On Jewish Learning

Rosenzweig was born in 1886 to intellectual and assimilated parents. He studied philosophy, history, and classics. While he was at university, many of his friends and relatives converted to Christianity, and he came close to converting, until a visit to an Orthodox synagogue on the eve of Yom Kippur inspired him to "return" to Judaism. His doctoral thesis, Hegel and the State, was published in 1920, and he then began to devote his energies to the construction of a Jewish philosophic system. The result, The Star of Redemption (1921), has become a classic, combining German idealism, existentialism, and Jewish tradition into a complex and enduring system. In 1921 a progressive paralysis set in and, although he soon lost his mobility and power of speech, he continued his intellectual activities for seven years. Rosenzweig's wife deciphered his signals, and, among other activities, he began a new translation of the Hebrew Bible (with Martin Buber, who finished it in the 1950s), utilizing a style of German that attempted to retain the spirit of the original Hebrew. 020