The Earth is the Lord's: The Inner World of the Jew in Eastern Europe

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Jewish Lights Publishing, 1995 - History - 109 pages

Powerfully and beautifully portrays a bygone Jewish culture.

The story about the life of the Jews in Eastern Europe which has come to an end in our days is what I have tried to tell in this essay. I have not talked about their books, their art or institutions, but about their daily life, about their habits and customs, about their attitudes toward the basic things in life, about the scale of values which directed their aspirations....

"In this period our people attained the highest degree of inwardness.... It was the golden period in Jewish history, in the history of the Jewish soul."
--from The Earth Is the Lord's

Contents

• Preface: 7
• ONE The Sigh: 13
• THREE The Two Great Traditions: 23
• FOUR For the People: 39
• SEVEN A World of Palimpsests: 56
• ELEVEN Hasidim: 75
• TWELVE Love the Wicked: 83
• FOURTEEN Guard My Tongue from Evil: 95

About the author

Abraham Joshua Heschel was born in Poland in 1907, received his early education from a yeshiva (a school for Talmudic or rabbinical study), and earned his doctorate from the University of Berlin. In 1939, six weeks before the Nazi invasion of Poland, he left for London and then for the United States, where he taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City from 1945 until his death in 1972.An activist as well as a scholar and a teacher, Heschel was deeply engaged in social movements for peace, civil rights, and interfaith understanding.The following three selections are excerpted from his 1965 work, Who Is Man?

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Earth is the Lord's: The Inner World of the Jew in Eastern Europe; A Jewish Lights classic reprint
• Author: Abraham Joshua Heschel
• Illustrated by: Ilya Schor
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1995
• ISBN: 1879045427, 9781879045422
• Length: 109 pages
• Subjects: History / Jewish; Religion / Judaism / General; Religion / Judaism / History; Religion / Judaism / Rituals & Practice; Social Science / Customs & Traditions; Social Science / Jewish Studies