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Daniel M. Herskowitz, "The Judeo-Christian Thought of Franz Rosenzweig" (Liverpool UP, 2025)
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C
Hi, everyone. My name is Amir Engel and I'm the Chair of the German Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I'm currently also a visiting professor at the Theology Department at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Today I'm speaking with Daniel Herskowitz about his new book, the Judeo Christian Thought of Franz Rosenzweig, which came out with the British Academy and Liverpool University Press in 2025. Daniel, welcome to the show.
- [02:01]
A
Thank you. It's great to be here.
- [02:02]
C
It's great to have you. We start. As always, I ask you to tell a little bit about yourself and how you actually got interested in this project and ended up writing this book.
- [02:13]
A
Yes, well, I am a Professor of Religious Studies at the Department of Religious Studies at Duke University, and I am an intellectual historian and scholar of religion whose focus is on modern Jewish thought, European intellectual history, and I teach and research German Jewish thought. I have been reading and thinking about Franz Rosenzweig for probably 20 or so years, since high school, really. That's when I was introduced to this thinker and it was because the way in which I conducted my teenager rebellion was by reading philosophy. And thinkers like Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber were the people who I was attracted to from very early on. So Rosenzweig was always in the background whenever I was doing, whenever I was studying or teaching. And I think it really was only a matter of time until I will really focus on Rosenzweig and write about him. And this book is the result of this enduring occupation with his thought.
- [03:41]
C
Right. Maybe you should mention that you wrote another book in the meantime about Heidegger and his reception in Jewish thought.
- [03:49]
A
Yes, yes. This book on Franz Rosenzweig is my second book. My first book, which was based on my doctorate, which I wrote in the University of Oxford. Its title is Martin Heidegger and His Jewish Reception. And that is again, a study of modern Jewish thought and intellectual history, where I argue that Martin Heidegger, who is one of the most important and certainly the most controversial 20th century philosophers, was a important and serious interlocutor for 20th century Jewish thought. And that while many people focus on his politics, he supported Hitler when they write about him in terms of 20th century Jewish thought. Major Jewish thinkers definitely dealt with his Nazism and treated it very seriously, but also saw him as a great philosopher and a great challenge for any serious philosophy, religious thought and Jewish thought. So that was my first book. And the second book in, Franz Rosenzweig continues this trajectory by looking at 20th century Jewish thought within a broader context of European intellectual history, post Kantian philosophy and Protestant theology.
- [05:16]
C
Right. So as you said, the book really concentrates on Franz Rosenzweig. It focuses especially on the Stern. De Al. The Star of Redemption is a very famous, very influential book from 1921. Maybe we can start by talking a little bit about who Franz Rosenzweig was and why the Stern, why the star is still red. Why is it. Why is it still relevant? Why did you read it as a teenager? Why were you drawn to it?
- [05:45]
A
Yes. So Rodentzweig is now considered one of the great 20th century Jewish philosophers.
- [05:55]
C
He.
- [05:57]
A
Was. Okay, I'll take that from the top. Franz Rosenzweig is now considered one of the great Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. He is part of this very influential and important and intellectually intriguing cohort of German Jewish thinkers from the early 20th century, including Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem and Martin Buber and others. And they have become the Canon of 20th Century Jewish Thought and part of modern Jewish thought. And he really wrote one book, one great book of Thought. It's difficult to call it a book of philosophy or of theology because it's truly a unique, idiosyncratic book that does a lot of things at the same time. And this is the Star of Redemption. He started writing it on postcards from the front while he was a soldier in the German army in World War I. And it was published towards the end of the second decade of the 20th century. And what he tries to do in this book is this extravagant system where he tries to harmonize between philosophy and theology and offer this grand picture whereby he creates two triangles, one triangle constituting three kind of categories or elements of reality, which is God, the human and the world. And the categories that connect between these three elements, which are creation, revelation and redemption. And once you take these two triangles and put them on one or the other, it creates this image of the star. And this is supposed to be a representation of reality as such. Now, while he does this, he also offers just a tremendous amount of details on a tremendous amount of different subjects and topics. So we have reflections on poetry and opera and architecture and myth and meal and songs and Islam and paganism. And it's just a tremendously rich and innovative book that it's really difficult to place it under one single heading because so much is going on there. Now. When I was introduced to Rosenzweig, I was told, and I think this is a wise advice, that the best way to enter into Rosenzweig is through his letters. Rosenzweig held a very vast network of correspondences with many, many people, which one, makes for a very interesting read and two, is very helpful for scholars of Rosenzweig because there's a sense in which he left a trace of almost everything. So we know pretty much everything he read because he asks for books to be sent to him to the front, or he discusses the books, his reflections on the books that he read with his friends or cousins or with his mother. And that was how I was introduced to Rosenzweig, through his letters. And then there's this organic shift to the star, which is not an easy book, but once I think you get the hang of it, you could understand the general drift, right?
