The Motif of Blood and Procreation in Franz Rosenzweig

AJS Review

Volumn 26, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 241-249

  Dagan, Haggai ^a  

^a Haggai Dagan ^*  (Israel)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85012486077     PISSN: 03640094     EISSN: 14754541     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0364009402000053     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. F. Rosenzweig, Briefe und Tagebücher, in Franz Rosenzweig: Der Mensch und sein Werk [5 Gesammelte Schriften] (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979), 1: 473 (an Margrit Rosenstock).
2. Two striking examples of researchers who depart from these exegetical tendencies are Yaakov Fleischman and Steven Schwarzschild. See n. 24 below.
3. Briefe and Tagebücher, pp. 105-106.
4. Emphasis in the original.
5. Briefe und Tagebücher, p. 158.
6. Briefe und Tagebücher., p. 224.
7. Briefe und Tagebücher., p. 288. One should remember that this letter is part of an extended correspondence with Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, a friend and interlocutor of Rosenzweig. Rosenstock, the son of Jewish parents who had converted, attempted to persuade Rosenzweig to convert to Christianity. After he failed to do so, the dialogue between them assumed a polemical and apologetic tone.
8. “Paralipomena,” in Zweistromland, GS 3:121.
9. Der Stern der Erlösung, GS 2 (The Hague, 1976). English quotations from The Star are taken from The Star of Redemption, trans. W. W. Hallo (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972).
10. Stern, p. 332; Star, p. 299. The characterization of Judaism as an organic body from which it is impossible to separate oneself follows from the correspondence with Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy. The conversion to Christianity of someone (such as Rosenstock) indicates that from the outset he was not an integral part of this body, for if he really belonged to it, he would be unable to cut himself off from it. See R. Mayer, Franz Rosenzweig-eine philosophie der dialogischen Erfahrung (Munich: Ch. Kaiser Verlag, 1973), p. 40.
11. Elsewhere (Stern, p. 317; Star, p. 285), Rosenzweig says that “hope… lives as a matter of blood-inheritance only in Jewish blood.” But this is a hope that accompanies the anticipation of the future in the present, and not hope for a distant future. Hope for a distant future is a concept that involves an inherent contradiction, for only when the future, or some part of it, is present, is there reason for hope.
12. Stern, pp. 362-363; Star, pp. 325-326.
13. Stern, p. 332; Star, p. 299.
14. In the wake of this position, Emanuel Levinas creates a contrast that counterpoises, on the one hand, Hegelianism, which only gives meaning to a totality against which every particular (faith, existence, etc.) is an illusion, or something that draws its meaning from totality, and on the other hand, “Jewish subjectivity,” which demands for itself a significance not dependent upon any whole. This Jewish stance is the selfsame demand for existence separate from the nations. It follows that Rosenzweig is not simply an alternative to Hegel but a Jewish alternative to him. By exploding the Hegelian complex, says Levinas, Rosenzweig allowed for authentic Jewish life that draws its significance from within itself and no longer needs an external source of meaning. See E. Levinas, “Zwischen zwei Welten,” in Zeitgewinn-messianisches Denken nach Franz Rosenzweig, ed. G. Fuchs and H. H. Henrix (Frankfurt am Main: Knecht, 1987), pp. 60-64.
15. GS 1: 554-556.
16. Mayer, Franz Rosenzweig, pp. 173-174; S. Moses, System and Revelation, trans. C. Tudani (Detroit: Wayne State University Press., 1992), p. 168. Moses (the wake of this position., p. 204) claims that placing the Jew in a metahistorical light means ignoring the empirical life of the Jewish people and seeing it as a religious entity alone. In light of what is said above, one may formulate this more precisely by saying that it is an ignoring of the empirical life of part of the people, while placing the life of the other part (that remains explicitly under the sign of separation) in a symbolic light.
17. Zweistromland, pp. 169-177.
18. Albeit folkist approaches that mix in the motif of blood were not so rare. Michal ben Naftali characterizes it as follows, in “Jewish Philosophy and the Holocaust” [Hebrew], Te'oriah u-viqoret 4 (Autumn 1993), p. 63: “The acceptance of the folkish (Volkisch) terminology, which attributes to a people a natural-organic characteristic, by intellectual Zionist groups in Austria-Hungary and Germany, as well as in Eastern Europe (without direct German influence), testified to their devotion to the liberal humanism of the generation of the parents. Jewish folkism, which boasted of the unity of the soul, spirit, and body, was free of exclusivist racist arrogance. The solidarity among ‘Jewish souls’ established by a shared land/blood/destiny was understood as a necessary prior step to general human solidarity.” It seems to me that Rosenzweig's more moderate stance, which finds expression in The Star, is closer to this characterization. However, his earlier stance, as expressed in the letters surveyed above, differs.
19. See W. Kluback, “The Conflict Between Hermann Cohen and Franz Rosenzweig,” in Der Philosoph Franz Rosenzweig, ed. W. Schmied-Kowarzik (Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber, 1988), 2: 801- 802. The fact of the subject of separateness being so deeply rooted in the Jewish ethos was overlooked by W. Schmied-Kowarzik, who expresses surprise at the rejection of the doctrine of mission in Rosenzweig's understanding of Judaism. See his Franz Rosenzweig-existenzielles Denken und Gelebte Bewährung (Freiburg, 1991), p. 76
