Emil Fackenheim

Who was Emil Fackenheim?

Emil Ludwig Fackenheim, Ph.D. was a noted Jewish philosopher and Reform rabbi.

Born in Halle, Germany, he was arrested by Nazis on the night of 9 November 1938, known as Kristallnacht. Briefly interned at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, he escaped with his younger brother Wolfgang to Great Britain, where his parents later joined him. Emil's older brother Ernst-Alexander, who refused to leave Germany, was killed in the Holocaust.

Held by the British as an enemy alien after the outbreak of World War II, Fackenheim was sent to Canada in 1940, where he was interned at a remote internment camp near Sherbrooke, Quebec. He was freed afterward and served as the Interim Rabbi at Temple Anshe Shalom in Hamilton, Ontario, from 1943 to 1948. After this he enrolled in the graduate Philosophy Department of the University of Toronto and received a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto with a dissertation on Medieval Arabic Philosophy and became Professor of Philosophy. He was among the original Editorial Advisors of the scholarly journal Dionysius.

Fackenheim researched the relationship of the Jews with God, believing that the Holocaust must be understood as an imperative requiring Jews to carry on Jewish existence and the survival of the State of Israel. He emigrated to Israel in 1984.