Leo Baeck was born in Lissa (now Leszno, Poland), in the then
German province of Posen on May 23, 1873, the son of a Rabbi.
After attending the conservative Jewish Theological Seminary in
Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), he moved to Berlin to study at
the more liberal Lehranstalt für die Wissenschaft des Judentums
in Berlin. By 1897 he had secured his first post as rabbi in
Oppeln (now Opole, Poland). In Oppeln, Baeck made his mark as an
intellectual and a modern theologian in, with the publication of
Das Wesen des Judentums (“The Essence of Judaism”) in 1905.
Written in response to Adolf von Harnack’s Das Wesen des
Christentums (“The Essence of Christianity”), the book is a
passionate argument for the enduring relevance of Judaism.
Rather than the cult based on outmoded rituals and laws that
Harnack saw in Judaism, Baeck located the essence of Judaism in
the intersection between rational ethics and a personal
experience of the divine. The commandment to search the
scriptures for ethical principles, he argued,