Background
Baeck was born in Lissa, Posen (now Poland) on May 23, 1873 to the local rabbi.
Rabbi theologian community leader
Baeck was born in Lissa, Posen (now Poland) on May 23, 1873 to the local rabbi.
He studied for the rabbinate in Wroclaw and Berlin. Leo received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Berlin in 1895 and was ordained in 1897 by the Berliner Hochschule.
He continued his work in London and in Jerusalem. The Leo Baeck College in London and the historical institute The Leo Baeck Institute (in New York, London, and Jerusalem) commemorate his name and carry on his work.
After occupying pulpits in Oppeln (Upper Silesia) and Düsseldorf, he returned to Berlin in 1912 as rabbi and as lecturer in the Liberal seminary. During World War I he served as army chaplain on both the western and eastern fronts. After the war, he became chairman of the national association of German rabbis (1922) and president of the B’nai B’rith fraternal organization in Germany.
When Hitler came to power in 1933, a small central committee (the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland) was established to represent German Jewry before the government and Baeck was appointed its chairman. Realizing and stating that the thousand-year history of German Jewry was reaching its end, he successfully united all its activities on a nationwide scale so as to ensure its maximum strength in face of the heavy blows rained on it.
On two occasions he was arrested by the Gestapo but was released and resumed his position. Despite the personal danger, he remained at his post after the outbreak of World War II until the beginning of 1943 when he was deported by the Nazis to the ghetto at Theresienstadt. In that concentration camp, he was one of the leaders of the Jewish Council and, through his teaching and preaching, bolstered the morale of the inmates.
Early in his life, his poor eyesight had accustomed him to lecturing and preaching without notes; now he taught without books. On one occasion the Germans decided to deport him to an extermination camp but a mix-up occurred and someone of a similar name was taken.
After liberation in 1945, Baeck moved to London and in his last years served as chairman of the World Union of Progressive Judaism, taught at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, headed the Council of German Jews in England, and helped found the Leo Baeck Institute, the international research institute for the study of the Jews of Central Europe. Everywhere he was revered as a saintly symbol of spiritual resistance to the Holocaust suffering.
His biblical scholarship and research into rabbinic and mystic texts enabled him to present a picture of what he called "classic" Jewish faith in contrast to the "romantic" faith of Christianity.
His sympathetic treatment of the Gospels as a document of Jewish history, and his critique of Paul, also established him as an important New Testament scholar.
(The essays included in this volume set forth the distinct...)
1958He saw the core of Judaism as morality and firmly upheld its superiority over Christianity. A strong impact was made by his distinction between Judaism as a “classic religion,” which makes ethical demands, and Christianity as a “romantic religion,” which induces passivity because it is based on emotion in which faith and revelation are seen as the fulfillment of religion. Judaism is a religion of polarity between the mystery of the Divine and the commandment of the ethical imperative. In Judaism, man becomes free through the commandments; in Christianity, through grace.
Quotations:
From the Leo's works:
• Through faith man experiences the meaning of the world; through action he is to give it a meaning.
• We are encompassed by questions to which only awe can respond.
• Religion may be the concern of a people but it must never become a concern of the state.
• Man’s creed is that he believes in God and therefore in mankind, but not that he believes in a creed.
• Jewish piety and Jewish wisdom are found only where the soul is in the possession of the unity of devotion and deed.
As early as 1897 he showed his readiness to stand up for unpopular principles when he refused to sign an anti-Zionist declaration supported by the majority of German rabbis. Baeck’s leadership qualities, which included courage and integrity, were clearly demonstrated during the Nazi years, when he turned down many opportunities to emi¬grate in order to remain at the head of his community.
