Heschel and the Spirit with Dr. Michael Marmur

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) was one of the most influential Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century. In this lecture, we will consider some of the key aspects of his life, thought, and activism through the prism of one Hebrew word - Ruach. We will look at the definition of this term that Heschel gave this complex term in a dictionary he wrote when a member of the HUC faculty in Cincinnati in the 1940s, and how ruach , sometimes translated as spirit, resonated in his life over decades of creativity, reflection and activism.

Michael Marmur is Associate Professor of Jewish Theology at HUC-Jerusalem. Among his publications are a number of articles about Heschel, and Abraham Joshua Heschel and the Sources of Wonder, published by the University of Toronto Press in 2016.