Lost Prophets

Marc H. Ellis (1952-2024) saw the prophet today as in a condition of exile, refusing to compromise with injustice, perhaps doomed, without protection, even without destination.

It was while first reading Jewish theologian Marc Ellis’ writing that we realized the waters of the prophetic ran much deeper than we had first thought.

We excitedly tore through several of his books on the prophetic in anticipation of our Lost Prophets interview with Marc, back in January. When we connected, he seemed a little frail but still ardent and eloquent. (He told us he got a kick out of the title of our podcast.) Near the end of our almost two-hour exchange, he offhandedly mentioned his health struggles. We traded a couple of emails in the weeks following and then saw the notices that Marc had died on June 8th.

The prophetic was surely the great theme of Marc’s work, beginning in 1974, when an encounter with Dorothy Day in Tallahassee convinced him to spend a year living at the main Catholic Worker house in New York. He next moved to graduate school at Marquette University in Milwaukee. For his thesis he chose to write on the co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, Peter Maurin. Marc was also affiliated for a time with the Maryknoll School of Theology, a home of liberation theology, where he said he discovered the prophetic.

Amidst the catastrophic 20th century, Marc claimed to see a revival of prophecy in figures such as Martin Luther King, Simone Weil, Gandhi, Albert Camus, and others. “It should not surprise us that a century so dark has also given birth to men and women who have had prophetic thoughts and lived prophetic lives,” he wrote. “And so in the century of the dead the question of the prophet is reborn.”

He was struck by the way prophetic figures typically become exiles in their own communities, as Marc himself had done, due to his uncompromising belief that Jewish liberation had to include Palestinian liberation.

In addition to his biography of Peter Maurin, he wrote one of the few books proposing a Jewish liberation theology, with introductions by Gustavo Gutierrez and Desmond Tutu. He wrote several books on Israel and Palestine, as well as essays on notable Jewish thinkers (Wiesel, Buber, Heschel, Arendt, Levinas), Holocaust theology, and the wonderful interfaith reflections in Revolutionary Forgiveness.

Some takeaways from our conversation:

* The prophets do not celebrate progress, despite the way modernity itself has become a religion, enabled partly by the old religions. Everything we enjoy in modernity has a dark side.

* The Catholic Worker experience: spending a year among the poor and their spirituality. “There was something beautiful about it which became foundational in my life.”

* Prophets become closer to each other across traditions than they are to many within their own traditions. The ecumenism of our times is not one of faith and dogma but rather of solidarity. None of us can make it alone or in our particular communities. We have a different community—the prophetic diaspora.

* The New Diaspora of exiles worldwide—the Catholic Worker house in New York had posters of Gandhi, Buber, etc.

* Simone Weil—”she was a one-off.” Her idea of the new saintliness, which both connected to the old traditions while abandoning parts of them. She insisted on the freedom to think and to act. A practical mystic—something like Bob Dylan, the itinerant Jewish prophet (and fan of Marc Ellis’ work!).

* It’s difficult to define the prophetic—it’s a kind of mystical encounter. The prophetic is set apart but we don’t know how or why that happens. It comes from somewhere else.

* And it’s not just political. The prophetic is the embodiment of the possibility, the gamble, of meaning (and God) in history and in our lives. You can see it, feel it—as in the aura several witnesses have asserted MLK possessed.

* The prophetic is a perilous vocation—your own community probably can’t protect you. There’s no reward, even from God. There is, in Marc’s words, a “solitude and a solidarity” in this way of living.

Timestamps

01:30 We introduce Ellis as a Jewish theologian who deeply studied prophecy, noting this was one of their last conversations with him.

02:45 How we discovered Ellis's work while researching prophetic figures.

03:40 We consider how the mid-20th century reawakened prophetic thinking in response to modernity's challenges and failures.

07:35 About Ellis's early background, from his Orthodox Jewish upbringing to his time at Florida State University.

19:30 Ellis’s concept of a "prophetic diaspora" and how prophets often become exiles from their traditions.

