Rosenzweig’s starting point is Hegel. His book Hegel and the State and his other works on the philosopher are considered among the best studies written on Hegel in the last generation. But in formulating the philosophy presented in The Star of Redemption, he turned away from Hegel’s theory. That departure becomes for him – as for the Danish Kierkegaard – a motivating force in creating a philosophy of belief. The first part of The Star of Redemption is subtitled In Philosophos (against the philosophers!)

What caused Rosenzweig’s departure from Hegel? Hegel’s monistic idealism converges everything into a single principle: the Idea, the “Spirit”. The world is merely this Idea in one of its states, in its dialectic movement and development. If we wish to toy with words we may refer to the Idea as a deity, but this will not make the Hegelian system a theistic one. It is atheistic, because it does not suggest that things were created by the Idea but rather that they are the Idea. “All that is real is rational” – in other words, all real things are embodiments of the Idea. Nature, Science and Art are all forms of rationality, and so is each and every man. The individual self has no place in this system; in it – as in Spinoza’s system – the self is merely a slight ripple on the ocean waves: Spinoza’s Substance, Hegel’s Spirit, engulfs everything. The individual self cannot therefore stand before his God in the manner that religion allows the one who prays, the sinner or the penitent, to stand before his God. The world also stands neither before God nor before man, because all three are but one flow of the Idea that is constantly in the process of logical-dialectic development. Hegel, just like Spinoza, leaves no place for faith.

This is where Rosenzweig diverges from Hegel. The key assumption that underlies faith is that a man may entreat his God – that his God may speak to him and vice versa. The monistic view of the world allows no room for faith. Faith, though it aspires towards the “One”, must spring from the many, from several “correlating” sources (Cohen spoke of a “correlating” of man and God): Rosenzweig establishes his philosophy of belief upon three elements: God, man, the world. On these he constructs the “star of redemption”: the Star of David.

Rosenzweig gave this ancient symbol a new interpretation. Viewed in this way, the Star can be an expression and a symbol of his theory, while also providing readers with an anchor for understanding the theology of Judaism as Rosenzweig construes it.

There are three elements on which Rosenzweig bases the system of the “All”, three premises on which his system stands: God, World, Man. This triangle is the foundation of all:

This triad was known in the pre-Judaic world. The Greeks, too, recognized these three elements. They, however, could not bind them together. It is not the number of deities that distinguishes Jews from Greeks; this issue is insignificant to Rosenzweig. Lagarde was mistaken when, in his hatred of Judaism, he “explained” our faith in one God by saying that Jews have “only one exemplar” of divinity, as though the difference was a mere matter of numbers. The crucial aspect does not lie in this but in the unity of all, in the interrelationship of the three elements that make the world. In Greek theology the All disintegrates, since the Greeks did not know the element of the One. The important issue is not the number of gods but the unity of the universe. Everything disintegrates if there is no single unifying element. The Greek gods live their lives on Mount Olympus. Though they do occasionally descend to earth and to Man, there is no essential mutual connection between the gods and man, between the gods and the world, between the world and man. The Greek god would still be a god in the absence of the world and of man. He is a living god, but not a god of the living. The encounter between god and man is incidental and external. Greek man – even in his noblest form, that of the tragic hero – is enclosed within himself, engaged in the struggle that Fate assigned him; but this struggle concerns neither god nor world. The world, likewise, seems to exist without any relation to either god or man. Greek philosophy fashions a world that has neither beginning nor end, and if it recognizes the one god, it still does not recognize the God who is the world’s creator. Each of these three elements – God, man, the world – appears to face inwards upon itself, turning away from the others. There is no unity of All here; rather, the All seems to be disintegrated into three completely disparate components.

In Judaism, however, the All is rooted in the One. The three elements have been redeemed from their inert isolation: it is as though the eyes of man and of the world have been opened to God, and opened also to see and to act upon each other. The three separate apices are connected by one current that flows through them all, or as Rosenzweig puts it, by one “path”: God creates the world, God reveals Himself to man, man redeems the world. God creates the world: this is no incidental, external encounter as in Greek theology, but an event essential both to the world and to God. The creation of the world is an essential attribute of divinity. Here Rosenzweig refers to Maimonides, who on this point diverged from Arab scholastics, and unlike the Arab philosophers believed that the creation of the world is an attribute of God. And just as creation is defined as the “path” between god and the world, so revelation creates the path between god and man. God loves man and therefore has revealed Himself to him, and man accepts the revelation from the God who loves him. The “path” of revelation, too, is an essential and by no means incidental relationship between God and man. The giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai – an event which Rosenzweig accepts without attempting to dismiss it or bring it near any rational understanding – is an event that exists within the history of mankind and yet traverses its boundaries and cannot be comprehended through history alone. Thus we cannot understand man or history solely from man’s perspective. Human history does not stand alone. Therefore we cannot look at man in isolation, as the Greeks have done, nor understand him without referring to both God and the world. Any account that presumes to explain the history of humankind “autarchically”, confining itself to the realm of that history, will misrepresent reality; for on Mount Sinai divinity entered human history. Man does not stand alone.

