Emil Fackenheim

Emil L. Fackenheim (June 22, 1916 – September 19, 2003) was a monumental German-born Jewish theologian, philosopher, and Reform rabbi whose profound philosophical responses to the Holocaust fundamentally altered 20th-century religious thought. Ordained at the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin and briefly imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp following Kristallnacht, he escaped Nazi Germany to Canada in 1940. Fackenheim went on to earn a PhD from the University of Toronto, where he served as a professor of philosophy for 35 years and became professor emeritus. He vaulted into global intellectual prominence by introducing the "614th Commandment"—a core theological imperative declaring that Jews are forbidden to hand Adolf Hitler a posthumous victory by allowing Judaism or the Jewish people to perish. A highly prolific scholar, he authored over a dozen seminal works including God's Presence in History, To Mend the World: Foundations of Future Jewish Thought, and The Jewish Thought of Emil Fackenheim. In 1984, he made aliyah to Israel, where he spent his final decades continuing his pedagogical legacy as a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.