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There was no talent richer and more varied in all of Yiddish and Hebrew literature [than his]. A master of foreign cultures as well as his own, he wrote epic poems and historical plays, litanies and literary essays citing Talmudic laws and Midrashic thought, sayings of Rabbi Nahman and reflections of Socrates. But his knowledge never weighed upon his style. On the contrary, his writing was stamped with the simplicity that remains the essence of art.

Some writers are angry, others are forgiving. Reb Aharon belonged to the latter category. He was literally incapable of saying anything pejorative about anyone. He shunned slander as one would an obscene spectacle.… When he recounted his experiences as a new immigrant, or when he spoke of the solitude, anguish, and distress of the war years, his every phrase was accompanied by a little laugh, as though he were begging pardon for his inability to judge others. I can still hear his voice: “How can I condemn another when I have not yet resolved the problems I have with myself? I am still trying to penetrate the secret of my survival.… Why did the hangman spare me rather than my brothers and sisters?”

I made friends with another Yiddish poet and thinker from Warsaw, Abraham Joshua Heschel, the great-grandson of the Rebbe of Apt, whose name he bore. Heschel was profoundly Jewish, a deep believer and a sincere pacifist who wrote lyric poems in Yiddish (one of which I recited at his funeral). He also produced a magnificent work on Rebbe Mendel of Kotz, and two volumes of Talmudic studies in Hebrew, as well as theological works in English. He was generous with his advice when I was writing on Hasidic masters.

We spent hours together, sometimes strolling up and down Riverside Drive discussing God, prayers, Polish Hasidism compared to Hungarian Hasidism, Lithuanian Yiddish folklore, and Polish Yiddish literature. He loved to reminisce about Frankfurt, where in the thirties he succeeded Martin Buber at the Institute of Jewish Studies. Heschel was a man motivated by humanism and civic virtue as well as Hasidic fervor. Nor did he conduct his quest for knowledge from an ivory tower. He was an active opponent of the war in Vietnam. One Shabbat afternoon he confided to me that Israeli friends had asked him—possibly on the initiative of American officials—to keep a lower profile in his struggle against Lyndon Johnsons policy in Southeast Asia. “What can I do?” Heschel asked. “How can I keep silent when week after week thousands of Vietnamese civilians are being killed by our bombs? How can I forget the Jewish concept of ra’hmanut, of pity, of charity? How can I proclaim my Jewishness if I remain insensitive to the pain and mourning of men, women, and children who have been deprived of sleep by years of nighttime bombing?” He was genuinely distressed and since he was asking my opinion, I gave it to him. Press on, I told him, even at the cost of annoying the administration.

Heschel was the major spokesman for Jewish ecumenism, a Jewish friend of all the oppressed. He was among the first to fight for Russian Jews and—it should be noted—for American blacks. It was he who introduced me to Martin Luther King, Jr., whom he revered. In the civil rights movement they called him Father Abraham, as a result of which certain Orthodox circles kept their distance from him, which grieved him. “He’s too close to the Christians,” they said. Nonsense, I replied when I heard such criticism. What is wrong with a Jew teaching Judaism to non-Jews while defending the honor and tradition of his people? When he went to see Pope Paul VI in Rome, it was to discuss the Catholic Church’s anti-Semitism. He believed that a Jew must not lock himself into a kind of spiritual ghetto, forever separated from the society that envelops or opposes him. It is not human, it is not Jewish, to ignore everything that is not Jewish. Scripture teaches us the value of human life—all human life, whether Jewish or not. Our sages insist on the obligation of pikua’h nefesh, of coming