Synopses & Reviews
Emil Fackenheim’s life work was to call upon the world at large—and on philosophers, Christians, Jews, and Germans in particular—to confront the Holocaust as an unprecedented assault on the Jewish people, Judaism, and all humanity. In this memoir, to which he was making final revisions at the time of his death, Fackenheim looks back on his life, at the profound and painful circumstances that shaped him as a philosopher and a committed Jewish thinker. Interned for three months in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp after Kristallnacht, Fackenheim was released and escaped to Scotland and then to Canada, where he lived in a refugee internment camp before eventually becoming a congregational rabbi and then, for thirty-five years, a professor of philosophy. He recalls here what it meant to be a German Jew in North America, the desperate need to respond to the crisis in Europe and to cope with its overwhelming implications for Jewish identity and community. His second great turning point came in 1967, as he saw Jews threatened with another Holocaust, this time in Israel. This crisis led him on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and ultimately back to Germany, where he continued to grapple with the question, How can the Jewish faith—and the Christian faith—exist after the Holocaust?
“An ‘epoch-making’ autobiography.”—Arnold Ages, Jewish Tribune
Review
“An illuminating and affecting memoir by a seminal Jewish thinker of the twentieth century.”—Raul Hilberg, author of The Destruction of the European Jews
Review
“Written in a compelling conversational voice, Fackenheim’s memoir tells the story of the making of a Jewish philosopher, of a Jewish thinker, tutored by Hegel’s dictum that philosophy is the strenuous ‘labor of thought’ that does justice to reality—for Jews a reality lacerated by the horrors of the Holocaust and yet bearing premonitions of redemption as heralded by the birth of the State of Israel.”—Paul Mendes-Flohr, University of Chicago
Review
"[Fackenheim's] influence on present-day Jewish thought has been profound, and these memoirs show why. They will be indispensable both to those who seek to understand aspects of German Jewish history under the impact of Nazism, and to those who will seek to understand the impact of the Shoah on Jewish and Christian thought.”—Yehuda Bauer, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Synopsis
Emil Fackenheim s life work was to call upon the world at large and on philosophers, Christians, Jews, and Germans in particular to confront the Holocaust as an unprecedented assault on the Jewish people, Judaism, and all humanity. In this memoir, to which he was making final revisions at the time of his death, Fackenheim looks back on his life, at the profound and painful circumstances that shaped him as a philosopher and a committed Jewish thinker. Interned for three months in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp after Kristallnacht, Fackenheim was released and escaped to Scotland and then to Canada, where he lived in a refugee internment camp before eventually becoming a congregational rabbi and then, for thirty-five years, a professor of philosophy. He recalls here what it meant to be a German Jew in North America, the desperate need to respond to the crisis in Europe and to cope with its overwhelming implications for Jewish identity and community. His second great turning point came in 1967, as he saw Jews threatened with another Holocaust, this time in Israel. This crisis led him on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and ultimately back to Germany, where he continued to grapple with the question, How can the Jewish faith and the Christian faith exist after the Holocaust?
An epoch-making autobiography. Arnold Ages, Jewish Tribune
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Synopsis
From Agate Nesaule, acclaimed by writers across the globe from Doris Lessing to Tim O Brien, comes a long-awaited novel. In Love with Jerzy Kosinski is a story of courage and persistence, exploring in fiction the themes that gripped readers of Nesaule s award-winning memoir, A Woman in Amber.
After fleeing Latvia as a child, Anna Duja escapes Russian confinement in displaced persons camps and eventually arrives in America. Years later, she finds herself in a different kind of captivity on isolated Cloudy Lake, Wisconsin, living with her disarming but manipulative husband, Stanley.
Inspired by the transformation of Polish-Jewish emigre Jerzy Kosinski from persecuted wartime escapee to celebrity author in America, Anna slips away from Stanley and Cloudy Lake in small steps: learning to drive, making friends, moving to Madison, falling in love, and learning to forgive. Readers will applaud the book s power, the beauty of its prose, and its strong evocation of a woman gradually finding her way in the wake of trauma.
Winner, the Chancellor s Regional Literary Award, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater"
About the Author
Emil Fackenheim (1916–2003) was a rabbi and professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto and the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. His many books include The Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought, God’s Presence in History, To Mend the World, and What Is Judaism?