Hannah Arendt

The German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975) called Schocken the “Jewish Bismarck.” For his part, Schocken described her as the most intelligent woman on earth. When Schocken offered Arendt a top editing position at Schocken Books in New York, she accepted. In her words, Schocken had a “passionate, almost worshipful respect for intellectual and scholarly accomplishment, and for intellectuals.”

Arendt connected fully with Schocken’s vision to use “the great religious and metaphysical post-Biblical tradition,” especially medieval Hebrew poetry, to secularize religion and create a new Jewish culture in America. She wrote in the company catalog that “the last generation of German-Jew writers, artists, and thinkers used the sheer force of personal imagination to amalgamate older traditions into new impulses and awareness.”

Eventually, Arendt resigned, following arguments with Schocken about editorial independence. Her position at Schocken Books was the beginning of a brilliant career as a writer and political philosopher. Her books, e.g. Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem, turned her into one of the leading public intellectuals in postwar America. Her life was featured in a full-length popular movie (2012).