God-talk, Friendship, and Activism: Theological Affinity and the Relationship Between Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Luther King, Jr
By Susannah Heschel

Both Heschel and King ... spoke of God in similar terms, as deeply involved in the affairs of human history, yet at the same time as other than the worldly realm. For both, God has a subjective life that is affected by human deeds; human beings constitute an object of divine concern.

Heschel developed a theology of what he termed "divine pathos" that he claimed was rooted in the teachings of the biblical prophets. In the experience of the prophets, God was not remote, nor simply a commanding force that expects obedience. Rather, God responds to human beings "in an intimate and subjective manner," experiencing "joy or sorrow, pleasure or wrath." Humanity and God do not inhabit detached realms, because God "has a stake in the human situation.... Man is not only an image of God; he is a perpetual concern of God." Central to the prophets is the conviction that "the attitudes of man may affect the life of God, that God stands in an intimate relationship to the world." Such a theology, by assuming that a dynamic encounter between human beings and God is possible, testifies to some degree of analogy between God and people, thereby elevating the moral significance of human life. Divine pathos, as Heschel defines it, bears the religious implication "that God can be intimately affected" and the political implication that "God is never neutral, never beyond good and evil."

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Using language that is strikingly similar, both Heschel and King assert that God is not the "unmoved Mover" of the Aristotelian tradition, unconcerned with the joys and troubles of human life, but is, in fact, deeply affected by earthly affairs. King writes, "The God that we worship is not some Aristotelian "unmoved mover" who merely contemplates upon Himself; He is not merely a self-knowing God, but an other-loving God Who forever works through history for the establishment of His kingdom." Heschel used similar language, arguing that in Judaism, God is the "most moved Mover," responsive to human suffering and challenging us to respond to the divine initiative: "To be is to stand for, and what human beings stand for is the great mystery of being God's partner. God is in need of human beings."

God's need of human beings is a prominent tradition within classical Jewish mysticism. Human actions affect the divine realm, according to the mystics, strengthening the forces of mercy or judgment within God, who responds in kind. The divine realm itself is dependent upon human actions, because God is understood to have gone into exile with the Jewish people, sending the divine presence to reside in the earthly realm. As much as human beings are in need of redemption, God, too, awaits redemption and exists in a measure of dependence upon human deeds. King writes something similar: "By endowing us with freedom, God relinquished a measure of his own sovereignty and imposed certain limitations upon himself." Divine concern is an assumption that pervades the Black church. Lewis Baldwin writes, "The concept of a personal God of infinite love and undiluted power 'who works through history for the salvation of His children' has always been central to the theology of the Black Church."

Theologically as well as politically, King and Heschel recognized their own strong kinship. For each there was an emphatic stress on the dependence of the political on the spiritual, God on human society, the moral life on economic well-being. Indeed, there are numerous passages in their writings that might have been composed by either one. Consider, for example, Heschel's words: "The opposite of good is not evil, the opposite of good is indifference," a conviction that he translated into a political commitment: "In a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible." King writes, "To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system." In so doing, he went on, "the oppressed becomes as evil as the oppressor." Not to act communicates "to the oppressor that his actions are morally right." Social activism was required by religious faith, both Heschel and King argued, particularly when society had developed immoral institutional structures: "Your highest loyalty is to God and not to the mores, or folkways, the state or the nation or any man-made institution."

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Heschel remained deeply engaged in anti-war efforts during the last years of his life. He lectured frequently at anti-war rallies, and made his opposition to the war an integral part of his public lectures and of his classes at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he served as professor of Jewish ethics and mysticism in the department of philosophy. The atrocities committed by U.S. forces in Vietnam, and the obvious political futility of a war against guerillas, were vigorously condemned by Heschel, who was placed under FBI surveillance; he was branded an anti-American subversive by supporters of the war. But the real subversiveness, Heschel stated, came from the policies of the American government:

Our thoughts on Vietnam are sores, destroying our trust, ruining our most cherished commitments with burdens of shame. We are pierced to the core with pain, and it is our duty as citizens to say no to the subversiveness of our government, which is ruining the values we cherish.... The blood we shed in Vietnam makes a mockery of all our proclamations, dedications, celebrations. Has our conscience become a fossil, is all mercy gone? If mercy, the mother of humility, is still alive as a demand, how can we say yes to our bringing agony to that tormented country? We are here because our own integrity as human beings is decaying in the agony and merciless killing done in our name. In a free society, some are guilty and all are responsible. We are here to call upon the governments of the United States as well as North Vietnam to stand still and to consider that no victory is worth the price of terror, which all parties commit in Vietnam, North and South. Remember that the blood of the innocent cries forever. Should that blood stop to cry, humanity would cease to be.

