In a letter dated October 19, 1917, Franz Rosenzweig—the German Jewish philosopher considered by many to be one of the central Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century—writes the following: “I can definitely understand . . . him [a common friend] being an antisemite for religious reasons. . . . [But] that he is an antisemite for racial reasons [Rassewegen]—I am very sorry [I cannot understand such a thing], because for him this is simply following the spirit of the times!”F. Rosenzweig, Briefe und Tagebücher, in Franz Rosenzweig: Der Mensch und sein Werk [= Gesammelte Schriften] (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979), 1: 473 (an Margrit Rosenstock). Further on Rosenzweig criticizes the “scandal” of hatred of the Jews that is even found among Christians who became Jews (a distinction that emphasizes the racial—and not religious—origins of this hatred.)