- [09:54]
C
So it seems like the book is precisely captivating and intriguing because it is so complex and large and entails so many ideas. This attempt to cohere philosophy. And we're talking about kind of 19th century idealist philosophy and theology together. Your thesis seems to be. Well, it is that one of the ways to enter this pardes, this forest of ideas, is by thinking it with a Background in Protestant theology. So your book suggests, argues that one of the ways is to know what are the debates within the field of practice and theology. And this kind of is a key for you to decipher many of the main issues.
- [10:50]
A
Right? Is this correct?
- [10:53]
C
Let's talk about that. So what are the kind of main debates, central debates in Protestant theology that are so important for the shtern and maybe still important for our discussion today? What are the issues? What does it involve?
- [11:08]
A
Yeah, right. So let me preface my answer by saying that the origin of this book, of my book on Rosenzweig was it started out as a chapter of another book where this other book that I started writing took as its departure point the thought that late 19th century and early 20th century German Jewish philosophy, specifically the thought of Hillmann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and then slightly later, Emmanuel Lebinas, who is French, but nourishes substantially from the German tradition, that a good lens through which we can examine their thought is through the post Kantian debates over the nature of religious thought and the nature of who Martin Luther was. This was a very important central debate in Protestant discourse in Germany at the time. What is the image of Luther after Kant? And there's also a political background to this, because Luther was celebrated as this father hero of the German nation, and because this was such a dominant question, a dominant debate in the religious discourse, the theological discourse in Germany at the time, that of course, these German Jewish thinkers who participate in this discourse from their specific perspective as German Jewish thinkers, that this discourse and debate is useful for understanding their thought. And then I started writing the chapter on Rosenzweig. And gradually it grew and grew from 30 pages to 60 pages, then to 90 pages. And at some point I just understood that in order for me to write this chapter properly, it will have to become a book. And once you center your attention on something and dedicate the time and energy. So that is basically how this book came about. It came from this assumption that we have to take into consideration how everyone around Rosenzweig was thinking about these basic categories of religious thought. So if Rosenzweig thinks about God, revelation, redemption, creation, sin, atonement, all these basic categories of theology, of religion, of course, he will be using the categories and priorities and drawing on the assumptions that everyone around him is. He'll either agree or disagree or take a certain side in a particular debate. But this is how thinkers think. This is how we all think. We all are children of our age. And my assumption was that treating the Star as a book that participates in this discourse, can shed very important light on it. And basically what happened was the more I studied the Protestant theology of the turn of the century and the early decades of the 20th century, the more I saw how much it resonates in the Star of Redemption and how much it is crucial to read Rosenzweig in this context of post Kantian early 20th century Protestant theology, grappling with the central questions of what is the role and place of religion in the modern world? How are we to understand the relationship between history and religion? What is the nature of revelation and redemption in a world which no longer sees this as, you know, an immediate automatic. Sees them as immediate or automatic categories that can be applied to the world. And what I discovered is that Rosenzweig not only draws profoundly on the assumptions, categories of this Protestant theological discourse, but that he also takes a stand in these major debates. And that part of what is so innovative and original about his philosophy is that not that he develops a Jewish thought in this context, but rather that he fully embraces the Protestant theology of his time and integrates Judaism into it. And hence, I think the best way to think of his thought as it comes out in the Star of Redemption is as a Judeo Christian thought. But I'm sure that we're going to discuss this.
- [16:23]
C
Yes, I'd like to discuss it, but I'd like also to say that I find the thesis very, very compelling and convincing. And I have to say that I was surprised to discover through my own work how little Jewish scholars know about, you know, prophetic theology.
- [16:41]
A
Not just that it exists, but actually.
- [16:43]
C
Who are the main players? What did they actually say? What are the main arguments about it? This is something that is kind of in general, what is the role of theology in German society and German nation building in the 19th century has a profound, profound importance which we, many scholars of Jewish, I would say not all of them, of course, and so forth, but many do not understand quite fully. I have to say that I realized it in kind of a profound way only when I started working at the theology department at the University of Berlin, coming from the heart of the beast, so to speak. And they're like, oh, these figures, these people, these theologies, these thoughts are things that are still debated by scholars this day, and they're meaningful in a very deep way. So, so let's talk about.
