In this book the author explores through the prism of Rosenweig's image of how German Jews have understood and contended with their two-fold spiritual patrimony. He deepens the discussion to consider also how the German-Jewish experience bears upon the general random experience of living with multiple cultural identities.
From its modest beginnings in 1818 Berlin, Wissenschaft des Judentums has burgeoned into a scholarly discipline pursued by a vast cadre of scholars. Now constituting a global community, these scholars continue to draw their inspiration from the determined pioneers of Wissenschaft des Judentums in nineteenth and twentieth Germany. Beyond setting the highest standards of philological and historiographical research, German Wissenschaft des Judentums had a seminal role in creating modern Jewish discourse in which cultural memory supplemented traditional Jewish learning. The secular character of modern Jewish Studies, initially pursued largely in German and subsequently in other vernacular languages (e. g. French, Dutch, Italian, modern Hebrew, Russian), greatly facilitated an exchange with non-Jewish scholars, and thereby encouraging mutual understanding and respect. The present volume is based on papers delivered at a conference, sponsored by the Leo Baeck Institute in Jerusalem, by scholars from North American, Europe, and Israel. The papers and attendant deliberations explored ramified historical and methodological issues. Taken as a whole, the volume represents a tribute to the two hundred year legacy of Wissenschaft des Judentums and its singular contribution to not only modern Jewish self-understand but also to the unfolding of humanistic cultural discourse.
For Gustav Landauer, literary critic and anarchist, scholar of mysticism and participant of the Bavarian revolution, culture and politics occupied the same spiritual space. While identifying with ethical socialism, his Jewish sensibility increasingly gained over the years, not only, but in great measure due to Buber's influence. This volume brings together leading scholars to assess Landauer's ramified literary and political activities, his life as a Jew and anarchist, paying particular attention to his impact on Martin Buber.
Das Buch gibt eine Gesamtdarstellung von Martin Bubers Denken bis zur Veröffentlichung von „Ich und Du“ im Jahre 1923, jedem berühmt gewordenen Werk, das nach Bubers eigener Aussage einen grundsätzlichen Wendepunkt in seinen Überlegungen darstellt. Mendes-Flohr arbeitet zwei scheinbar widersprüchliche Aspekte in Bubers vor-dialogischer Philosophie heraus. Zum einen beschäftigte sich Buber mit mystischen Gedankengängen, die darauf abzielten, die empirischen Beschränkungen der sozialen Existenz des Menschen zu überwinden, zum anderen sah Buber durchaus die Ungerechtigkeiten bestehender Sozialordnungen und war sich der Notwendigkeit bewußt, Änderungen durch praktisches Handeln herbeizuführen. Die letztliche Unvereinbarkeit mystischer Kontemplation und praktischer Handlungsphilosophie löste bei Bubér eine existentielle Krise aus, die schließlich mit der Niederschrift und Veröffentlichung von „Ich und Du“ überwunden und gelöst wurde.