Since 2018, I've been researching the scholarship of the Edelsteins (Ludwig & Emma) along this line: how did they (possibly) become interested in Philo's Therapeutae and (mystical Judaic) psycho-spiritual healing before 1938, specifically in their student days at Berlin and Heidelberg from 1921-30? Emma Edelstein's own "Rebirth" is much less surprising, given her (presumed) participation in such a metaphysical cult c.1925-8.
I knew about a few obscure Weimar German Jewish groups before; I had never heard of the Thorapeutikum until just now:
Steven Aschheim, Culture and Catastrophe: German and Jewish Confrontations With National Socialism and Other Crises [1996], p.36:
I knew about a few obscure Weimar German Jewish groups before; I had never heard of the Thorapeutikum until just now:
Steven Aschheim, Culture and Catastrophe: German and Jewish Confrontations With National Socialism and Other Crises [1996], p.36:
The Weimar Jewish revivalists recognised this and, in part, modelled their renaissance on explicitly anti-Buberian premises, rejecting Buber’s pre-1914 call for a return to a personal Judaism of renewal and pure Erlebnis.37
This revival, it is true, shared some of the convictions that young radicals were already voicing in the years immediately prior to 1914. The revolt against bourgeois elders, the rejection of the assimilation, and doubts about the Deutschtum-Judentum synthesis38 all preceded the war. But now under the vastly changed conditions of war and a polarised republic, they adopted new critical perspectives and novel ways not only of casting the problems but also of answering them. Theirs was an eclectic radicalism that characteristically fused Messianic, utopian, and modernist modes of thought. The period abounds with numerous examples of its experimental (often esoteric) character. It was expressed atmospherically in such diverse institutions as the famous Juedisches Lehrhaus in Frankfurt, the Juedische Volksheim and the utopian socialist Safed society in Berlin, the Heidelberg sanitarium (1924–1928) that combined Judaism with psychoanalysis (the “Thorapeutikum,” as it was known!), and the “metaphysical magicians” in Oskar Goldberg’s circle.39
This revival, it is true, shared some of the convictions that young radicals were already voicing in the years immediately prior to 1914. The revolt against bourgeois elders, the rejection of the assimilation, and doubts about the Deutschtum-Judentum synthesis38 all preceded the war. But now under the vastly changed conditions of war and a polarised republic, they adopted new critical perspectives and novel ways not only of casting the problems but also of answering them. Theirs was an eclectic radicalism that characteristically fused Messianic, utopian, and modernist modes of thought. The period abounds with numerous examples of its experimental (often esoteric) character. It was expressed atmospherically in such diverse institutions as the famous Juedisches Lehrhaus in Frankfurt, the Juedische Volksheim and the utopian socialist Safed society in Berlin, the Heidelberg sanitarium (1924–1928) that combined Judaism with psychoanalysis (the “Thorapeutikum,” as it was known!), and the “metaphysical magicians” in Oskar Goldberg’s circle.39
Statistics: Posted by billd89 — Mon Jan 06, 2025 8:37 am