The German-Jewish Dialogue Reconsidered

Download or read book The German-Jewish Dialogue Reconsidered written by Klaus L. Berghahn and published by Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers. This book was released on 1996 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was there a German-Jewish dialogue? This seemingly innocent question was silenced by the Holocaust. Since then, it is out of the question to take comfortable refuge to a distant past when Mendelssohn and Lessing started this dialogue. Adorno/Horkheimer, Arendt, and above all Scholem have repeatedly pointed out, how the noble promises of the Enlightenment were perverted, which led to a complete failure of Jewish emancipation in Germany. It is against this backdrop of warning posts that we dare to return to an important chapter of Jewish culture in Germany. This project should not be seen, however, as an attempt to idealize the past or to harmonize the present, but as a plea for a new dialogue between Germans and Jews about their common past.