The Legacy of German Jewry / Hermann Levin Goldschmidt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Goldschmidt, Hermann Levin, Author.

Contributor:

Goetschel, Willi, Contributor.

Suchoff, David, Contributor.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (265 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2022]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

First published in 1957, The Legacy of German Jewry is a comprehensive rethinking of the German-Jewish experience. Goldschmidt challenges the elegiac view of Gershom Scholem, showing us the German-Jewish legacy in literature, philosophy, and critical thought in a new light. Part One re-examines the breakthrough to modernity, tracing the moves of thinkers like Moses Mendelssohn, building on the legacies of religious figures like the Baal Shem Tov and radical philosophers such as Spinoza. This vision of modernity, Goldschmidt shows, rested upon a belief that “remnants” of the radical past could provide ideas and energy for reconceiving the modern world. Goldschmidt’s philosophy of the remnant animates Part Two as well, where his account of the political history of the Jews in modernity and the riches of Jewish culture as recast in German-Jewish thought provide insights into Leo Baeck, Hermann Cohen, and Franz Rosenzweig, among others. Part Three analyzes the post-Auschwitz complex, and uses the Book of Job to break through that trauma. Ahead of his time and biblical in his perspective, Goldschmidt describes the innovative ways that German-Jewish writers and thinkers anticipated what we now call multiculturalism and its concern with the Other. Rather than destined to destruction, the German-Jewish experience is reconceived here as a past whose unfulfilled project remains urgent and contemporary—a dream yet to be realized in practice, and hence a task that still awaits its completion.

Contents:

Frontmatter

contents

Introduction

Contributors

Part One

1. Origins of the Modern

2. The Breakthrough to Modernity

3. The Role of German Jewry

Part Two

4. Historical Stages

5. Equal Rights, Not Assimilation!

6. Steps Toward Emancipation

7. Gabriel Riesser’s Greatest Deed

8. Emancipation’s Greatest Foe

9. The Final Step to Emancipation

10. A Few Figures

11. The Dual Legacy of Theodor Herzl

12. The Lifework of Martin Buber

13. The Jewish State and the World Jewish Congress

Part Three

14. The Essence of Judaism

15. Philosophy Out of the Sources of Judaism

16. World History of the Jewish People

17. Science from a Jewish Perspective

18. Education Without End

19. Jewish Literature

20. The Empty House and Shofar

21. Jewish Self-Hatred

22. The Jewish Quest for a German Bible

23. Judaism’s Message of the Kingdom of God

Part Four

24. The End

25. Sorrow

26. Continuity

27. The Legacy of German Jewry

Afterword

Notes

Bible Index

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Mrz 2022)

ISBN:

9780823293032

0823293033

OCLC:

1369656602