André Neher

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André Neher (born October 22, 1914 in Oberehnheim , Alsace ; † October 23, 1988 in Jerusalem ) was a French-Jewish and Israeli philosopher and researcher of Judaism who, alongside Emmanuel Levinas and Léon Ashkénasi, played a key role in the renewal of Jewish thought in France contributed to the Shoah .

life and work

Until the Shoah

Neher was born in Alsace in 1914 (which came back to France in 1918) as a German. His father Albert A. Neher, a merchant, was socially as well as literary and artistically active, so he published stories about Jewish life in Alsace. In Obernai, Neher attended the Torah school of a committed rabbi, Jérôme Lévy. In 1927 the family moved to Strasbourg , where he studied German and music and learned at the local synagogue. In 1936 he became a German teacher in Sarrebourg in Lorraine . For two summers he attended the Talmud College ( Jeshiva ) Etz Chaim in Montreux , founded in 1927 , whose director Elijahu Botschko was influenced by the rational, antimystical interpretation of the Torah by his Lithuanian teachers . Neher's first publications (from 1932) reflect his interests at the time.

In 1939 he was drafted into the French military, after the defeat he returned to his family, who fled first to Mulhouse and then to the Limousin . He taught in Brive-la-Gaillarde until he had to give up his position at the end of 1940 due to the Jewish laws of the Vichy regime . At that time Neher was working on a dissertation on Heinrich Heine , which he destroyed, however, in order to devote himself entirely to studying the canonical texts of Judaism with his father and brother Richard. The family ran a pension and school for Jewish Torah students in the village of Lanteuil. In a raid by the SS in 1944, she was surprisingly spared. From 1941 to 1944, the father and the brothers wrote and illustrated a Passover Haggadah every year , the pictures of which reflect the atmosphere of the time. In 1947 André and Richard Neher wrote a text for the liturgy of a planned memorial day for the victims of the Shoah, which was published in 2000.

Jewish self-image from the Bible

After the liberation, Neher briefly taught in Lyon before returning to Strasbourg. Among the audience of his lectures were many war returnees and refugees, including the young Elie Wiesel , who was released from the Buchenwald concentration camp and with whom he remained friends. Wiesel's work became a reference in Neher's book L'Exil de la parole (1970). In 1946 Neher was appointed rabbi . In the same year he published Transcendence et immanence with his brother Richard , in which he founded the Jewish self- image based on the history of the vocation of the Jewish people , in a decisive departure from Christian, mystical and existential foreignness to the world. In doing so, he implicitly contradicted Sartre's view of Judaism; he had also declared in 1946 in Réflexions sur la question juive : “The Jew is the person whom others regard as such. (...) The anti-Semite makes the Jew. "

Neher's dissertation on the prophet Amos , published in 1950, attracted a great deal of attention, as it combined an advanced scientific method with precise knowledge of rabbinical discussions of the biblical texts - which he used fruitfully to clarify word meanings - and current philosophical issues. In precise and passionate disputes, he took a stand against the view established in historical-critical research on the Hebrew Bible , as it was re-established in the 19th century by Julius Wellhausen , that from the 8th century BC onwards A universal, individualistic and purely ethical prophecy was proclaimed in Israel , which is older than the Mosaic Law, which was only codified in the 6th and 5th centuries . Because the ethics of the prophets pointed to Christianity, Christianity itself could be ascribed older roots than classical Judaism, whose strict reference to a particularist law that led to segregation did not develop until after the Babylonian exile .

In contrast, with reference to Max Weber's study Das antike Judentum (1921), Neher argued that the covenant of Israel with God, which is described in the Torah, was and was constitutive for Jewish life from the beginning, for the entire period described in the Bible that the prophets - at a time when the obligatory character of the covenant was no longer felt after great social upheavals - had done nothing but to remind of it and to demand its observance. With reference to David Koigen's theses in Das Haus Israel (1934), he further argues that the content of this covenant preserves the experience of liberation from slavery , which is why it is permeated with the idea of ​​social justice and the responsibility of all. Its bearers were the Levites (the tribe to which Moses belonged), in whose tradition the prophets always understood each other.

