Who was Franz Rosenzweig?
Rosenzweig was born in Kassel in 1886 to a minimally observant Jewish family. He pursued a normal German academic career, studying history and philosophy at the universities of Gõttingen, Munich, and Freiburg. In July of 1913 Rosenzweig came close to yielding to the entreaties of his close friend Eugen Rosenstock, a convert to Christianity, who viewed Judaism as no more than a historical fossil. Rosenzweig said that before converting he must first affirm his status as a Jew, and not as a pagan. In this way he would complete in his own life the historical trajectory from Christianity to Judaism. This did not happen, for attendance at a Yom Kippur service early in the following year convinced him to reverse course. Henceforth, Franz Rosenzweig would devote himself to Jewish scholarship. Yet, as shown in a new piece by David Wasserstein in the TLS for June 20, 2008, he continued to be preoccupied with Christian theology. These interests permeate Rosenzweig’s major work Stern der Erlõsung
