Leo Baeck at 150

Note: This event will take place in-person at the Jewish Museum Berlin, and there will be no online stream or recording.

Join the Freunde and Förderer des LBI e.V. at the Jewish Museum Berlin on May 23, 2023 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Rabbi Leo Baeck's Birth. Michael Meyer (Hebrew Union College), the author of Leo Baeck: Living a Religious Imperative in Troubled Times, will give a talk illuminating the character of LBI's namesake: his love of learning and his special ability to give hope and comfort to the persecuted Jewish community during the era of National Socialism. Guided by his personal faith and Jewish tradition, Leo Baeck's left a legacy that is significant to Jews and non-Jews alike even today.

Rabbi, educator, intellectual, and community leader, Leo Baeck (1873–1956) was one of the most important Jewish figures of prewar Germany. The publication of his 1905 Das Wesen des Judentums (The Essence of Judaism) established him as a major voice for liberal Judaism. He served as a chaplain to the German army during the First World War and in the years following, resisting the call of political Zionism, he expressed his commitment to the belief in a vibrant place for Jews in a new Germany. This hope was dashed with the rise of Nazism, and from 1933 on, and continuing even after his deportation to Theresienstadt, he worked tirelessly in his capacity as a leader of the German Jewish community to offer his coreligionists whatever practical, intellectual, and spiritual support remained possible. While others after the war worked to rebuild German Jewish life from the ashes, a disillusioned Baeck pronounced the effort misguided and spent the rest of his life in England. Yet his name is perhaps best-known today from the Leo Baeck Institutes in New York, London, Berlin, and Jerusalem dedicated to the preservation of the cultural heritage of German-speaking Jewry.