“Some are Guilty but All are Responsible” – A.J. Heschel’s Opposition to All Forms of Persecution
“Some are Guilty but All are Responsible” – A.J. Heschel’s Opposition to All Forms of Persecution

Summary/Abstract: This paper is concerned with racial persecution as seen from the standpoint of the religious conception of equality advanced by A.J. Heschel, one of the most original and influential Jewish thinkers. Addressing a fair number of theological and philosophical issues, his work also explored the problem of persecution, which he regarded to be entirely at odds with faith in God. Racism, he argued, is the most common and dangerous cause of hostility between people, even worse than idolatry and on a par with Satanism. For Heschel, all racist acts in one’s religious life are blasphemy, “a treacherous contradiction of God’s existence”. The Jewish thinker conducted a remarkably thorough analysis of racism in a religious context. Relying on biblical sources and personal experience of anti-Semitism, he asserted explicitly: “religion or race”. In his opinion “you cannot worship God and at the same time look at man as if he were a horse”. Not only does Heschel demonstrate the existence of diverse forms of racism within religious communities since the biblical times until today, but he primarily propounds the religious notion of equality, which in his opinion is the only alternative religion may opt for and the only remedy to rectify the situation of the racially persecuted. The concept sets out with the necessity to rebuild conscience, which often does not respond to one’s unrighteous acts. Next to discussing persecution, Heschel also reacted vehemently to all instances of hostility. He became an advocate of all wronged people, not only among Jews and not only in America. One of the figures he would often meet was Martin Luther King, a leader of an anti-racist movement. In 1965, they both participated in the Selma to Montgomery March. The Jewish rabbi continuously asserted – in both word and deed – that moral responsibility for persecution must not be rescinded or substituted by someone or something. One must invariably remind oneself that everyone is embroiled into what is done by few. “Some are guilty, but all are responsible”.

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