In This Hour: Heschel’s Writings in Nazi Germany and London Exile

Rabbi, historian, and philosopher, Heschel (1907–72) left Warsaw for Berlin when he was 20, experiencing the full measure of institutionalized German anti-Semitism. Deported and ghettoized, the author eventually escaped to the United States in 1940. These translated essays represent only that material from his years in Germany and a few months in England (1936–37) when he wrote primarily in German. Heschel is mostly remembered for his masterful work, The Prophets (1963). This collection contains other unpublished texts that highlight Heschel’s profound and deep appreciation for Jewish learning as the key to Jewish identity; he writes, “Jewish literature is not a dead past but the immediate present.” Heschel obliquely wrestles with the question of Jewish historiography: Is Jewish history merely valorized memory or is Jewish education, as the bearer of living tradition, equipping individuals for their spiritual destiny?