22:50 Ellis's writings on how mass death in the 20th century led to a revival of prophetic thinking

30:55 How people like Dorothy Day and Martin Buber found themselves closer to prophetic figures of other faiths than to their own traditions. Prophecy as the “wild card” in the deck—we never know when it will turn up. The “hidden circle” of prophets, the “light gatherers.”

43:30 Guest Marc Ellis joins the discussion, sharing his personal journey discovering the prophetic as indigenous to Jewish tradition and his encounters with Holocaust theologian Richard Rubenstein (“Where is God? We need power”). The promise of modernity amidst the growing “nation of the dead.” The “new diaspora” of prophets.

52:00 Ellis reflects on how the major religions became enablers of modernity, even as they became more traditional in some respects. His time at Maryknoll and his discovery of liberation theology. Meeting Daniel Berrigan in 1974. The impossibility of defining the prophetic, a kind of unpredictable mystical encounter. A story about why Martin Luther King Jr. had an “aura” that set him apart, as do all prophets. The prophetic is about the possibility of meaning in history—“it’s a gamble”. And “a perilous vocation.” Simone Weil—a “one-off” and a mystic “in practical terms like Bob Dylan.”

1:03:45 Ellis's encounter with Bob Dylan. His year at the Catholic Worker with the elderly Dorothy Day. Two deeply opposed views of the Holocaust and the U.S. Holocaust Museum (Richard Rubenstein vs. Elie Wiesel).

1:11:20 Ellis’s understanding of "covenantal vocation" and the heritage of prophecy in Judaism.

1:21:28 The nature of "Revolutionary Forgiveness" and its role in Israeli-Palestinian relations. After many centuries, the Christian embrace of Jewish history.

1:26:00 Ellis's thoughts on the future of prophetic movements and why prophets shouldn't focus too much on outcomes. Despite the famous song’s Christian hope, he suggests “We’re not going to overcome.”

1:31:30 Ellis’s new book “First Light” about his friendship with Edward Said, as well as his current practice of daily journaling and painting during wartime.

1:35:00 The "Ice Age" which has come over prophetic thinking in recent decades. Theologians no longer write and speak to power in the same way they once did.

1:38:38 Ellis’ final reflections on why he continues his work preserving the prophetic tradition, despite its difficulties as a frightening kind of vocational misadventure. He concludes with thoughts on the difference between Christian and Jewish views of prophecy and hope.

Further reading:

* A Year at the Catholic Worker: A Spiritual Journey among the Poor (2000), Marc H. Ellis

* Revolutionary Forgiveness: Essays on Judaism, Christianity and the Future of Religious Life (2000), Marc H. Ellis

* Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation (2007), Marc H. Ellis

* Encountering the Jewish Future: with Wiesel, Buber, Heschel, Arendt and Levinas (2011), Marc H. Ellis

* Future of the Prophetic: Israel’s Ancient Wisdom Re-presented (2014), Marc H. Ellis

* A Palestinian Theology of Liberation (1989), Naim Stifan Ateek

* First Light: Encountering Edward Said and the Late-Style Jewish Prophetic in the New Diaspora (2023), Marc H. Ellis

Here at Lost Prophets, we are interested not only in the seminal mid-century figures we feature, but also in those contemporaries who have imbibed their ideas and are extending them today. So we were happy to speak recently with one today’s great theorists of technology, L.M. Sacasas.

A few years ago L.M. posted on his blog 41 (!) thoughtful and provocative questions we should ask of the technologies we use — not just our computers and AI and Zoom, but also tables and alarm clocks and ovens. That inspired the New York Times’ Ezra Klein, one of L.M.’s enthusiastic readers, to contact him for an interview, which you can read here.

L.M. extends a tradition of technology’s skeptical questioners, joining figures such as Marshall McLuhan, Jacques Ellul, and Neil Postman. In an homage to Ivan Illich’s Tools for Conviviality (1973), L.M. even named his Substack, launched in 2018, the Convivial Society.