In 1955 a chair for Jewish studies was established for Neher at the University of Strasbourg . In the same year he published the fundamental work L'Essence du prophétisme , in which he highlighted the general characteristics of Jewish prophecy and separated it from the historical context. In his book about Moses (1956, German 1964 etc.), which has been published many times in several languages ​​and in which he again represents the continuity of prophecy and law, the experience of liberation from the Egyptian yoke is illustrated with images of the existence of the There are illustrated slaves there, next to it are pictures from the National Socialist extermination camps. In his study of the prophet Jeremias (1960, German 1961), Neher visualized the dramatic tension in which his life took place.

Attitude towards Germany

In 1957, Edmond Fleg founded the Colloques des intellectuels juifs de langue française , which for many years focused on a Leçon talmudique (interpretation of the Talmud ) and a Leçon biblique Nehers presented by Emmanuel Levinas . In 1963, as part of a colloquium on forgiveness, Neher gave a lecture deviating from this approach on Réparation et pardon. The problem of the Allemagne. As in a lecture from 1958, he emphasized the irreversibility of the resulting break. In the text of 1963, he contrasted the behavior of the participants in the Action atonement , who are looking for a meeting in the face of what happened, to the "thinking away" of one's own guilt, which is widely practiced in Germany, the reassurance of conscience due to the " reparation payments " at the time and the ongoing anti-Judaism . He concluded both lectures with a reference to Albrecht Goes ' story Das Brandopfer , in which a simple woman who for years offered Jews a refuge during persecution finally wants to atone for this crime after everyone has been deported by exposing herself to a bomb attack . But she is only injured and lives on. - Neher did not enter Germany after the Shoah and also argued that this was no longer possible for Jews.

In Beyond Guilt and Atonement (1966), Jean Améry criticized Neher for demanding that those persecuted by National Socialism should "interiorize" the suffering they have suffered in an "ethical flight" and take it up in emotional asceticism like [the] tormentors their fault ”, which Améry refused rigorously for himself. In Neher's basic statements on the subject, however, there is no support for this allegation.

Change to Jerusalem

In 1947 Neher married Renée Neher-Bernheim (1922–2005), who had worked in the French resistance during the war to rescue Jewish children. Both published the Histoire biblique du peuple d'Israël in 1962 , followed by L'Histoire juive de la Renaissance à nos jours in 1963 . Inspired by his wife, Neher turned to research into Jewish mysticism and its significance for modern thinking. He published Le Puits de l'exil ("The Fountain of Exile"), la théologie dialectique du Maharal de Prague about Rabbi Löw of Prague, who in legend became the creator of the Golem (1966), and later a study of his pupil David Gans , a collaborator of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler (1974), and Faust et le Maharal de Prague: le mythe et le réel (1987).

In 1965 Neher was appointed president of the French section of the World Jewish Congress . After the Six Day War in 1967 he stayed increasingly in Israel, and in 1973 he and his wife moved there permanently. He now taught in Tel-Aviv as in Strasbourg. - In the book L'Exil de la parole, often regarded as his main work . Du silence biblique au silence d'Auschwitz (1970) he deals with God's silence, which as an experience already underlies the first biblical texts and which also shaped the experience of the biblical prophets. In his texts about Israel he emphasizes the importance of this country for life as a Jew - e. B. by the fact that some of the biblical commandments can only be fulfilled in the country - but also the hope associated with it as well as the obligation to a just policy that realizes the ethical demands of the Bible.

«Son oeuvre peut être considerée comme la reprise existential permanente et comme le commentaire approfondi en termes et en concepts contemporains des grandes thèmes de la tradition juive. »

"His work can be seen as a continuing existential resumption of and as an in-depth commentary on the great topics of the Jewish tradition in the categories and terms of the present."

- Encyclopaedia Universalis

Works

German editions

  • The Basel Christian-Jewish Theologian Discussion (Pentecost Week 1958) . In: Freiburger Rundbrief 11, 1958/59, pp. 38–60. Documentation of the contributions based on a tape recording, including the lecture by André Neher: Salvation Expectation in Jewish View, pp. 47-50, and his contributions to the discussion
  • Jeremiah . Bachem, Cologne 1961
  • Your misunderstood brother: A Jew sees us Christians . (Lebendige Kirche 4), Lambertus, Freiburg 1961 (Concise presentation of the history of anti-Semitism and the role of Christianity in it. With an introduction by the Christian theologian Karl Rahner full of reservations about Neher's text)
  • Moses in personal testimonies and pictorial documents (Rowohlt's Monographs 94), Rowohlt, Reinbek 1964, further editions 1984, 1989, 1997
  • No to Germany . Article, published September 1965 in Darmstadt
  • Israel, June 1967: A testimony from Rabbi André Neher . In: Freiburger Rundbrief 19, 1967, pp. 6–9 (Statement on the Six Day War )
  • The attitude towards Israel: city, country and people . In: Concilium. Internationale Zeitschrift für Theologie 10, 1974, pp. 580-584; also in: Freiburger Rundbrief 28, 1976, pp. 56-60
  • Against becomes a blessing - a Judeo-Christian encounter . In: Günther Bernd Ginzel , Elisabeth Pfisterer (Ed.): Scheidewege. Rudolf Pfisterer on his 70th birthday . dkv, Düsseldorf 1985, pp. 41-43.
  • Jewish identity. Introduction to Judaism . European Publishing House, Hamburg 1995, afterword Rudolf Pfisterer.

