There is a fracture in the Jewish moral imagination—an ever-widening rift between two sacred imperatives: the universal ethics of the prophets and the particular obligations of Jewish peoplehood. One speaks in the language of justice, empathy, and solidarity with the vulnerable. The other insists on memory, power, and survival. One is rooted in the words of Isaiah and Amos. The other rises from the ashes of Auschwitz and the founding of the State of Israel. At the heart of this tension stand two towering figures: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Theodor Herzl.
To walk between Heschel and Herzl is to confront one of the most urgent questions in Jewish life today: Who gets to define Jewish ethics? Whose vision guides us when our values seem to conflict with our safety? And can we still hold prophetic moral language alongside the realpolitik of Jewish power?
For generations of American Jews, Abraham Joshua Heschel remains the embodiment of Jewish ethical greatness. A refugee from Nazi Europe and a Hasidic mystic turned social critic, Heschel gave voice to a Judaism that was spiritually urgent and morally expansive. He marched with Dr. King, protested the Vietnam War, and inspired a generation of liberal Jews to see the pursuit of justice as the very heart of Torah. His writings—God in Search of Man, The Prophets, and his essays on prayer and ethics—taught that God is not indifferent, but affected by human suffering. “Some are guilty, all are responsible,” he said, calling for moral responsiveness in the face of systemic evil. His famous line—“In Selma, I felt my legs were praying”—became a rallying cry for Jews who saw in social justice not a break from tradition, but its fulfillment.
And yet, what many forget is that Heschel’s prophetic voice emerged from deep within the Jewish tradition. He was not a secular progressive with tzitzit. He was a profoundly rooted theologian who saw justice not as a political choice, but as a covenantal obligation. He did not universalize Judaism out of discomfort with Jewish difference. He universalized from within Jewish chosenness. He believed that the God who chose Israel also demanded that Israel speak for the voiceless—but as Israel, not in place of it.
In contrast, Theodor Herzl’s contribution was not spiritual but strategic. A secular journalist turned reluctant revolutionary, Herzl diagnosed with brutal clarity what centuries of Jewish piety, assimilation, and ethical appeal had failed to change: the world would not accept Jews without a state. Herzl was not a prophet in Heschel’s mold. He was not interested in ethical theory. He was interested in Jewish survival. After witnessing the virulent antisemitism surrounding the Dreyfus Affair in France, Herzl concluded that emancipation had failed. The only solution was Jewish self-determination—a nation among nations. His vision, laid out in Der Judenstaat, was not about redemption, but necessity. And for all its cold realism, Herzl’s Zionism was also deeply moral. It was grounded in the radical assertion that the Jewish people, long treated as a problem, had the right to exist in dignity. That the ghetto and the shtetl and the courtroom and the concentration camp were not our natural condition. That we could—and must—be responsible for our own fate.
For decades, American Jews managed a delicate balancing act. Heschel and Herzl coexisted. One guided sermons; the other guided security policy. One inspired college students and interfaith activism; the other built Iron Domes and border walls. But that balance is breaking.
Since October 7, and the antisemitic onslaught that followed it, many Jews have found themselves politically homeless and spiritually confused. As Israeli civilians were raped, burned, and taken hostage, and Jewish students on American campuses were told they deserved it—or worse—many Jewish institutions responded with… caution. Ambiguity. Silence. Statements were issued that spoke of “the cycle of violence.” Calls were made for “mutual empathy.” Heschel was quoted. Peace was invoked. And yet somehow, what too many rabbis and Jewish leaders did not say was the simple truth: that Hamas is evil, that Israel has the right—and the obligation—to defend itself, that the Jewish people are under attack.
The prophetic voice, it seemed, had become allergic to clarity. And the Zionist impulse, for many liberal Jews, had become a source of embarrassment. The two had come unmoored from one another—floating in opposite directions, unable to speak the same moral language.
This dissonance has consequences. It breeds a Judaism that speaks passionately about justice in America while equivocating about the right of Jews to self-defense in Israel. It breeds sermons about George Floyd, but silence about Jewish hostages. It teaches our children to care about every cause except their own. It creates a generation of Jews who know how to march, but not how to mourn. Who know how to critique, but not how to defend. Who quote Heschel, but disown Herzl—until they are spat on at university protests, and realize that without Jewish power, Jewish ethics are irrelevant.
The danger of this split is twofold. First, ethics without power is impotent. A prophetic voice that cannot defend its own people is not moral—it is performative. The Torah commands us to pursue justice, yes—but also to pursue life. The right to exist is not a right we owe the world. It is one we owe our children. Second, power without ethics is dangerous. Zionism untethered from Torah becomes just another nationalism. Jewish defense without Jewish values becomes self-serving rather than covenantal. If Herzl built the house, Heschel reminds us how to live in it. If Herzl gives us a flag, Heschel reminds us what it must stand for.
The Torah does not ask us to choose between them. It calls us to integrate them. The prophets and the kings are part of the same story.
What we need is not a rejection of prophetic ethics or Jewish nationalism, but a reunification of the two—a covenantal ethic that embraces both moral responsibility and Jewish particularism. This ethic would say: Yes, we must care about all human suffering—but not at the expense of our own. Yes, we must mourn Palestinian deaths—but not apologize for fighting a genocidal enemy. Yes, we must affirm the image of God in every human being—but not allow that affirmation to make us suicidal. Yes, we must love peace—but not more than we love Jewish life.
It would teach that Judaism begins in particularity and expands outward. That loving the stranger is not opposed to loving your brother. That protecting the vulnerable includes protecting your people. That we are not a guilt project—we are a covenant. It would raise a generation of Jews who can stand with the oppressed and still stand with Israel. Who can pray with their feet and fight with their hands. Who can sing Shalom Rav and still train their bodies for a world that is not yet redeemed.
So who gets to define Jewish ethics?
We do.
We, the inheritors of both prophets and pioneers. We, the people who have walked through fire and still seek holiness. We, who carry both the words of Isaiah and the weapons of the IDF—not because we want war, but because we will not die quietly.
Jewish ethics are not defined by Twitter trends or campus activists or moral grandstanders who quote the prophets while ignoring their context. Jewish ethics are defined by Torah. By covenant. By history. And by a people who refuse to apologize for surviving.
We must stop teaching our children to choose between Heschel and Herzl. We must teach them to carry both. Because the world they are inheriting demands nothing less than a Judaism that is both righteous and resilient. We need a prophetic voice with a backbone. A political vision with a soul. A Jewish ethic that does not flinch when our enemies chant for our death.
That’s what it means to walk between Heschel and Herzl. That’s what it means to be a Jew in this moment. And that’s what it will take to ensure we have a Jewish future worth defending.
Leave a Reply