Abraham Joshua Heschel and Radical Amazement
Sermon, February 23, 2007
Rabbi Bruce Kadden
What would you say is the root of sin? What is it, more than everything
else, that lies at the core of evil doing? According to Rabbi Abraham Joshua
Heschel, the root of sin is “indifference to the sublime wonder of living.”
That concept is at the core of Rabbi Heschel’s understanding of religion as
being based upon wonder, or what he calls “radical amazement.”
This evening, as I conclude my series of sermons about Rabbi Heschel on the
100th anniversary of his birth, I want to explore these ideas which
lie at the core of his theology.
Heschel, who was born in 1907, lived at a time of great technological and
scientific development. Our understanding of the universe and how it functioned
increased dramatically. And, as human beings learned more about the world, as
mysteries were unraveled, as questions were answered, our sense of wonder
naturally diminished.
“As civilization advances,” he wrote in God in Search of Man, “the
sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of
mind.” Heschel recognized the relationship between how we view the world and
its workings and our religious inclination. If we think that we know
everything, if we think we understand everything, then we have no need for God
or religion. And, of course, Heschel lived in a time when human begins were
beginning to believe that they did understand everything, or at least would do
so in the near future.
“Modern man fell into the trap of believing that everything can be explained,
that reality is a simple affair which has only to be organized in order to be
mastered,” he observed. Those of us who lived a good part of the 20th
century recognize how much our understanding of our world increased. We learned
more about the universe, more about the human body, more about the atom and its
intricacies.
The pursuit of knowledge picked up momentum, and with it the erroneous notion
that soon it would lead to resolving all of our problems. There was no problem
too difficult, no disease too severe, no issue too complicated; we human beings
would save the world and live happily ever after.
Heschel recognized the fallacy of this belief and, more importantly, its
challenge to religious faith. For he taught that at the core of religion was a
sense of wonder or radical amazement. “Wonder or radical amazement is the chief
characteristic of the religious man’s attitude toward history and nature.”
If we look at our world and shrug our shoulders; if we are indifferent to the
beauty of nature, if we take for granted our health and our life and our very
being, then we are likely to have no need for religion or the Divine. But if
instead, we look at the world with a sense of wonder, if we truly appreciate the
beauty of nature, if we recognize the great gift of our health, our life and our
being, then we will realize the importance of religion and of God.
One of the ways that we, as Jews, remind ourselves not to take things for
granted is by reciting brachot, blessings, before we partake of food or
when we experience natural phenomena. A number of years ago, Rabbi Glickman
introduced the congregational theme, “The Mountain Bracha Society,” to
remind us of the importance of appreciating the incredible beauty of Mount
Rainier.
Saying a blessing encourages us to think about what we are doing, to pause a
moment to really appreciate the world and all its grandeur. The rabbis
recognized how easy it is for us to take for granted the world we live in and
tried to assure that we reflected on this world as we encountered it. Heschel
explains that the reason the rabbis ordained daily worship, a repetition of
words and blessings, was to continually imbue us with a sense of wonder. “Since
there is a need for daily wonder, there is a need for daily worship,” he
writes.
If worship does nothing else, it should serve to remind us what an incredible
world we live in. It should allow us to appreciate the everyday wonders of the
world, and ultimately the God who is responsible for them. “Awareness of the
divine,” Heschel teaches “begins with wonder.”
We cannot hope to develop a love of God without an appreciation of the
world. Ultimately, religious faith and commitment depend on our ability to view
the world with awe and wonder. We often speak of a “childhood sense of
wonder,” because, children are constantly amazed by the world around them. Each
day brings new discoveries and new experiences. As adults, we can only hope
that we can maintain that “childhood sense of wonder” that allows us to continue
to experience awe and wonder on a daily basis.
As we reflect on the legacy of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, let us recommit
ourselves to nurturing and sustaining the sense of wonder that allows us to look
at the world with radical amazement. May we continually renew our “childhood
sense of wonder.”
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