The leading theologian of Judaism in the twentieth century. Born in Poland, Heschel was educated in Warsaw, then in Vilna, Lithuania, and finally in Berlin, where he studied philosophy of religion. He taught in Germany until 1939, when he was expelled and returned to Warsaw. Through the efforts of Dr. Julian Morgenstern, president of Hebrew Union College (HUC), the Reform Rabbinical seminary in Cincinnati, he was brought to the U.S.A. in 1940. He taught at HUC for five years, and in 1945 moved to the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, in New York City, where he was professor until his death.
In the 1950s, he did his systematic work, producing a philosophy of religion, Man Is Not Alone (1951) and God in Search of Man (1955). He wrote influential essays in religious philosophy, collected as Man’s Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism (1954). His The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence (1966) addressed a broad audience of religious thinkers. In the late 1950s and through the 1960s he took an active role in the civil rights movement, marching with Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama. He became known as the most prominent voice of Judaism in American public life. He also exercised considerable influence in the deliberations of the Second Vatican Council on the relationships of Christianity and Judaism. He is the single most influential theologian in American Judaism because of the broad perspective and profound knowledge exhibited in his writings.
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