Professor Kenneth Hart Green of the University of Toronto once described Emil L. Fackenheim as "one of the greatest thinkers in Jewish history after World War II", which shows the importance of Falkenheim's thought in Jewish thought after World War II.
Throughout his life, Fakenheim focused on post-Kant classical German philosophy, Jewish belief systems, the Holocaust, and Jewish survival. He is committed to combining the research of philosophy and religious theology, reflecting on the Holocaust from the perspectives of the experiencers, witnesses and victims of the Holocaust, and advancing the study of the Jewish survival after the war.
His ideas not only influenced the philosophical community, but also had an extremely important reference value for contemporary Holocaust research and educational activities, and his research on the Jewish question was hailed as "the most profound and fruitful starting point of future Jewish thought". The reason why Fakenheim embarked on the road of academic research spanned the fields of philosophy, theology and history was inseparable from Fakenheim's life experience in Germany and the post-Holocaust diaspora.
In his lifetime, Falkenheim was a witness to many major events in the Jewish world of the 20th century, such as the Holocaust and the Six-Day War. The turbulent life of Falkenheim can be seen as a microcosm of Jewish life in the 20th century.
On June 22, 1916, Emil Falkenheim was born into a well-off liberal Jewish family in Halle, Germany, and was said to be a descendant of Maimonides, but Falkenheim doubted this claim. Influenced by family customs, Falkenheim kept going to the local synagogue on Fridays to attend religious services. But according to Falkenheim's recollections, there were also differences in the degree of observance of Jewish law and Jewish rites among Fakenheim family members.
For example, Falkenheim's grandparents still strictly followed the Jewish dietary laws, while the young Falkenheim, although still in the habit of not eating pork, no longer strictly followed the laws and etiquette of Kodaism. It can be seen that Falkenheim received a better Jewish education in a more traditional Jewish family, but had an open mind and did not conform to the old ways.
In the early 20th century, the attitude of German Jews towards Zionist thought was characterized by polarization. Some Jews were influenced by the strong nationalist sentiment in Germany at that time, and advocated the localization of Jews and became authentic Germans; A section of the Jews supported the Zionist movement and formed the Zionist Society to propagate Zionist ideas. Falkenheim favored the first and became the leader of a non-Zionist community. Falkenheim endorsed the rhetoric of Jewish localization and included a group of young German Jews who opposed Zionism.
In 1935, Falkenheim embarked on his journey to Berlin, which he called "my first journey." During this study, Falkenheim showed great interest in Jewish thought. "I just wanted to be a learned Jew because as a young Jew at the time I had an opinion about the Jewish community, which was that despite the enthusiasm of the people, most people did not know much about Judaism," Falkenheim said.
Driven by this idea, Falkenheim went to the Institute of Jewish Studies in Berlin. During his studies at the Academy, Falkenheim systematically learned the culture of Judaism. Under the tutelage of Leo Baeck, Fakenheim systematically learned the specific meaning of Midrash and developed a good habit of independent thinking.
At the same time, Falkenheim also came into contact with Martin Buber, a thinker who had achieved some success at the time. Falkenheim once said: "He (Leo Beck) was a formidable teacher, but he could not completely answer my philosophical puzzles. His answers are always filled with beauty... He taught me a lot about Midrash and forced me to think for myself, just like Buber, and I benefited a lot. But because he preferred speculative discussion of philosophical issues and scientific research on Judaism, he recalled calling the Institute of Judaism "a depressing place."
On November 9, 1938, the sudden "Kristallnacht" forced Falkenheim to suspend his normal studies and life. On the eve of Kristallnacht, Falkenheim and his family lived in Berlin. When the Nazis began to arrest Jews on a fray, the Falkenheims were imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Falkenheim was humiliated and mistreated in the Sachhausen concentration camp.
According to Falkenheim, in the freezing conditions of the concentration camps, he had to work more than physically demanding every day in a state of hunger. Fortunately, Falkenheim was granted a visa to leave Germany and was able to escape the Sachhausen concentration camp. But Falkenheim's brother, Ernst Alexander, had illusions about the German government and chose to stay in Germany, where he was eventually murdered and killed in Sachhausen.
In the end, only Falkenheim, his brother Wolfgang and their parents fled Germany. During this time, Falkenheim passed the rabbinical exam and became a rabbinian.
