ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL:Prophetic Witness by Edward K. Kaplan and Samuel H. Dresner ($35.00, hardcover; 416 pages Yale University Press, ISBN: 0300071868)

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-72) was one of the outstanding Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century. A renowned American theologian and interpreter of tradition, and the author of such important books as Man Is Not Alone, God in Search of Man, and The Prophets, he was a living example of holiness, compassion, and vehement dedication to social justice.

This book, the first of two volumes, is the only comprehensive biography of Heschel available in any language. Based on interviews with Heschel’s friends and family, archival documents, and his previously unknown writings in Yiddish, German, and Hebrew, the book traces Heschel’s life from his birth in Warsaw, in 1907, to his arrival in New York in 1940. Edward Kaplan and Samuel Dresner describe how Heschel came of age in a Hasidic community and reached maturity in secular-Jewish Vienna and cosmopolitan Berlin, speaking out as a religious philosopher during the advent of Nazism. They relate how he became a teacher in Berlin, in Frankfurt, as part of Martin Buber’s education program (which was the beginning of his lifelong debate with Buber), in Warsaw and in London, while the several Jewish cultures he had absorbed were being destroyed. They show that he was already intellectually and spiritually mature when he immigrated to the United States, fully prepared for his dual roles as social activist and interpreter of Jewish piety.