Franz Rosenzweig

Franz Rosenzweig was one of the most important Jewish philosophers of the twentieth century. Born into a nonobservant Jewish family in Kassel, Germany, he considered converting to Christianity in 1913. But an experience he described as sudden and revelatory led him instead to seek a way of living a life of Jewish belief and observance. Rosenzweig was also moved to seek a philosophy that would legitimate revelation and commandedness (and thus Jewish law and its observance) against both the paralyzing impact of modern skepticism and what he regarded as an empty Jewish proto-existentialism (associated with the philosopher Martin Buber) that talked much about God but made no place for Jewish law. During World War I, while serving in the German army on the Balkan front, Rosenzweig completed (on postcards he mailed home) a systematic philosophical reenvisioning of Judaism, revelation, and commandedness, The Star of Redemption (1921).