Abraham J. Heschel on Mysticism and Hasidism

Abstract

��� In one of the most insightful observations on theology in Judaism, Heschel pointed out the role played by Spinoza’s sharp distinction between philosophy and the Bible, as inspiring a vision that encouraged a view of Judaism as legalistic. In the same essay he even speaks about a ‘‘Halakhic heresy.’’ 1 Spinoza’s distinction has been appropriated by Moses Mendelssohn, on the one hand, and by German philosophers like Kant and Hegel on the other hand. In a way, much of Heschel’s opus is a lengthy polemic with, and an effort to offer an alternative to, this separation between the legalistic and the theological. 2 He contributed not just an alternative theology but one that strives to dissolve an opposition between the two and offers instead a consonant synthesis between thinking about God and living in a religiously performative community. By doing so Heschel capitalizes especially on Hasidism, but in more general terms he accentuates Jewish mysticism as a clue for understanding the enlarged version of Jewish theology. Already in a relatively early period of his career in the United States, he complained that ‘‘there is no proper evaluation of the place of mystical experience in the life of Israel.’’ 3 Articulated almost a decade after the publication of Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, and years after Heschel became wellacquainted with it, this is an audacious statement, reflecting Heschel’s independent approach. Immediately following the above statement, he confessed that the yearning for prophetic inspiration remains even in the present, an issue to which we shall return below. No less interesting is the emphasis on the topics of revelation, inspiration, and prophecy, in a period when the dominant figures in the small American academe of Jewish studies were Harry A. Wolfson at Harvard, interested mainly in history of philosophy; Louis Finkelstein and Saul Liebermann at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, concerned basically with Rabbinics; and Salo W. Baron, a noted historian at Columbia University. None of them, let me emphasize, looked favorably on Jewish mysticism, to say the least.