Every Word Has Power

Every Word Has Power: The Poetry of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel celebrates Heschel’s words with a concert performance of his poetry set to music by noted singer, composer and musician Basya Schechter. This one-hour documentary began airing on ABC-affiliated stations nationwide in May 2015 and features Dr. Susannah Heschel, Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College; Peter Geffen, founder of the Abraham Joshua Heschel School; Rabbi Shai Held, author, Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence; and Dr. Edward Kaplan, author, Spiritual Radical, Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940-1972.

Rabbi Heschel’s immense influence as a social critic has tended to overshadow the eloquence of his writing. He was a masterful poet, artistry he revealed in his years as a university student. Later on, he would lose his mother and sisters to the Holocaust.   Yet despite such tragedy, in the years just after World War II, Heschel married, had a child, and wrote five books, including some of his most well known works. As he would later put it, he found a way to turn “sorrow into song.”  The lyricism of Rabbi Heschel’s prose and poetry reflect his deep appreciation of language: he wrote eloquently in English, Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish and German.

[vc_video link=’https://vimeo.com/120609990‘]