Simon Rawidowicz

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Simon Rawidowicz, 1932

Simon Rawidowicz (born October 30, 1897 in Grajewo , Congress Poland , † July 20, 1957 in Waltham , USA ) was a Jewish philosopher and historian of philosophy.

Live and act

Simon Rawidowicz came to Berlin in 1919. In the same year he founded the short-lived magazine "Our Freedom". From 1920 he taught as a teacher at the Hebrew Language School. From 1921 Rawidowicz studied at the Friedrich Wilhelms University. At the same time he continued his writing activity and in 1922 founded the Hebrew publishing house "Ayanot". From 1928 to 1930 he was editor of the magazine "Ha-Tekuphah". In 1929 Rawidowicz was employed as a librarian at the Jewish community library in Berlin. In 1933 he emigrated to England, where he was given teaching positions at Jew's College in London and from 1941 at Leeds University. In 1948 Rawidowicz was appointed to the Chicago College of Jewish Studies, from where he moved to Brandeis University , Waltham (Mass.) In 1951 . There he taught as chairman of the Department of Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies until his death. From the Berlin years, aggravated by the parallel application for a professorship in Jerusalem in 1933/34, Rawidowicz was in a certain competition with Leo Strauss until the American period .

In Berlin Rawidowicz campaigned vigorously for a revival of Hebrew. He formed the center of a culturally and politically active group of intellectuals, who in turn played an important role in the contemporary capital city Zionist movement.

Numerous studies on medieval and modern Jewish intellectual history stand out from the extensive scientific work of Rawidowicz. Above all, he has made a name for himself as a Maimonides researcher and as editor of the Jewish writings of Moses Mendelssohn . But he also dealt with current issues of Judaism and Israel politics. His Feuerbach studies (first in 1931) are still extremely valuable .

In 1953 Rawidowicz was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Since 1964 Brandeis University has organized the "Annual Simon Rawidowicz Memorial Lecture". In 2009 it was held by the historian Saul Friedländer ("Voice of the Victims Challenges of an Integrated History of the Holocaust").

Rawidowicz was married to Esther Eugenie Klee (1900–1980), a daughter of the Zionist Alfred Klee (1875–1943, Westerbork transit camp ). The son Benjamin Ravid himself teaches today as "Jennie and Mayer Weisman Professor of Jewish History" in Waltham.

Works

  • Portrait of the Hebrew poet Chajim Nachman Bialik and his biography . Berlin: Soncino Society , 1926.
  • Ludwig Feuerbach's philosophical youth development and his position on Hegel until 1839 , o. O. [Berlin]: [Reuther & Reichard], (1927).
  • Ludwig Feuerbach's philosophy. Origin and Destiny , Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 1931 (reprint: Berlin: de Gruyter, 1964).
  • On Jewish Learning , Chicago: College of Jewish Studies, 1950.
  • Jerusalem and Babylon (1957), reprinted by Michael Brenner a. a. (Ed.): Reading Jewish History, Munich 2003.
  • Studies in Jewish Thought , Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1974.
  • Conversations with Bialik , Dvir, Tel Aviv 1983.
  • Israel: the ever-dying people and other essays . Ed. by Benjamin CI Ravid, Rutherford [u. a.]: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Pr., 1986.
  • State of Israel, Diaspora, and Jewish Continuity: Essays on the "Ever-Dying People" , Hanover, NH [u. a.]: Brandeis Univ. Press [u. a.], 1998.

editor

  • Moses Mendelssohn: Writings on Judaism (Collected writings: Jubilee edition. In association with Fritz Bamberger [among others] edited by Ismar Elbogen [among others]. Volume 7). Edited by Simon Rawidowicz, Berlin: Akademie-Verl., 1930 (facsimile reprint of the Berlin 1930 edition: Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1974).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ John F. Oppenheimer (Red.) And a .: Lexicon of Judaism. 2nd Edition. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh u. a. 1971, ISBN 3-570-05964-2 , col. 652.
  2. ↑ different information in the Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors, p. 191
  3. ↑ Alternative spellings of names according to DNB : Shim'on Ravidovits and Shim'on Ravidovitsh.
  4. ^ Jewish Virtually Library on "Ha-Tekuphah" (The Season) .
  5. ^ Members of the American Academy. Listed by election year, 1950-1999 ( [1] ). Retrieved September 23, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Rawidowicz, Simon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH October 30, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Grajewo
DATE OF DEATH July 20, 1957
Place of death Waltham