THE STRUGGLE

JOHN LEWIS: We in the African American church would, from time to time, compare ourselves to the Children of Israel and we would sing the songs. We identified with that struggle; we have been held as slaves, held in bondage and the church, the religious institution provided for us a way out. The music, when we have been beaten and jailed, we would just sing a hymn of the church and it just lifted you, moved you. So there were probably some people that didn’t really believe, but in the process of being involved in the movement, but they converted to the idea that singing “amen, amen,” in one of the hymns molded them. So the Church, the religious institution became a haven for all of us.

TAYLOR BRANCH: Heschel was controversial within the Jewish community both because he reached out to Christians at a time when the Jewish community, feeling wounded -for good reason by the Holocaust-and teachings of Christianity that they were a deicide people, or were saying we don’t have anything to do with Christians. But also, for reaching out to Black people...It’s like a double whammy. We’re trying to fit in here in America and you’re upsetting the Christians about what Jews think and you’re also saying that we need to be allied with Black people which will further expose the Jewish communities in the South.

FEED THE SOUL

SHARON BROUS: There are a couple of elements of Heschel’s teachings around Judaism that I think are really important as we think about what it means to live into a Jewish experience or Jewish life that he so beautifully wrote about it and called us toward. One is really understanding the inner life, really recognizing that each of us is called to explore and to nurture and to nourish a soul. That you can have all the books and you can say all the right words and you can show up on time but if we don't pay attention to and work to feed the soul then it's all empty and meaningless. That is matched with a kind of prophetic activism, that it's not enough to nurture the soul and feed ourselves and create environments in which we can dance and cry, but we also have to translate our core values into the demands of the society that we're living in. And a lot of Heschel’s activism especially in his later years was really rooted in that belief. That he saw and knew and understood that you can't take Torah seriously, you can't take the Hebrew Bible seriously and not then translate the encounter between Moses and Pharaoh into the immediate, into understanding what was happening with race relations in America.

JAMES RUDIN: So you cannot understand Heschel’s commitment to the American Civil Rights Movement without understanding where it was coming from. It wasn't just political, he wasn’t running for any political office, he was not the chairman of some committee. He was coming out of his own experiential life as a committed Jew and who knew a lot about the prophets. And he said if Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah were here, they would be shaking the finger at the community, pointing out the errors. Not in hatred but in love, that you can be better, you can do better. Always remember, the prophets chastised the people but they loved the people of Israel. Well Heschel, and I would say Dr Martin Luther King obviously, they loved America but they thought America was not living up to its potential greatness, what it promised itself, what we promised ourselves as Americans.

WORLD OF INDIFFERENCE

SHAI HELD: I think on some level he felt, how could I be a theologian and an interpreter for tradition who talks about the sanctity of human life, who talks about the ways that God cares precisely and deeply about the widow and the orphan and allow the Civil Rights Movement to pass me by? How is that even coherent? How do you write about the prophet Amos, knowing that the prophet Amos would have been involved in the Civil Rights Movement, and just say, ‘No thanks. I'd rather hang out of my library, parsing words of the prophet Amos.’ You can't do it, not if you really hear the prophets making a claim on you, which I think he did. The Bible was alive for Heschel in some very basic way. This wasn’t just a book he was studying as a cultural artifact. This was a book that, as it were, seized him by the lapels. What are you going to do?

BENJAMIN SAX: I would say that one of Heschel’s major theological contributions is to say that one can be the victim, like Jews in the Holocaust, and Jews who suffer from antisemitism, and yet, slip into a safe space of “whiteness” in this particular context. And here is a Jewish theologian that says “No, I will not let you be complicit. The prophets won’t let you, God won’t let you, you have a responsibility if you’re talking about otherness and loving the stranger to strip yourself of that privilege, to lean into that discomfort, and accept the racism that bedevils all aspects of this society, and work towards changing the conditions so that you can let God back into the world. And I think that that is a major part of Heschel’s contribution to American Jewish theological life.

SHAI HELD: He lived, I think, in excruciating ways with the reality that as the world and the family he grew up in was destroyed in Europe, most of the world was in fact indifferent. So, overcoming the sin of indifference was everything to him, it was kind of making repair for a world that was broken enough to allow a Holocaust to take place. There you see the Bible and his own biography really coming into dialogue with each other.

