Heschel High School Commemorates Rabbi Heschel’s Yahrzeit
Heschel High School gathered as a community to commemorate the 53rd Yahrzeit of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Students and faculty shared reflections on how the school’s namesake inspired them in their day-to-day lives.
Below are excerpts from the program:
Heschel approached interfaith dialogue with humility and courage. He did not believe in blurring differences or merging religions. Instead, he argued that true dialogue begins when people stand firmly in their own faith while remaining open to the holiness of others. As he wrote, “No religion is an island.”
“The Moral Outrage of Vietnam,” [is] a speech given by Rabbi Heschel on January 31st, 1967, almost two years after American troops entered into the Vietnam War. The speech urgently and presciently addresses a fundamental dilemma of modern life that we continue to face: what does it mean to live in a democratic society responsible for committing acts of violence and atrocities against civilians during wartime? Perhaps it is unsurprising, then, that in another part of the speech, Rabbi Heschel utters words that should be a familiar challenge to us all: “in a free society…some are guilty, all are responsible.”
Heschel writes, “Wonder is a state of mind in which we do not look at reality through the latticework of our memorized knowledge, in which nothing is taken for granted.”...When things feel flat, the problem isn’t life itself, but the way I’m seeing it. Radical amazement reminds us that we must look at reality differently, through a lens of wonder, and adjust our state of mind to uplift the ordinary in our daily lives.
Heschel rejects the idea that you need a pure, unwavering faith in God to do pious acts; he believes that “Piety and faith are not necessarily concurrent. There can be acts of piety without faith. Faith is vision, sensitivity, and attachment to God; piety is an attempt to attain such sensitivity and attachment. The gates of faith are not ajar, but mitzvah [commandment] is a key. By living as Jews, we may attain our faith as Jews.” I understand this quote to mean that you can follow the mitzvot without having faith in God, but you can’t have true faith in God without following the mitzvot.
