Ken Koltun-Fromm offers a radically new interpretation of the writings of Moses Hess, a fascinating nineteenth-century German Jewish intellectual figure who was at times religious and secular, traditional and modern, practical and theoretical, socialist and nationalist. In Hess, modern readers witness a Jew struggling with the meaning of those conflicting commitments and impulses and recognise how in Hess's life, as in their own, these commitments remain fragmented and torn.
As contemporary Jews negotiate among multiple, often contradictory allegiances in the modern world, Koltun-Fromm argues that Hess's struggle to unite conflicting traditions and frameworks of meaning offers intellectual and practical resources to re-examine the dilemmas of modern Jewish identity. A central claim of the book is that the confusions and tensions embedded in Hess's major work, Rome and Jerusalem produce a meaningful testament to the complexity of modern Jewish identity. Adopting Charles Taylor's philosophical theory of the self to uncover Hess's various commitments, Koltun-Fromm demonstrates that Hess offers a rich, textured, though deeply conflicted and torn account of the modern Jew. This ground-breaking study in conceptions of identity in modern Jewish texts is a vital contribution to the diverse fields of Jewish intellectual history, philosophy, Zionism, and religious studies.