Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T12:15:30.906Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 3 - Vulnerable Existence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2023

Yaniv Feller
Affiliation:
University of Florida
Get access

Summary

This is the first of three chapters to unpack Baeck’s confrontation with the rise of Nazism. It details the Nazi ideology as grounded in race and space, and the idea of a national community (Volksgemeinschaft) in which the Jews had no place. Baeck needed to respond to it as a thinker and community leader, having been chosen to lead the efforts of the Central Association of Jews in Germany. His political activities and writings show an insistence on Judaism’s lasting value, for Jews and the world. The chapter offers a close reading of a pastoral letter Baeck sent for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which in 1935 fell shortly after Nuremberg Laws. In his search for explanations of antisemitism in the mid-1930, Baeck returned to earlier ideas of Jewish existence as precarious, turning to surprising sources such as Martin Heidegger, at the time already affiliated with the Nazi party, and Karl Barth’s commentary on the scene of the crucifixion in Matthias Grünewald’s magnificent Isenheim altar.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Jewish Imperial Imagination
Leo Baeck and German-Jewish Thought
, pp. 73 - 100
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Vulnerable Existence
  • Yaniv Feller, University of Florida
  • Book: The Jewish Imperial Imagination
  • Online publication: 08 November 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009321877.004
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Vulnerable Existence
  • Yaniv Feller, University of Florida
  • Book: The Jewish Imperial Imagination
  • Online publication: 08 November 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009321877.004
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Vulnerable Existence
  • Yaniv Feller, University of Florida
  • Book: The Jewish Imperial Imagination
  • Online publication: 08 November 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009321877.004
Available formats
×