Stephen Schwarzschild (1924–1989)

Stephen Schwarzschild was born to a Jewish family in Frankfurt, Germany, and was raised in Berlin. He and his family fled the Nazis to the USA in 1939. In 1948, he was ordained a rabbi at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. After returning to Berlin to serve as rabbi of the Berlin Jewish Community under the auspices of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, he met Lily Rose; they later married and had a son. In 1950, he returned to the USA and served as rabbi in Temples in Lynn, Massachusetts, and Fargo, North Dakota. He was a member of both Reform and Conservative rabbinic assemblies. He was a visiting professor at Brown University and held professorships at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Notre Dame University in Indiana. In 1965, he was named professor of Philosophy and Judaic Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. He edited Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life & Thought from 1961 until 1969, and was senior editor of the collected works of Hermann Cohen. In person and by letter, he entered into dialogue with Mennonite theologian and pacifist John Howard Yoder, Catholic monk and writer Thomas Merton, and many leading figures in philosophy and in Jewish thought.