Philosophy and the Jewish Question: Mendelssohn, Rosenzweig, and Beyond

Acknowledgements

a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s I owe a debt of gratitude to the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities for providing me a fellowship in 2005–6 that allowed me to take a semester off from teaching and work entirely on this book. The fellows who met weekly to discuss ongoing projects offered immense support. In particular, I would like to thank Professor Matti Bunzl, then the director of the IPRH, for his ongoing encouragement. I would like to thank Professor Robert McKim, chair of the Department of Religion at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who generously provided me with teaching reduction in the fall semester of 2006. Professor Gary Porton of the Department of Religion at Illinois was extraordinarily supportive throughout the writing of this book. Without his faith in my project, I could not have brought this book to completion. My daughters Penelope and Sissela were lovingly tolerant of my selfabsorption during the writing of this book, and I sincerely beg their forgiveness for the many, many times that ‘‘just a minute’’ extended into hours. I owe them big time. I could not have written this book without the help of my wife, Harriet Murav. She and I talked though nearly every chapter more than once, and her critical advice has vastly improved this book. But above all else, Harriet teaches me how to make every day yontovdik. I am still only a beginner in the lessons, but her love and faith in me draw me forward step by step. Finally, I would like to say a word about Bertold Rosenstock, the person to whom this book is dedicated. From the age of three, he grew up with his older brother Georg, my father, in the Jewish Orphanage in Frankfurt am Main. Declining the opportunity to emigrate with his brother to America in 1938 after Kristalnacht, Bertold joined the Hehalutz Zionist youth movement centered in Berlin where he served as a teacher in the Youth Aliyah xiii xiv Acknowledgments school. Later, he directed the Youth Aliyah Hachsharah training camp in Hummelo, Netherlands. There he helped young Jews to acquire the agricultural skills required for emigration to Palestine. Bertold was arrested by the Gestapo on April 10, 1943. He perished in Auschwitz the following year. Philosophy and the Jewish Question ...