicked, while a plain unlettered man may be righteous. Moral sentiments originate in a man’s sense of the ineffable, not in having learned the precepts of some religious theology. Responsiveness to God cannot be copied; it must be original within every soul. The divine cannot be accepted by hearsay.
But truth has nothing to fear from reason; what we should abhor is presumptuousness! True faith will never compel the reason to accept that which is absurd. Faith is not the clinging to a static shrine, but an endless pilgrimage. Faith involves the entertaining of daring thoughts that overwhelm the heart and drive us toward demonstrations of the ineffable. Faith is having the desire to enter synthesis with God.
We Are Expressions of the Ineffable
Unmistakably, the human is interwoven with the Ineffable within the pattern of history. The mere idea that God may exist confirms Gods existence, as our minds inherently begin to form the concepts of moral perfection, thus establishing directives from God.
The more we comply with God, the closer we come to God, and the more we come out of chaos. Wisdom, art, music, love, order, beauty, holiness have all already emerged from the chaos of primitive man. Think of all the additional glory available to us as we move further out of the animal state! It is the discoveries of the spiritual pioneer that we long for. We must ask ourselves if our worship embodies our own unique artful expression or if it is mired in the blindness of simply following the herd.
We are a part of creation and creation is a continuous process. When we grasp the infinite continuity and diversification of the creation, our faith no longer needs static dogmatic denominations. Faith is not assent to a static idea, but rather consent to God’s infinity, which we can clearly observe to be highly diverse and in perpetual change. Stop and think about how monstrously egotistical it is for man to offer his expert opinion of God!
We approach God, not with cold judgement, but with song. No one can explain rationally why he should sacrifice his life for the sake of the good; we just know it. We find our way from awe to action. We find our way from just “thinking about the way to live” to “living what we think”. We grow from within outward.
Without the Ineffable We Are Animal
Unless we recognize the ineffable, trifling needs become our God and the power of our egotistical interests tyrannizes our lives. When we set out solely to satisfy our own desires, we soon forfeit our freedom and become degraded to a mere tool, robot, or yoked animal. The more things we acquire, the more enslaved we become to them. If we get, for example, another car, then more of our time must be devoted to caring for it, servicing it, washing it, insuring it, and working to pay for it. It is much the same way with all the things we hoard. We must learn to say “no” to ourselves in the name of a higher “yes”.
Animals are satiable. Animals are content with having their needs satisfied; but man wants, not only to be satisfied, but also to satisfy. Besides satisfying his own needs, man wants to be a need, and this endeavor is what spurs forth his moral progress. Man wants his life to hold value for others, but his goals remain generalized, unvoiced, and often poorly apprehended. Most men live for that which they don’t even know how to utter, much less accomplish. The feeling of futility that comes with the sense of being useless is the most common cause of psychoneurosis.
An animal is solely concerned with its needs, to “whatever” ends. Blind to a larger goal, the animal strays about, selfishly imitating random patterns that happen to please. But man, capable of foregoing gratification, can deploy his cognitive acts, independent of impulse.
The man seeking goodness becomes conscious of the needs evident to achieve good ends, even when they are not for his own sake. Man’s acts can be self-surpassing (For whom does one plant a tree?). Man finds meaning in his ability to satisfy ends that go beyond his ego.
In terms of astronomical time, our civilization is in its infancy. The realization and expansion of human power has hardly begun. What are we going to do with it? Are we going to follow our passions and act like the beast or will we be able to dominate the beast? Our existence looms between animality and divinity; which will we choose?
We Experience the Ineffable as Individuals
Human existence cannot derive its ultimate meaning from society because society is itself in need of meaning and the ineffable is infinitely diversified. Our quest must not be a product of social coercion but an essential element of our personal nature.
We must ask ourselves what do we choose to do within the gift of being? To what do we volitionally choose to set our minds upon? What design do we choose to weave from the eternal fabric? What ripples do we choose to set astir within the placid lake of time?
We are a short stage between the animal and the spiritual and our state is one of constant wavering. The fully emancipated man will be persistently operational in the fashioning of goodness within the moments of time afforded to him. How magnificent is it to conceive of life as a partnership between God and man toward the achievement of justice, peace, truth, compassion and holiness!