This, then, is the path of revelation, which connects man and God. And the path between man and the world is redemption. Man, beloved by God, turns in this love towards his fellow man. The two commandments “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God” and “Love thy neighbor as thyself” are interlinked. One’s fellow man is part of the world. Thus God’s love of man is transformed into man’s love of the world: man’s interaction with the world is the path of redemption. Rosenzweig once said, in his notes on the poems of Rabbi Yehudah Halevi, that the couplet “Hetavt chasdech beyachlech goalech” – “you have bestowed your grace by yearning for your redeemer” – contains “the secret of Judaism”: redemption draws its strength from grace – that is, love – and love becomes the hope for redemption. Therefore the hope for redemption grows stronger with every year of exile. The love kept apart from the beloved is magnified. The hope of redemption has fed on love. Finally the “path” once again returns to its starting point, to God, for God redeems Himself when the world is redeemed by man. The path returns to the source from which it sprang. “I the Lord, the first, and with the last, I am he.”

Three points on the first triangle are linked by the three “paths” of a second triangle: Creation, Revelation, Redemption.

Thus the “Star of Redemption”, the Star of David, represents Judaism and its teachings. The Greeks knew only the upper triangle of the Star. But the second triangle fills the upper one. It also fulfils the prophecy – for the Greek philosophy was, in a sense, a prophecy; Judaism uttered the word that was bound to remain mute in the idol-worshipping world. It did so by introducing the “path”, the process that unites the three principles of all, and showing that everything – God, the World and Man – is interconnected by a historical process whose goal is redemption.

For us, the memory of the past and the eternity of existence are bound together. In the case of other nations, history might be likened to a stage entered and exited by the characters in a play. So nations enter and exit history, but from the perspective of eternity their victory is no victory and their reign is no reign. For what have they gained by their victory? Only time, a postponement and nothing more. They are all doomed to extinction – all, except the one that exists in order to be a witness. When Friedrich the Great ordered a priest to bring indisputable evidence of the truth of faith, the priest replied, “Your majesty – the Jews!” Even the Christians accept the existence of the Jews as proof of religious truth. Their existence is a contradiction of history itself. History adorns the victors with garlands, records their victories, celebrates them; and here is the Jewish people, whose entire history consists of others’ victories, but who nevertheless outlasted all these others, because its existence is not the existence of a nation by virtue of victory, but by the grace of defeat. From this perspective we see that history does not merit the admiration of Hegel’s contemporaries, for it is merely a façade for the true events.

Judaism is the fire that burns inwardly. Christianity is the light of the rays that are exuded by this fire, penetrating the world that dwells in darkness. Christianity, then, is always in the process of moving towards the goal, whereas we have eternal life implanted within us, and need not pursue it. Therefore Christianity’s mission is to spread its message among the nations, sending its emissaries to all corners of the earth, for it has been commanded to win souls. It proves its necessity by its constant expansion. Judaism, however, declares itself by its very existence. The same principle applies on an individual level: the Jew is of sacred stock; he is born a Jew, while the Christian is born a heathen and becomes a Christian. Christianus fit, non nascitur. Our Jewishness is a natural, inherent quality. The Christian becomes Christian by means of a “rebirth”. Therefore his Christianity demands of him many more inner struggles, a hard tussle with his naturally pagan inclinations. He becomes a Christian by virtue of restraint, by oppressing his natural urges. The Jew need only be true to himself and to his birth. For this reason, faith has a very different role for the Christian and for the Jew. The Christian, always at risk lest his unhallowed nature overcome him and make him a heathen again, must cling to his faith. But the Jew, as explained above, has no need for the evidence of faith, for his very birth is his evidence. His own existence testifies to the existence of God, and therefore religious dogma is not as crucial to him as it is to the Christian. The Christian needs faith formulated into phrases and principles, so that he may spread these words among the people whom it is his mission to convert. In the Christian’s life, faith must come first; for the Jew the main concern is life, eternal life in which he is implanted, and faith in religious tenets follows. Only for the Christian, not for the Jew, is it a meaningful and understandable idea that man attains eternal life through faith. Christianity spreads outwards by virtue of faith, while Judaism needs only to become more deeply rooted within itself. Here, again, Rosenzweig refers to the symbols of the two religions. The arms of the cross are outstretched (a guidepost at a crossroads also has the shape of a cross) while our star, the Star of Redemption, is closed and faces inwards. The potential danger to the Jew is the inward-looking tendency of his nation – in the words of our poet, “How shall my mind contemplate others outside you?” The nation may suffer if it sees nothing but itself. For the Christian, the danger is that his idol-worshipping, ever-rebellious nature should overpower his Christianity, and that he should once again become what he naturally is, what he was before faith curbed him – a heathen.

The difference between the Jewish and the Christian nature is also evident in the contrast between the Christian Sunday and the Jewish Sabbath. Christianity celebrates its day of rest not on the seventh day but on Sunday, the first day of the week. The Jew celebrates the day of the completion of Creation, while the Christian celebrates the day on which it began. The Christian is always in the beginning; he is an “eternal beginner”. This is the source of his perpetual youthfulness. The Jew, in contrast, has reached his goal when he was born a Jew.

