Man is Not Alone by Abraham Joshua Heschel

Man is Not Alone by Abraham Joshua Heschel

Man Is Not Alone is a profound, beautifully written examination of the ingredients of piety: how man senses God's presence, explores it, accepts it, and builds life upon it. Abraham Joshua Heschel's philosophy of religion is not a philosophy of doctrine or the interpretation of a dogma. He erects his carefully built structure of thought upon foundations which are universally valid but almost generally ignored. It was Man Is Not Alone which led Reinhold Niebuhr accurately to predict that Heschel would "become a commanding and authoritative voice not only in the Jewish community but in the religious life of America." With its companion volume, God in Search of Man, it is revered as a classic of modern theology.

Abraham Joshua Heschel was born in Poland in 1907 and obtained his early education at a yeshiva (a Talmudic or rabbinical study school) before earning his doctorate at the University of Berlin. He departed for London in 1939, six weeks before the Nazi invasion of Poland, and subsequently for the United States, where he taught from 1945 to 1972 at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. Heschel was deeply involved in social movements for peace, civil rights, and interfaith understanding as an activist, scholar, and teacher.