- [17:41]
A
I agree, I would add, I would add two points to this. First of all, I completely agree about the, the centrality and importance of theology during this time. Where Rosenzweig wrote at the time you have German Protestant theologians like von Harnack, like Willem Hermann, who were not just important thinkers. They attained celebrity like status. They had hundreds of students flocking their lectures. They were important cultural figures. And the role of theological ideas was dramatically greater just in common culture, in general culture, than sometimes we remember. I will also add that part of what I'm trying to urge other scholars to do through this, through this book, is to advocate for the importance of integrating theology into the work of the intellectual historian. And that this is that theological ideas have had great important historical influence and that the stratification of, like the. The de. Theologization of the scholarship of intellectual history is a price we shouldn't pay. Intellectual historians would benefit greatly from knowing the theological discourse of the periods that they research, and that theology is important for understanding culture, understanding politics, and definitely understanding culture and politics of previous historical periods. That's the first point, and maybe to piggyback on this point, is that in the context, in the more local context of Jewish studies, one of the points I make in the introduction here is that I think it is time that we appreciate that just as we expect, for example, scholars of medieval Jewish philosophy, we expect them to know Islamic thought. You can't truly produce responsible scholarship on, say, Maimonides without understanding the background of his Islamic background or his Islamic intellectual background. In the same way, I think it's high time that scholars of European Jewish thought come to appreciate the importance of understanding Christian theology. It's simply too central for us to continue ignoring it and continue writing the narrative of modern Jewish thought as if the thinkers of the canon only reacted to themselves, to other Jewish figures within the canon, and as if the only engagement with the Christian thought of their time was one of critique. That is not how intellectual work happens. And it is also simply an inaccurate way of describing the evolution of modern Jewish thought, which always involves adoption and critique and negotiation and influence and influence in both ways. So that's the first point. The second quick point about more specifically with regards to Rosenzweig is one of the questions that my book raises is the question of Rosenzweig's reception. Because part of what I think took place in the history of reading Rodenzweig and the Star Redemption is that this Protestant background was forgotten and obscured. And why that is so, I mean, we could discuss. Perhaps it's because increasingly the people who would read Rosenzweig were people who did not read Protestant theology. Perhaps it was because he attained the status of a hero of modern Jewish identity and thought, so that people who want him to play that role would emphasize his Jewish background and the resonances of Jewish tradition in his thought, and would like to conceal or not emphasize or even not recognize the resonances or layers of Christian thought in him. And perhaps from the side of Christian readers of Rosenzweig, because Rosenzweig affirms Judaism and Christianity together, separately, but together. And because, especially after the Holocaust and in the 1960s and after Vatican II, he became a hero of interfaith dialogue. From a Christian perspective, there was a motivation to present Rosenzweig as this authentic Jewish thinker who, from a Jewish perspective, affirms Christianity. But in any case, as I point out, I am by no means the first reader of Rosenzweig or the first scholar who identifies these Protestant layers in his thought. In fact, some of the earliest readers of the Star were perplexed by how Christian it all sounded to them. And this includes, you know, Rudolf Ehrenberg, who was one of the first readers of the Star, who recommended that Rosenzweig publishes it in a Christian publishing house or Sholem or Buber Ernst Simon has this great quote where he talks about. He refers to Rosenzweig as a goy who studied Torah. So Leo Strauss, as well, recognized the strong Protestant subcurrents running through the Star. So this was definitely part of his reception, but it not entirely disappeared, but definitely went underground.
- [23:55]
C
Okay, so thank you very much for these two remarks. They're very pertinent. I think we can also even generalize them further, but we'll leave it at that, because I want to go into the discussion itself, and you discuss a whole host of issues. And I think the book is interesting and rich. But for our conversation, I want to touch about two main issues, two main concepts. The first one is revelation, and the second one is temporality. History. I don't know we can discuss exactly, but the idea of temporality. And what I would like to do is to discuss both concepts. They're of course, tied into one another, so it's a little difficult to separate them, but we'll do our best so to think about them first within the theological debate. So what does revelation. What is the meaning of revelation within the kind of debates, Debates in the Protestant German Church in the late 19th century and early 20th century? This has also to do with World War I and the rise of kind of generational changes and so forth. But, okay, so what is revelation? And then maybe we could talk about this idea of temporality, and we can try to apply it then to Rosenzweig and to see how Rosenzweig uses the.
- [25:16]
A
Terms.
- [25:19]
C
Develops them, criticizes and kind of works with them and within the discourses that have to do with these questions. So let's talk a little bit about.
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A
So that's a plan.
- [25:29]
C
Okay, so let's talk about a little bit about redemption. What is redemptions for this revelation? I'm sorry, Revelation. Let's talk about revelation. What is the role of revelation in 19th century theology? What is its role in early 20th century theology? Why is it so important? What is the argument about towards the.