The difference that exists between the two faiths despite their common origin is also evident in their approach to history. True, neither religion accords importance to history. The history of the world’s nations, their wars and victories, is in fact irrelevant to both Judaism and Christianity. Both are rooted in the Kingdom of Heaven, and can view history only from this perspective, so that the concept of history is foreign to them both. Nevertheless, here lies another tremendous difference between the two. The Jew takes no part in the history of the nations, for the history of his own people as a mere nation is already behind him. The history of humanity is significant to him only as a path leading from Creation to the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, and thence to the coming of the Redeemer and the Redemption. These two points, Mount Sinai and the coming of the Redeemer, mark out the only framework in which the Jew can perceive and conceive history. Nothing else has any significance to him. The Jew has seen nations and kingdoms come and go, and it is all the same to him whether the world is presently governed by the Romans or by the British, for instance. For to him all nations are “Emorites, Canaanites, Chittites, Perizites, Chivites and Yevusites” – that is, nothing but names – and the secular history of the nations is to him nothing more than a change of names. The Jewish people as a nation has withdrawn from history, participating in it only to the small extent necessary for existence. For it regards its existence as a precondition to the redemption of the world. History has significance to the Jew only at those momentous junctures when human desire for redemption interrupts the flow of history, changing the world through actions of deliverance. Therefore (we may be allowed to conclude from Rosenzweig’s writings) Jews take a different approach to social history, which involves the struggle of enslaved classes for liberation, than to the history of nations fighting for supremacy.

Christianity, too, has withdrawn from secular history. To the Christian, too, there are two points that anchor the history he recognizes: the first coming and the second coming of the Messiah. To Christians, too, history means sacred history; but where the Jew has withdrawn from history (in Rosenzweig’s words, “the Jew has constructed his bridge of law over the river of time”), the Christian enters the current and competes with its flow. Time has no hold over the Jew; it rolls off him and seemingly moves back. But the Christian carries his flag of war into time. These two approaches to time are illustrated by the calendars and the festivals that mark the seasons: for both Jew and Christian, the seasons are accompanied by festivals that divide the yearly cycle into sections. For the Jew, this cycle of festivals has remained unchanged from the moment when the nation’s secular history ended and became sacred history. Time left no traces in it. Various memorial days declared by parts of the nation, such as local Purim celebrations commemorating a community’s salvation from catastrophe, failed to make their way into the calendar that had been in place for two thousand years. The cycle of festivals is firmly fixed, unreceptive to events and memorial days brought about by time. Such is not the case for Christians. Though Christianity, too, has its established annual cycle of festivals, the church consecrates the historical and periodically changing festivals of various nations, if only for a few generations. It sanctions these secular festivals and gives them its blessing, and consecrates the flags of the nations going to war, though it is not its own war. This also characterizes its missionary work: the church enters the current of time. It is not carried away by it, but descends into it in order to conquer history by apparently joining in its flow. Here, too, the Christian is on his way, while the Jew has already arrived at the goal.

Rosenzweig even dares to trace these differences to physiognomy. The Jew is a Jew by nature, and the longer he lives and the more marked his Jewish character becomes in the lines on his face, the more deeply it is ingrained internally. With every year of life his inner being is increasingly evident in his outward appearance. The typical Jew is the old Jew. Not so the Christian. He is by nature a heathen, an idol-worshipper. Christian faith places a great burden on each individual: he must undergo a “rebirth”, signified by baptism, so as to shed his “old” being and become “new”. His Christian life leads him away from his idol-worshipping source, and he must estrange himself from his nature in order to transform himself from heathen to Christian. Living in the faith subjugates his nature. Each passing year draws him further away from his natural character. Therefore the typical non-Jew is the young man, who has not yet succumbed to a faith which is foreign to his blood, body and inner being, and which subjugates them.

I do not know whether Rosenzweig’s views led him to any conclusions regarding our youth movements and theirs, but such conclusions seem obvious. It is impossible for us to have a youth movement similar in character to those of other nations. For them, youth can still be an ideal. In their world, it is still Apollo who is wrestling with Jesus. Our ideal can only be the old Jew, his eyes radiating the very essence of our nation and all its spiritual treasures, and the light of God’s presence surrounding his head. To us, youth and middle age can only be a time of learning, of increasingly absorbing the nation’s spirit. Youth can have no other role than to “sit at the feet” and “drink the words” of the great pillars of Judaism in every generation. Much of our present spiritual chaos surely came about because our national movement failed to see the essence of Judaism in this (as in many other things), and instead followed the paths of other nations. And the national movement has a long way to go until it achieves the goal of which Herzl spoke, without realizing the profundity of his own words: a return to Judaism.

From: Book of Bialik, Edited by Yaakov Fichman, Essay on Franz Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption, Vaad-Hayovel Press in conjunction with Omanut Press, Tel Aviv