Original publications of the books

  • (with Richard Neher :) Transcendance et immanence , Lyon: Yechouroun 1946, reprinted in L'Existence juive
  • Amos. Contribution à l'étude du prophétisme , Paris: Vrin 1950
  • Notes sur Qohélet, l'Ecclésiaste , Paris: Minuit 1951
  • L'Essence du prophétisme , Paris: PUF 1955, since 1995 under the title Prophètes et prophéties
  • Moïse et la vocation juive , Paris: Seuil 1956
  • Jérémie , Paris: Plon 1960
  • (with Renée Neher :) Histoire biblique du peuple d'Israël , Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve 1962
  • L'Existence juive, solitude et affrontements , Paris: Seuil 1962
  • Le Puits de l'exil, la théologie dialectique du Maharal de Prague , Paris: Albin Michel 1966
  • De l'hébreu au français , Paris: Klincksieck 1969
  • (with Abraham Epstein and Émile Sebban :) Étincelles. Textes rabbiniques traduits et commentés , Paris: Albin Michel 1970
  • L'Exil de la parole. Du silence biblique au silence d'Auschwitz , Paris: Seuil 1970
  • Dans tes portes Jérusalem , Paris: Albin-Michel 1972
  • David Gans, disciple du Maharal de Prague, assistant de Tycho Brahe et de Jean Kepler , Paris: Klincksieck 1974
  • (with Robert Aron and Victor Malka :) Le Judaïsme, hier-demain , Paris: Buchet Chastel 1977
  • Clefs pour le judaïsme , Paris: Seghers 1977, since 1989 under the title L'identité juive
  • Oubekhol Zot (“And yet”; in Hebrew), Jerusalem: Rubin Mass 1977
  • Le dur bonheur d'être Juif (Victor Malka interroge André Neher) , Paris: Le Centurion 1978
  • Ils ont refait leur âme , Paris: Stock 1979
  • Jérusalem, vécu juif et message , Monaco: Rocher 1984
  • Faust et le Maharal de Prague: le mythe et le réel , Paris: PUF 1987
  • Regards sur une tradition , Paris: Bibliophane 1989
  • Renée Neher, Paul Zylbermann (ed.): Un Maillon dans la chaîne. Choix de textes d'André Neher , Paris: Septentrion 1995. Readable in the Google scan of the book, among others: Elie Wiesel : Quelques moments avec André Neher, 7-9. Paul Zylbermann: Portrait d'un maître et d'un ami, 11-27

Secondary literature

  • Paul Ricœur : Philosophy et prophétisme I (1952) . In: Ders .: Lectures 3: Aux frontières de la philosophie . Seuil, Paris 1994, pp. 153–172 (on Amos ; French)
  • Paul Ricœur : Philosophy et prophétisme II (1955) . In: Ders .: Lectures 3: Aux frontières de la philosophie . Seuil, Paris 1994, pp. 173-185 (on L'Essence du prophétisme ; French)
  • Alexis Nouss: Babel: avant, après . In: TTR: traduction, terminologie, rédaction 3, 1990, pp. 53–70 (via De l'hébreu au français ; French), accessible online
  • Tod Linafelt: "Mad Midrash" and the Negative Dialectics of Post-Holocaust Biblical Interpretation . In: Gerhard Bodendorfer, Matthias Millard (ed.): Bible and Midrash. On the importance of rabbinical exegesis for biblical studies , Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1998, pp. 263-274 (about L'Exil de la parole )
  • Paul B. Fenton : André Neher's Reading of the Book of Amos . In: European Judaism 34, 2001, pp. 33–39 (English)
  • David Banon (Ed.): Héritages d'André Neher , Éd. de l'éclat, Paris 2011, with extensive bibliography (French)
  • The Festschrift Mélanges André Neher (Adrien Maisonneuve, Paris 1975) contains contributions from friends and students suggested by Neher and on pp. XIII – XXIX a (336 titles) bibliography of his publications up to 1974

