Edith Stein, Emmanuel Levinas and Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Idea of Empathy in Jewish Thought

This article argues that Edith Stein, a Jewish-born philosopher who was murdered in Auschwitz despite her conversion to Christianity, has much to contribute to Bible interpretation. Rarely discussed in Jewish Studies, Stein’s Philosophy of Empathy (Einfühlung) deserves a central place in contemporary discussions of Jewish ethics and Biblical interpretation. This article makes two related claims. First, it proposes that Stein anticipated Levinas in her account of the move from philosophy to ethics. Working within the framework of phenomenology, Stein refused the idea of a ‘self’ separate from society and community. Empathy, in her analysis, is an ethical mode of access to others, which can (and should) acknowledge the other as subject. In this way, Stein proposes a thought-based foundation for responsibility that does not require an ‘exit’ from phenomenology itself. Levinas later radicalized the ethical implications of this move by describing the importance of ethical obligation, yet Stein had already shown that human responsibility ethics should become part of what religious thought should be. The article shows how Stein’s idea of empathy can guide biblical interpretation, placing her alongside Levinas and Heschel, and arguing that Empathy can be integrated into Jewish thought after Auschwitz, the site of non-Empathy, in contemporary Jewish discourse.