20. In one place Rosenzweig explicitly uses the term “race” (Rasse) in order to clarify the meaning of “people.” See GS 3: 691.
21. Stern, p. 332; p. Star, 299. Rosenzweig is not always absolutely loyal to this distinction. He says that the woman is charged with this blood connection more than the man, because her roots are anchored in “the depths of nature” (Stern, p. 362; Star, pp. 325-326). As such, it is she who “has this basis of Jewish life for her own.” The man, by contrast, needs to study the Torah “deliberately over and over” for the essence of life. Elsewhere, he argues that a Jew does not even have to believe, for his very existence as a Jew is an act of faith (Stern, p. 380; Star, p. 342).
22. Stern, p. 332; Star, p. 299.
23. Stern, p. 338; Star, p. 305.
24. “The Conflict Between Hermann Cohen and Franz Rosenzweig,”. The matter of blood likewise serves the unity of the people. Rosenzweig says that this unity, expressed in the motif of blood, is only symbolic, but nevertheless needs to be preserved as such. See S. Talmon, “Judentum und Christentum im Verständnis Franz Rosenzweigs,” in Offenbarung im Denken Franz Rosenzweigs (Essen: Ludegrus, 1979), p. 133, and the reference there. Concerning blood, cf. A. Funkenstein, “An Escape from History: Rosenzweig on the Destiny of Judaism,” History and Memory 2 (1990): 117; idem, “The Origin of Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption: ‘Early Version’ and ‘Preliminary Unit'” [Hebrew], in Image and Historical Consciousness in Judaism and in Its Historical Environment (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1991), p. 220; E. L. Fackenheim, To Mend the World (New York: Schocken, 1982), p. 90; Yehoshua Amir, “The Distinctively Jewish Perspective in the Thought of Franz Rosenzweig” [Hebrew], Da'at 6 (1981): 93-94; H. Bergman, Hogei hador [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1975), pp. 201-204; E. Levinas, “Zwischen zwei Welten,” in Zeitgewinn-messianisches Denken nach Franz Rosenzweig, ed. G. Fuchs and H. H. Henrix (Frankfurt: Knecht, 1987), p. 52; N. Rotenstreich, Contemporary Jewish Thought [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1987), p. 239; M. D. Oppenheim, “Death and Man's Fear of Death in Franz Rosenzweig's The Star of Redemption,” Judaism
25. (1978): 464; R. Horwitz, “Hermann Cohen and Franz Rosenzweig” [Hebrew], Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 4, nos. 3-4 (1985): 311-312; idem, “The Understanding of Jewish History in Franz Rosenzweig's Thought” [Hebrew], Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 37 (1969): 14-15; idem, “Aspects of the Problems of Language and Speech in Rosenzweig's Thought” [Hebrew], Da'at 6 (1981): 48, 50, 53; K. Löwith, “M. Heidegger and F. Rosenzweig or Temporality and Eternity,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 2 (1942): 1-70; Moses, System and Revelation, pp. 179-180; S. Schwarzschild, “Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Heidegger: The German and the Jewish Turn to Ethnicism,” Der Philosoph Franz Rosenzweig, p. 889; Y. Fleischman, “The Two Eternities” [Hebrew] ‘Iyyun 5 (1954): 72, 82; idem, “Franz Rosenzweig as Critic of Zionism” [Hebrew], Beit Hillel Discussions on Franz Rosenzweig (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1956), p. 63; idem, The Problem of Christianity in Jewish Thought from Mendelssohn to Rosenzweig [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1964), pp. 173, 176; Z. Levi, “On the Status of Man in the Philosophies of Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber” [Hebrew], Da'at 12 (1964): 136-137; idem., “Franz Rosenzweig's Encounter with the Hegelian Tradition” [Hebrew] (M.A. diss., Tel Aviv University, 1968), 98-99; A. Meir, Kokhav mi-Ya'akov [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1994), p. 91; J. Tewes, Zum Existentialsbegriff Franz Rosenzweigs (Meinheim am Glan: Verlag Anton Hain, 1970), p. 31.
26. Thus in a letter to Rudolph Hallo on March 15, 1921: “Jude sein heisst im ‘Golus’ sein” (“Being a Jew means to be in Exile”). The word Golus is used here in the sense of “exile,” and not as translated by Rivka Horwitz in Selected Letters and Diary Passages [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1987), p. 203: “to be a Jew means to be revealed.”
27. Gershom Scholem, “Jews and Germans,” in On Jews and Judaism in Crisis (New York: Schocken, 1976), p. 89, commented on such matters in reaction to Margarete Susman's assertion that “the vocation of Israel as a people is not self-realization, but self-surrender for the sake of a higher, transhistoric goal.” He says that it is blindness to demand such a thing in the name of the prophets, “who indeed did not wish Israel to be a people like all the other peoples.” Scholem's comments are directed against the distortion involved in the universalist interpretation of Judaism. “We are asked to believe… that the ‘original meaning of the Jewish idea is the absorption of this people by other peoples.'What is terrible about this statement is not that it has been so devastatingly refuted by history, but that it never signified anything except a perversion whereby Christian ideas-rejected by Jews with their dying breath-now presented themselves as the demands of the greatest Jewish minds.”