- [25:51]
A
End of the 19th century and early 20th century in Germany, there is what can be termed a turn towards revelation in general way in which people thought about theology. And the narrative about this turn can be told in a number of ways. But a useful way to do so is to speak about it's the beginning a little bit earlier in the earlier stages of the 19th century and talk about the rise of history, the rise of historical sciences and historical consciousness, where what we have in Europe generally is the emergence of fields such as the field of scientific writing of history, or of archaeology, or of philology, and this gradual rise of a certain way of approaching the world whereby history becomes the primary way through which people approach the world. So if something can be proven historically or through evidence that are accepted through the historical perspective, well, that will be treated as more true than say, word of mouth or just this as how things came down to us through past traditions. So, and as this took place, this on the one hand held some promise to religion because it allowed for a richer and better understanding of the historical past and the religious past, so we could learn more about the historical reality, say of the period of Jesus, for example, because we have more information, more historical information about the archeology of the time, about what life was.
- [27:54]
C
And we might, we might actually know who Jesus was and what did he actually say.
- [27:59]
A
Right. We have a, a better ability to grasp what was at the time called the historical Jesus. On the other hand, this rise of the historical perspective also presented a challenge to religious thought. Because if historical scholarship came up with, if historical scholarship reached conclusions that were not aligned with what traditional religious, you know, what, what religion traditions told us, well, that that would be a problem from the perspective of religion, especially if historical evidence was what was taken to be the primary kind of arbiter for truth. So what happened gradually towards the end of the 19th century was that the area that was designated for religion, the area that was. I'll say that again. What happened gradually towards the end of the 19th century was that increasingly history came to claim more and more of the truth claims that religion used to occupy and their began a shrinking of the area that religion could say this is true, regardless of what history has to say. And towards this shift, the shift towards revelation really reflects the dominance of this historical perspective. So much so that in the Protestant theology of that time, especially towards in the beginning of the 20th century, the Revelation became this storm free event or moment that was this. It was an event, it was a top down experience that happens to the individual. That is existentially. It's a moment that shakes you to the core. It is a moment of rebirth and redemption. It's a moment where you encounter God in an unmitigated way. And nothing historians can say can refute this experience. Okay, so this turn towards revelation or the centrality that revelation comes to receive at this time, on the one hand, reflects the dominance of history and the great challenge that history poses theology and religious life. And also the fact that revelation constitutes this place that historical scholarship cannot touch. And what various different partisan theologians at the time do, and what Rosenzweig does as well is basically build an entire theological structure and a foundation for a religious life out of this Archimedean point of revelation.
- [31:15]
C
Okay, so let me see if I understand. The idea is that historical scholarship, historiography was imagined as a path to improve religious consciousness, but actually backfired somehow, where the truths of historiography contradicted what we thought we assumed about religious faith. And this posed a problem in many areas of the way we understand Jesus and the Gospels and the texts and the figures and the people, but was unable, so to speak, to touch this event of revelation because it was historic, but also purely kind of personal, psychological or something of the sort. Is this more or less what you're trying to say?
- [32:05]
A
Yes, other than that, I wouldn't say it backfired so much as there were different attempts and different claims and different hopes and aims from this historical turn that took place at the same time. So this historical, the rise of historical consciousness was at once used for criticizing religion. And some people took it in that direction and others saw it as a promise for religion and theology. So both of these things took place at the same time, as often is the case. Right. You rarely have one voice more often than other. It's various voices that are sometimes in contradiction with each other. Right.
- [32:52]
C
So, okay, so let's just talk a little bit more about the rise of this so called dialectical theology of the post World War I era. Is this relevant?
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A
Right.
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C
So for them, for these figures, I guess Karl Bat and maybe some others. The notion of revelation is central. But is it. But it's also out of some kind of existential need to kind of reaffirm belief. No. Is it not?
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A
Yes.
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C
Yes.
- [33:19]
A
So what you're referring to here is the rise of what is sometimes called dialectical theology or crisis theology in the early decades of the 20th century. And what this is is really a theological movement that caught Protestant theology. You know, it kind of conquered it in a storm, became very, very popular because it was a young, raw rebellion against the dominant theological Protestant discourse that reigned in Germany for a good almost 40 decades. And this school that was the dominant school from 1870 or so was the Richelien school, affiliated with the father of Albert Ritschel, that tried to offer a sophisticated way of doing theology while taking history seriously. And this was part of the general historical political constellation in Germany at the time, which was very conservative, it was very middle class. And. And it saw the role of religion as one that meshes very comfortably with German Protestant culture of the time.
- [34:49]
C
And nationalism, probably.
