Abraham Joshua Heschel was born in Poland in 1907 and obtained his early education at a yeshiva (a Talmudic or rabbinical study school) before earning his doctorate at the University of Berlin. He departed for London in 1939, six weeks before the Nazi invasion of Poland, and subsequently for the United States, where he taught from 1945 to 1972 at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. Heschel was deeply involved in social movements for peace, civil rights, and interfaith understanding as an activist, scholar, and teacher.