Amusing as it is to be called a charlatan by a guy who broke into journalism by purchasing a magazine for himself, I think Marty Peretz may want to actually read up on his Heschel before we continue this argument any further. No Time For Neutrality, which Peretz dismisses as "a small five page essay," was central enough -- and representative enough -- to Heschel's thought that his daughter, in compiling the anthology, used it to name the whole second section of the book. The work I was quoting from, "God, Torah, and Israel," is actually 18 pages, as if that matters. Moreover, Peretz is right to say that Heschel uses the term Israel to denote "the spiritual Israel," and that's reflected in my piece ("Israel, for Heschel, was the corporeal manifestation of higher ideals -- an unbreakable respect for human rights, and an unyielding sense of obligation to one another's dignity."). As for Peretz, that's about all the response his post deserves, the rest of it is composed of charming hypotheses like, "believe me, [Heschel] had his standards, and he wouldn't have marched with the two-bit Jewish leaders who are still excited to utter Arafat's name. (In 1993, they were so were so excited to see him at the White House that they almost pissed in their pants...and in their panties.)" Okay, we'll believe you Marty. Rather, I'll outsource the rest of the reply Gershom Gorenberg's sensitive and learned post on Heschel. The whole exchange left me thinking about another essay of Heschel's, this one on the meaning of World War II. Heschel regretted the battle that he knew to be necessary, but insisted that force was a stopgap, not a solution. He wrote: THE PIT.
Amusing as it is to be called a charlatan by a guy who broke into journalism by purchasing a magazine for himself, I think Marty Peretz may want to actually read up on his Heschel before we continue this argument any further. No Time For Neutrality, which Peretz dismisses as "a small five page essay," was central enough -- and representative enough -- to Heschel's thought that his daughter, in compiling the anthology, used it to name the whole second section of the book. The work I was quoting from, "God, Torah, and Israel," is actually 18 pages, as if that matters. Moreover, Peretz is right to say that Heschel uses the term Israel to denote "the spiritual Israel," and that's reflected in my piece ("Israel, for Heschel, was the corporeal manifestation of higher ideals -- an unbreakable respect for human rights, and an unyielding sense of obligation to one another's dignity."). As for Peretz, that's about all the response his post deserves, the rest of it is composed of charming hypotheses like, "believe me, [Heschel] had his standards, and he wouldn't have marched with the two-bit Jewish leaders who are still excited to utter Arafat's name. (In 1993, they were so were so excited to see him at the White House that they almost pissed in their pants...and in their panties.)" Okay, we'll believe you Marty. Rather, I'll outsource the rest of the reply Gershom Gorenberg's sensitive and learned post on Heschel. The whole exchange left me thinking about another essay of Heschel's, this one on the meaning of World War II. Heschel regretted the battle that he knew to be necessary, but insisted that force was a stopgap, not a solution. He wrote: 