The crimes committed in Vietnam were destroying American values, and were also undermining our religious lives, he insisted. Someone may commit a crime now and teach mathematics an hour later. But when we pray, all we have done in our lives enters our prayers. As he had articulated in his early essays of the 1940s, the purpose of prayer is not petitionary. We do not pray in order to be saved, Heschel stressed in his writings, we pray so that we might be worthy of being saved. Prayer should not focus on our wishes, but is a moment in which God's intentions are reflected in us. If we are created in the image of God, each human being should be a reminder of God's presence. If we engage in acts of violence and murder, we are desecrating the divine likeness.

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The anguish Heschel felt over the war in Vietnam was relentless and often left him unable to sleep or concentrate on other matters. Throughout those years, he received warnings and complaints from some members of the Jewish community, who felt his protests were endangering American government support for the State of Israel. Similarly, King was attacked for endangering President Lyndon Johnson's support for the Civil Rights movement, and his outspokenness against the war did not win approval from the major Black organizations. SNCC and CORE opposed the war, but the Urban League and the NAACP defended it. Whitney Young stated, "the greatest freedom that exists for Negroes. . . is the freedom to die in Vietnam."

Both Heschel and King spoke of each other as prophets. On 25 March 1968, just ten days before he was assassinated, King delivered the keynote address at a birthday celebration honoring Heschel, convened by the Rabbinical Assembly of America, an umbrella organization of Conservative rabbis. In his introduction of King to the audience, Heschel asked, "Where in America today do we hear a voice like the voice of the prophets of Israel? Martin Luther King is a sign that God has not forsaken the United States of America. God has sent him to us. His presence is the hope of America. His mission is sacred, his leadership of supreme importance to every one of us." In his address, King stated that Heschel "is indeed a truly great prophet." He went on, "here and there we find those who refuse to remain silent behind the safe security of stained glass windows, and they are forever seeking to make the great ethical insights of our Judeo-Christian heritage relevant in this day and in this age. I feel that Rabbi Heschel is one of the persons who is relevant at all times, always standing with prophetic insights to guide us through these difficult days."

It is clear that their relationship carried profound meaning for both Heschel and King. They seem to have been aware of the symbolic significance of their friendship, and used it as a tool to foster further alliances between Jews and Blacks. Heschel worked on joint projects with Jesse Jackson and Wyatt T. Walker, among others, while many of King's closest advisors were Jews. The opposition of most Jewish organizations to affirmative actions programs, beginning in the 1970s, never won support from Heschel, who died in 1972, and it is likely he would have mediated the tensions arising from the Jewish community's hostility toward Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson that developed in the late 1970s and 1980s. Yet while Heschel gave his political support to a wide range of African-American leaders, it was the theological affinity he experienced with King that lent their relationship a particularly strong and profound intimacy.

Neither community today has voices of moral leadership comparable to the voices of King and Heschel. The prophetic mood they created has been replaced by voices of witness that speak about the racism and antisemitism of our society, but without offering the transcendent religious vision they provided. The moments of transcendence that predominated in the Civil Rights era have shifted to moods of cynicism. Perhaps if the memory of that era and the symbolism of the friendship between Heschel and King survives it will one day inspire the transformation that remains so badly needed.

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This feature is excerpted with the permission of the author from "Meeting of the Spirit, by the Spirit: The Relationship between Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Luther King, Jr.," Black Zion: African-American Religious Encounters with Judaism, ed. Yvonne Chireau and Nathaniel Deutsch (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). The longer article, with complete footnotes, contains much more material on King's work, as well as more of the scholarly material on both King's and Heschel's teachings and writings.

A recent issue of Conservative Judaism was devoted entirely to articles about Heschel in honor of the 25th anniversary of his death. For more information,click here.

Susannah Heschel (left, with her father Abraham Joshua Heschel in 1970) holds the Eli Black Chair in Jewish Studies and serves as associate professor in the Department of Religion. She served as the Martin Buber Visiting Professor of Jewish Religious Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt in 1992-93, and has lectured frequently in Germany on topics related to Jewish-Christian relations, and on feminism and religion. She is the editor of a classic collection of essays, On Being a Jewish Feminist, which first appeared in 1983, and more recently edited , Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, an anthology of her father's essays, speeches, articles, and interviews.