In 1940, Falkenheim and his family fled Germany and began living in England. Upon arriving in the UK, Falkenheim immediately pursued his PhD studies at the University of Aberdeen in hopes of returning to normal life. However, as World War II intensified, it was difficult for the British authorities to distinguish between Jews fleeing Germany and hostile elements loyal to Germany, so the British authorities deported the Falkenheim family to a prisoner-of-war camp in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada.
After 20 months in a prisoner-of-war camp, the Canadian authorities gradually realized that Falkenheim had suffered greatly from the Nazis rather than allegiance to Germany, and released the Falkenheim family. Thus began a 40-year life in Canada.
After leaving the Canadian prisoner-of-war camp, Falkenheim was admitted to the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto to pursue a doctorate. During this time, Falkenheim served as a rabbi for the Jewish community in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, where he gained insight into the daily life, spiritual and material needs of the Diaspora Jews.
In 1948, Falkenheim taught at the University of Toronto, Canada, where he taught classical philosophical thought from the post-Kant era, the religious tradition of German idealism. At this time, at the beginning of the end of World War II, there was a silent attitude towards the Holocaust worldwide, as did Falkenheim, so the focus of his intellectual research was on the philosophical ideas of Strauss, Kant, Hegel and others, and favored religious philosophical thought. In 1967, Israel's victory in the Six-Day War led Falkenheim to turn to the study and reflection of the Holocaust.
In 1984, influenced by Zionist ideas, Falkenheim ended his 20-year teaching career at the University of Toronto and moved to the State of Israel with his family. After arriving in Jerusalem, Israel, Falkenheim began a new teaching life at the Hebrew University.
At the Institute for Contemporary, Falkenheim worked primarily on Holocaust education and remembrance, as well as in the construction of the Yad Washem Memorial. But as Fakenheim drifted toward the right in his thinking, he became increasingly estranged from the intellectuals of the State of Israel. Falkenheim always spoke in a dull tone when recalling his time in the State of Israel.
After returning to the State of Israel, Falkenheim briefly returned to Germany to communicate with the children and grandchildren of war criminals in order to keep his agreement with his teacher. In his recollections, Falkenheim described his trip to Germany with passion. Falkenheim argues that the third generation of Germans he met seemed to know him better than the Israelis, who understood Falkenheim's fascination with post-Kantian classical philosophy and love of Jewish culture.
In them, Falkenheim saw the success of his reflection on the Holocaust and a bright future for Judaism and Jewry. With blessings and expectations for the State of Israel, Falkenheim left his beloved Jewish world forever on September 18, 2003.
Throughout his life, Fakenheim has experienced a period of German schooling, a rampant and pessimistic Holocaust, and a period of displacement. If Falkenheim's studies in Berlin were his first journey, the inhuman treatment he suffered in Sackhausen, his philosophical studies and Holocaust reflections in Canada, and his return to the State of Israel were Falkenheim's second, third, and fourth journeys, respectively.
Over the course of these four lives, Falkenheim's identity has undergone a transformation from the leader of a non-Zionist community who advocated "Jewish localization" to a neutral rabbi of the Jewish community to a staunch belief in Zionism.
It can be said that Falkenheim's life course is a microcosm of the Jewish world in the 20th century, a true portrayal of the Jewish diaspora in the 20th century, and the choices he faced in his life are also the dilemma faced by the entire Jewish world in the 20th century.
With the transformation of Fakenheim's identity, his ideology also underwent a major turn. In the relatively peaceful German period, Falkenheim believed that the suffering of Jews was caused by their own particularity, so he advocated "Jewish localization" to eliminate the suffering faced by the Jewish world by integrating into the local ideological and cultural system; In the years of war, Falkenheim hoped that a Jewish state would provide refuge for the Jews in Auschwitz, and that God would come to Auschwitz to save the Jews; In the post-Holocaust era, Falkenheim had faith in the Jewish belief system and the state of Israel, and was unwavering in his struggle for the survival of the Jewish people.
The reason for this is that the series of ideological turns in Fakenheim's thought are inseparable from its ups and downs in life. Therefore, the life course of Fackenheim is crucial in the study of Fakenheim's thought. Interpreting the Jewish system of thought constructed by Falkenheim and judging the historical impact of Falkenheim's thought are inseparable from Falkenheim's life course in the 20th century.