Recently I have been reading of and about Rabbi Abraham Heschel, a remarkable man who was descended from generations of orthodox hasidic jews but who famously broke with jewish orthodoxy to reach out to other religions. Heschel broke from his own ranks and was villified by numerous of them, in the 50's and 60's for reaching out to the Catholic Church, becoming active in the civil rights movement (he was a close friend and advisor to Martin Luther King), and speaking out against the Vietnam war.

Heschel personally went to Rome and pleaded with Pope Paul VI that the Second Vatican Council was the time to deal with historical anti-semitism in church doctrine.

Heschel said:

"Both Judaism and Christianity share the
prophet’s belief that God chooses agents
through whom His will is made known and His
work done throughout history. Both Judaism
and Christianity live in the certainty that
mankind is in need of ultimate redemption, that
God is involved in human history, that in
relations between man and man God is at stake;
that the humiliation of man is a disgrace of God."

Heschel specifically wanted eliminated any language that stated or even implied that jews need convert to catholicism to be one with God. He declared to the Pope that faced with the choice of conversion or death in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, he would choose Auschwitz."

More importantly, Heschel attacked both physical and spiritual isolationism. He said "“Unless we learn how to help one another, we will only weaken each other” Also, "The misery and fear of
alienation from God make Jew and Christian cry
together". Heschel believed that "“The world is too small for anything but mutual care and deep respect; the world is too great for anything but responsibility for one another”

This all sounds so wonderful that it is hard to imagine how intensely villified Heschel was among both orthodox jews AND catholics opposed to the changes made by the Second Vatican Council. Heschel's own hasidic colleagues blasted him, saying that anti-semitism was a christian problem, and that it was unseemly and undignified for Jewish people to plead in their own behalf. Also speaking out against isolationism ran against the historical experience of jews. Heschel did not want all of these organized religions living in their own worlds, cut off from each other, he saw each as part of the other, invested in the other.

I wish Heschel was still alive, because his words really speak to current times. There is a lack of *connection* between religions and between peoples. I think Heschel would say that we are jews and we are christians and we are muslims and we are agnostics, but we are humans first, and should identify by what we have in common first, and not by what separates us.

(many of the Heschel quotes can be found at the united states holocaust museum's website, ushmm.org, and at www.edah.org/backend/JournalArticle/4_2_Kimelman.pdf)