In the open­ing chap­ter, Paul Mar­cus suc­cinct­ly puts for­ward the the­sis of his well-researched and infor­ma­tive book, The Spir­i­tu­al Resis­tance of Rab­bi Leo Baeck: Psy­cho­analy­sis and Reli­gion: to exam­ine how Rab­bi Leo Baeck’s char­ac­ter, demon­strat­ed pri­mar­i­ly in his com­mit­ment to oth­ers and G‑d, helped him sur­vive the hor­rors of the Nazi con­cen­tra­tion camp at There­se­in­stadt; ​“Leo Baeck was untouched by There­se­in­stadt,” an inmate at There­se­in­stadt said of him, ​“He nev­er was real­ly there.” Fur­ther, Mar­cus con­nects how these aspects of Baeck’s char­ac­ter and behav­ior can be applied to improve the work of psy­cho­analy­sis. Leo Baeck was a promi­nent Jew­ish fig­ure through­out the Holo­caust and after­ward, both in his writ­ings and in his approach to life, exem­pli­fy­ing a man of faith, integri­ty, and kindness. 

As shown in the work of many Holo­caust sur­vivors, includ­ing Vik­tor Fran­kl, Pri­mo Levi, and Elie Wiesel, Leo Baeck demon­strat­ed that the best way to sur­vive the hor­rors of the Holo­caust was to focus on main­tain­ing one’s human­i­ty. Mar­cus describes the many ways Baeck did this, such as through con­tin­u­ing with his reli­gious obser­vance — includ­ing cre­at­ing dis­cus­sion groups on reli­gion and phi­los­o­phy, lead­ing ser­vices, and offi­ci­at­ing at wed­dings, funer­als, and B’nai Mitzvot — prac­tic­ing minor acts of resis­tance, such as not giv­ing in to Nazi demands on hol­i­days that restrict­ed him from doing so, and act­ing on behalf of his ​“flock”; that is, being a leader and pro­tec­tor of the Jews and non-Jews around him. Mar­cus repeat­ed­ly high­lights the impor­tance of Baeck safe­guard­ing his auton­o­my and self-respect, and that he fol­lowed his oth­er-serv­ing and oth­er-cen­tered beliefs and val­ues regard­less of what was hap­pen­ing around him.

Addi­tion­al­ly, Marcus’s explo­ration of Baeck’s rela­tion­ship to Judaism shines light on how Baeck was able to demon­strate such strong char­ac­ter through­out his time at There­se­in­stadt. He explores the notion of hope, and how, in con­trast to desire, which he describes as inher­ent­ly nar­cis­sis­tic and self-serv­ing, hope includes a belief that some­thing greater than the indi­vid­ual will offer them relief, and that the hope one has encom­pass­es those around them. More­over, he states that Baeck’s reli­gious devo­tion sit­u­at­ed him in a group con­text, both Jews who were alive then but also greater Jew­ish his­to­ry, and gave him a moral stan­dard that he could fol­low. In these ways, reli­gion and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty act­ed as a pro­tec­tive fac­tor for Baeck.

The pri­ma­ry aspect of this book that dif­fer­en­ti­ates it from oth­er works on Leo Baeck is its con­nec­tion to psy­cho­analy­sis. This comes at the end of the vol­ume, where Mar­cus describes how the char­ac­ter­is­tics Baeck had could be used as goals for ana­lysts to move their analysands toward. Although the claims Mar­cus makes are sound — for exam­ple, encour­ag­ing analysands to devel­op ​“human­iz­ing tran­scen­dent beliefs and val­ues,” and putting empha­sis on fos­ter­ing hope, patience, and a vision for one’s future, as meth­ods to work through a cri­sis and to guide one’s life — this pas­sage felt rel­a­tive­ly brief in com­par­i­son to the reflec­tions on Baeck’s life and oth­ers’ inter­pre­ta­tions of his life and writings. 

Nev­er­the­less, Spir­i­tu­al Resis­tance is a thor­ough exam­i­na­tion of a laud­able Jew­ish fig­ure, and its insights into psy­cho­analy­sis are worth­while for any prac­tic­ing ana­lyst to explore.