Leo Baeck on Repentance and Forgiveness Before and After the Holocaust
With Professor George Y. Kohler (Bar-Ilan University)
Public Keynote Lecture for “Concepts and Theories of Forgiveness in Jewish Thought”
Monday, May 5
6:30 p.m.
WLSS of The Jewish Theological Seminary
3080 Broadway (at 122nd Street)
New York City
The life and thought of Rabbi Leo Baeck (1873–1956) is often seen as prism that refracts many aspects of the 20th century German Jewish experience. Baeck began rabbinical training at JTS Breslau in the 1890s, studied philosophy at the University of Berlin, taught at the Berlin Hochschule for Jewish Studies until it was shuttered by the Nazis, and was subsequently deported to Theresienstadt. Baeck’s early theological writings reflected a liberal religious rationalism, whereas his later writings embraced more mystical and particularistic understandings of Judaism. Professor George Y. Kohler’s lecture follows Baeck’s changing ideas on divine forgiveness from before the First World War through the Interwar period until after his liberation from Theresienstadt.
This is the keynote lecture for “Concepts and Theories of Forgiveness in Jewish Thought,” an academic conference taking place at JTS on Monday and Tuesday, May 5–6.
Professor George Y. Kohler is an associate professor in the Department of Jewish Philosophy and director of the Joseph Carlebach Institute for Jewish Theology at Bar Ilan University. He is the author of Kabbalah Research in the Wissenschaft des Judentums (1820–1880): The Foundation of an Academic Discipline and Reading Maimonides’ Philosophy in 19th Century Germany: The Guide to Religious Reform.
