God in Search of Man : A Philosophy of Judaism
by Abraham Joshua Heschel
Book Summary Information
Author: Abraham Joshua HeschelEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1976-06-01
ISBN: 0374513317
Number of pages: 437
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Book Reviews of God in Search of Man : A Philosophy of Judaism
Book Review: Anti-rationalism taken too far
Summary: 1 Stars
I started reading this book as part of an effort to get a better understanding of Jewish intellectual history. Heschel is routinely mentioned as one of the great Jewish philosophers of the 20th century and so I was excited to delve into this, one of his "greatest works". I could hardly have been more disappointed.
Heschel is a mystic and as such, eschews rationalist approaches to religion. Ok, sure. I'm willing to suspend my rationalism in that area for long enough to get through the book. The damning thing, however, is that Heschel gets sloppy about where exactly this anti-rationalism applies. Even if rationalism doesn't apply to the experience of religion, even if we can't describe God or judge a religious experience in the same way we would judge a scientific breakthrough, I still expect him to provide some sort of evidence for his historical claims. He consistently refuses to do this, and the book as a whole reads as 400+ pages of unsupported claims and wild leaps. Here are a few examples.
p. 223 "Should we maintain that [the prophets] were mentally deranged, victims of hallucinations? . . . Their message being ages ahead of human thinking, it would be hard to believe in the normalcy of our own minds, if we questioned theirs. Indeed, if such is insanity, then we ought to feel ashamed of being sane... And granted, unlikely as it is, that signs of sickness should be traced in the life of the prophets. . . it would still be absurd to reject their claim. Is it not more meaningful to maintain that a person has to be sick in order to see what those who are benighted by their robustness and complacency fail to perceive?"
Translation "Even if the prophets were crazy, we still have to believe them. Perhaps its simply because we aren't crazy that we can't experience God directly."
p. 229 "What gave the prophets the certainty that they witnessed a divine event and not a figment of their own imagination? . . . A thunder out of a blue sky, a voice coming from nowhere, an effect without a visible cause, would not have been enough to identify a perception as a divine communication. . . [These] only manifest a force of nature, not God."
Here Heschel ignores the fact that until very recently in human history (in fact, until the rise of scientific knowledge) forces of nature were assumed to be direct actions of God. If he wasn't so intent on assuming a modern framework for the Bible, this would be readily apparent.
And of course, leading questions play a large role in Heschel's rhetoric. . .
p. 240 "Why does the Bible surpass everything created by man? Why is there no work worthy of comparison with it? Why is there no substitute for the Bible, no parallel to the history it has engendered? Why must all who seek the living God turn to its pages?"
p. 247 "To deny the divine origin of the Bible is to brand the entire history of the spiritual efforts and attainments in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as the outgrowth of a colossal lie, the triumph of a deception which captured the finest souls for more than two thousand years."
Yeah, that's right, monotheists have the best souls.
p. 243 [The Bible] is the foutainhead of the finest strivings of man in the Western World. It has elicited more holiness and compassion from mankind than we are able to comprehend. Most of what is noble and just is derived from its spirit."
I'd say the Bible has inspired its fair share of events. The fact that Heschel can claim that those events are overwhelmingly good, however, simply showcases his blindness to history and reality.
I will finish this book, not because I find anything redeeming in it, but simply so that I can say I've read Heschel. I can only hope that my future explorations of Jewish intellectual history uncover something, well, intellectual.
Summary of God in Search of Man : A Philosophy of Judaism
Abraham Joshua Heschel was one of the most revered religious leaders of the 20th century, and God in Search of Man and its companion volume, Man Is Not Alone, two of his most important books, are classics of modern Jewish theology. God in Search of Man combines scholarship with lucidity, reverence, and compassion as Dr. Heschel discusses not man's search for God but God's for man--the notion of a Chosen People, an idea which, he writes, "signifies not a quality inherent in the people but a relationship between the people and God." It is an extraordinary description of the nature of Biblical thought, and how that thought becomes faith.
God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism is among Abraham Joshua Heschel's most comprehensive studies of the Jewish religion. It is a work of impeccable scholarship conveyed with absolute clarity, in a spirit of utmost reverence and compassion. "Religion is an answer to man's ultimate questions," Heschel declares on the book's first page. Religion that forgets its roots in humanity's lived experience, religion that inadequately addresses the earthly realities of life, Heschel says, is false religion. And yet, Heschel asserts that religion is not a vehicle by which humanity draws closer to God; it is always God who reaches out to humanity through religion. "Judaism is God's quest for man. The Bible is a record of God's approach to His people. More statements are found in the Bible about God's love for Israel than about Israel's love for God."
God in Search of Man is almost as exhausting as it is exhaustive. Detailed analyses of "Awe," "Wonder," and "Glory" stand alongside discourses on religion and time, the nature of prophesy, and the problem of evil. Heschel's encyclopedic knowledge of and omnivorous interest in the nature of Judaism is, for most readers, more productively taken in small doses than swallowed whole. The book's table of contents, however, will get a considerable workout over the years, as readers return again and again to find Heschel's opinions about various aspects of spiritual life. --Michael Joseph Gross
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