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Poetic Theologian

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:00:00 -0400

Heschel’s enduring popularity has earned for his writing a considerable secondary literature. You have your reader’s guide introductions, your scholarly investigations, your biographies, devotional meditations—throw in a selected works collection or two and you’ve got yourself a satisfying day at the beach. But abundance does not in itself meet all needs: Too much of the existing commentary on Heschel, Shai Held laments, collapses into “either uncritical adoration or overly facile dismissal”: Loyalists praise and exalt without pause, critics dismiss and deride out of hand. And so Held, a recently minted Harvard Ph.D. and the dean of Yeshivat Hadar (a non-denominational Jewish seminary in New York), aims to fill the gap with a treatment both “genuinely sympathetic and unapologetically critical.” Simply put, Held’s mission is to take Heschel seriously.

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