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Poster Commentary

"When I marched in Selma, I felt my legs were praying."Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

Poster design:Paula Scher

Commentary

by Erica Brown

Praying is not limited to a sanctuary and a prayer book. We pray when we live our values with the totality of ourselves. Such was Abraham Joshua Heschel’s commitment to racial equality and social justice. As a towering rabbinic luminary, he understood the power of the library and the synagogue. But as a force for goodness, Rabbi Heschel also knew when it was time to leave the library and take to the streets for the causes you believe in. Marching for civil rights was for him a form of prayer. In one of the most famous photos of him, Heschel is seen protesting only a few steps away from Martin Luther King, Jr.

Heschel’s life (1907–1972) spanned the better part of the 20th century. Only weeks before the Nazis invaded Poland, he received a visa to London, while most of his immediate family was killed by the Germans, including his mother and three of his sisters. He later came to the United States and for close to 30 years was an esteemed professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

For Rabbi Heschel, prayer was not only about achieving protest. It was also about seeking spirituality in a modern age that often tries to expunge the role of God and replace it with human accomplishments. Some of Heschel’s most famous philosophical works charge human beings to sanctify time and space and to rediscover the power of wonder. Heschel's famous expression “radical amazement” embodies his gift for highlighting spiritual curiosity and grandeur. His writings are filled with moments of transcendence.

Conversation Guide

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

The commentary to this poster points to the transcendental nature of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s famous march in Selma for civil rights. Heschel discovered profound religious meaning in acts of social justice and in the civil rights movement.

What does Heschel mean that marching for civil rights in Selma with Martin Luther King, Jr. felt as if his “legs were praying”? How can a march be compared to prayer?

How can the act of promoting social justice become a religious experience for someone? Can you think of other situations in which mundane experiences are infused with, and sanctified by, spiritual meaning?

Have you personally had a transcendent moment in which you felt the day-to-day transformed into a spiritual experience?

WHAT DO YOU SEE?

Each image calls out to us to examine it, to note our thoughts and feelings, and relate these impressions to the quotation. Often clues in the artwork suggest meaning and invite interpretation.

Graphic designer Paula Scher’s image draws us back to the civil rights movement of the 1960s during which Americans rallied to end discrimination and grant equal rights to persons of color.

How does the image present the quotation? Was this how you interpreted the quotation without the image?

Civil rights marches often drew thousands of participants. Why do you think the artist chose to depict just one marcher?

Why might the artist have chosen to depict only the lower, bottom half of the figure, and not the face?

Does this image convey the notion of praying, mentioned in the quotation? How so?

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Credits

Harold Grinspoon Foundation, West Springfield, MA

Author

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

1907–1972

Lived in Poland, New York

Philosopher, activist

About

Abraham Joshua Heschel’s biography spans Jewish worlds. He was born in 1907 in Poland, studied in yeshiva and received Orthodox rabbinic ordination, after which he studied in Berlin for his doctorate and a liberal rabbinic ordination. In 1938 he was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Poland, but in July 1939—six weeks before the Nazis invaded Poland—he obtained a visa, escaped to London and made his way to New York.

In the United States, Heschel taught at the Reform Movement’s rabbinical college (Hebrew Union College) for five years and at the Conservative Movement’s rabbinical college (Jewish Theological Seminary) for 26 years.

His most influential books include Man Is Not Alone, The Sabbath, God in Search of Man, The Prophets, Israel: An Echo of Eternity and Heavenly Torah: As Refracted Through the Generations.

Heschel was active in the Civil Rights Movement, representing the Jewish community at the National Conference of Religion and Race in Chicago in 1963 and marching with his friend Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. He helped organize and co-chaired Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam, a group that galvanized religious opposition to the Vietnam War.

Links

A tribute to Heschel by his student Prof. Reuven Kimelman

A New York Times review of a recent biography on Heschel

Excerpt from Heschel’s book The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man

Musician Basya Schechter on the challenge of setting Heschel poems to music

Credits

Image Credit: Photograph of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel from the Ratner Center Archives, Library of the Jewish Theological Seminar

Artist

Paula Scher

New York

Graphic designer

• • •

About

Paula Scher began her graphic design career in the 1970s, as a record-cover art director at both Atlantic and CBS Records. In 1991 she joined Pentagram as a partner. She has developed identity and branding systems, promotional materials, environmental graphics, and packaging and publication designs for a wide range of clients. She draws from what Tom Wolfe has called the “big closet” of art and design history, classic and pop iconography, literature, music and film to create images that speak to contemporary audiences with emotional impact and appeal.

