[4] His paternal great-great-grandfather and namesake was Rebbe Avraham Yehoshua Heshel of Apt in present-day Poland.

[4] In late October 1938, while living in a rented room in the home of a Jewish family in Frankfurt, Heschel was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Poland in the Polenaktion.

[4] Six weeks before the German invasion of Poland, Heschel fled Warsaw for London with the help of Julian Morgenstern, president of Hebrew Union College, and Alexander Guttmann, an eventual colleague at the Hebrew Union College, who secretly re-wrote Heschel's ordination certificate to meet American visa requirements.

He once wrote, "If I should go to Poland or Germany, every stone, every tree would remind me of contempt, hatred, murder, of children killed, of mothers burned alive, of human beings asphyxiated.

[4] He soon left for Cincinnati, serving on the faculty of Hebrew Union College (HUC), the main seminary of Reform Judaism, for five years.

Heschel believed that the teachings of the Hebrew prophets were a clarion call for social action in the United States and, inspired by this belief, he worked for African Americans' civil rights and spoke out against the Vietnam War.

[9] He also criticized what he specifically called "pan-halakhism," or an exclusive focus upon religiously compatible behavior to the neglect of the non-legalistic dimension of rabbinic tradition.

A recurring theme in this work is the radical amazement people feel when experiencing the presence of the Divine.

He discusses ways people can seek God's presence and the radical amazement we receive in return.

He discusses the need to correlate ritual observance with spirituality and love and the importance of Kavanah (intention) when performing mitzvot.

It covers their lives and the historical context of their missions, summarizes their work, and discusses their psychological state.

Whereas other nations have soothsayers and diviners who attempt to discover the will of their gods, Heschel asserts, the Hebrew prophets are characterized by their experience of what he calls theotropism—God turning towards humanity.

Heschel argues for the view of Hebrew prophets as receivers of the "Divine Pathos," of the wrath and sorrow of God over his nation that has forsaken him.

The three volumes of this work are a study of classical rabbinic theology and aggadah, as opposed to halakha (Jewish law).

It explores the views of the rabbis in the Mishnah, Talmud, and Midrash about the nature of Torah, the revelation of God to humankind, prophecy, and the ways that Jews have used scriptural exegesis to expand and understand these core Jewish texts.

It can be the subject of intense study and analysis, providing insight into the relationship between God and humans beyond the world of Judaism and all monotheisms.

Ignorance about man is not lack of knowledge, but false knowledge.” Heschel wrote a series of articles, originally in Hebrew, on the existence of prophecy in Judaism after the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE.

The publisher of this book states, "The standard Jewish view is that prophecy ended with the ancient prophets, somewhere early in the Second Temple era.

Heschel's work on prophetic inspiration in the Middle Ages originally appeared in two long Hebrew articles.

[20] Heschel's papers are held in the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University.

[21] On 17 October 2022, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin inaugurated the Abraham J. Heschel Center for Catholic-Jewish Relations, attended by Catholic and Jewish figures, including Rabbi Abraham Skorka, Susannah Heschel, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, and Archbishop Stanisław Budzik of Lublin.