- [34:50]
A
And nationalism, exactly. And it's sometimes called cultural Protestantism, although that's not a very good category. But with the turn of the century and with the increasing discomfort with history and the appreciation of the challenge that it poses to religion, together with the debacle of Germany in World War I, caused the younger generation of Protestant thinkers, and not only theologians, also just philosophers at the time, to feel very uncomfortable with what they called the liberalism of the previous generation. This understanding that, for example, the Christian message is really one of being a good person and a good civilian, and you have your calling and that could manifest itself in whatever profession it is you do. And there was this kind of very seamless understanding of the relationship between general culture and what Jesus wanted you to do. And this younger generation felt like this was a selling out of the radicalism and the alien nature of what Christianity really is. And that there is actually a strong countercultural message to theology, and that it's wrong to basically say that what Jesus wants us to do is to follow Kant's categorical imperative. Rather, what theology is a radical call not to succumb to secular culture, but actually to see secular culture as precisely that, as secular culture that needs to be revamped by the message of Christianity. And this message is experienced through this revolutionary existential event of revelation. So it was this critique against the comfortable middle class exploitation of religion for the sake of politics and culture, and an urge to see revelation as coming from without. It's different, it's alien. It's surprising. It shakes you to your core. You can't stay, you can't carry on with your life after the experience of Revelation. It changes everything. And Rosenzweig was part of this generational shift. He is in the Star. He articulates precisely the same critique of the previous generation's theology, utilizing the same terms and taking it to the similar directions. And himself offers the same antidote to the theological sickness of the previous generation. And his antidote is Revelation. It's at the center, it grips you, and it is this foundational point from which everything else is built.
- [38:08]
C
Right, okay, wonderful. This is very helpful. So let's talk about how, I mean, this is a huge topic, right? But maybe you can just draw a few kind of heuristics, a few lines. How do you build a theology on revelation? What kind of theology is it? I mean, we can talk about the Star because I think it's similar enough, but. And it could give us an idea. But how does Rosenzweig build a theology or a worldview or a religious kind of new understanding of the world from this, from this archimedal point that is called Revelation?
- [38:43]
A
Yes. I think the best way to understand what Rosenzweig's conception of revelation is and how it's the foundation for his entire system is to start from its temporality, the temporal character that he attributes to Revelation, how he understands its relationship with time to time. Rosenzweig repeatedly speaks of revelation as something that happens in the moment. But this moment, this Augenblik, which is a charged term in German philosophy and theology at the time, this moment is not a second, a moment that can be identified on, you know, a wristwatch. It is a moment that doesn't really occupy any temporal span. It's a moment that is so momentary that it is outside just our casual everyday experience of time. It's top down moment that lasts for a moment and changes everything. Now, the way in which he sees, he locates revelation in this moment as, you know, beyond the grid that Kant, the spatial temporal grid that Kant presents in his philosophy. And it's a moment that opens up this existential sphere outside of the common usual secular form of existence that Rosenzweig identifies with paganism. Okay, so there's a clear sense in which for Rosenzweig, there is a before and after the experience of Revelation. And before Revelation, the world just shows up to us as, you know, the world, what it is. We don't see it as, for example, creation. It just, it's the world. It's a bundle of objects but after revelation, everything changes. Revelation is like opening a curtain or taking off some kind of binds that we had. And everything emerges in this new light, and it emerges through its true light. The true nature of reality is exposed to us through this lens of revelation. So after revelation, we come to see that the world is created, and they actually always was created. But we just weren't able to identify that without the perspective of revelation. And we also see that the world is bound to be redeemed. And again, we needed revelation in order to see this. But revelation is the event that allows us to create relations between the world and God, between humans and the world, between humans and God. That is, revelation is precisely the relationship between God and the human being. And in addition, it is what Rosenzweig claims is what revelation is, what allows us to truly open ourselves up towards other people and truly act according to. According to ethics. In other words, not that it's impossible to act towards other beforehand, but true ethics, full ethics, only comes about after revelation. And Rosenzweig, again, he continues, various philosophical and theological traditions speaks of the revelation as the moment where we're actually able to truly open our mouth and speak dialogically to another person and truly encounter other people and truly act according to the good in order to bring redemption to the world. So revelation is this watershed moment that really opens up the past to the person who experienced revelation and opens up the future. And basically because for Rosenzweig, revelation is momentary, in order for it to be the foundation for religious life that it is supposed to be, and for order it to open up a path towards redemption into the future, he offers this very sophisticated mechanism of repetition whereby the momentariness of revelation disappears and reemerges all the time through this act of repetition. So again, revelation is outside of the experience of secular history. It's not the historian's history, it's the existential history of this experience that completely changes, revolutionizes my sense of self and my place and experience and responsibility towards the world. And it's deeply historical in that regard, but it is not historical in the sense that you could locate it on a certain place on, you know, the historical chronology of world history or whatever. So as this momentary experience, we can experience it over and over and over again. And in this way it can endure and be a foundation for religious life without falling back into the. Into the secular kind of range of historical existence.
