The self is inescapably beset by the questions: What shall I do with my existence, with my being here and now? What does it mean to be alive? What does being alive imply for my will and intelligence?
Who Is Man?, p. 105-106
This is the decision which we have to make: whether our life is to be a pursuit of pleasure or an engagement for service. The world cannot remain a vacuum. Unless we make it an altar to God, it is invaded by demons. This is no time for neutrality. We Jews cannot remain aloof or indifferent. We, too, are either ministers of the sacred or slaves of evil.
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, p. 75
The opposite of freedom is not determinism, but hardness of heart. Freedom presupposes openness of heart, of mind, of eye and ear.
According to Hegel, the history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom. With some qualification one might say in the spirit of the prophets that the history of the world with which they dealt was none other than the progress of the condition of hardness of heart.
Freedom is not a natural disposition, but God's precious gift to man. Those in whom viciousness becomes second nature, those in whom brutality is linked with haughtiness, forfeit their ability and therefore their right to receive that gift. Hardening of the heart is the suspension of freedom.
The Prophets, p. 243
There is immense silent agony in the world, and the task of man is to be a voice for the plundered poor, to prevent the desecration of the soul and the violation of our dream of honesty.
The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the Prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, p. 224-225
Why should religious, the essence of which is worship of God, put such stress on justice for man? Does not the preoccupation with morality tend to divest religion of immediate devotion to God? Why should a worldly virtue like justice be so important to the Holy of Israel? Did not the prophets overrate the wroth of justice?
Perhaps the answer lies here: righteousness is not just a value; it is God's part of human life, God's stake in human history. Perhaps it is because the suffering of man is a blot upon God's conscience; because it is in relations between man and man that God is at stake. Or is it simply because the infamy of a wicked act is infinitely greater than we are able to imagine? People act as they please, doing what is vile, abusing the weak, not realizing that they are fighting God, affronting the divine, or that the oppression of man is a humiliation of God.
He who oppresses a poor man insults his Maker
He who is kind to the needy honors God.
Proverbs 14:31; cf. 17:5
The universe is done. The greater masterpiece still undone, still in the process of being created, is history...It is within the realm of history that man is charged with God's mission.
Justice is not an ancient custom, a human convention, a value, but a transcendent demand, freighted with divine concern. It is not only a relationship between man and man, it is an act involving God, a divine need.
The Prophets, p. 252-253
Carl Stern: What made the Vietnam War a religious issue?
Rabbi Heschel: Of course it's a religious issue, for what does God demand of us primarily? Justice and compassion. What does He condemn above all? Murder, killing innocent people. How can I pray when I have on my conscience the awareness that I am co-responsible for the death of innocent people in Vietnam? In a free society, some are guilty, all are responsible.
1972 NBC Interview with Carl Stern
The greatness of that Selma march continues to reverberate because it was not simply a political event, but an extraordinary moral and religious event as well. For my father, the march was a deeply spiritual occasion. When he came home, he said, "I felt my legs were praying." His only regret, he later wrote, was that "Jewish religious institutions have again missed a great opportunity, namely, to interpret a Civil Rights movement in terms of Judaism. The vast number of Jews participating actively in it are totally unaware of what the movement means in terms of the prophetic traditions."
Susannah Heschel, Intro to The Prophets