Scher is a recipient of the Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design and the AIGA Medal. She holds honorary doctorates from the Corcoran College of Art and Design, the Maryland Institute College of Art and the Moore College of Art and Design. She is also a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame.

Her work has been exhibited worldwide and is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art; the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum; the Centre Georges Pompidou and many other institutions. Her teaching career includes over two decades at the School of Visual Arts, along with positions at the Cooper Union, Yale University and the Tyler School of Art. In 2002 Princeton Architectural Press published her career monograph Make It Bigger.

Links

Paula Scher at Pentagram

Interview with Paula Scher

Paula Scher's Maps

More design by Paula Scher

Media

A Ted talk by Paula Scher

Quote

"When I marched in Selma, I felt my legs were praying."Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

Context

"When he returned, he famously said: 'For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.'"

Source

Source of quote: Abraham Joshua Heschel: Exploring His Life and Thought, edited and Introduced by John C. Merkle, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York,1985.

Hebrew

"כאשר צעדתי בסלמה רגליי היו מתפללות."

-הרב אברהם יהושע השל

R.O. Blechman	Ivan Chermayeff	Seymour Chwast	Tom Geismar	Bob Gill	Milton Glaser
Carin Goldberg	Mervyn Kurlansky	Art Paul	Alan Peckolick	Michael Peters	Dan Reisinger
Paula Scher	Daniel Bennett Schwartz	Arnold Schwartzman	Henry Steiner	George Tscherny	Yarom Vardimon

Baal Shem Tov	Ben-Zoma, Pirke Avot 4:1	Louis Brandeis	Martin Buber	Benjamin Cardozo	Adapted from Deuteronomy 20:19
Deuteronomy Rabbah 1:10	Blu Greenberg	Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel	Rabbi Hillel (Pirke Avot 1:14)	Maimonides	Benjamin Mandelstamm
Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk	Rabbi Nachman of Breslau	Adapted from Song of Songs 8:6	Susan Sontag	Talmud, Taanit 23A	Rabbi Tarfon, Pirke Avot 2:21

"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware."	"A community is too heavy to carry alone."	"From every human being there rises a light."
"The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet."	"A human being is like a letter of the alphabet: to produce a word, it must combine with another."	"I found a fruitful world, because my ancestors planted it for me. Likewise I am planting for my children."
"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?"	"If you believe breaking is possible, believe fixing is possible."	"It is not your responsibility to finish the work of perfecting the world, but you are not free to desist from it either."
"Love is stronger than death."	"Man's life depends on the trees of the field."	"A miracle cannot prove what is impossible. It only confirms what is possible."
"Most of the things worth doing in the world were declared impossible before they were done."	"Once I had tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge, there was no going back. "	"Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech."
"There is nothing more whole than a broken heart."	"When I marched in Selma, I felt my legs were praying."	"Who is wise? One who learns from all people. Who is honored? One who honors everyone."

R.O. Blechman	Ivan Chermayeff	Seymour Chwast
Tom Geismar	Bob Gill	Milton Glaser
Carin Goldberg	Mervyn Kurlansky	Art Paul
Alan Peckolick	Michael Peters	Dan Reisinger
Paula Scher	Daniel Bennett Schwartz	Arnold Schwartzman
Henry Steiner	George Tscherny	Yarom Vardimon

Baal Shem Tov	Ben-Zoma, Pirke Avot 4:1	Louis Brandeis
Martin Buber	Benjamin Cardozo	Adapted from Deuteronomy 20:19
Deuteronomy Rabbah 1:10	Blu Greenberg	Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
Rabbi Hillel (Pirke Avot 1:14)	Maimonides	Benjamin Mandelstamm
Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk	Rabbi Nachman of Breslau	Adapted from Song of Songs 8:6
Susan Sontag	Talmud, Taanit 23A	Rabbi Tarfon, Pirke Avot 2:21

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