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ They first appeared in magazines, and after his death in 1945 they were also collected in book form, including the volume From Auscher's Erzählungen: Jüdische Novellen 1947 in Geneva in German. Several French texts by Albert A. Neher can be found on the page dedicated to him by Judaisme d'Alsace et de Lorraine .
  2. ↑ YR Dufour: Les maîtres qui vont guider votre étude de la Torah et du Talmud - André Neher ( Memento of February 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). In: modia.org . Retrieved February 23, 2017 (French).
  3. ^ Ralph Weingarten: Elijahu Botschko. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . January 10, 2003 , accessed June 30, 2019 .
  4. ↑ YR Dufour: Les maîtres qui vont guider votre étude de la Torah et du Talmud - André Neher ( Memento of February 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). In: modia.org . Retrieved February 23, 2017 (French). Dufour writes about the Torah school in Novogrudok, which Botschko had attended, that it “transmettait la rigueur de cette tradition, un sens aigu de la méthode nécessaire dans l'étude et de la connaissance simultanée des différents niveaux du texte, de l'être et de la collectivité. André Neher disait qu'il avait reçu à la yéchiva Êts' Hayim toute la méthode qui fut nécessaire pour étudier toute sa vie dans les textes difficiles et en profondeur. ”For the stays in Montreux see also Le dur bonheur d'être Juif , p 79 f.
  5. ^ R. Neher-Bernheim, Un témoignage sur André Neher et la Shoah , with links to the Haggadot.
  6. ^ R. Neher-Bernheim, Une "Qina" écrite pour le 9 av , with the text in French and Hebrew.
  7. ↑ E. Wiesel: Quelques moments avec André Neher , in: R. Neher, P. Zylbermann (ed.): Un Maillon dans la chaîne. Choix de textes d'André Neher , Septentrion, Paris 1995, pp. 7-9.
  8. ↑ J.-P. Sartre: reflections on the Jewish question. In: Ders .: Three essays. Berlin 1960, pp. 108–190, here 143. The comparison can be found in P. Zylbermann: Portrait d'un maître et d'un ami , in: R. Neher, P. Zylbermann (ed.): Un Maillon dans la chaîne. Choix de textes d'André Neher , Septentrion, Paris 1995, pp. 11-27, here 21 f.
  9. ↑ Amos. Contribution à l'étude du prophétisme , 40 f. (via Weber), 42-45 (via Koigen).
  10. ↑ The conference contributions appeared as La Conscience juive , eds. Éliane Amado Lévy-Valensi and Jean Halpérin, Vol. I, Paris: PUF 1963 ( Données et débats ; Colloquia from 1957, 1959, 1960); Vol. II, ibid. 1965 ( La Conscience juive face à l'histoire: Le pardon ; Colloquia from 1961, 1963), Vol. III, ibid. 1971 ( Tentations et actions de la conscience juive ; Colloquia from 1964, 1966 ), Vol. IV, ibid. 1971 ( Israel dans la conscience juive et dans la conscience des peuples ; Colloquia from 1965 [sic!], 1968), Vol. V, ed. Jean Halpérin and George Levitte, ibid. 1972 ( Jeunesse et révolution dans la conscience juive ; colloquia from 1969, 1970). After 1969, Neher stopped taking part.
  11. ^ Lesproblemèmes du judaisme dans l'Allemagne actuelle, printed in L'Existence juive (1961).
  12. ↑ J. Améry: Beyond Guilt and Atonement , Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 2004, 111.
  13. ↑ See also R. Goetschel: André Neher et l'Allemagne, in: David Banon (ed.): Héritages d'André Neher , Paris: Éd. de l'éclat 2011, 63-80, who discusses Neher's statements, but without referring to Améry's criticism.
  14. ↑ As quoted in David Banon (ed.): Héritages d'André Neher , Paris: Éd. de l'éclat 2011, 249.
personal data
SURNAME Neher, André
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH October 22, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Obernai , Alsace
DATE OF DEATH October 23, 1988
Place of death Jerusalem , Israel