472 A History of Judaism
struck down by the paralysis which was to confine him to his home
until his death in 1929. This recognition was more an act of friendship
and pity than an indication of approval for the distinctive existential
philosophy which Rosenzweig had laid out in Der Stern der Erlösung
(‘The Star of Redemption’), which he had published in 1921. Rosen-
zweig came from a highly assimilated middle- class family in Kassel with
only minimal attachment to Judaism, and many of his friends and rel-
atives had converted to Christianity. On the night of 7 July 1913,
Rosenzweig himself decided to convert under the influence of one such
relative, Eugen Rosenstock- Huessy, who was a Protestant theologian,
with the proviso that he would become Christian ‘as a Jew’. That
autumn he put this resolution to the test by attending services for the
Day of Atonement in an orthodox synagogue in Berlin. The notion that
the liturgy was what brought him back to his ancestral faith is probably
a later myth, but it is certain that soon after this date he ‘returned’ to
Judaism, convinced that all he needed to do was to recover Judaism for
himself and for other assimilated Jews like him. The core of Der Stern
der Erlösung was the collection of postcards sent home from various
postings while on military service during the First World War, incorp-
orating ideas about the significance of revelation as a historical and
existential reality which had been hammered out in extensive wartime
correspondence with Rosenstock. During the war he also found time to
go to Berlin for instruction in the Jewish sources about which he felt ill
informed. In Berlin he established a close personal friendship with Her-
mann Cohen and met Martin Buber, with whom he was to work closely
in the 1920s.^21
Der Stern der Erlösung reflects much of this background. The Jews
(‘the Synagogue’, in Rosenzweig’s parlance) are portrayed as a meta-
historical community of prayer, anticipating, through the cycle of the
religious calendar and liturgy, the spiritual redemption and the embodi-
ment of the eschatological promise, a ‘fire’ complementary to the ‘flame’
of God’s saving light in Christianity. Like Cohen, Rosenzweig saw a role
for Christianity, as a partial truth valid for Christians just as Judaism is
for Jews, both to be superseded by the absolute truth in the end of days.
Crucial to revelation within Judaism is that it is a continuous entry into
relationship with man by God through divine love, which evokes a
response of love in men which is expressed also in relations between
humans. God calls individuals by their ‘first and last names’, confirming
the individual in finite existence and blessing that individual with an
encounter with eternity.