Man is not an innocent bystander in the cosmic drama. There is in us more kinship with the divine than we are able to believe. When we love God and love what God loves, our ultimate commitment is our ultimate privilege. The privilege to be a partner with the ineffable!
Conclusion
God is life persisting inexorably against death and deadness. Godliness is that which enlivens, inspires, and promotes health. How to invest man with the ability to master all of life is the supreme, ineffable challenge to our intelligence.
We must all come to understand that life takes place under wide and diversified horizons that range beyond the span of an individual life or even the life of a nation, generation, or era. Understanding this transcends any dogmatic theory and represents the only course that does not throw man into bestial chaos. Let us seek It with ardor, zeal, intentness, vigor, and exertion, aware that we are constantly within sight of the Ineffable.
-End-
Acknowledging the Ineffable
In this book, Heschel makes plain what too many religious people refuse to do, which is to admit that God is something so far beyond us that religions are incapable of defining It. God is ineffable, something that we can sense but cannot adequately say.
We struggle in sensing the ineffable because of our tendency to first view things within the scope of remembrance. We generally remember before we think. We see things first in the light of what we already know, forever comparing instead of penetrating, categorizing before discerning. This tendency to judge and fit everything into predefined boxes severely restricts our perceptions.
Our endeavors to describe our perceptions with words and labels that are derived from our limited past knowledge makes us accept them for less than what they really are. Because of this, our perceptions are constantly prejudiced by past indoctrination.
Because the ineffable goes beyond what we know, we err in our attempts to confine it within prejudicial categories, which is exactly what we do within our religions. Our cognitive abilities are incapable of boxing God within a cage of finite description. We are unable to judge God.
Responding With Awe
Accepting Heschel’s premise that God is ineffable resigns us to understanding that the only legitimate approach to God is through awe, wonder and amazement. Wonder involves looking at something without using the filters of our memorized knowledge and accepting that it is infinitely beyond us.
When we approach God with wonder, we become radically amazed, not only by what we see, but also by the very fact that we are seeing. Perhaps the most incomprehensible fact is the fact that we comprehend at all. To be alive, aware, and filled with this sort of amazement alerts us to the sacredness of life.
This does not mean that we hush the quest for thought. The approach to the ineffable leads through the depth of knowledge, not through ignorant, animal-like gazing. But we have to refrain from the mistake of imposing the known world upon what is unknown. We must stop stifling our wonder with dogmatic religious explanations about things we can truly only be in awe about. I’m talking here about the tendency of fundamentalists to impose their half-cocked religious explanations upon an enigma they really can’t understand.
To assume that man stands before God only for the duration of some ostentatious ritual is absurd. The Godly man’s relation to the ineffable is not an isolated event but rather something that is lifelong. It is a mistake to think of some vow or conversion experience as limited engagement with God. All deeds, thoughts, feelings, and events are Gods concern.
Our response to God, if authentic, should be awe. We find ourselves in awe when we accept wonder as our compass instead of the rambling of verbose theologians. God is beyond the limits of our language. Immense freedom and wisdom comes to us when we jettison theological baggage and instead listen directly to God.
Reverent Awe Brings Insight Instead of Idolatry
When we stop judging the ineffable within the confinement of our past experiences, we are able to derive exciting insights from It. This is exemplified in the sort of creative newness that emerges in art, philosophy, and religion. It is a creative newness that grows humanity forward instead of stifling it within the religious indoctrinations instituted by primitive cultures. The infinity of God introduces us to artful newness, diverse emotions, and unanticipated visions.
All men are endowed with the ability to know that they don’t know everything. It is not difficult to recognize the immense preciousness of being. This sort of reverence is indigenous to the human consciousness. But our attempts to explain the unknown devolve into such a myriad array of culturally diversified explanations that we often end up profaning it. We seek to capture the ineffable within the confines of our reason and reduce it into something tangible, like a totem, sculpture, or profound theoretical dogma. The idol worshippers error lies in trying to specify that which is beyond his grasp.
No thing, in and of itself, can serve as a symbol or likeness of God, not even the multitudes of words that we fashion into idolatrous doctrines. Our wisdom is like dust in comparison to the Ineffable. We should revere that which surpasses us instead of judging It. When we stand in authentic awe, our lips will not demand speech, for we will know that if we spoke, we would only deprave It. All we can really do is pause, to be still in the moment, perhaps to only whisper : “I love you”.
