Gordon Tucker - Translation and Commentary On Heschel

Translation and Commentary On Heschel

Rabbi Tucker's most widely known scholarly work is his translation with notes and commentaries of writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel. Tucker translated Heschel's Torah min HaShamayim BeAspaklariah shel HaDorot (Heavenly Torah as Refracted through the Generations) from the original Hebrew into English, and provided many notes, essays, and commentaries.

In her forward to Heavenly Torah, Heschel's daughter Susannah Heschel describes the scope and magnitude of this translation. "Gordon Tucker (and Rabbi Leonard Levin) have done a superb job of assembling, editing, abridging, and translating a huge, not-quite-finished manuscript. Others literally died trying to translate this sprawling masterpiece. There may be some dissent from the inevitable omissions, some few typos, some doubts about Tucker's interpretations. But on the whole, the introductions to each chapter, the explanatory notes on almost every page (including identifying Heschel's often obscure sources) are wonderful aids in working through this massive work."

Heschel differed with the more legalistic approach to Torah of the Lithuanian rabbis who dominated the interpretation of halacha and the exegesis of Torah in the 20th century. He emphasized aggadah and midrash, the often speculative writings of the rabbinical sages that were outside the Torah's legal framework. Because these writings were not as heavily edited or redacted as the Mishna and Gemara, Heschel's Hebrew manuscript reflects a variety of difficult Hebrew prose styles. Or N. Rose, a reviewer of Heavenly Torah, praised Tucker and Levin for capturing the qualities of Heschel's original manuscript in their translation. "Not only is this English version a lucid and thoughtful reworking of the original text, but Tucker and Levin even manage to introduce into their translation a measure of the poeticism readers have come to expect of Heschel."