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There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusive and endlessly precious. Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

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Abraham Joshua Heschel
Age: 65 †
Born: 1907
Born: January 11
Died: 1972
Died: December 23
Judaic Scholar
Philosopher
Rabbi
University Teacher
Warszawa
Abraham Heschel
Moments
Hour
Attached
Two
Unique
Stream
Sanctuaries
Every
Teach
Alike
Consecrate
Years
Year
Magnificent
Endlessly
Time
Hours
Holiness
Sanctuary
Moment
Teaches
Emerge
Learn
Streams
Judaism
Given
Precious
Exclusive

More quotes by Abraham Joshua Heschel

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People are anxious to save up financial means for old age they should also be anxious to prepare a spiritual means for old age.... Wisdom, maturity, tranquility do not come all of a sudden when we retire.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. It is a silent justification affording evil acceptability in society.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Self-respect is the fruit of discipline.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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All that is left is to us is our being horrified at the loss of our sense of horror.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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There is no answer to Auschwitz...To try to answer is to commit a supreme blasphemy. Israel enables us to bear the agony of Auschwitz without radical despair, to sense a ray of God's radiance in the jungles of history.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder. Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of your universe. Each day enrapture me with your marvelous things without number. ...I do not ask to see the reason for it all: I ask only to share the wonder of it all.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Every little deed counts.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Faith opens our hearts for the entrance of the holy. It is almost as though God were thinking for us.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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The primary purpose of prayer is not to make requests. The primary purpose is to praise, to sing, to chant. Because the essence of prayer is a song, and man cannot live without a song. Prayer may not save us. But prayer may make us worthy of being saved.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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We worry a great deal about the problem of church and state. Now what about the church and God? Sometimes there seems to be a greater separation between the church and God than between the church and state.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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When religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Wonder, or radical amazement, is a way of going beyond what is given in thing and thought, refusing to take anything for granted, to regard anything as final. It is our honest response to the grandeur and mystery of reality our confrontation with that which transcends the given.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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The awe of God is wisdom.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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New insight begins when satisfaction comes to an end, when all that has been seen, said, or done looks like a distortion. ... Man's true fulfillment depends on communion with that which transcends him.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Prayer is not a stratagem for occasional use, a refuge to resort to now and then. It is rather like an established residence for the innermost self. All things have a home: the bird has a nest, the fox has a hole, the bee has a hive. A soul without prayer is a soul without a home.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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We forfeit the right to worship God as long as we continue to humiliate negroes. ... The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.
Abraham Joshua Heschel