One of the challenges to understanding and evaluating the thought of Abraham Joshua Heschel is his inability to connect his powerful and seminal religious insights in the form of sustained and linear arguments. Indeed, Heschel is best at the level of the sentence—many of which have acquired iconic status. He is less successful in larger units, particularly in constructing an argument that runs through an entire work. Scholars of Heschel must therefore cull together Heschel's spiritual aphorisms—crafted with unparalleled pathos and rhetorical sophistication—from his wide-ranging works, and assess whether there exists an underlying philosophy of religion and Judaism. They must identify the fundamental concepts that are the foundation of his theology and anthropology and analyze their cogency and their compatibility with one another.

In his recently published work, Shai Held overcomes this formidable obstacle and provides a masterful treatment of one of the major themes of Heschel's religious philosophy: the ideal of self-transcendence. Held has reworked his dissertation into an accessible yet carefully argued interpretation of Heschel's most fundamental anthropological and theological intuitions. Held argues that Heschel's notion of self-transcendence is the interpretive key to understanding Heschel's conception of the human being and God. Consequently, he maintains that Heschel views the highest religious ideal as the shift from reflexive concerns to transitive concerns: to be fully human, one must progress from the focus on the needs and desires of the brute ego and concern oneself with God and other human beings. Likewise, Held claims that Heschel's conception of God is grounded in the notion of self-transcendence: God is characterized as the only being that possesses absolute disregard for self and ego. As Heschel avers, “divine pathos combines absolute selflessness and supreme concern for the poor and exploited.”Footnote ¹

Having uncovered its centrality, Held proceeds to investigate a number of topics in Heschel's philosophy through the lens of his notion of self-transcendence. The topics that Held explores include Heschel's approach to divine pathos, the authority of Halakhah, the theological foundation of his call for social activism, and his innovative reading of prophetic and rabbinic literature. Held pays particular attention to Heschel's understandings of prayer, devoting two chapters to examining Heschel's subtle and innovative approach to this issue. As Held demonstrates, Heschel views prayer as the ultimate act of decentering the self; it is a spiritual exercise that works toward eradicating human selfishness. Held also underscores the importance of prayer for Heschel as a response to God's self-concealment and a “pleading with God to come out of the depths.”Footnote ² As Held notes,

Held's treatment of Heschel's approach to prayer ends with an illuminating comparison between Heschel and Buber on divine hiddenness.

One of the additional contributions of Held's work is his comparisons with twentieth-century Christian theologians such as Karl Barth, Karl Rahner, Henri de Lubac, Emil Brunner, and Paul Tillich. In general, scholarship of modern Jewish thought focuses more on comparisons between modern Jewish and non-Jewish secular thinkers such as Emmanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Martin Heidegger. Less scholarly effort has been devoted to surfacing the modern Jewish and non-Jewish (particularly Christian) religious dialogue. Held demonstrates that Heschel's thought can be profitably understood within the context of debates among Heschel's contemporary Christian theologians. For example, Held arrives at a deeper understanding of Heschel's understanding of revelation by comparing it with the neo-Orthodoxy of Barth and discussions of the relationship between nature and grace by members of the Nouvelle Théologie, such as Rahner and de Lubac.

One of the few weaknesses of Held's meticulous and lucid reading of Heschel is the lack of sufficient attention to Heschel's interchange with other modern Jewish thinkers. It is true that Heschel makes scarce references to modern Jewish philosophers, particularly to his contemporaries. But he cites often and extensively the writings of hasidic masters. In addition, he conducts an implicit dialogue with a wide range of modern Jewish thinkers. A better understanding of Heschel's debt to modern Jewish thought in constructing his philosophy of Judaism in general and his conception of self-transcendence in particular would have to address a series of complex issues. It would have to determine the common ground and differences between Heschel and his hasidic sources and other neo-hasidic thinkers such as Hillel Zeitlin. It would have to explore Heschel's plea for reorienting the self toward God with similar expressions emanating from the Musar movement. It would have to compare Heschel's ideal of a human shift toward divine concerns with Joseph Dov Soloveitchik's portrayal of the self-abnegation of Adam II and Yeshayahu Leibowitz's theocentric philosophy. It would also require examining the possibility that Heschel's conception of self-transcendence—both its anthropological and theological dimensions—is an implied critique of the naturalism of Mordecai Kaplan, his colleague at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Finally, it would be fruitful to investigate the connection between Heschel's notion of God in search of man and his call for self-transitivity, on the one hand, and Buber's dialogical philosophy, on the other. Held discusses some of these questions (115, 222–225, 250 n. 197). But a more comprehensive treatment would provide greater context for the emergence of Heschel's conceptions.

Finally, I would like briefly to relate to the significance of Held's study for illuminating the reception of Heschel's thought among American Jews. Held does not compare his understanding of Heschel with the American Jewish representation of Heschel, which supports his iconic status. Such a comparison, I believe, would reveal the considerable gap between the way Heschel has been understood and employed and his actual religious philosophy. In the American Jewish Renewal movement, for example, Heschel is perceived as a religious visionary who realizes that the foundation of religious life is spiritual experience. But Held demonstrates that Heschel ascribes to spirituality intermediary value: it must lead to worship (‘avodah) and God-centeredness. Held's analysis also problematizes the use of Heschel's involvement in liberal social causes to demonstrate his support for modern religious liberalism. As Held establishes, Heschel's prophetic moral criticism of American society flows from his critique of modernity, which he views as overly anthropocentric and utilitarian.