Franz Rosenzweig's Conversions: World Denial and World Redemption

by Benjamin Pollock

Franz Rosenzweig's near-conversion to Christianity in the summer of 1913 and his subsequent decision three months later to recommit himself to Judaism is one of the foundational narratives of modern Jewish thought. In this new account of events, Benjamin Pollock suggests that what lay at the heart of Rosenzweig's religious crisis was not a struggle between faith and reason, but skepticism about the world and hope for personal salvation. A close examination of this important time in Rosenzweig's life, the book also sheds light on the full trajectory of his philosophical development.

Genres: Philosophy

280 pages, Hardcover

First published August 6, 2014

Reviews

[Sam Schulman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Benjamin Pollock gets 4 stars for simply his first chapter exploding the story of Rosenzweig's last-minute decision in 1913 not to convert to Christianity, and an almost simultaneous but separate decision to become an observant and philosophical Jew - to become Franz Rosensweig. The story seems to have been invented by good old Nahum Glatzer out of - it's not clear what else, except steam from a teakettle. The two events are true enough - Rosenzweig did pull an all-nighter with his friends, both Jewish converts, Rosentrock and Ehrenburg, at Ehrenburg's parents' house in Leibzig in July, 1913. He also went to Yom Kippur services with his mother in October of that year. But Glatzer constructed a theory that linked the two events in a Hegelian dialectic, with an Aufhebung into Judaism in a highly imaginative way which Pollock argues turns the facts of Rosenzweig's vocation upside down. Glatzer's hadith is so intoxicating and seductive, however, that at least one Jewish educator Pollack quotes finds it impossible to reconcile with Rosenzweig's great work The Star of Redemption - and so the educator proposes to drop the Star of R from the curriculum.
This news is so exciting that I had to get my paragraph in ASAP. Pollock's counter-interpretation seems on target - not least because it is drawn from Rosenzweig's actual writings, supplemented by a novel Rosentrock was writing during 1913 a draft of which Rosenzweig had read, and which both men used to describe Rosenzweig's state of mind during the period. Needless to say it is necessary to say that there is nothing in Rosenzweig's written or recorded statements that backs up Glatzer's aggada.
My only fear is that Pollack feels at some distance from uthe many Christian sources that impinged on Rosenzweig's thinking, enough to be uncomfortable writing about them. But this may turn out to be an unfounded bit of snobbery.