In this conversation with L.M., we talk about discovering Illich, the importance of starting from the vision we want (not from the tools), what the Amish have figured out, the “post-human future”, why our embodied condition matters, and where we see signs of hope.

Recommended:

* Tools for Conviviality, Ivan Illich (1973)

* The Technological Society, Jacques Ellul (1964)

* Technopoly, Neil Postman (1993)

* The Religion of Technology, David Noble (1999)

* American Technological Sublime, David Nye (1996)

* The Frailest Thing: Ten Years of Thinking About the Meaning of Technology, L.M. Sacasas (2019)

This episode takes us into the long history of the Civil Rights Movement as we talk about the methods and legacies of two long-distance runners, Ella Baker (1903-1986) and Septima Clark (1898-1987).

Baker was a legendary organizer who espoused a group-centered form of leadership and insisted that deep change required the long-haul “spadework” of community organizing. Clark, known as “the teacher of the Civil Right movement,” built a network of Southern Citizenship Schools, which were crucial to the emergence of Black voting power in the early 1960s.

We also discuss the influence of the famous Highlander Folk School (today the Highlander Research and Education Center) in New Market, TN—and the role of its workshops as a seedbed of activism since the labor struggles over coal mining in the 1930s.

For this conversation, we invited two guests whose work has been inspired by the organizing culture of Highlander and the Civil Rights Movement:

* Stephen Lazar is a National Board Certified Social Studies teacher, who is typically teaching students Social Studies and English at Harvest Collegiate High School in NYC, which he helped to start. His writing on policy and practice has been published on the New York Times, Washington Post, Education Week, Chalkbeat, and Albert Shanker Institute websites.

* Daniel Marshall is the founder and director of the Sand Mountain Cooperative Education Center (in Gunstersville, AL), whose Highlander-inspired mission is to house and support programs that facilitate freedom, community centered-development, and cooperative education in the South.

Recommended:

* Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement (2005), Barbara Ransby

* Freedom’s Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark (2012), Katherine Mellen Charron

* I’ve Got the Light of Freedom (2007), Charles Payne

* The Long Haul: An Autobiography (1991), Myles Horton, with Judith Kohl and Herbert Kohl

* Starting with People Where They Are: Ella Baker’s Theory of Political Organizing (2022), Mie Inouye

* Ella Baker and the Origins of “Participatory Democracy” (2004), Carol Mueller

* Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker (1981), documentary about Ella Baker

* You’ve Got To Move: Stories of Change in the South (1985), documentary about the Highlander Folk School

Ivan Illich (1926-2002) emerged in the late 1960s as a radical public intellectual. Many of his most radical insights have today become conventional wisdom.

The wonderful essayist George Scialabba once entitled an otherwise generally sympathetic piece on Ivan Illich “Against Everything.” That was surely because Ivan Illich’s critique of modernity runs deeper than that of almost any other thinker of his time. His books attacked the unquestioned sacred cows of the age, including schooling, institutional medicine, cars, and economic development, charging them with “terminal counter-productivity”.

And yet Illich was neither a reactionary nor a Luddite. In the 1960s, his countercultural open seminar in Cuernavaca, Mexico—CIDOC—was partly a seedbed for what became liberation theology (although Illich later found the movement too ideological). His writings about “the war on subsistence,” as he called it, laid the groundwork for today’s global movements around the commons, decentralization, and degrowth.

After his remarkable but controversial Gender appeared in 1982, causing a firestorm around what Illich felt was a misreading of the book by its feminist critics, he pulled back from public speaking and concentrated on less volatile subjects.

In a series of interviews with his friend and biographer David Cayley—who is our guest for this episode—Illich gradually sketched out his somewhat startling theory of modernity as an extension of Church history. The “corruption of Christianity” was the theme he first shared in conversation with Cayley, who went on to transcribe and publish Illich’s account of how so many modern institutions arose out of misplaced ambitions to make Christian charity into permanent institutions of society.

