Abraham Joshua Heschel First Class: Gratitude, Awe, and Actually Connecting to God

The vast majority of work on Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel is academic: summaries, clarification, footnotes and so on. In this series of classes, I'm here to show you how to live Heschel's religious philosophy, not understand it. In this first lecture, I show how one begins this process by first gathering three philosophies: 1) Schleiermacher, 2) Pragmatism, and 3) Phenomenology. With these basics, one is ready to identify what connecting to God looks like, whether you've ever done it yourself, and how it creates and informs Judaism.

Judaism as a religion

Abraham Joshua Heschel's perspective is what drew me to Judaism over 40 years ago. It's such a breath of fresh air to hear a living rabbi who understands and teaches Heschel's understanding of the religious foundation of Judaism.