Common men generally tend toward self expression instead of expressing an absolute awe of the creation. Conversely, the artist allows the creation to convey meaning to him, realizing that it holds more significance than he is able to absorb. To a mind unwrapped from indoctrination, there is no dogma, only wonder and the realization that the world is just too incredible. Definitions are like taking the name of God in vain.
We Are Part of the Amazing Creation
Understanding ourselves as part of the creation renders our respect for it and helps us to stop constantly measuring it only by its worth to us. We can go out to meet the world in a way other than as a source of supply for our industries. We can stop going out like a hunter seeking prey and instead go out like a lover anxious to reciprocate love. We can go out to meet the world with wonder. When we do this, the familiar retires from our sight and the beauty emerges more distinctly.
We are one with the creation, not separate. We become truly alive when we are in fellowship with the creation. Strife comes with our attempts to conform the creation to our ego instead of appreciating the magnificent gifts it bears to us. Who are we to have the service of the spring for our survival? How can we ever reciprocate for breathing, thinking, seeing, and hearing? Who are we to be the witness of stars and the settings of the sun? Must we allow the extravagant gift of life to become overwhelmed by our desire to possess frivolous trinkets?
Thankfulness should be stronger than our wants and desires. Gloom implies that man thinks he has a right to a better, more pleasing world. Gloom is a snub, not an appreciation. We must stop allowing arrogance to jam our ability to perceive.
When we get carried away in our wonder, we come to understand that we too may perform acts of wonder. God wants us to carry wonder into our actions. Others are lead toward the sense of awe when we artfully demonstrate the joyful wonder of just living and appreciating. Others are lead to the questions: Who made us aware? Who lit the wonder before our eyes? Who said: “let there be light”?
Awe is Not Paralyzing
But what do we do with this awe? Praise is our first answer to wonder. We praise God for the ability we have to see. We become thankful for God’s patience in waiting for us to awaken. God goes out to meet us as soon as we long to know God. We cease to see the trees for the forest.
Within our awe we begin to see tasks. The more deeply we listen, the more we become stripped of arrogance and callousness and gain marvel over the miracle of our awareness. The ineffable enters our consciousness like a ray of light passing into a lake. We are penetrated by insight. We openly embrace this Thing that has struggled so persistently to awaken our awareness to the realization of our greater spiritual powers: powers to help heal what is broken in the world, powers to create within the worldly medium, powers to establish good incidents and powers to brandish our creative insights.
But we have to decide whether we wish to continue to feed our mind on traditional conceit or to actually mean what we truly sense in the inspiration for goodness that is afforded to us. We are incapable of grasping the divine until we grow sensitive to Its supreme relevance and cease stifling our mind with half-truths.
We come to recognize God because we are in awe of God, not for any personal reward. Just as we are not redeemed by a stone idol, so we are not redeemed by elaborate doctrine. But daily, if we will but look, we will witness miracles sufficient to overwhelm us. We cannot know “what” He is; we only know “that” He is. The mind surrenders in love.
Awe and Reason
Reason may aid the mind in acceptance, but from where comes the impetus that makes us love to do what we ought to do? That love is the spark of the divine within. We must desire not only to know more, but to be more.
Reason prompts us with questions about God, but then we find that God has questions for us, such as: Why would we refrain from endeavoring to instill goodness in the hearts of all men? Why would we conceive of the world as only material for our own fulfillment? Why would we rise and fight one another when competitive civilizations simply come and go, eventually sinking into the abyss of oblivion? Why would we adapt religions to meet our selfish needs: to condone slavery, to allow the marketing of indulgences, to justify genocide, to murder heretics? How can we accept such absurdities over the ineffable?
Moral sentiments do not originate in reason: a most learned man may be wicked, while a plain unlettered man may be righteous. Moral sentiments originate in a man’s sense of the ineffable, not in having learned the precepts of some religious theology. Responsiveness to God cannot be copied; it must be original within every soul. The divine cannot be accepted by hearsay.
