Legacy of German Jewry

Hermann Levin Goldschmidt (1914–1998) founded and directed the Jüdisches Lehrhaus in Zurich from 1952 to 1962. This is his first book to be translated into English.David Suchoff is Professor of English at Colby College. He is the author of Critical Theory and the Novel: Mass Society and Cultural Criticism in Dickens, Melville, and Kafka.

"This book is fascinating, but deceptively so. It retraces familiar byways in German-Jewish intellectual and cultural history, stopping to recall key figures and moments. And yet, it constantly generates bold new interpretations--and not only of German Jewry, but of the modern Jewish experience and the project of modernity itself. In this important regard, _The Legacy of German Jewry_ is more than an account of the past; it is also a profound meditation on the Jewish and human conditions after the Holocaust. Its excavation after fifty years of obscurity is a a most welcome development." -- -David N. Myers UCLA Center for Jewish Studies "Rich in content, elegant in style, and eye-opening on many issues of modern German-Jewish history and culture... A cohesive, illuminating historical account." -- -Amir Eshel Stanford University "The Legacy of German Jewry offers a fresh opportunity not only to consider the achievements of German Jewry but also to show how contemporary Jews and students of the modern Jewish experience view those achievements." -AJS Review "More than 60 years after the Holocaust, Goldschmidt's text, whose scope ranges beyond the borders of Germany, underlines how the Jews have shaped and still influence the European environment. Recommended." -Choice "Little known outside of Switzerland, to which he fled from Nazi Germany in 1938, Hermann Levin Goldschmidt's /Legacy of German Jewry/ can now receive the attention it richly deserves in David Suchoff's fine translation. Against Gershom Scholem, who held that there never was a German-Jewish dialogue, Goldschmidt argues that such a dialogue did, indeed, take place and that its legacy is crucial for understanding what it means to be modern. In this argument from a book published originally in 1957, Goldschmidt anticipated ideas widely accepted today in ways that are philosophically challenging and ethically persuasive." (MAY EDIT AS WE SEE FIT) -- -David Biale University of California, Davis "A particularly trenchant and at times surprising cultural history. A significant legacy." -- -Robert Gibbs University of Toronto