Heidegger and His Jewish Reception

In this book Daniel Herskowitz examinesthe rich intense and persistent Jewish engagement with one of the most important and controversial modern philosophers Martin Heidegger. Contextualizing this encounter within wider intellectual cultural and political contexts he outlines the main patterns and the diverse Jewish responses to Heidegger. Herskowitz shows that through a dialectic of attraction and repulsion Jewish thinkers developed a version of Jewishness that sought to offer the way out of the overall crisis plaguing their world which was embodied as they saw it in Heidegger''s life and thought. Neither turning a blind eye to Heidegger''s anti-Semitism nor using it as an excuse for ignoring his philosophy they wrestled with his existential analytic and what they took to be its religious ethical and political failings. Ironically Heidegger''s thought proved itself to be fertile ground for re-conceptualizing what it means to be Jewishin the modern world.