Michael Wyschogrod papers

Michael Wyschogrod was born in Berlin, Germany on September 28, 1928. He is the younger son of Paul and Margaret (Unger) Wyschogrod, who had moved to Berlin from Budapest, Hungary in the mid-1920s. He attended Adas Yisroel School in Berlin, an Orthodox Jewish institution that combined excellent Jewish and secular instruction. The family migrated by the way of Warsaw, Poland to New York City in 1939. They settled in Brooklyn and Michael enrolled in Yeshiva Torah Voda'ath, a Yiddish-speaking Orthodox day school. He graduated from this high school in 1945 and spent the next academic year in Talmudic studies. He entered the City College of New York in the fall of 1946. At the same time he enrolled in Yeshiva University as a student of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, with whom he studied Talmud and Jewish philosophy until 1953.

Michael Wyschogrod earned his B.S.S. degree at City College in 1949 and became a graduate student in the Philosophy Department of Columbia University. He earned his Ph.D. in 1953 with a dissertation later published under the title Kierkegaard and Heidegger: The Ontology of Existence (London: Rutledge and Kegan Paul; New York: Humanities Press, 1954. Reprinted in 1970). From 1953 - 1992 Dr. Wyschogrod taught philosophy at City College, Hunter College and Baruch College; he achieved the rank of Professor of Philosophy and was chairperson of Baruch College's Philosophy Department for many years. In 1992 he was appointed Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Houston; he retired in 2002, and at that time donated his library and papers relating to Jewish-Christian Studies to the Institute of Judeo-Christian Studies at Seton Hall University.

Dr. Wyschogrod also taught at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, the New School in New York, Dropsie University in Philadelphia, Heidelberg College for Jewish Studies and the Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal in Germany, the Theological Faculty of Luzern and the University of Berne, Switzerland, Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey and Rice University in Houston.

Dr. Wyschogrod published his first book review in Judaism (April 1953): the book, by John M. Oesterreicher, was Walls are Crumbling. So, long before Christian Jewish dialogue became popular, Dr. Wyschogrod was equipped by his studies and personal commitment to become a significant contributor to interfaith discussions. Eventually he became involved on the national and international levels, especially in the United States and German-speaking areas of Europe. His interest in both Catholic and Protestant intellectual pursuits is well-documented. Seton Hall University recognized the contributions to Jewish-Christian Studies made by Dr. Wyschogrod by granting him the Doctorate in Hebrew Literature, honoris causa, in 1983.

Dr. Wyschogrod is married, with two children and five grandchildren. His wife, Edith is a well known philosopher in religion.

The major source for this biography is the sketch by R. Kendall Soulen found in the collection of Dr. Wyschogrod's writings, Abraham's Promise: Judaism and Jewish-Christian Relations (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004) p. xi-xiii.