Redemption Restored: The Star in the Context of Modernity

Abstract

Abstract In retrospect of a century, the philosophical and theological concepts of Franz Rosenzweig’s New Thinking, as developed in the Star of Redemption, are in many aspects a milestone in modernity, reflecting the crisis of the modern Jew and Judaism both historically and politically. The notion of redemption serves here in fact as a paradigm for modernity itself, where the individual attempts to position himself in the tension between religion and secularism, tradition and modernity. This contribution analyses Rosenzweig’s “Jewish journey of redemption”, not only from the perspective of Jewish Messianism, but in the context of modern Jewish thought as a cultural critique (Kulturkritik) in Western tradition, in its philosophical, theological, historical and political aspects.