But truth has nothing to fear from reason; what we should abhor is presumptuousness! True faith will never compel the reason to accept that which is absurd. Faith is not the clinging to a static shrine, but an endless pilgrimage. Faith involves the entertaining of daring thoughts that overwhelm the heart and drive us toward demonstrations of the ineffable. Faith is having the desire to enter synthesis with God.
We Are Expressions of the Ineffable
Unmistakably, the human is interwoven with the Ineffable within the pattern of history. The mere idea that God may exist confirms Gods existence, as our minds inherently begin to form the concepts of moral perfection, thus establishing directives from God.
The more we comply with God, the closer we come to God, and the more we come out of chaos. Wisdom, art, music, love, order, beauty, holiness have all already emerged from the chaos of primitive man. Think of all the additional glory available to us as we move further out of the animal state! It is the discoveries of the spiritual pioneer that we long for. We must ask ourselves if our worship embodies our own unique artful expression or if it is mired in the blindness of simply following the herd.
We are a part of creation and creation is a continuous process. When we grasp the infinite continuity and diversification of the creation, our faith no longer needs static dogmatic denominations. Faith is not assent to a static idea, but rather consent to God’s infinity, which we can clearly observe to be highly diverse and in perpetual change. Stop and think about how monstrously egotistical it is for man to offer his expert opinion of God!
We approach God, not with cold judgement, but with song. No one can explain rationally why he should sacrifice his life for the sake of the good; we just know it. We find our way from awe to action. We find our way from just “thinking about the way to live” to “living what we think”. We grow from within outward.
Without the Ineffable We Are Animal
Unless we recognize the ineffable, trifling needs become our God and the power of our egotistical interests tyrannizes our lives. When we set out solely to satisfy our own desires, we soon forfeit our freedom and become degraded to a mere tool, robot, or yoked animal. The more things we acquire, the more enslaved we become to them. If we get, for example, another car, then more of our time must be devoted to caring for it, servicing it, washing it, insuring it, and working to pay for it. It is much the same way with all the things we hoard. We must learn to say “no” to ourselves in the name of a higher “yes”.
Animals are satiable. Animals are content with having their needs satisfied; but man wants, not only to be satisfied, but also to satisfy. Besides satisfying his own needs, man wants to be a need, and this endeavor is what spurs forth his moral progress. Man wants his life to hold value for others, but his goals remain generalized, unvoiced, and often poorly apprehended. Most men live for that which they don’t even know how to utter, much less accomplish. The feeling of futility that comes with the sense of being useless is the most common cause of psychoneurosis.
An animal is solely concerned with its needs, to “whatever” ends. Blind to a larger goal, the animal strays about, selfishly imitating random patterns that happen to please. But man, capable of foregoing gratification, can deploy his cognitive acts, independent of impulse.
The man seeking goodness becomes conscious of the needs evident to achieve good ends, even when they are not for his own sake. Man’s acts can be self-surpassing (For whom does one plant a tree?). Man finds meaning in his ability to satisfy ends that go beyond his ego.
In terms of astronomical time, our civilization is in its infancy. The realization and expansion of human power has hardly begun. What are we going to do with it? Are we going to follow our passions and act like the beast or will we be able to dominate the beast? Our existence looms between animality and divinity; which will we choose?
We Experience the Ineffable as Individuals
Human existence cannot derive its ultimate meaning from society because society is itself in need of meaning and the ineffable is infinitely diversified. Our quest must not be a product of social coercion but an essential element of our personal nature.
We must ask ourselves what do we choose to do within the gift of being? To what do we volitionally choose to set our minds upon? What design do we choose to weave from the eternal fabric? What ripples do we choose to set astir within the placid lake of time?
We are a short stage between the animal and the spiritual and our state is one of constant wavering. The fully emancipated man will be persistently operational in the fashioning of goodness within the moments of time afforded to him. How magnificent is it to conceive of life as a partnership between God and man toward the achievement of justice, peace, truth, compassion and holiness!
Man is not an innocent bystander in the cosmic drama. There is in us more kinship with the divine than we are able to believe. When we love God and love what God loves, our ultimate commitment is our ultimate privilege. The privilege to be a partner with the ineffable!