- [44:33]
C
Right, right, right. So, but very practically, where does one get the revelation?
- [44:39]
A
One doesn't. One can't do anything to experience revelation. That's Part of Rosenzweig and the generation that he. The rebellious generation that he was part of. Human beings don't really have an active role in bringing it about. That in the Protestant world, that would be work, righteousness. That would be as if you are taking active role in your own redemption. According to the way in which this generation, Barth and Rosenzweigan stand. In revelation, it is something that happens from God. We can't generate it. We do have a role in receiving it and in responding to it. And this is very important. But it happens. It's like lightning that happens from beyond. After the case, you could look back and see that various things prepared you for this moment, but it's not of your doing at all. If it were your doing, it wouldn't have been a revelation. Revelation is divine.
- [45:45]
C
Right. So this is very helpful. But I want to step back and kind of generalize a little bit about the thesis that you present, your kind of Judeo Christian reading of Rosenzweig. And you also mentioned that it is an intuition that kind of led you through readings not only of Rosenzweig, but also of Buber and Helen Cohen. And I can definitely see this, and I fully understand why this is compelling. But let's talk about it a little bit, because what does it all mean? I mean, can you actually draw a line between Judaism and Christianity? Can you actually draw a line between, you know, you were trying, kind of trying to kind of go away from theology, philosophy, and saying, well, it's not exactly either. What about Judo Christian? Is that two different religions? What is the relationship here? Can we think about Rosenzweig and Buber and the tradition as, you know, something that. I mean, how useful are these categories? Judaism, Christianity, at all?
- [46:54]
A
Yeah. So I'll say two things about this. First of all, my argument in the book is not that Rosenzweig, as a thinker from a minority culture, inevitably is, say, influenced by the majority Protestant discourse of his time. That I would say is true of other German Jewish thinkers, like, for example, Hermann Cohen, like Martin Buber. You could see this in other thinkers as well, Liu Bick and others. My argument in this book is more radical. It's not that Rosenzweig is influenced by Protestant theology as if Protestant theology is a discourse that is external to him and that he draws on it as part of his production of his thought that could be termed Jewish thought. Rather, it's a more radical argument. It is that the nature of his thought is Judeo Christian. In other words, that once we come to appreciate the fact that he is deeply and profoundly embedded in the Protestant theology of his time. Not as if it's external to him, not as if it's something that is outside and then he's utilizing it for his own sakes. But rather this is. He is deeply embedded in this discourse. This is how he thinks from the inside. If you take this into account, as well as the fact that he argues for the truth, the partial but nevertheless truth of both Judaism and Christianity together. Both are the children of God. Both are tasked with the mission of bringing redemption to the world. They have different tasks, but the overarching mission is one. And Judaism needs Christianity and Christianity needs Judaism. And he perceives them both together over against other religious traditions, like, for example, Islam, or what he calls the cultures of Asia and India and what he calls the nations of the world. And once you consider the fact that often he quite explicitly takes the perspective when he writes, he takes the perspective of that which is common to Judaism, Christianity, beyond or before their historical separation. So, for example, he treats revelation, which again is the centerpiece of his system. He treats revelation as something that is really historically manifested through religious through Jewish and Christian communities. It's not taken up by Islam nor by, you know, what he calls Indian traditions. It is a Judeo Christian revelation that is manifested historically different in both. But the perspective that he takes in describing it is quite explicitly relating to both Judaism and. And Christianity. So the argument here is that he is a thinker who draws substantially on Jewish and Christian traditions and thoughts, that he articulates his thought by taking very decisive stands within the debates that occupied Protestant theology of his time. He affirms both of these religions over against other religions. And the perspective that he takes in writing the Star is one that intentionally includes only these two religions as the only religions who respond properly to revelation and who have a mission to bring redemption to the world. So that once we take all this into account, we see that it's not. He's a Judeo Christian thinker. Now, while I was researching this for this book, I found it really interesting how other scholars of Rosenzweig, even when they recognized Protestant layers or Protestant resonances within the Star, they still simply assumed that whatever he says about Christianity is secondary to what he says about Judaism, as in the hermeneutical assumption with which they approached the book, was this is a book about Judaism. And whatever he says about other religions, and especially what he says about Christianity, is interesting or important, but not at the core. And that's how he assumed he became. He got this image of a Jewish Thinker who is very inclusive or very open to Christianity. But I think that's a hermeneutical assumption that is unjustified. There's no reason to simply assume that what he says about Christianity is less important than what he says about Judaism. Actually, he argues explicitly otherwise. He explicitly says that this is a book just it's about Christianity just as much as this about Judaism. And he describes them in parallel fashion. There's no place where he has, you know, a section or a statement about Judaism that is not accompanied by a statement or a section about Christianity that is, you know, describing the parallel way in which what he has to say about Judaism manifests itself in Christianity and vice versa. So this is a book about Judaism. It's about a lot of things, but it is about Judaism and Christianity and the role of. In bringing redemption. So he was a Judeo Christian thinker. Now, Judeo Christian is a charged term that has a history and has a lot of different. Has had a lot of different usages. And in the introduction, I set out exactly what I mean by Judeo Christian. I place it within this. You know, how it was used in Europe in the 18th century, 19th century, how it was used differently in the United States, how it's used now. And then I explain exactly what I mean when I say that he is a Judeo Christian thinker. But what is important to add here is that while Rosenzweig draws on both of these religions and champions both of them for him, together with the Judeo Christian perspective, he is very clear that Judaism and Christianity have two different roles. And that's what I think is interesting about his philosophy. He constantly affirms what's common to them and highlights what is separate and distinct about them. And he blurs and doubles down on their differences at the same time.
