As a graduate of the college that bears his name, I knew the story and works of Leo Baeck but this wonderful biography, drawing on a broad variety of sources, reveals to us a great deal more of the man and of the painful choices he had to make as leader of German Jewry during the Nazi period.
Baeck embodied a polite and austere morality. He is described as “living without showing himself off”, but he had courage and integrity in abundance, refused to be intimidated by the powers around him, and both his writing and his actions demonstrated a spiritual resistance to tyranny.
In this book we meet the younger, less confident Baeck who nevertheless was writing powerfully on the Jewish people and on Judaism, becoming an important intellectual voice in liberal Judaism, and we see him grow into the hugely respected community leader, the gifted teacher, the empathetic pastoral rabbi who stayed with his congregation even as far as Theresienstadt.
In the darkest of times Baeck taught consolation and faith. His leadership stance was to show a composed self-determination that would not allow the oppressor to undermine self-esteem. He was dignified and patient in the face of provocation, even paying his household bills before allowing himself to be arrested and taken to Theresienstadt.
