Session #1
Rabbi Leo Baeck and Carl Jung: A Tale of Reconciliation, and Perhaps Forgiveness –
A Lesson for the High Holidays

In 1947, the famed psychiatrist Carl Jung met with Rabbi Leo Baeck, the last head of the German Jewish community prior to its destruction by the Nazis, in a Swiss hotel room. Jung asked Baeck, who he had known prior to World War II, to forgive him for the Nazi sympathies he had expressed during the 1930s and requested that Baeck address a spiritual conference that Jung was convening. We will look at a description the famed Hebrew University scholar Gershom Scholem provided of that meeting and consider how the exchange between the two men might inform our own understanding of and approach to forgiveness and reconciliation as we reflect on the meanings Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur hold for us.

Session #2
Truth-Telling and Jewish Tradition:
The Case of Rabbi Leo Baeck and the Holocaust

We return to Rabbi Leo Baeck and the moral dilemmas he confronted as leader of the Jewish community in Germany during the time of Nazi oppression, destruction, and cruelty. As head of the community, he faced the moral dilemma of being completely transparent about what the Nazis were doing and shielding his community from the “full truth” in the hope that more Jewish lives would thereby be saved. We will consider two of these cases that faced Rabbi Baeck and view the positive as well as critical responses others ranging from members of the German Jewish community to the famed Protestant theologian Paul Tillich made in commenting on Rabbi Baeck and his decisions. We will also explore what classical Jewish sources say about truth-telling and look at Rabbi Baeck’s deeds from the perspective of what the famed Holocaust historian Saul Friedlander describes as “limit situations,” situations in extremis where moral judgments must be made.

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