Conclusion
God is life persisting inexorably against death and deadness. Godliness is that which enlivens, inspires, and promotes health. How to invest man with the ability to master all of life is the supreme, ineffable challenge to our intelligence.
We must all come to understand that life takes place under wide and diversified horizons that range beyond the span of an individual life or even the life of a nation, generation, or era. Understanding this transcends any dogmatic theory and represents the only course that does not throw man into bestial chaos. Let us seek It with ardor, zeal, intentness, vigor, and exertion, aware that we are constantly within sight of the Ineffable.
-End-
January 11, 2026
If you’re only used to hearing about religion via harsh judgments, or stodgy rituals, or the hypocrisies of conservative politicians, then Abraham Joshua Heschel is a breath of fresh air. His writing is not only effervescent and rife with metaphors, but endlessly thought provoking. In Man Is Not Alone, he unpacks the relationship between man and God and, to a lesser extent, explains the core of the Jewish religion. And even if I don’t understand or agree with all of his arguments, they still gave me a new perspective on religious belief, one that seems built on love and unity rather than hate and control.
According to Heschel, there is an invisible world beyond rationality and the diurnal that he refers to as the ineffable. It is brought out by our sense of awe and terror in reaction to the sublime qualities of what we can experience and is tantamount to the subconscious, which serves as the fount of human creativity. And because we know there is meaning to the things we create, there is also inherent meaning in the world.
For Heschel, our awe at the richness of the world is evidence of this meaning. For me personally, this seems more in line with the notion that the universe is staggeringly complex. There may very well be things out there, or within ourselves, that we can’t fully understand, but skipping from wonder to belief, even with such vibrant language, is a step too far. I’d still err on the side of the existentialists or Viktor Frankl that we create our own meanings once we are here.
Even so, Heschel always appears genuine in his beliefs, like he is trying his best to cut through the noise of the charlatans and the fundamentalists and get back to the heart of the spiritual experience. So when he says that God is a “unique living being” that we must understand and worship intuitively, it feels valid instead of cynical, as it would in the hands of many others.
And his understanding of the purpose of religion–as man’s answer to God’s cosmic question–stands in stark contrast to more traditional views of religious provenance. As Heschel says, “As long as man sees in religion the satisfaction of his own needs, a guarantee for immortality or a device to protect society, it is not God whom he serves but himself.” So belief for the aims of self-aggrandizement, security in heaven, or promotion of one’s own ideas as the basis for any civilization are deeply flawed.
Where Heschel really wins me over, though, is in the ways people are–or should be–connected. He begins with more logical assertions about how our thoughts are built upon the thoughts of others. Human history is an ongoing dialectic in that way. And he expands on this with ideas of his own, like how our subconscious minds are mixed with the ineffable, so we as frail individuals are entwined with the larger universe.
But beyond this, he says, “True love of man is clandestine love of God” and “God means: Togetherness of all beings in holy otherness.” So it seems that goodness in the world is unity and evil is division. And God exists wherever people treat each other with love. I don’t know if this is ultimately true or not, or if this is too much of a radical redefinition of what God is, but, either way, this is the kind of wonderment of the world that strikes me as a lovely one.
According to Heschel, there is an invisible world beyond rationality and the diurnal that he refers to as the ineffable. It is brought out by our sense of awe and terror in reaction to the sublime qualities of what we can experience and is tantamount to the subconscious, which serves as the fount of human creativity. And because we know there is meaning to the things we create, there is also inherent meaning in the world.
For Heschel, our awe at the richness of the world is evidence of this meaning. For me personally, this seems more in line with the notion that the universe is staggeringly complex. There may very well be things out there, or within ourselves, that we can’t fully understand, but skipping from wonder to belief, even with such vibrant language, is a step too far. I’d still err on the side of the existentialists or Viktor Frankl that we create our own meanings once we are here.
Even so, Heschel always appears genuine in his beliefs, like he is trying his best to cut through the noise of the charlatans and the fundamentalists and get back to the heart of the spiritual experience. So when he says that God is a “unique living being” that we must understand and worship intuitively, it feels valid instead of cynical, as it would in the hands of many others.
