[Jewish True Tales] Franz Rosenzweig

[Lawrence J. Epstein]

[http://jewishtruetales.com]

Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929). He was, arguably, the most influential Jewish theologian of the 20^th century. His early philosophy evolved into an existential outlook, focusing on the individual experiences of people, and probing how religion shaped an individual’s experience. He saw a person’s relationship with God as an encounter. Oddly enough, his interest in religion was aroused by his close friend Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, who had become a Protestant and who convinced Rosenzweig that a scholar could, with intellectual justification, also be religious.

The two friends talked through most of the night of July 7, 1913. Seeking a breakthrough, Rosenzweig asked his friend how to find answers. Rosenstock-Huessy gave the simplest of religious responses; he urged Rosenzweig to pray. Rosenzweig didn’t pray. Instead he reached a conclusion that he, too, would embrace Christianity because it was acceptable to his friend and some members of his own family.

Having made his fateful decision, Rosenzweig concluded that he should not enter Christianity as a pagan but, as the religion’s founder had, as a Jew. The logic drove him to attend Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services to pass through Judaism to Christianity.

It was with such a plan in mind that he was sitting in an Orthodox synagogue in Berlin on Yom Kippur, October 11, 1913. He spent the entire day listening to the services, listening in the evening to the Kol Nidre declaration and the next day to the psalms and hymns, the scriptural readings, and the rest of the emotionally overwhelming service. He heard the story of Jonah—the tale of a prophet who tried to flee from the service of God. Surely, Rosenzweig’s mind found resonance in such a story. The service ended with the congregational professions of the faith and the sounding of the ram’s horn.

Rosenzweig left the services as a transformed man. The day made him realize he could find meaning within Judaism. It is not necessary to leave it. He wrote a long letter to his mother, trying to explain what had happened.

It was at the end of August 1918 that he began The Star of Redemption. He as a soldier at the time and he wrote what he could on military postcards that he sent to his mother. It was only when the war ended that he returned home to finish one of the most important books in Jewish theology.

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Posted By Lawrence J. Epstein to Jewish True Tales at 12/30/2010 01:00:00 PM