I Asked For Wonder

“Heschel, like his hasidic forebears, had the gift of combining profoundity with simplicity. He found just the right word not only to express what he thought but to evoke what he felt, startling the mind and delighting the heart as well as adressing and challenging the whole person. There are passages in this collection which, once encountered, will be taken up again and again, until they are absorbed into one’s inner life. Reading Heschel is to peer into the heart of that rarest of human phenomena, the holy man.” With these words, Rabbi Samuel H. Dresner, an early student and longtime personal friend, introduces his collection of the aphorisms and spiritual wisdom of Abraham Joshua Heschel. Drawing upon virtually all of Herchel’s published work, Rabbi Dresner has an unerring eye for the heart of the matter: brief, gemlike statements that have both the universal appeal and the element of surprise of all great wisdom literature.