Early Jewish Writings

Abstract

This chapter treats Hermann Cohen’s early Jewish writings: his essays on Heinrich Heine, on the Sabbath and on the Virchow affair. It is argued that after leaving the Breslau seminar Cohen never broke with Judaism, though he insisted on approaching it in his own critical and independent terms. The young Cohen was very sympathetic to Heine and his pantheism, which seemed to be a feasible form of Judaism for someone in the modern era. Cohen’s early interpretation of the Sabbath ritual reveals his sympathy with the Jewish tradition and his attempt to interpret it in modern political terms.