Our conversation in this episode is grounded in Cayley’s Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey, a work which not only presents its subject’s ideas but wonderfully extends them, an achievement we surely owe to Cayley’s personal friendship with Illich, especially in his last years.

Some takeaways from our conversation:

The key modern assumption in Illich’s view: that human beings are made up of needs and society is organized to fulfill them. Moreover, modern institutions, as they grow ever larger, tend to defeat their own purposes: they weaken communal self-reliance by creating needs to be serviced by technical professionals; they threaten our ability to enjoy and bear the human condition; and they undermine the arts of suffering and our ability to die our own deaths.

Illich’s idea of subsistence (which is not poverty but simply sustainable living) as the way the global South might continue to avoid the tragedies of industrialization and modernity.

In the mid-1980s, a kind of catastrophic breakdown in the old (tool-based) way of seeing things, replaced by a new dimensionless cybernetic space, discontinuous with the past and the certainties with which people once lived.

“Risk awareness”: to Illich, this was the most important religiously celebrated ideology today.

The vocation of the friend: to Illich, our only hope for a new society, through “little acts of foolish renunciation”.

Timestamps

Introduction to Ivan Illich [00:00:00]

Illich's background and early life [02:08]

Illich's time in New York and Puerto Rico [05:00]

Founding of CIDOC in Cuernavaca, Mexico [10:00]

Illich's critique of modern notions of “development” [15:00]

Illich's "Deschooling Society" and radical monopolies [21:30]

"Tools for Conviviality" and the critique of tools [35:00]

"Medical Nemesis" and its attack on the medical establishment [43:52]

"Gender" and its controversial reception [49:56]

Illich's later works on language and literacy [54:30]

Illich’s theory of “the corruption of Christianity” in the institutions of modernity [1:00:00]

Interview with David Cayley begins, his first encounter with Illich [1:15:08]

Illich's ideas on the incarnation and institutions [1:26:02]

Illich's influence on social movements including the one for the commons [1:41:48]

Cayley's reflections on Illich as a teacher and friend [1:57:30]

The hosts offer final thoughts on Illich's legacy [2:11:15]

Recommended:

Deschooling Society (1971), Ivan Illich

Tools for Conviviality (1973), Ivan Illich

Medical Nemesis (1975), Ivan Illich

Shadow Work (1981), Ivan Illich

Gender, (1983), Ivan Illich

In the Vineyard of the Text (1993), Ivan Illich

ABC: Alphabetization of the Popular Mind (1989), Ivan Illich and Barry Sanders

Ivan Illich in Conversation (1992), David Cayley

Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich (2005), David Cayley

Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey (2023), David Cayley

Many thanks to the great band NOBLE DUST, who provides the music for Lost Prophets. Their latest album A Picture for a Frame is here.

This is the fourth episode of LOST PROPHETS, a podcast about the mid-century voices of solidarity we need to hear again. To listen on your podcast player, our Spotify link is here, Apple Podcasts link is here, and RSS link is here.

Peter Maurin (1877-1949) was Dorothy Day’s great teacher and collaborator in establishing the Catholic Worker movement. He saw Catholic social teachings as the still-unexploded “dynamite of the Church.”

If Dorothy Day is better known today than her close colleague, Peter Maurin, it is not for lack of praise from Dorothy herself. She never ceased to emphasize Peter’s influence and his role, noting that there would not have been a Catholic Worker movement but for Peter. “Peter gave me more than instruction”, she liked to repeat. “He gave me a way of life.”

That way of life, a radical path of voluntary poverty and service to the poor, grew out of Peter’s early life, having been born into a large French family which farmed the same land in the Languedoc region for centuries. His peripatetic life experiences doing all kinds of day labor to support himself as an independent intellectual and Catholic street preacher served to keep him close to the poor. “He believed in poverty,” Dorothy once noted, “and loved it and felt it as a liberating force.”