And his understanding of the purpose of religion–as man’s answer to God’s cosmic question–stands in stark contrast to more traditional views of religious provenance. As Heschel says, “As long as man sees in religion the satisfaction of his own needs, a guarantee for immortality or a device to protect society, it is not God whom he serves but himself.” So belief for the aims of self-aggrandizement, security in heaven, or promotion of one’s own ideas as the basis for any civilization are deeply flawed.
Where Heschel really wins me over, though, is in the ways people are–or should be–connected. He begins with more logical assertions about how our thoughts are built upon the thoughts of others. Human history is an ongoing dialectic in that way. And he expands on this with ideas of his own, like how our subconscious minds are mixed with the ineffable, so we as frail individuals are entwined with the larger universe.
But beyond this, he says, “True love of man is clandestine love of God” and “God means: Togetherness of all beings in holy otherness.” So it seems that goodness in the world is unity and evil is division. And God exists wherever people treat each other with love. I don’t know if this is ultimately true or not, or if this is too much of a radical redefinition of what God is, but, either way, this is the kind of wonderment of the world that strikes me as a lovely one.
July 2, 2023
"Man is more than what he is to himself. In his reason he may be limited, in his will he may be wicked, yet he stands in a relation to God which he may betray but not sever and which constitutes the essential meaning of his life. he is the knot in which heaven and earth are interlaced."
And later on in the same chapter (20 - "The Essence of Man") Heschel adds:
"Man is not an innocent bystander in the cosmic drama. There is in us more kinship with the divine than we are able to believe. The souls of men are candles of the Lord, lit on the cosmic way, rather than fireworks produced by the combustion of nature's explosive compositions, and every soul is indispensable to Him. Man is needed, he is a need of God."
The marginalia such thoughts evoked in me is evidenced in nearly every page of the paperback version I recently purchased. Heschel is more than a deep thinker - he is a beautiful writer. He is both an orthodox Jew as well as an unflinching philosopher. What adds further to his perspective is he practiced what he preached. In his chapter "To Be Is to Stand For" (4), you can feel the conviction that neutrality is never a real option when it comes to moral issues. This principle underpins many of his subsequent writings that helped to both inspire and channel many of the messages delivered (by King and others) during the Civil Rights Movement. Specifically, Heschel would go on to state, "morally speaking, indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty but all are responsible." And, "When I marched in Selma (with King and others), I felt my legs were praying."
As I read Heschel's words several decades later, in a very small but significant manner - I feel as if I'm being brought into this prayer. His words provoke me to do more than pray - to move my own feet and to trust my "sense of the ineffable" to guide me toward the God I greatly desire to worship and a greater understanding that we are truly not alone.
And later on in the same chapter (20 - "The Essence of Man") Heschel adds:
"Man is not an innocent bystander in the cosmic drama. There is in us more kinship with the divine than we are able to believe. The souls of men are candles of the Lord, lit on the cosmic way, rather than fireworks produced by the combustion of nature's explosive compositions, and every soul is indispensable to Him. Man is needed, he is a need of God."
The marginalia such thoughts evoked in me is evidenced in nearly every page of the paperback version I recently purchased. Heschel is more than a deep thinker - he is a beautiful writer. He is both an orthodox Jew as well as an unflinching philosopher. What adds further to his perspective is he practiced what he preached. In his chapter "To Be Is to Stand For" (4), you can feel the conviction that neutrality is never a real option when it comes to moral issues. This principle underpins many of his subsequent writings that helped to both inspire and channel many of the messages delivered (by King and others) during the Civil Rights Movement. Specifically, Heschel would go on to state, "morally speaking, indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty but all are responsible." And, "When I marched in Selma (with King and others), I felt my legs were praying."
As I read Heschel's words several decades later, in a very small but significant manner - I feel as if I'm being brought into this prayer. His words provoke me to do more than pray - to move my own feet and to trust my "sense of the ineffable" to guide me toward the God I greatly desire to worship and a greater understanding that we are truly not alone.
December 24, 2024
I've been on a nondual Judaism kick for a little while, and have previously read a few books by Heschel. When I was looking for my next book to read and remembered that I had a bag of books that I got from a going out of business bookstore in my trunk, and one of them was this book, I ran to retrieve it. I was mostly disappointed.
