Leo Baeck

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Leo Baeck (May 23, 1873 – November 2, 1956) was an 20th century German-Polish-Jewish Rabbi, scholar, and a leader of Progressive Judaism.

Contents

[edit] Life

Baeck was born in Lissa (Leszno) (then in the German Province of Posen, now in Poland), the son of Rabbi Samuel Baeck, and began his education near Breslau at the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary in 1894. He also studied philosophy in Berlin with Wilhelm Dilthey, served as a rabbi in Oppeln, Düsseldorf, and Berlin, and taught at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Higher Institute for Jewish Studies). In 1905 Baeck published The Essence of Judaism, in response to Adolf von Harnack's The Essence of Christianity. This book, which interpreted and valorized Judaism through a prism of Neo-Kantianism tempered with religious existentialism, made him a famous proponent for the Jewish people and their faith. During World War I, Baeck was an army chaplain in the German Imperial Army. In 1933, after the Nazis seized power, Baeck worked to defend the Jewish community as president of the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden, an umbrella organization that United German Jewry from 1933-1938. After the Reichsvertretung was disbanded during the November Pogrom, the Nazis reassembled the council's members under the government controlled Reichsvereinigung. Leo Baeck headed this organization as its president until his deportation in January 1943

On 27 January 1943, he was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Upon his arrival, he was made an honorary member of the Council of Elders. After the large scale deportations in October 1944, Leo Baeck took on an official role in the Council of Elders at Theresienstadt. And after the camp was liberated by the Russians in May 1945, he became the Jewish figure head as the Elder of the Jews.

Leo Baeck did not play a decisive role in the Jewish administration of the ghetto until its last days. Yet he never ceased to be a symbol to and a leader of the Jews imprisoned in Theresienstadt. In Berlin, he had been a leader of the German Jews; in Theresienstadt, he became a spiritual leader and symbol, leader to thousands of Jews from all parts of Nazi-occupied Europe.

Up until his deportation, numerous American institutions offered to help him escape the war and immigrate to America. Leo Baeck refused to abandon his community in the camps and declined the offers.

After the war, Baeck relocated to London, taught at Hebrew Union College in America, and eventually became Chairman of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. It was during this time he published his second great work, This People Israel, which he partially penned during his imprisonment by the Nazis.

In 1955, the Leo Baeck Institute for the study of the history and culture of German-speaking Jewry was established, and Baeck was the first international president of this institute. The asteroid 100047 Leobaeck is named in his honour, as is Leo Baeck College, the Reform/Progressive rabbinical college in London.

He died on November 2, 1956, in London, England and has seven living descendants, a granddaughter, a great-grandson, and five great-great-grandchildren (four great-great-grandsons and one great-great-granddaughter.) His daughter and great-grandson are deceased.

[edit] From a Conversation with Leo Baeck (1948)

  • Q: Why lecture on Plato to people who might not even have heard his name before?
  • A: People in distress should be helped to exercise their brains and think about things unrelated to the present. They needed to listen to an idealist, a visionary. But of course we lectured on many other things, too. Courses and classes and lectures of all kinds, oh yes, oh yes.
about the lectures in Terezin [1], [2]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

[edit] Institutions named in honor of Leo Baeck

[edit] Sources

  1. ^ Elena Makarova, Sergei Makarov, Victor Kuperman: University Over the Abyss,The story behind 520 lecturers and 2,430 lectures in KZ Theresienstadt 1942-1944, Second edition, Verba Publishers Ltd., Jerusalem 2004, ISBN 965-424-049-1, page 192
  2. ^ List of Lecturers in Ghetto Theresienstadt