Creator Bio
Leo Baeck
1873–1956
The German Reform rabbi Leo Baeck was trained at the Breslau Rabbinical Seminary and the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin, as well as the Universities of Breslau and Berlin. He served as a rabbi in Germany and, from 1933, as head of the representative body of German Jewry. Despite entreaties to leave, he remained in the country, believing it was his duty to offer spiritual support to his fellow Jews during the horrors of the Nazi years. In 1943, he was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. He survived and settled in London after the war. He originally wrote The Essence of Judaism as a response to the Christian theologian Adolf von Harnack’s The Essence of Christianity.
Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator
Primary Source
The Essence of Judaism
During the thousands of years of its history, Judaism has learned and experienced a good deal. In its people the commanding urge to think further, to struggle with ideas, has…
Primary Source
The Idea Remains
Since the song of victory is silent
About the man now overcome.
I will serve as Hector’s witness.
There once was a Germany, we all know it, that belonged to the world, and that was received by the…