I've been on a nondual Judaism kick for a little while, and have previously read a few books by Heschel. When I was looking for my next book to read and remembered that I had a bag of books that I got from a going out of business bookstore in my trunk, and one of them was this book, I ran to retrieve it. I was mostly disappointed.

I loved the way Hechel talked about celebrating the sabbath in The Sabbath; his collected works blew my mind; and reading his biography made me want to meet him. Man is Not Alone didn't have the same magic, didn't really talk to me at all.

The first 75 pages or so are good. He talks about the ineffable and how that relates to the concept of god. That god just means that which we can't explain, that we have no words for. Since I've had experiences like this, I was hooked. But then he gets a little weird. He pretty much spends the rest of the book talking about (from the way I read it at least) how god is separate than us. How this all-knowing, all-seeing, man created the earth and everything on it. Bleh.

If I were to take a quiz about the final three quarters of the book, I would fail miserably because I spent most of the time just skimming and zoning out about other things. I'm definitely not done with Heschel, but I will be more picky when choosing his next book. ( )