Abraham Joshua Heschel's Pre- and Post-Holocaust Approach to Hasidism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11679116 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alexander Even-Chen (Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 139-166 |
| Publication date | 2014-04-08 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Modern Judaism - A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0276-1114 • E-ISSN: 1086-3273 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/mj/kju006 |
| OpenAlex | W2054210201 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 2 |
In this article, I examine the change in Heschel’s attitude toward Hasidism following the Holocaust. As we shall see, a distinction must be made between two periods: the young Heschel was very critical of Hasidism, however following the Holocaust, his attitude changed. In order to ground this assertion, I will examine writings from the two periods, and will consider some of Heschel’s autobiographical statements. These statements are of great value to our understanding of how Heschel perceived what was happening in his life. One enlightening comment upon his evolving view of Hasidism appears in Heschel’s book The Earth is the Lord’s. In 1944, Heschel was invited by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York to deliver a lecture on Eastern European Jewry. The lecture formed the basis for that book. At the end of the book, Heschel states: In the spiritual confusion of the last hundred years, many of us overlooked the incomparable beauty of our old, poor homes. We compared our fathers and grandfathers, our scholars and rabbis, with Russian or German intellectuals ... ..measured the merits of Berditchev and Ger with the standards of Paris and Heidelberg.1
Assertion · Confusion · German · Judaism · Order (exchange · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · The Holocaust · Theology · Value (mathematics · Computer Science · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Jewish Identity and Society · Mathematics · Psychology · Religion, Theology, History, Judaism, Christianity · History · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.17 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2020 - 2020 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |