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Portrait of Franz Rosenzweig (1926)

Franz Rosenzweig was a historian and philosopher whose most famous work, Der Stern der Erlösung [The Star of Redemption], was a synthesis of philosophy and theology that he named the “new thinking.” After World War I, he gave up his academic career to live and teach in the Frankfurt Jewish community. In 1920, he founded the New Jewish Lehrhaus, which attracted many leading Jewish intellectuals, including Martin Buber, who would become his close friend and collaborator. Although he was critical of Buber’s philosophy and Zionism, Rosenzweig agreed to collaborate with him on a German translation of the Bible; the project occupied him until his death in 1929.

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Portrait of Franz Rosenzweig (1926)

Courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute