The Sabbath: Its Meaning for the Modern Man »

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) was a well-known scholar, author, activist, and theologian. He was Professor of Ethics and Mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York City.

Elegant, passionate, and filled with the love of God's creation, Abraham Hoshua Heschel's The Sabbath has been hailed as a classic of Jewish spirituality ever since its original publication in 1951—and has been read by thousands of people of many faiths seeking meaning in modern life. In this brief yet profound meditation on the meaning of the Seventh Day, Heschel introduced the enormously influential idea of an "architecture of holiness" that appears not in space but in time. Judaism, he argues, is the religion of time: it finds meaning not in space and the material things that fill it but in time and the eternity that imbues it, so that "the Sabbaths are our great cathedrals."