Space and Time

Most of us succumb to the magnetic property of things and evaluate events by their tangible results. We appreciate things that are displayed in the realm of Space. The truth, however, is that the genuinely precious is encountered in the realm of Time, rather than in Space. Monuments of bronze live by the grace of the memory of those who gaze at their form, while moments of the soul endure even when banished to the back of the mind. Feelings, thoughts, are our own, while possessions are alien and often treacherous to the self. To be is more essential than to have. Though we deal with things, we live in deeds.

from the book

I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology

Abraham Joshua Heschel,
Edited by Samuel H. Dresner

Summoned

We do not live in a void. We never suffer from a fear of roaming about in the emptiness of Time. We own the past and are, hence, not afraid of what is to be. We remember where we came from. We were summoned and cannot forget it, winding the clock of eternal history.

from the book

I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology

Abraham Joshua Heschel,
Edited by Samuel H. Dresner

The Mark of Cain

God will return to us when we shall be willing to let Him in – into our banks and factories, into our Congress and clubs, into our courts and investigating committees, into our homes and theaters. For God is everywhere or nowhere, the Father of all men or no man, concerned about everything or nothing. Only in His presence shall we learn that the glory of man is not in his will to power, but in his power of compassion. Man reflects either the image of His presence or that of a beast.

from the book

I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology

Abraham Joshua Heschel,
Edited by Samuel H. Dresner

The Mark of Cain

The conscience of the world was destroyed by those who were wont to blame others rather than themselves. Let us remember. We revered the instincts but distrusted the prophets. We labored to perfect engines and let our inner life go to wreck. We ridiculed superstition until we lost our ability to believe. We have helped to extinguish the light our fathers had kindled. We have bartered holiness for convenience, loyalty for success, love for power, wisdom for information, tradition for fashion.

from the book

I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology

Abraham Joshua Heschel,
Edited by Samuel H. Dresner

A Thought of God

The purpose of prayer is to be brought to His attention, to be listened to, to be understood by Him; not to know Him, but to be known to Him To pray is to behold life not only as a result of His power, but as a concern of His will, or to strive to make our life a divine concern. For the ultimate aspiration of man is not to be a master, but an object of His knowledge. To live “in the light of His countenance,” to become a thought of God- this is the true career of man.

from the book

I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology

Abraham Joshua Heschel,
Edited by Samuel H. Dresner

The Mark of Cain

Let modern dictatorship not serve as an alibi for our conscience. We have failed to fight for right, for justice, for goodness; as a result we must fight against wrong, against injustice, against evil. We have failed to offer sacrifice on the altar of peace; thus we offered sacrifices on the altar of war.

I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology

Abraham Joshua Heschel,
Edited by Samuel H. Dresner

The Mark of Cain

We have trifled with the name of God. We have taken the ideals in vain. We have called for the Lord. He came. And was ignored. We have preached but eluded Him. We have praised but defied Him. Now we reap the fruits of our failure. Through centuries His voice cried in the wilderness. How skillfully it was trapped and imprisoned in the temples! How often it was drowned or distorted! Now we behold how it gradually withdraws, abandoning one people after another, departing from their souls, despising their wisdom. The taste for the good has all but gone from the earth. Men heap spite upon cruelty, malice upon atrocity.

I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology

Abraham Joshua Heschel,
Edited by Samuel H. Dresner

THE PEOPLE

Plucked from the Fire

I speak as a member of a congregation whose founder was Abraham, and the name of my rabbi is Moses.I speak as a person who was able to leave Warsaw, the city in which I was born, just six weeks before the disaster began. My destination was New York, it would have been Auschwitz or Treblinka. I am a brand plucked from the fire, in which my people was burned to death …

I speak as a person who is afraid lest God has turned away from [man] in disgust.

I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology

Abraham Joshua Heschel,
Edited by Samuel H. Dresner

To Meet the Spirit

Inspirations are brief, sporadic and rare. In the long interims the mind is often dull, bare and vapid. There is hardly a soul that can radiate more light that it receives. To perform a mitzvah is to meet the spirit. But the spirit is not something we can acquire once and for all but something we must constantly live with and pray for. For this reason the Jewish way of life is to reiterate the ritual, to meet the spirit again and again, the spirit in oneself and the spirit that hovers over all beings.

The spirit rests not only on our achievement, on our goal, but also on our effort, on our way. This is why the very act of going to the house of worship, every day or every seventh day, is a song without words. When done in humility, in simplicity of heart, it is like a child who, eager to hear a song, spreads out the score before its mother.

I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology

Abraham Joshua Heschel,
Edited by Samuel H. Dresner

Routine

The path of loyalty to the routine of sacred living runs along the borderline of the spirit; though being outside, one remains very close to the spirit. Routine holds us in readiness for the moments in which the soul enters into accord with the spirit … A good person is not he who does the right thing, but he who is in the habit of doing the right thing.

I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology

Abraham Joshua Heschel,
Edited by Samuel H. Dresner