The thought of Franz Rosenzweig and The Star of Redemption

Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929), a German philosopher from an assimilated Jewish family, is one of the most original thinkers of the Jewish intellectual renewal of the twentieth century. Tempted for a time by conversion to Christianity, he returned to a fully embraced Judaism and made of this return the matrix of his reflection. His masterwork, The Star of Redemption (Der Stern der Erlösung, 1921), written in part at the front during the First World War, repudiates German idealism and proposes an existential thought articulating the three fundamental elements — God, the world, and man — around the relationships of creation, revelation, and redemption. Rosenzweig founded in Frankfurt the Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus, a house of study open to Jews seeking to reappropriate their tradition, and undertook with Martin Buber a translation of the Hebrew Bible into German that has remained celebrated. Stricken very young by a degenerative paralysis, he continued his work until his death, leaving a profound imprint on Jewish philosophy and modern theology.

Sources & resources

• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan
• Jewish Virtual Library ↗