Winter 1984 - 1985 - Quarterly Review

HESCHEL'S SIGNIFICANCE
religious community. I know of no other person of whom this was so
true. ... He seemed equally at home with Protestants and Catholics,"
2
We have all heard the tributes paid him by the Christian
theologians at this symposium. Jewish scholars also bear witness to
Heschel's impact on Christians. Samuel Dresner wrote of Heschel's
"fraternity with the Christian community." 3
And in a paper given at
the Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum said that
"Americans of all religions and races discovered in Heschel a rare
religious genius of penetrating insight and compassion." 4
How do we explain this extraordinary phenomenon: a Jewish
religious thinker, utterly and profoundly Jewish, who touched and
affected not just the lives, but the thought of Christian theologians? I
hope to throw some light on this question by examining the role that
Heschel played in bringing Jews and Christians closer to each other. I
shall approach my subject in three parts:
First, I shall examine those writings of Heschel in which he speaks
explicitly of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. To
this group belong not only passages that reveal Heschel's remarkable
understanding of and sympathy for Christianity, but also his
trenchant and honest—at times painfully honest—articulation of
Christian failure, Christian sin vis-^-vis Judaism in the course of
history, such as the attempts at forced conversion, the "Teaching of
Contempt," and Christianity's role in the Holocaust.
The second section will deal with Heschel's influence on the Second
Vatican Council. It is closely related to the first, but I examine it
separately because of the historical importance of Vatican II for the
religious history of the twentieth century in general, and for
Christianity's relationship to Judaism in particular.
In the third and last part I shall briefly look at Heschel's work more
broadly, to see how Abraham Joshua Heschel the Jew, Heschel the
Hasid, has influenced Christianity today. While the theme of this
paper—Jewish-Christian reconciliation—will be implicit rather than
explicit here, this area may well prove to be Heschel's most enduring
and profound impact on Christianity. It can perhaps be seen as the
source and wellspring of the first two parts of my paper.
One common thread runs through all three sections: the
great-heartedness, the generous, deeply caring figure of Abraham
Heschel. His personal impact on Christians— whether on renowned
theologians, popes and cardinals, or on large lay audiences, such as
the gathering at the 1969 Milwaukee Liturgical Conference—was as
immediate and profound as was the impact of his writings, Or to put it
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