  In the fall of 1921, less than a year into his directorship of the Lehrhaus and—eerily—months after he wrote his account of philosophical paralysis, Rosenzweig began to notice symptoms of a disturbance of the nervous system. In February of 1922 he was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Rosenzweig continued to devote himself to directing and teaching in the Lehrhaus, but already in the spring of 1922, his speech was significantly impaired and he experienced difficulty writing. At the end of the summer of 1922, Rudolf Hallo replaced Rosenzweig as the institute’s director, although Rosenzweig remained intimately involved in the programmatic development of the Lehrhaus in the years that followed. By the end of 1922, Rosenzweig could no longer write; he remained able to communicate orally to his wife and to a few others close to him—and through these to others as well—until the spring of 1923. At that time the Rosenzweigs purchased a special typewriting machine which allowed Rosenzweig first to type, and then simply to indicate, the letters (and later, the first letters) of the words he wished to communicate, by using a lever to move a disk to the desired letter. As Rosenzweig became further incapacitated, more and more was demanded of his wife, Edith, who would regularly guess the word Rosenzweig wished to convey from Rosenzweig’s indication of that word’s first letter. Incredibly, this procedure allowed Rosenzweig not only to continue to communicate with others in person, but to continue “writing” as well up until the time of his death.