- [54:16]
C
Yeah. I think that the Judeo Christian tradition that you discuss, as you discuss it, is much bigger than Rosenzweig, I'm sure. A degree. No.
- [54:29]
A
Yes. I don't think he is the only Judeo Christian thinker. I also think that the past decades have seen a rise of what we may call, you know, Judeo Christian thought, though I don't want to. I want to say that I think Rosenzweig is very. He's an idiosyncratic thinker. And I, I. There are few thinkers who were as familiar with Christian thought as Rosenzweig was within the tradition of Jewish thought. And there are few thinkers who are familiar with Judaism as Rosenzweig was in Christian thought and what he tries to do in putting them Together while keeping them apart is also, I think, very, very interesting. So what I argue is I'm not arguing by claiming that he is a Judeo Christian thinker. I'm not arguing that he should not be read in the context of the tradition of modern Jewish thought. I think he should. He's a Judeo Christian thinker. He's a Judeo Christian thinker. And more than that, I think that there's no doubt that between Judaism, Christianity, he thinks that Judaism is superior in a number of important ways. So Judeo comes first. It's Judeo Christian. But one of the arguments I make is that he should also be right in the context of the tradition of modern Christian thought because he is part of these debates, Protestant theological debates of his era. He offers some very interesting analyses and arguments and critiques in the very same way that other Protestant thinkers of his time do. He has a lot of interesting things to say about Christianity, not from the perspective of Judaism, but from the perspective of Christianity. And. And that Christian thought, you know, intellectual history of modern Christian thought in theology would benefit from inserting him into their canon or into the tradition. Because he is, I think. I mean, again, part of. So, for example, part of the Judeo Christian nature of his thought and also part of the way in which I think his reception did not entirely do justice to his thought is the point that is often quoted by scholars of Rosenzweig, where he argues for the superiority of Judaism by claiming that the Jews are already in redemption. They already exist in a state of redemption. They are already, in his words, with the Father. And Christians need a mediary. They need a middleman to help them arrive at the Father and reach the point where Jews are already. They need Jesus. They need, in his terms, the Son, in order for Christians to reach the point where Judaism already is. Now, this, on the one hand, clearly shows that first, Judaism, Christianity are both religions of redemption, which is what Roosevelt says. Two, that Judaism is superior in the sense that for Rosenzweig, the Jews are already with God, they're with the Father. But three, it also means that for Rosenzweig, the Son is a operative, legitimate theological category that makes sense in terms of a religious philosophy, and there aren't many Jewish thinkers, or rather, a Judeo Christian thinker would be precisely the right term for someone who approves of the role of the Son in bringing Christians to redemption. Right.
- [58:28]
C
I think you're making a very compelling case. I think, as I said, this exists far beyond what we usually think about within Jewish kind of discussions. And. And I'M very, very thankful for this book because I think really kind of makes the point in a very concise and, and kind of insistent way, which is important. Before we, before we close off, maybe you could tell us what is your kind of. What are you working on now?
- [58:56]
A
Could I make another point about the.
- [58:58]
C
Please, please, go ahead.