Despite his Chaplinesque, shabby appearance, Maurin’s mental universe was immensely rich, stocked with a mix of Catholic theology, history, and literature which he happily shared with any and all he encountered. He opposed both communism and industrial capitalism, favoring his own notion of a “green revolution” in a three-point program of roundtable discussions, houses of hospitality, and farming communes that blended religion, politics, and ecology — or, as he put it, “cult, culture, and cultivation.” These ideas became the program of the Catholic Worker movement during Peter’s lifetime.

Our guest for this episode is Kelly Johnson, associate professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton and author of The Fear of Beggars: Stewardship and Poverty in Christian Ethics (2007).

Some takeaways from our conversation:

* Peter as a paragon of a radical, Franciscan Christianity in which piety and social justice are fused in a gentle personalism.

* Peter’s life as the outsider, the pilgrim, the mendicant beggar at times. By 1934, he had given up everything—home, status, financial security and his personal life to become “a fool for Christ” (cf. I Corinthians 1:10).

* Peter’s “troubadour method” of reciting his Easy Essays on street corners to crowds. Once asked what university he had graduated from, he answered, “Union Square.”

* Peter taught Dorothy his philosophies of distributism and anarchy, as well as his opposition to usury—a shared goal of a society in which “it would be easier for people to be good.”

* Peter’s opposition to the New Deal and to the wage-only focus of unions, as neither solution goes to the roots. Only the land movement, he felt, was a cure for unemployment.

* Peter’s vision of “cells of good living” over trying to seize power at the top.

* Peter’s love of language and word-play: “The aim of the Catholic Worker is to make an impression on the Depression through expression.”

* Peter’s contrast between machine civilization and handicraft civilization (agriculture and crafts). His idea that scholars must become farmers and farmers must become scholars, part of his vision of restoring a truly Catholic culture—reclaiming the dignity of manual labor.

* In the 1940s, Peter defended the Jewish people from slanders and appealed for the U.S. to accept more refugees.

* Peter was one of the first Catholics to seriously entertain dialogue with Marxists.

* Peter and the Catholic Worker movement influenced Michael Harrington, Thomas Merton, Daniel Berrigan, and E.F. Schumacher, among many others.

Timestamps

* Introduction to Peter Maurin and the Catholic Worker Movement, brief overview of Peter's background and significance. [00:00:00]

* Peter's early life in France, his upbringing and family background. [00:05:29]

* Peter’s travels and experiences in North America, journey through Canada and the United States, various jobs and encounters. [00:08:00]

* Peter’s "Easy Essays." Discussion of his unique writing style and method of communicating ideas. [00:13:00]

* Peter’s personalist philosophy, and an exploration of his views on the centrality of the human person and its relation to community. [00:20:02]

* The Green Revolution and Peter’s agrarian vision, a precursor of our notions of sustainability. [00:25:30]

* Peter's critique of industrial capitalism and alternative economic ideas. Discussion of distributism, cooperatives, and his vision for a new social order. [00:35:00]

* Peter’s approach to popular education through the practice of "roundtable discussions" about social issues and solutions, as well as Peter’s ideas about integrating manual labor, intellectual pursuits, and social action. [00:45:00]

* Interview with Kelly Johnson (University of Dayton), and her first encounter with Peter Maurin. [00:58:42]

* Peter’s practice of voluntary poverty — his way of embodying his own ideas, not merely talking about them. Plus, an introduction to “viator economics.” [01:10:00]

* The historic partnership between Peter and Dorothy Day. Analysis of their complementary roles in founding the Catholic Worker Movement. [01:20:08]

* Peter's way of empowering those with whom he spoke—a sign of a great teacher. His notable blind spot: the impact of slavery. This missed moment for lay Catholic theology—not informing the life of the Church? Hope as a thing you do, not a thing you feel. [01:30:00]

* Concluding thoughts and reflections from the hosts — and a mention of possible topics for some future episodes. [01:43:29]

Recommended:

* The Forgotten Radical Peter Maurin: Easy Essays from the Catholic Worker, edited by Lincoln Rice (2020)

* Peter Maurin: Apostle to the World, Dorothy Day with Francis J. Sicius (2004)

* The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist, Dorothy Day (1952, 2009)

* Peter Maurin: Prophet in the Twentieth Century, Marc H. Ellis (2010)

* The Fear of Beggars: Stewardship and Poverty in Christian Ethics, Kelly Johnson (2007).

