Leo Lowenthal and the Jewish Renaissance

Abstract

This chapter traces Leo Lowenthal's early intellectual life through a series of passionate engagements with traditional and modernist Jewish thought that continued to find expression in his work at the Institute for Social Research and, after 1933, in the United States. As a student in his twenties, Lowenthal was part of the community of young Jewish intellectuals surrounding Rabbi Nehemiah Anton Nobel, an adherent of German philosophy and Orthodox Judaism. He was committed to the Weimar Jewish Renaissance, active in Jewish communal organizations, and joined the psychoanalytic group around Erich Fromm and Frieda Reichmann, an observant Jew whose sanatorium served kosher meals and observed Jewish holidays. The chapter then identifies the traces of Jewish identity in Lowenthal's reading of such traces in the life of Heinrich Heine. Ultimately, Lowenthal's Jewish visibility reflects both on Jewish sources in critical theory and the contributions of critical theory to the evolution of Jewishness.