The idea of repairing or restoring a broken world is central to much of Heschel’s thought, particularly that surrounding the prophets and the prophetic tradition. Heschel conceived of God and humankind as partners in restoring the things that were broken in the world, especially relationships. When it came to civil and human rights, there was no question for Heschel as to what he was called to do. The example of the prophets and the terms of the ancient covenant between God and Israel made clear that we are to stand with others for justice and righteousness and to address oppression and injustice wherever they are to be found. One of Heschel’s most visible and most important public moments came when, at no small risk to himself and his reputation within parts of the Jewish community, he joined Martin Luther King, Jr. and other Black leaders to march for justice in Selma, Alabama. In so doing, he said he felt like “my legs were praying” - that, in joining the march, Heschel was combining physical action with soul action, walking in the metaphorical steps of his Hasidic forebears, as his daughter, Susannah, has written.

1. Congressman John Lewis, who led the “Bloody Sunday” march in Selma, Alabama in 1965, points out that many African-Americans identified with the Jewish experience, particularly that of being a people in captivity. Why might this have been an important connection for the civil rights movement?

A. On the other hand, Heschel’s daughter, Susannah, remembers her father saying that, if there were any hope for Judaism in America, it would come from the Black church. What did Heschel mean by that?

2. Scholar Cornel West implies in the film that, in coming to Selma in March 1965 to march beside Martin Luther King, Jr., Heschel “wasn’t just uttering words. He was putting it all on the line.” Why was it important to King and other leaders that Heschel be there, and why was it important to Heschel? How did Heschel’s presence at Selma, and the dangers associated with it, reflect his commitment to the tradition represented by the ancient Hebrew prophets whom he had studied? In what ways was Heschel’s presence also a critique of certain contemporary Jewish perspectives, as West suggests?

3. What does Rabbi Sharon Brous mean when, reflecting on Heschel at Selma, she asserts that “you can't take Torah seriously, you can't take the Hebrew Bible seriously and not then translate the encounter between Moses and Pharaoh into the immediate, into understanding what was happening with race relations in America. . . . “ What public issues or concerns today would lead you to speak out in a prophetic way?

4. What does Rabbi Brous mean when she says that Heschel knew it was important for him and for other Jews to be part of the American civil rights movement because of the Holocaust? How did the experience of the Holocaust possibly influence Heschel’s thinking and that of other Jews with regard to what was happening to Blacks in America? Is there an irony in the fact that many Jews like Heschel stood with Christians in America in the 1960s, while most Christians in 1930s Germany did not stand with Jews like Heschel and his family?

5. What do you think Sax means when, thinking of Heschel and King, he says that “prophets are the ones that take people out of their sense of comfort and complicity with everyday life and problematize it, so that they start thinking beyond their own needs”? In what ways are both Heschel and King taking people out of their comfort zones and “problematizing” the status quo of everyday life in America in the 1960s?

6. Heschel famously wrote that, in marching with King at Selma he felt like his legs “were praying.” What do you think Heschel meant by that? In what way might his involvement at Selma be seen as prayer? How did Heschel connect piety and action, and how does that reflect his understanding of the Hebrew prophets?

7. A number of civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr. and Andrew Young, saw Heschel’s presence at Selma as lending a unique spiritual authority to an event that had strong political and social overtones. It was important for leaders like King and Young that the civil rights movement be grounded in a spiritual foundation. How did Heschel’s presence and support help with that?

8. Why, according to civil rights historian Taylor Branch, was Heschel’s involvement with King and other Christian leaders so controversial within parts of the Jewish community? What risks was Heschel taking in engaging with these Christian leaders? How was that complicated by the fact that King and others of these leaders were Black?

9. What does Taylor Branch mean when, interpreting Heschel, he says that the prophets “were the first men in history to regard power and justice as opposites”? How does that reflect Heschel’s understanding of the prophetic tradition and his reasons for being involved in the American civil rights movement?

10. At a time when so much turmoil is underway in America, what does Heschel’s life and legacy show us about the need for individuals to seek inner spiritual depth while at the same time being present on the streets demanding social change? Are they connected? Do the social movements of today recognize the need for individual spiritual growth? 11. What does Shai Held mean when he says that, for Heschel, “overcoming the sin of indifference was everything,” especially in light of the Holocaust? How might a concern about indifference---to segregation and discrimination---have led Heschel to march at Selma in 1965? And why did Heschel in his later year take up the cause of Soviet Jews again raising concerns about indifference?