Many thanks to the great band NOBLE DUST, who provides the music for Lost Prophets. Their latest album A Picture for a Frame is here.

This is the third episode of LOST PROPHETS, a podcast about the mid-century voices of solidarity we need to hear again. To listen on your podcast player, our Spotify link is here, Apple Podcasts link is here, and RSS link is here.

The life and career of Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) is a remarkable case of the inspired “amateur” who changes an entire field of study (urban planning) merely by looking more closely at things than the experts had done. While not religious, she had a profound faith in the essential goodness and creativity of ordinary people — and consequently in our collective ability to co-create the places in which we live.

In her later years, Jane Jacobs once recounted her reaction upon coming to New York in the early 1940s: “It was inexhaustible. Just to walk around the streets and wonder at it. So many streets different. So many neighborhoods different. So much going on.”

In this language, we hear not only her love of cities but the beginnings of her intuition that we grasp truth through love. Thinking of the city planners of her day, many of whom seemed dubious about cities, she argued that it’s a big mistake to try to reform something you hate because that emotion will contaminate your prescription.

One version of Jane Jacobs (in the eyes of her opponents) is the “uncredentialed housewife” whose organizing talents in 1962 defeated New York City’s mega-planner Robert Moses and his Lower Manhattan Expressway, thereby rescuing for later generations the neighborhoods of SoHo (one of the greatest inventories of 19th century buildings in the world) and Little Italy.

Another version of Jane is the “city naturalist,” a keen observer of processes hiding in plain sight: the organic order of streets, the mail shunting by beneath her feet in pneumatic tubes, the diamond trade, the flower market. A true urbanophile, she saw self-organizing networks everywhere.

A third Jane is the ecologist of cities and the champion of economic diversity, perhaps the most powerful benefit cities can offer.

What Rachel Carson did for the natural environment or Ralph Nader for the commercial environment, Jane Jacobs did for the built environment. She became the articulate voice and defender of a movement which now seems merely common sense: a bottom-up approach to urbanism which values streets over buildings, people over automobiles, and the unpredictable over the centrally planned.

For our conversation about Jane Jacobs, we spoke with her longtime friend and ally in urbanist advocacy Roberta Brandes Gratz, author of The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, among other titles.

Takeaways from our conversation:

“Cities are created by everybody.” Jane saw them as places where ordinary people had the chance to do something new and interesting. They offer scope for all kinds of people.

Jane’s new theory about how cities function and her insight into the kind of problem a city is—i.e., one of organized complexity, requiring us to deal simultaneously with numerous interrelated factors in an organic whole.

Against those who saw only disorder, Jane could see an intricate and unique order, which she liked to describe using ecological metaphors.

Jane’s landmark book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, gave a boost to localism of all sorts, including the local food movement.

The concept of import replacement: Jane thought it her most important contribution. Not a product of planning but of bottom-up processes of discovery within a city.

Jane was part of the wave of resistance to centralized authority in the 1960s—Betty Friedan, Rachel Carson, Noam Chomsky, the civil rights movement.

Big plans live intellectually off little plans. Without the latter, planners often make big mistakes which cannot easily be corrected.

Jane’s idea that we’re living in a time of “dying priesthoods” of all kinds. “We need unlimited independent thinkers with unlimited skepticism and curiosity.”

Jane’s enormous impact on reverting cities from car-dominated places back to walkable (and bikeable) places.

