A Muslim Interfaith Leader Looks at Abraham Joshua Heschel: Second Speech in the Union Theological Seminary Interfaith Cycle, Originally Delivered February 6, 2013

Abstract

A Muslim Interfaith Leader Looks at Abraham Joshua Heschel: Second Speech in the Union Theological Seminary Interfaith Cycle, Originally Delivered February 6, 2013 Eboo Patel My mother had a friend, a senior colleague at the community college where she teaches, a man who had adventured in countries I'd never even heard of and somehow settled down in the western suburbs of Chicago. Marvin was an American aquarium drinker, a man who contained multitudes. He would order off the Chinese language menu at Argyle Street eateries, he knew when the chicken was fresh at the restaurant owned by Moroccan Jews on Devon Avenue, he would take the widow of the Consul General of the Philippines to the Walnut Room at Marshall Fields on State Street every Christmas holiday. When Marvin found out my wife was a civil rights attorney, he began spontaneously quoting Clarence Darrow courtroom speeches at remarkable length. I can't even tell you how many religious passages he photocopied for me, placing them in manila folders and putting them in my hands with the line, “This'll give you something to think about.” I seriously believed that Marvin had so much life that death would turn and run. But that's not how this world works. Toward the end, when I would visit him in Evanston hospital, he didn't regale me with the thousand things he was expert on—no chitchat about online poker or presidential wills. Marvin had only one subject at that stage, one focus. He would pull me so close I could smell old age on his skin and he would say, “Have you been reading Heschel?” Abraham Joshua Heschel. In his last days, that was Marvin's only topic of conversation with me. I'd heard of Heschel before, here and there, but never paid him much mind. Yet the way Marvin breathed the name—like a wish, like a will, like a prayer—there on his deathbed … Well, I went out and bought some Heschel. And as I read, I felt like the angels had descended and were singing around me, like I was in a room surrounded by Chagall Windows and the characters were dancing. It is writing that brings the light of heaven to the Harlem of life. It is writing that reminds me why I am a Muslim, and this is not just because Rabbi Heschel sports a bushy beard. What first moved me about Islam, after a long time with my back turned to the tradition, was the sense that we are put here by the Source for big things. The Qur'an says: “God did not create the Heavens and the earth and what is between them in sport.” God gave humankind a mission to fulfill; God believes in us. In Islam, we are taught that God picks up a lump of clay and gives it His breath and thereby creates Adam, the first human being, the representative of all humankind. God tells Adam that he was made to be His abd and Khalifa, His servant and representative upon the earth. The Angels are called forth and God tells them to bow to the figure he has entrusted with His Creation. The Angels are petulant. Why shall we honor a creature who will only fiddle and destroy, they ask. “I know what you do not know,” God responds. Allah then sets up a contest between Adam and the Angels. He asks the Angels to name the different parts of Creation. The Angels reply that the only knowledge they have is to sing of God's glory. God gives the same task to Adam, but first He gives Adam a treasure—the ability to name the names of Creation. Adam wins the contest. It is a story that has great resonance in Abraham Joshua Heschel's work. “Man's most precious thought is God,” he says, “but God's most precious thought is man … (We are) holy of holies.” In the Qur'an, when the Angels scorn Adam, God's response is: “I know what you do not know.” Think what this means: God vouches for our goodness to the Angels. God is convinced that we are...