Philosopher and Poseq- 81 ­

career in the United States . Heschel gave much of his creative effort to halakhah and the great halakhic thinkers of the past. His biography of Maimonides dealt with philosophical, mystical, as well as halakhic issues. His major work, Torah Min Hashamayim is a historical exploration of the entire realm of rabbinic literature. Abraham Heschel provided an insight into his personal understanding of the mitzvah through his essay. (15) There he explained how he began to feel a sense of"duty" to worship and to the other mitzvot while a student in Berlin. Although the university courses which he took emphasized symbolic thinking, this was not satisfactory for him as he felt that the mitzvot created orderly existence for each human being.(16) On a practical level he felt that modern man could not mechanically observe the mitzvot as that was of little purpose. He emphasized that there remained a vast gap between the all or nothing philosophy expressed by so many modern Jews . The real question was which segments of the halakhah can and should be fulfilled.(17) Modern man primarily sought for divine meaning in the mitzvot and was little concerned with their origin- a major concern in the nineteenth century. Heschel felt that the mitzvot would lead to meaning and that the modern Jew should not spend his time seeking a rationale for the commandments,"Its meaning must be understood in terms compatible with the sense of the ineffable".(18) He stressed the need for a‘leap of action’, an approach very much in keeping with the traditional way of Judaism . For Abraham Heschel "the deed is the source of holiness."(19) The mitzvot represented the path to the sacred and within that path emphasis was to be placed upon kavanah rather than detailed observance.(20)