A History of Modern Jewish Religious Philosophy

Volume IV: The Crisis of Humanism (II). The End of the Jewish Center in Germany

Series: 

Author:
Eliezer Schweid
Translator:
Leonard Levin
The last generation of German Jewish philosophers brought the long, tragic history of German-Jewish creative thought to a close in a blaze of glory, while transitioning to the new Jewish creative centers in Israel and America. The best known (Buber, Rosenzweig, Baeck, Strauss, Scholem) and the less known (Breuer, Birnbaum, Klatzkin, Aviad-Wolfsberg, Guttmann) are thoroughly explicated here, with generous primary text citations appearing in English for the first time, making this a rich sourcebook and reference for the thinkers presented.
Copyright Year:
2023
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ISBN:
978-90-04-53313-4
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07 Nov 2022
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-53312-7
Publication:
27 Oct 2022
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Eliezer Schweid was lifelong Professor of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University, Israel Prize laureate, philosopher and public intellectual, and author of over 40 books on Jewish thought, applying the Jewish legacy to issues of Jewish and universal human concern.

Leonard Levin has translated many of Eliezer Schweid’s books, including The Responsibility of Jewish Philosophy (Brill, 2013) and edited Studies in Judaism and Pluralism (Ben-Yehuda, 2016). He is professor of Jewish philosophy at the Academy for Jewish Religion, Yonkers, NY.

Christoph Hopp is working towards his PhD in Jewish Studies at the University of Potsdam and University of Haifa.
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations

Historical Introduction
 0.1 Period of the World Wars: The Rise of Totalitarianism
 0.2 The Jewish Fate in the World Wars
 0.3 General Developments in the Democratic Countries
 0.4 Growth of the Jewish Centers in America and Israel
 0.5 General Intellectual Developments—Psychology, Sociology, and Philosophy
 0.6 Jewish Thought of the Period: Changes in Historical and Social Studies
 0.7 Maturation of Modern Jewish Literature
 0.8 Sociology and Psychology of Religion: Weber, Durkheim, James, Otto, Freud
 0.9 Philosophical Developments: Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein

1 German Jewry Faces the Prospect of Its Impending Destruction
 1.1 Premonitions of Doom
 1.2 Assimilated German-Jewish Radicals
 1.3 Old Movements and New Leaders
 1.4 The Larger Perspective

2 The Return to Eternal Roots: The Encounter between the People and Its God—The Philosophy of Martin Buber
 2.1 Buber’s Early Years
 2.2 From Mysticism to Hasidism
 2.3 From the Bible to Dialogue
 2.4 Buber and Cohen
 2.5 Hebrew Humanism
 2.6 Unity, Deed, and Future
 2.7 Land, Language, and Bible
 2.8 Dialogue and Prophecy
 2.9 Cognition and Relation: I-Thou and I-It
 2.10 The Eternal Thou: God
 2.11 Buber’s Religious Spiritual Zionism

3 The People Living Eternity in Time: The Religious Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig
 3.1 Life as Exemplar
 3.2 Between Judaism and Christianity
 3.3 Star, Lehrhaus, and Illness
 3.4 Departure from Hegel: A Believing Knowledge
 3.5 The Elements: God, Man, and World; Language
 3.6 Epistemology: From Negative to Positive Knowledge
 3.7 Schematic of the Star
 3.8 Rosenzweig’s Attitude to Natural and Social Sciences
 3.9 Religious Philosophy: Creation, Revelation, Redemption
 3.10 Complementarity of Judaism and Christianity
 3.11 The Calendar as Matrix of Jewish Teaching and Community
 3.12 Return to the Individual Standpoint

4 The Traditional, Pan-Jewish Turn in Reform: The Teaching of Leo Baeck
 4.1 Communal Leader in Time of Crisis
 4.2 Response to Harnack: The Essence of Judaism
 4.3 Baeck’s Critique of Christianity
 4.4 Prophetic Revelation Complementary to Reason
 4.5 Polarities in God Concept and Ethics
 4.6 Prophetic Mysticism in the Face of Catastrophe

5 The Paradox of Right-Wing Modern Orthodoxy: The Thought of Isaac Breuer
 5.1 The Pedagogical Challenge: R. Juda Wohlgemuth
 5.2 From Zionism to Agudath Israel: Nathan Birnbaum
 5.3 Rabbi Isaac Breuer: Summary of His Career
 5.4 Breuer’s Kantian Orthodox Philosophy
 5.5 Breuer’s Polemic against Autonomous Ethics

6 The Decline of Life or the Birth Pangs of Redemption?—Jacob Klatzkin and Isaiah Aviad
 6.1 Political Zionism and Religious Zionism in Germany
 6.2 The Thought of Jacob Klatzkin
 6.3 The Thought of Yeshayahu Aviad-Wolfsberg

7 The Awakening of Modern Jewish Thought in France
 7.1 Historical Background of French-Jewish Thought
 7.2 Rabbi Joseph Salvador
 7.3 Rabbi Elijah ben Abraham Benamozegh
 7.4 Bernard Lazare
 7.5 Edmond Fleg

8 Amid the Uprooting to New Centers: “Are We Still Jews?”—Julius Guttmann, Leo Strauss, and Gershom Scholem in the German Phase of Their Careers
 8.1 Ernst Simon’s Question
 8.2 Julius Guttmann and the Philosophy of Judaism
 8.3 Leo Strauss: Athens and Jerusalem
 8.4 Strauss’s Critique of Spinoza
 8.5 Guttmann’s Response to Strauss
 8.6 Recovery of the Mystical Tradition: Gershom Scholem
Appendix: Source Texts to Chapters 5–8
 Source Texts to Chapter 5
 Source Texts to Chapter 6
 Source Texts to Chapter 7
 Source Texts to Chapter 8
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
The full multi-volume work will be the standard reference in modern Jewish philosophy, essential for libraries and scholars of modern Jewish religious and secular thought addressing the crisis of humanism.
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