Judaism, History and Eternity According to Franz Rosenzweig

Throughout the ages Jews and Judaism have lived as a part of host civilizations. They have been in the past a part of the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greco-Roman, Arab-Moslem, and Christian-European civilizations. Today Jews find themselves in a civilization that in many ways is dominated by American culture. But in addition to being a part of these world-civilizations, the Jewish people have almost always sought to preserve whatever it is that makes their own religious and cultural heritage unique, and as a result they distanced themselves to one extent or another from some of the characteristic norms of their host civilizations.

Franz Rosenzweig

This complex relationship often raised questions pertaining to the nature of Jewish identity and challenged the Jewish people to formulate again and again the nature of relations obtaining between themselves, their religion and culture and the dominant world civilization of their time. In the following discussion, I would like to present a particular formulation of the relationship between Judaism and world-civilization as it appears in the early 20th century German-Jewish thought of Franz Rosenzweig.

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Franz Rosenzweig was born in 1886 to an assimilated Jewish family in the German city of Kassel . He died in 1929 after a long debilitating illness. To whatever extent the general public has heard of Franz Rosenzweig, it is usually in connection with a relatively famous turn of events during the summer and autumn of 1913. In that year Rosenzweig had decided to convert to Christianity, but after quite a bit of soul searching, changed his mind, and not only returned to the Jewish fold, but also embarked on a life dedicated to a renaissance of Jewish religiosity  (Franz Rosenzweig, Der Mensch und sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften . I Bd : B riefe und Tagebücher, Ed. by Rachel Rosenzweig and Edith Rosenzweig-Scheinmann, Martinus Nijhoff 1979, p. 133. Regarding Rosenzweig’s work toward a renaissance of Jewish life see the description of the Jewish educational institute he founded in Ephraim Meir, The Rosenzweig Lehrhaus, The Rappaport Center for Assimilation Research and Strengthening Jewish Vitality – Bar Ilan Faculty of Jewish Studies 2005, p. 15 – 47)..

In order to fully comprehend the significance of Rosenzweig’s willingness to consider baptism and subsequent return to the fold of Judaism, it is necessary to recall that in his day, any and all discussion concerning the status of different religions in world civilization presupposed the political and social realities of the German state as the historical embodiment of the European heritage, in regard to both cultural and religious issues. This is a time when emancipation had already promised and to a certain extent guaranteed the Jews civil rights. Nonetheless, as a result of assimilation, the Jewish religious and cultural heritage became relatively insignificant to everyday life. When Rosenzweig, as a young man, found himself searching – along with a number of close friends – for a way to live a life with religious meaning, he was easily convinced that this in fact required becoming a Christian. And so, following an intense night-long conversation on the 7th of July, 1913 , he announced to his friends his decision to become baptized. Despite his deep identification with European-Christian social and religious heritage, Rosenzweig apparently still felt within some sense of identification with his Jewish past, and as a result, changed his mind within a couple of months.

Surprisingly, the explanation he offered for remaining a Jew contained a justification of his previous decision to become baptized. As an assimilated Jew, Rosenzweig had already accepted the Christian theological position that Christianity alone is the religion of western civilization, whose responsibility it is to bring the gentile peoples to worship the one God of creation. In Rosenzweig’s words, “Christianity holds fast to Jesus [.] because she knows no one can reach the Father save through him”.

Why then, did Franz Rosenzweig nonetheless decide to remain a Jew? He attributes the decision to an understanding of the present religious viability of Judaism that he had been unable to attain previously. He says,

“Indeed, no one may reach [God save through Jesus but] the situation is [.] different for one who does not have to reach the father because he is already with him”  (Op. cit).

With this statement, Rosenzweig formulated what to his mind is unique about Judaism, and began to consider both Judaism and Christianity as true religions wherein each provides a separate function in the betterment of Western civilization: Christianity acts within history in order to bring the peoples of the world closer to God, whereas Judaism acts as a model of religious existence in which God is experienced as always and already present beyond the realm of historical change and development.

Such a formulation of Judaism as an a-historical faith-community would have been sufficient for Franz Rosenzweig to justify his remaining a Jew. But it was also important for him to make the claim that the continued existence of Judaism is necessary in order to achieve the goals of Christianity in its attempt to bring Western society closer to God. He therefore reminds us that the history of Christian Europe is built upon pagan foundations. In fact, Christianity’s uniqueness vis-a-vis Judaism is its willingness to confront its own pagan elements in order to wage war against them. But precisely because of this, he concluded, Christianity faces a danger that Judaism does not.

“She is in constant danger that [the pagan culture] she has vanquished [will rise up] and force its laws upon her”  (Op. cit). .

Judiasm is therefore necessary as a constant reminder as to what the goal of Christianity and Western civilization ought to be. That is, to achieve the type of society that already exists in Judaism; a society in which God is always and already experienced as eternally present.

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Despite the historical value of the above description of Rosenzweig’s attempt to come to terms with the significance of his Jewish identity vis-a-vis Western culture, I would not have chosen to present it here, were it not for his later attempt to validate his position regarding Judaism as a-historical faith-community in his major philosophical work – The Star of Redemption  (Franz Rosenzweig , Der Stern der Erlösung , Suhrkampf Verlag , Frankfurt am Main 1988/ The Star of Redemption, Trans. By William Hallo, Holt Rinehart and Winston , New York Chicago and San Francisco 1971). .