Episode Sections:

Introduction to Jane Jacobs [00:00:00]

Her early life and upbringing [00:02:47]

Her deep curiosity and early interests [00:07:29]

Early career as a journalist [00:13:35]

Development of her urban theories [00:19:00]

Her activism against urban renewal projects [00:39:32]

Discussion of Jane's major books:

The Death and Life of Great American Cities [00:30:00]

The Economy of Cities [00:52:01]

Cities and the Wealth of Nations [00:57:56]

Systems of Survival [01:05:00]

Interview with Roberta Gratz [01:09:56]

Discussion of Jane's final book Dark Age Ahead [02:03:00]

Concluding thoughts on her legacy [02:11:56]

Recommended:

Eyes on the Street, Robert Kanigal (2017)

Citizen Jane: Battle for the City Documentary (2016)

City Limits Documentary (1971)

Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs (1961, 1992)

The Economy of Cities, Jane Jacobs (1970)

Cities and the Wealth of Nations, Jane Jacobs (1985)

Dark Age Ahead, Jane Jacobs (2007)

The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, Roberta Brandes Gratz

For our debut episode, we felt we could hardly find a better example of our theme than the life and work of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

To recover the spirituality of Heschel is to re-enter a state of awe and wonder, especially if we recognize, as Heschel taught, that “God takes humankind seriously.” That is, we are not merely worshippers but also covenant partners in tikkun olam, the ancient notion of repairing the world.

An acclaimed interpreter of the Hebrew prophets, a popular theologian drawing on his own traditions of mystical Judaism, and an activist unafraid to plunge into both the Civil Rights movement and the protests against the war in Vietnam, Heschel exemplifies the “moral grandeur and spiritual audacity” he once exhorted President Kennedy to display in an urgent telegram.

In this debut episode, our guest is Rabbi Shai Held, author of The Call of Transcendence, a study of Heschel’s spirituality. His latest book is Judaism Is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life.

In this conversation, Pete and Elias interview Rabbi Held about Heschel's influence on other mid-century prophets, his background in Hasidism, and his relationship with Martin Buber. The conversation delves into Heschel's views on American culture and militarism, as well as his interpretation of Exodus theology.

Some themes and takeaways from our conversation:

* Heschel’s view that God is everywhere: we search for his presence through a life of spirituality.

* The key ideas of radical amazement, spiritual audacity, moral grandeur — and Heschel’s emphasis on the importance of the capacity for surprise.

* Heschel’s memories of the warm humanity of Hasidic culture and his experience of growing up amidst people he could revere, concerned with problems of the inner life, spirituality, integrity.

* The prophet must first have been shattered himself/herself. Rather than focusing on thought palaces, the prophet takes us on tours of the slums, as Heschel put it.

* Heschel found himself in what he felt was a moral emergency rooted in a spiritual emergency. The ultimate and spiritual cause of the Shoah: distance from God, a lack of piety.

* What the prophets have discovered: that history can be a nightmare.

* The sanctity of time for the Jews—how to convert it to eternity.

* Heschel’s prophetic anti-militarism. A favorite question to provoke his students: “Nuclear weapons—are they kosher?”

* His view of education: “Reverence for learning and the learning of reverence”.

* His wonderful humor: “I’m an optimist—against my better judgement.”

* Heschel as a brilliant practitioner of mystagogy—he leads us into the mysteries.

* Religion should not be used as a mere accessory to preconceived political beliefs, he argued, but should guide and shape one's politics.

* Heschel's interreligious solidarity was bold and unapologetic, seeking to find common ground and learn from different religious traditions. “No religion is an island,” as he liked to say.

Episode Timestamps:

Introduction (00:00—15:52)

* Why a Podcast about “lost prophets”?

* Impact of the neoliberal “ice age” and our need to recover these mid-20th century thinkers

Heschel’s Background (15:52—29:29)

* His life and work

* Hasidic upbringing in Warsaw

* A move to America, eventual involvement in the burgeoning Civil Rights movement

Heschel’s Major Works (29:29—44:59)

* Overview of The Sabbath

* Discussion of The Prophets and his concept of divine pathos

* His critique of modern society and consumerism

Heschel and Civil Rights (44:59—1:01:00)

* His spiritual alliance with Martin Luther King Jr.