I loved the way Hechel talked about celebrating the sabbath in The Sabbath; his collected works blew my mind; and reading his biography made me want to meet him. Man is Not Alone didn't have the same magic, didn't really talk to me at all.
The first 75 pages or so are good. He talks about the ineffable and how that relates to the concept of god. That god just means that which we can't explain, that we have no words for. Since I've had experiences like this, I was hooked. But then he gets a little weird. He pretty much spends the rest of the book talking about (from the way I read it at least) how god is separate than us. How this all-knowing, all-seeing, man created the earth and everything on it. Bleh.
If I were to take a quiz about the final three quarters of the book, I would fail miserably because I spent most of the time just skimming and zoning out about other things. I'm definitely not done with Heschel, but I will be more picky when choosing his next book.
I loved the way Hechel talked about celebrating the sabbath in The Sabbath; his collected works blew my mind; and reading his biography made me want to meet him. Man is Not Alone didn't have the same magic, didn't really talk to me at all.
The first 75 pages or so are good. He talks about the ineffable and how that relates to the concept of god. That god just means that which we can't explain, that we have no words for. Since I've had experiences like this, I was hooked. But then he gets a little weird. He pretty much spends the rest of the book talking about (from the way I read it at least) how god is separate than us. How this all-knowing, all-seeing, man created the earth and everything on it. Bleh.
If I were to take a quiz about the final three quarters of the book, I would fail miserably because I spent most of the time just skimming and zoning out about other things. I'm definitely not done with Heschel, but I will be more picky when choosing his next book.
July 6, 2025
Heschel's understanding of the ineffable is far more convincing than his account of God. All things carry a surplus of meaning—he says—they mean more than they are in themselves. He is right. The few glimpses I have had of this surplus, the awareness of everything's interconnectedness, the intuition that any object stands for something else that in turn stands for something farther away— this is what has defined my experience of the sacred. But it is unclear to me why the ineffable should be interpreted as a signal of God. I agree with Heschel that the world is an allusion, yet perhaps it is an allusion without a beginning nor an ending—an assembly of texts that point to each other in circles, a spiderweb that does not cease to be weaved. To me, the ineffable reveals that the world is sacred, not that its sacredness lies outside of it or has an author.
I read Heschel's book as a Jewish, theistic companion for Carse's Finite and Infinite Games.
I read Heschel's book as a Jewish, theistic companion for Carse's Finite and Infinite Games.
November 23, 2020
What a fantastic read. I had heard that reading Abraham Heschel was quite the treat, and this did not disappoint. Page after page I found myself pausing and contemplating this profound treasure. The closest I can compare this to is the Jewish equivalent of C.S. Lewis. I'm a non-Jewish Christian, but Jews and Christians alike will find significance and relevance in Heschel's words. This is a philosophy of religion and as the title suggests, explores the notion that "man is not alone." It does so with such elegance and prose. While this book is highly sophisticated literature (had me reaching for a dictionary more than once), it never felt like work to read. I found myself frequently wanting to share passages with my spouse. This is a book I'll be keeping on my shelf and re-reading often.
November 9, 2024
✡️ 🌟 Man Is Not Alone by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel 🌟 ✡️
“God is not hiding in a temple. The Torah came to tell inattentive man: ‘You are not alone, you live constantly in holy neighborhood;’ “
As someone who would still consider myself at the least agnostic, reading a book all about someone trying to convince others that God is real was a challenge. There was a lot to disagree with, naturally, but it was all so beautifully written.
I was still able to have some takeaways that match with my perception of “God” and found it insightful to learn what others in my community may believe. I like Heschel’s version of a personal God who needs man as much if not more than man needs Him. It was refreshing to read about and made me wish that I believed in it.
3.5/5 ⭐️
“God is not hiding in a temple. The Torah came to tell inattentive man: ‘You are not alone, you live constantly in holy neighborhood;’ “
As someone who would still consider myself at the least agnostic, reading a book all about someone trying to convince others that God is real was a challenge. There was a lot to disagree with, naturally, but it was all so beautifully written.
I was still able to have some takeaways that match with my perception of “God” and found it insightful to learn what others in my community may believe. I like Heschel’s version of a personal God who needs man as much if not more than man needs Him. It was refreshing to read about and made me wish that I believed in it.
3.5/5 ⭐️
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