A Plea for Love Without Cause

Shortly before the six-day Arab-Israeli war in 1967, a well-meaning Christian friend asked Jewish Scholar Abraham J. Heschel why he was "so dreadfully upset." Heschel thought for a moment. Then he replied gently: "Imagine that in the entire world there remains one copy of the Bible, and suddenly I see a brutal hand seize this copy, the only one in the world, and prepare to cast it into the flames."

Both the question and the reply point up a central problem in the dialogue between Jews and the rest of the world: the meaning of Israel. To non-Jews, modern Israel is simply a nation with an unusual heritage of religious history. For most Jews, though, it is not only a historical homeland but part of an eternal theological reality, as Heschel argues in a new book called Israel: An Echo of Eternity (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $5.50). Part poetry, part polemic, part plea, the book stems from his response to the 1967 war. Though one of Judaism's most admired religious thinkers--he is professor of ethics and mysticism at Manhattan's Jewish Theological Seminary--Heschel admits that the war profoundly changed his attitude toward Israel. "I had not known," he said, "how deeply Jewish I was."

People and Prophets. Heschel views the war as a "rendezvous with history" that illuminated not only his own life but the lives of Jews everywhere. Speculations on "why it is significant to be a Jew" were no longer necessary. "We felt all of Jewish history present in a moment. Suddenly, we sensed the link between the Jews of this generation and the people of the time of the prophets." That "eternal link," Heschel argues, makes Israel unique. "It is the only state which bears the same name, speaks the same tongue, upholds the same faith, and inhabits the same land as it did 3,000 years ago."

Of course, Heschel notes, there were nearly 19 centuries between the modern state and the last one that could be called Jewish. But in all that time, he argues, "Palestine never became a national home for any other people, has never been regarded as a geopolitical entity, has never been an independent state. It was conquered and reconquered no less than 14 times." Throughout the centuries of the Diaspora, the Jews never abandoned hope of regaining their ancient land. At every Passover Seder, each Jewish family would ritually promise itself: "Next year, in Jerusalem."

Stream of Dreaming. Despite its secular government, says Heschel, Israel is the beginning of fulfillment for the Biblical prophecies, the necessary realization of the "stream of dreaming, the sacred river flowing in the Jewish souls of all ages." From its origins in Abraham, he declares, "Israel has had a divine promise," and "Israel reborn is a verification of the promise. We are God's stake in human history." The rebirth of Israel thus calls for "a renewal of trust in the Lord of history." To a cynical, disbelieving world, the Jews' own "return to the land" can revive hope for "the possibility of redemption for all men."

Why Israel? Why such transcendent importance for any "return to the land"? Simply because, says Heschel, the Jews, more than men of other faiths, see the material and spiritual as part of a single reality. It is the special gift of the Jews "to endow the material with the radiance of the spirit, to sanctify the common, to sense the marvelous in ev-erydayness." Judaism conceives of redemption as "an ongoing, continuing process in which all have a role to play," in which "the heart of the relationship of God and man is interdependence." In Israel, a land both sacred and secular, the ability of man to contribute to that redemption can be tested. For the Jew, says Heschel, Israel is "an existential engagement, a matter of destiny." That destiny, that "irreducible commitment," is to become one day "a blessing to all nations."

Endowing a nation with spiritual dimensions is not new in history, nor is it without at least potential danger. American Indians, among others, know what it can mean when a country is convinced of its "Manifest Destiny." Although he does not admit the relevance of any such parallel, Heschel recognizes the temptations of a secular state, and concedes that "economic, political and spiritual development is still in a stage of beginning," that "not in one generation will the vision evolve." He remembers that "for nearly two thousand years we have not lifted a sword" and suggests that beyond the absolute needs of self-defense, Israel must return to that tradition. "To care for our brother ardently, actively, is a way of worshiping God, a way of loving God."

Quite explicitly, Heschel insists that Israel must be more than usually benevolent for a secular nation, and should extend an open hand of friendship to its Arab neighbors. It must ensure "that justice prevails over power, that awareness of God penetrates human understanding." Where "hatred without cause" brought down the Second Temple, says Heschel, "love without cause will save Israel and all mankind." If those virtues prevail, he concludes, the six days of war may ultimately turn out to have been only a prelude to the seventh day--"which is peace and celebration."

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