In the 3rd section of this now famous book, Franz Rosenzweig describes Judaism as an indivisible mixture of faith, ritual and ethnicity. The fabric of Jewish identity, in this context, is rooted in an intimate relationship between forefathers and offspring maintained through the custom of naming new-born children in memory of their grandparents throughout the generations  (Op. cit. p. 331 – 332/298 – 299). . The meaning of this particular form of Jewish ethnicity is drawn from a national-religious myth of the people’s beginnings in the divine redemption of its forefathers from slavery in Egypt and the revelation of God’s Law at Sinai  (Op. cit. p. 337 – 338, 346, 351 – 354/303 – 304, 312, 317 – 319). . These, for the Jewish religious consciousness, are the foundations of Jewish peoplehood.

Through the Jewish ritual calendar, the saving presence of God recalled in the story of the exodus and his revealing presence at Sinai become a matter of immediate temporal experience. Week in and week, out the Sabbath becomes an experience of nature and history as divine creation  (Op. cit. p. 344 – 349/310 – 315). . This experience is further enriched by a sense of divine presence through the reading of the weekly Tora portion on the Sabbath morning  (Op. cit. p. 346 – 347/312). . The Passover, Shavuot and Succot festivals interpret the major events of Jewish history as landmarks in the divine drama of the people’s lives  (Op. cit. p. 351 – 357/316 – 321). . The experience of eternity as always present within the Jewish year is then brought to a climax on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur which inaugurate, in the midst of the community, a direct ritual experience of the future Judgment day, meant to come for others only at the end of time  (Op. cit. p. 359 – 364/323 – 327). .

The significance of this explication becomes clear as he compares and contrasts the fusion of ritual, faith and ethnicity in Jewish life with the inevitable conflict between faith and ethnicity that he believed to be characteristic of the Christian world. It is not by accident that the Christian calendar counts the years beginning with the birth of Jesus rather than from the time of creation as does Judaism. Christianity, he maintains, is experienced by the European peoples as but one epoch situated between their pre-Christian history which was transformed through the acceptance of Jesus as their savior, and a future epoch of world redemption which will begin with Jesus’ second coming.

For Rosenzweig, it is not surprising, that in Christian civilization, the Sabbath comes at the beginning of the week and not at the end. The week here symbolizes the Christian experience of time. Christianity, he maintains, is always at the beginning of its historical endeavor, and the redemption from history is always seen in the far off distance  (Op. cit. p. 373 – 381, 392 – 410/336 – 343, 353 – 370). . It is also not surprising, in his opinion, that the Hellenistic appreciation for art and music dominate Christian liturgy, or that pagan deities have been transformed into Christian saints. In a very real sense, he maintains, the material infra-structure of the Christian world is still pagan. Christianity has taken upon itself the job of introducing biblical religion into the historical culture of the West by vanquishing is pagan foundations, but in order to do so, it must become a part of pagan culture  (Op. cit. p. 392 – 396, 412 – 420/353 – 357, 370 – 378). . This, for Franz Rosenzweig, is the source of a great danger.

We have seen that already in 1913, Rosenzweig had justified his remaining a Jew by pointing out that Christianity is in “constant danger that [the pagan culture] she has vanquished [will rise up] and force its laws upon her”, and on this basis justified his remaining a Jew. In addition to the inherent value of Judaism as the means through which Jews forever experience divine presence in their midst, its eternal character lends support to Christianity’s historical battle against paganism by exemplifying the type of a-historical religious life meant for humanity in the future.

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Much needs to be said concerning this innovative, if problematic, view of Judaism as an a-historical faith community. Firstly, this view was anachronistic already in his own time. Since the time of emancipation, the organized Jewish communities of Western and Central Europe were assimilated into the mainstream of European civilization to the point that they stressed those aspects of the Jewish tradition that they shared with Christianity at the expense of religious uniqueness, and took great strides in making Jewish ritual as amenable as possible to that of the contemporary Christian world.

Rosenzweig’s a-historical description of Judaism, we may add, is not particularly accurate with respect to pre-modern Judaism either, but is really an idealization of pre-modern Judaism that persists by making the sense of Jewish uniqueness its single over-riding characteristic. Thus, it may be asked, why did Rosenzweig choose to portray Judaism as an a-historical faith community in such a one-sided manner? I suspect that this is a reflection of a deep tension between the advanced degree of Rosenzweig’s own assimilation into Christian culture, and his interest nonetheless, in maintaining some sort of viable religious commitment to the Judaism of the past, despite that assimilation. Having already adopted the Christian theological perspective that Christianity is the religion of Western history that serves as a historical force designed to convert the gentile world, Franz Rosenzweig was able to make a place for Judaism, in world civilization, only by determining the need for the existence of a faith-community that is not involved in history and whose religious culture is not affected by historical experience, but is rather drawn solely from the inner-workings of the community dynamic. Such a view may go far in explaining the value in retaining Judaism’s unique religious character rather than submit to the secular tendencies of contemporary historical culture.

Franz Rosenzweig’s account of Judaism is, in addition, an impressive attempt to make sense of the rather complex relationship that existed between his own Jewish identity and the character and values of the non-Jewish host civilization.

Nonetheless, I believe that we should be aware of the destructive potential inherent in this view. For in essence, an a-historical view of Judaism would inevitably lead to a sort of blindness that hides the real and concrete need for Jews and Judaism to constantly assess, and then reassess, the challenges and threats to Jewish existence produced by changing historical realities.

Dr. Yossi Turner is a senior lecturer in Jewish Thought at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem.

Image: Franz Rosenzweig plaque, Frankfurt am Main. Enthüllt am 29. April 1993. Bronzetafel mit Portrait, 40×70 cm, gestaltet von Günter Maniewski. Frank Behnsen