Jewish Mystic Contends Modern Education Needs 'Sense of Awe'

The greatest fault of modern education is the failure to develop the sense of wonder and awe which is "the beginning of faith," Abraham J. Heschel, Professor of Jewish Mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary said last night in the final Israel Goldman Memorial Lecture.

Heschel spoke on "The Intellectual View of Our Religious Convictions," and asserted that "we must respond to the mystery of living with a sense of awe before we can intellectually understand the existence of God." He described faith as the response to the "mystery of existence."

The speaker admitted that modern religion is frequently a faith of symbols, and doubted that a symbol would heal a man's wounds. "If God is a symbol," he continued, then religion is child's play.

The speaker then discussed the presence of "mystery within reason," adding that "we must go over sleek certainties and recognize that the act of thinking is, in part, mystery."

Heschel asserted that "man is less concerned with God than God is with man," and cited Adam, Cain and Abel, and Noah as Biblical examples. "God in search of man is the great paradox of Biblical literature," he said. "God seeks us out by asking the Ultimate Question of us. Faith in God is an answer to the question. Thus God is not passive to our search."

The speaker asked for a separation of the "speculative problem of God's existence and the religious problem. While the speculative problems may find an answer in agnosticism, the religious problem finds its answer in faith."