Rabbi Abraham Heschel Quotes & Sayings

Friendship, a dear balm...
A smile among dark frowns: a beloved light: A solitude, a refuge, a delight. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

He was no longer quite sure whether anything he had ever thought or felt was truly his own property, or whether his thoughts were merely a common part of the world's store of ideas which had always existed ready-made and which people only borrowed, like books from a library. — Milan Kundera

It was through reading that I discovered the crucial, even sacrosanct place the rituals of drinking held in the American imagination - the ingenious way alcohol seemed to lubricate everything from onerous chitchat to self-conscious sexual advances. — Daphne Merkin

and pleasure? What is it that I am tasting?' The most eloquent rabbi and writer of Hasidic mysticism, Abraham Joshua Heschel, left Warsaw in 1939 to become an important — Diane Ackerman

I had a lot of depression as a kid. — Sarah Silverman

I argue that synagogue leaders have it backwards. Engaging individuals is what will lead them to affiliate with a synagogue as the institution that serves them, that meets their needs and those of their family. If synagogues continue to focus on the needs of the institution rather than on the needs of the individual, they will lose their dues-paying members and eventually become financially unviable. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel suggested to folks in the 1960s that they pray with their feet - and those prayers took them to places like the civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama. As a result of the actions of Rabbi Heschel and the influence of American political culture, American Jews - like most Americans - have been taught to vote with — Kerry M. Olitzky

Both were men who knew the frontier code and each other. At a time of action speech, beyond the curtest of monosyllables, was surplusage. — William MacLeod Raine

This is what the Sabbath should feel like. A pause. Not just a minor pause, but a major pause. Not just lowering the volume, but a muting. As the famous rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel put it, the Sabbath is a sanctuary in time. — A. J. Jacobs

The great Jewish Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, "The Greeks learned in order to comprehend. The Hebrews learned in order to revere. The modern man learns in order to use" ('God in Search of Man' p34) — Paul F Herring

Human beings interested her so much that it must always be an advantage to meet another one. — Penelope Fitzgerald

Communications devices were always used to effect change, to effect revolution. Telephone, telegraph - these all seemed like very big enhancements at the time. — Gary Shteyngart