- [58:59]
A
Okay. Like do whatever you want with, with the editing. So I want to make another point about the Judeo Christian nature of IS by taking an example that you asked me about beforehand. So one of the most beautiful and architecturally central sections of the Star of Redemption is Rosenzweig's description of Revelation, or in the second book of the second part of the Star, where he describes revelation as this kind of peculiar unfolding of a scene, this kind of dialogue between God and what he calls the soul, who's the receptive human. And Rodenzweig describes this as, on the one hand, taking place in the moment. Right. So it has no actual temporal duration, but it goes on as this kind of back and forth where God says something and then the soul says something and then God says something and then the soul experiences this kind of. This experience. And it's not at all clear why Rosenzweig is describing revelation in this way. And often it was read as just this brilliantly original and beautifully written piece of philosophical theology. But it was unclear why Rosenzweig is describing it like this, like what warrants this back and forth. This seemed very, very arbitrary. Where basically what happens is God reveals himself to the soul as love. And again we have to note that Rodenzweig is insistent. The revelation is not and cannot be law. It cannot be law. It has to be love. And then the experience, the immediate experience that the soul experiences is the sense of shame. And then the soul says, I have sinned. And then it says, I am still in the present sinning. And then it experiences exhilaration of joy and it announces that God is God. And this, it's. It's just a very weird, seemingly out of the blue description of what relation is. And once you look at this peculiar description of relation in light of how all Protestant theologians at his time, at Rosenzebeck's time, describe a relation, you see that what Rosensteinweig is doing is precisely kind of animating in a scene, in a plot like way, the common conception of revelation at the time, which was very Lutheran actually, which is revelation is an event that happens between God and the individual human being. It's not a public event. It does not include, involve law. It's not communal. It happens in this very intimate dialogue between the individual and God. It's described as momentary and as love. And the first experience that is experienced is this guilt and shame and this sense of sin. All this time I existed in sin because I wasn't with God. This is before I experienced revelations. Precisely how Rose inspired this. And then accompanying the sense of I used to be in sin until this moment is I am still in sin because as a human being, I am sinful, but I am at the same time at once sinful and also justified and redeemed through divine love, which, again, is exactly what Rosenzweig describes. And when I would teach this to students, when I was in Oxford, I would teach this to students. And they all read Rosenzweig's description of revelation. Said, this is Luther, right? This is. You see, you have discovery of revelation includes discovery of sin. It includes atonement. It includes justification and reconciliation. It includes redemption. This experience of existential redemption in revelation. This is all. We're familiar with this. This is all Protestant. And indeed it is. But then what Rosenzweig does with it is he presents this very Protestant notion of revelation and then says, this is manifested concretely in both Judaism and Christianity. Wonderful. And now to my.
- [63:27]
C
To your third project. No, but I just say, again, I repeat myself. I think this is a very compelling point, and I think it's very important for our understanding of the tradition of Rosenzweig. But of this tradition, which is deeply immersed in a Protestant discourse, which, as you said at the beginning of our conversation, is indeed plays a central part in, you know, German culture and politics of its time. And it tries to apply it, not negate it, but apply it to the Jewish question, to the. To being Jewish, and seize a lot of profit, sees much to gain through doing so. And I think it's very compelling, and I think it could be generalized far beyond the case of Rosenzweig. That's my. I say I'm kind of tooting my own, but I think it's very helpful. Tell us quickly about your current project. What's happening now?
- [64:24]
A
Yes, so my current project is a bit different from what I've been doing so far. I'm still within the world of intellectual history, and I'm still within the 20th century and thinking about ideas and the role and place of religion in modernity. But I've shifted from the German Protestant world, and I'm looking now at the Catholic world. My current project is a book on the Second Vatican Council. There was the council of the Catholic Church that took place in the first half of the 1960s in the Vatican and centering on the document that is now known as Nostra Aetate. So that's the document that the Catholic Church expressed its attitude towards non Catholic.
- [65:21]
C
Religions, which celebrated like 75 years or something last week or something of the sort. No.
- [65:26]
A
Right. So about a month ago, a month from when we're recording this. Right. The Catholic and the Interfaith World marked 60 years of the promulgation of Nostra Aetate. It's an extremely important document in the Catholic world and interfaith world and in, I would say, the 20th century in general. It started out as the document on the Jews, and it has a fascinating, bumpy history of evolution and many rounds of drafting and political and theological controversies that erupted around it. And this is what my book is about. It's a critical history and analysis of the evolution of this document. And the argument is that, as we all know intuitively, but sometimes forget, theology always takes place in the world within a context, within a historical and political and cultural context, and that we fail to understand the full depth of this truly important document without understanding the various theological and political forces that shaped it. And that is what this book is about. It's an analysis of the religious. This book is about the various developments that Judaism and Christianity underwent in the post World War II and post Holocaust world and the way in which this historical moment is refracted through the history of Nostra Aetate.
- [67:25]
C
Wonderful. Well, I'm looking forward for that book and I'm very thankful for your time and for talking to us. We were discussing the judo Christian thought of Franz Rosenzweig with Daniel Herskovitz. Stania, Thomas, thank you so much.
- [67:42]
A
Thank you.