Judaism despite Christianity

Dialogical Affirmations of Theological Incommensurability

The 1916 wartime correspondence between Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and Franz Rosenzweig is an embryonic exemplification of what they would call ”speech-thinking,“ or the dialogical exchange between individuals in which, as Rosenzweig noted, the other not only has ears to hear what I say, but a mouth that utters a response. In their often brutally frank exchange about Judaism and Christianity, they forged an interreligious friendship grounded in a recognition and ultimately an affectionate affirmation of theological difference.
 
  
Paul Mendes-Flohr is Dorothy Grant Maclear Professor of Modern Jewish History and Thought, Divinity School and Department of History, University of Chicago.

He is one of the leading scholars within the field of Jewish Studies. He is the former Director of the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he is Professor emeritus, and still active as Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Chicago and Advisory Board Member at CJMC at the University of Copenhagen.
His major research interests include modern Jewish intellectual history and philosophy, religious thought and philosophy of religion, German intellectual history, and the history and sociology of intellectuals.

The open lecture is part of the Workshop and PhD course with Paul Mendes-Flohr: Judaism despite Christianity? The 1916 Correspondence between Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and Franz Rosenzweig, 28-29 april 2015.

Organized by: Claudia Welz and Lars K. Bruun
Center for the Study of Jewish Thought in Modern Culture

Funded by CEMES: Centre for Modern European Studies, University of Copenhagen
and KU s Almene Fond