![View of the Western Wall in Israel with sun set in the distance](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_21_9__1920x825/public/2026-07/iStock-852178720.jpg?itok=WY-Z5Tui) # Abraham Joshua Heschel July 02, 2026 Maximillian Wetter Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) was a philosopher, scholar, mystic, poet, and activist whose teachings during the twentieth century left an indelible mark on American Jewish life. Having seen his entire way of life eradicated during the Holocaust, Heschel sought to reinvigorate the Jewish spirit in the wake of this profound loss by interweaving Hasidic mystical teachings with a prophetic theological framework that emphasized the pathos of the human-divine relationship. Like the Kabbalists and Hasidic masters before him, Heschel utilizes a pedagogical and literary style that does not explicitly discuss his mystical or revelatory experiences, opting instead to conceal them within his poetic and philosophical writings. His experience at the Western Wall, cited here, is one such experience. The Six-Day War in 1967 felt, for many Jews in both America and Israel, like ‘the Holocaust that didn’t happen,’ that is, the war would bring with it another unimaginable cataclysm: the mass destruction of Jewish life. Heschel’s emotional state during the war’s build-up and the eventual victory of Israel was thus an amalgam of sheer terror and overwhelming joy. Though not a political Zionist, Heschel spoke frequently of the theological importance of the Land of Israel in his works; his visit to the city of Jerusalem immediately following the war, in the summer of ’67, was suffused with religious import. It was during this trip, as he visited the Western Wall––which only became part of Israeli territory as a result of the war––for the first time, that the experience recounted here took place. While it is difficult to know the exact effects this experience had on Heschel, the revelation at the Western Wall is perhaps the most lucid report of a direct mystical encounter in all his works. The encounter with the Divine Presence, symbolized by the wall, catalyzed his connection with the State and eventually led to the writing of *Israel: An Echo of Eternity*, a book that has tainted the legacy of his activism because of its political implications. Nevertheless, the alleviation of his anxiety intermixed with his joy at the survival of a bastion of Jewish spiritual existence, and his mystical disposition coalesced in Jerusalem––which he calls “a city of prophetic trance” throughout *Echo of Eternity*––all contributed to his revelatory experience. Heschel’s exilic mysticism, like that of many Eastern European Jews who witnessed the extermination of their way of life, stands at the nexus of nostalgic memory and redemptive longing. His resistance to an undifferentiated *unio mystica*, or mystical unity with God, is coterminous with the liberatory effects of the mystical consciousness he seeks to live by. ## Source *Israel: An Echo of Eternity*, published in 1968, discusses the religious import of his visit to the Land of Israel in the wake of the war and records his experience at the Western Wall. It is the only place where Heschel outlines a quasi-prophetic event in his own life, a state of consciousness echoing his understanding of revelation, where the nature of the liberatory path is to remain unliberated: > What is the Wall? The unceasing marvel. Expectation. The Wall will not perish. The redeemer will come. > > Silence. I hug the stones; I pray. O, Rock of Israel, make our faith strong and Your words luminous in our hearts and minds. No image. Pour holiness into our moments. > > The Wall is silent? For an instant I am her tongue. Then I hear: I am a man of unclean lips. . . O God, cleanse my lips, make me worthy to be her tongue. Forgive me for having tried to be her tongue for one instant. Forgive my ecstasy. > > I am afraid of detachments, of indifference, of disjunctions. Since Auschwitz my joys grieve, pleasures are mixed with vexations. No security anywhere, any time. The sun can be a nightmare, humanity infinitely worse than a beast. How to be in accord with Isaiah? I ask in my prayers. Suddenly ancient anticipations are resurrected in me. Centuries went and came. Then a moment arrived and stood still, facing me. Once you have lived a moment at the Wall, you never go away. How can I depart from you? You have become a part of me. My bones will forever be filled with your secret.\[1\] ## Notes \[1\] Abraham Joshua Heschel, *Israel: An Echo of Eternity* (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1997), 20-21. ## Bibliography Carson, Maria. “The Emotional Heschel.” PhD diss., Syracuse University, 2021. Heschel, Abraham Joshua. *The Earth is the Lord’s: The Inner World of the Jew in East Europe*. New York: Henry Schuman, Inc., 1950. ———. *Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion*. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. ———. *Israel: An Echo of Eternity*. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1997. Heschel, Susannah. “A Different Kind of Theo-Politics: Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Prophets and the Civil Rights Movement.” *Political Theology* 21, no. 1–2 (2019): 1–20. [https://doi.org/10.1080/1462317X.2019.1685743.&nbsp](https://doi.org/10.1080/1462317X.2019.1685743. ); Idel, Moshe. “Abraham J. Heschel on Mysticism and Hasidism.” *Modern Judaism* 29, no. 1 (March 2009): 80–105. . Kaplan, Edward K. *Holiness in Words: Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Poetics of Piety*. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. Kaplan, Lawrence. “Time, History, Space, and Place: Abraham Joshua Heschel on the Religious Significance of the Land of Israel.” *Journal of Modern Jewish Studies* 17, no. 4 (2018): 496-504. doi: 10.1080/14725886.2018.1513187. Matanky, Eugene D. “The Mystical Element in Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Theological-Political Thought.” *Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies* 35, no. 3 (2017): 33–55. . Perlman, Lawrence. *Abraham Heschel’s Idea of Revelation*. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1989. Author Biography ### Maximillian Wetter Maximillian Wetter is a PhD student in the Department of Religion at Rice University. He earned his Master of Theological Studies, with a concentration in Jewish studies, from Harvard Divinity School in 2025. His research explores motifs of suffering and joy in the mystical and philosophical writings of post-Holocaust Jewish thinkers. ![Max Wetter, smiling, standing in front of an academic building](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__480x480/public/2026-07/m.Wetter.jpg?itok=BpQ_ONp3) See also:- [ Archive of Mystical Experiences ](/topic-tags/archive-mystical-experiences) - [ Jewish Studies ](/topic-tags/jewish-studies)