* Activism in the Civil Rights movement, then Vietnam anti-war movement

* His interfaith work

Interview with Rabbi Shai Held (1:01:00—2:01:10)

* Rabbi Held’s discovery of Heschel’s greater depths

* Exploration of his theology and views on prophecy

* Relationship between Heschel and Martin Buber

* The relevance of Exodus theology; views on American culture and militarism

* His relevance and legacy today, views on Judaism and love, the use of the term “prophetic”

Conclusion (2:01:24—end)

* Our key takeaways from the conversation

* Discussion of Heschel’s emphasis on wonder, surprise, and breaking through callousness

Recommended:

* The Prophets, A.J. Heschel (1962)

* The Sabbath, A.J. Heschel (1951)

* God In Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism, A. J. Heschel (1976)

* Spiritual Audacity, documentary film biography (2021)

* The Earth Is the Lord’s, A.J. Heschel (1995)

* Heschel’s Last Interview — YouTube (1972)

* A. J. Heschel: A Life of Radical Amazement, Julian Zelizer (2021)

* Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence, Shai Held (2013)

* Judaism Is About Love, Shai Held (2024)

Many thanks to the great band NOBLE DUST, who provides the music for Lost Prophets. Their latest album A Picture for a Frame is here.

[Note: This episode and interview was recorded in December 2023, in the early months of Israel’s invasion of Gaza, a topic we will return to in more depth in a later episode.]

In the coming weeks, join Elias Crim and Pete Davis as they journey into the land of the Lost Prophets, the mid-century figures who asked deep question and had big visions about what happened, where to go, and how to get there.

Here in the mid-2020s, we are lost in the woods.  We do not trust the established systems, and the established systems are revealing themselves daily to not be, as presently designed, worthy of our trust.

Most of us don't feel like we are members of the places in which we reside, nor co-creators of the structures in which we inhabit — and as a result, loneliness, cynicism, and unease abounds.  Powerful words like neighbor and citizen and solidarity, democracy, community, and ecology, participation — prophecy! — have been lost by years of abandonment and misuse. 

And none of the silver bullets of the past decades — the latest politicians, the latest technologies, the latest cultural trends — have delivered on their promise to get us out of this mess.  Where to now?

One way of thinking about what’s been going is that we are living in an age of what could be called declining hegemony.

From the late 1980s to early 2010s, most of the questions that were raised about public life had conventional wisdom answers. There were always alternatives, critics, and dreamers, but the conventional wisdom dominated — if you had a question, the system had an answer, and most of us believed it.

But eventually, that conventional wisdom started unraveling. Two decades of cultural malaise, disastrous wars, financialization, monopolization, Trump, an environmental crisis, technodystopias, and more have resulted in the conventional wisdom answers being much less believable today. That’s what declining hegemony feels like — unanswered questions, the most important being: Where to now?

But here’s something we noticed: So many of the questions that we’re asking today were also asked by people who lived before the rise of the current, now-declining hegemony. In the mid-20th century, there was an explosion of reflection about big questions: How do we make sure our tools serves us instead of the other way around? How do we build community in the modern world? How should we relate to nature and to one another? How do we design our cities? Our systems? Our government? Where to now?

Jane Jacobs, Dorothy Day, Hannah Arendt, Paul Goodman, Martin Luther King, Wendell Berry, Ella Baker, Ivan Illich, Simone Weil, Abraham Joshua Heschel, James Baldwin, Marshall McCluhan, E.F. Schumacher… it was an era of deep questions and big visions. It was an era of prophecy. 

If we want to figure out where to go from here, we may need to hear their voices again.

And that’s exactly what we’re doing with Lost Prophets. Each episode, we will feature a Lost Prophet of solidarity — discuss their life, their work, and what they can teach us about today. Additionally, we’ll bring on a guest that’s a much bigger expert on their work to go deeper. And hopefully in this excavation, we’ll find some light that can shine a path forward today.

Come digging with us, Listener!