Aj heschel biography

Abraham Joshua Heschel January 11, — December 23, was a Polish-American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. Heschel, a professor of Jewish mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America , authored a number of widely read books on Jewish philosophy and was a leader in the U.

His mother was also a descendant of Avraham Yehoshua Heshel and other Hasidic dynasties.

Heschel and king

Their father Moshe died of influenza in when Abraham was nine. His mentor in Berlin was David Koigen. He joined a Yiddish poetry group, Jung Vilna, and in , published a volume of Yiddish poems, Der Shem Hamefoyrosh: Mentsch, dedicated to his father. In late October , while living in a rented room in the home of a Jewish family in Frankfurt , Heschel was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Poland in the Polenaktion.

Heschel's sister Esther was killed in a German bombing. His mother was murdered by the Nazis , and two other sisters, Gittel and Devorah, died in Nazi concentration camps. He never returned to Germany, Austria or Poland. He once wrote, "If I should go to Poland or Germany, every stone, every tree would remind me of contempt, hatred, murder, of children killed, of mothers burned alive, of human beings asphyxiated.