German Jews were a small but
significant minority, contributing greatly to their country’s culture until
they were murdered or driven to exile by Hitler. Emil Fackenheim escaped
shortly before the outbreak of World War II and became a philosophy professor
at the University of Toronto and a rabbi serving the local Jewish
community before emigrating to Israel
in his final years. Epitaph is the
last manuscript Fackenheim composed before his death in 2003, a compact memoir
interesting not only for his life but his lifetime of reflection on the larger
questions that eluded many 20th century philosophers. For Fackenheim, morality
was not relative and evil was never an abstraction. He stared into the face of
it and barely held on to his life.
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