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Article: Abraham, our father. (Hassidic Jewish teacher, philosopher, intellectual, poet and scholar Abraham J. Heschel)
- Article from:
- Commonweal
- Article date:
- October 9, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Commonweal Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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This book is simply stunning! I know that it goes against the rules of reviewing to make such an uncritical statement, but I can't help it. What Edward Kaplan and Samuel Dresner have done in this biography is so remarkable that the regular rules of reviewing have to be suspended.
The book is remarkable on two counts. The first is the incredible research on display. It reads as if every scrap of paper that Abraham Heschel ever wrote or that anyone else ever wrote referring to him has somehow been found by these two. The sheer volume of the details of Heschel's life in Warsaw, in Vilna, in Berlin, and in Frankfort is astonishing. For example, there are ...