... this book, one must first understand what was perhaps the first great scholarly debate in twentieth-century Jewish mysticism. This debate was between Gershom Scholem and his one-time mentor Martin Buber on the nature of Hasidism, a type of Judaism that is practiced in many of today’s ultra-Orthodox...

... as a warrior, see the Song of Moses, Exodus 15: 3–7. 4 See: A Land of Two Peoples, Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs , ed., Paul R. Mendes-Flohr (Oxford University Press, New York, 1983). 5 From: Martin Buber’s ‘Open Letter’ to Gandhi Regarding Palestine (February 24, 1939) in Arthur Hertzberg, ed...

... the world versalistic ethics is the heart of Jewish be­ cusses Martin Buber in terms of his pre-7 right now by splitting the task between Ju­ lief is close to being a dogma among us. It is and Thou days as an emotive, mystic na­ daism and Christianity. Jews, having the the reason why, believers...

... suddenly would besomething inside me. There’s a Buber story I’m probably m isrepresenting that to u ch es on this. A Rabbi sp en d s en d less hours deciding whether to do good d eed s or pray. He thinks this first, then that:This...

... of Martin Buber: that of the Jewish sage able to speak to the universal concerns of modern (or perhaps better, post- modern) men and women. . . . Born in Lithuania in 1906, Levinas came to France after the First World War to study philosophy, particularly as it had been developed by Henri Bergson...

... after midnight the world forgotten, everything except God Joy, Joy, Joy, tears of Joy.” Martin Buber found a special spiritual ecstasy within the communal experiences of Hasidic Judaism. He then was able to translate the experiences derived from this Hasidic fellowship into his poetic masterpiece...

... Adowntime and to the patience he extended to me. On one ride, as I was in the midst of asking lots of questions about Martin Buber, he stopped me and said: “Buber is smart, very smart. But if you want to read a truly great...

... own work has been a long, long attempt to answer two questions: First, “If you don’t like corporate capitalism and you don’t like state socialism, what do you want?” Second, “And how can we get from here to there?” In part following Martin Buber, in part following teachers like William Appleman...

... of years. She never ate leavened bread. She enjoyed basking in blistering conditions that resembled Israel or Miami Beach. And the cruel vicissitudes of life often made her come out of her skin. On the minus: She demonstrated no particular grasp of Martin Buber’s “I and Thou” philosophy (though she had...

... commitment. Halachah has had a difficult time of it in modern Jewish thought: Reform theologians dismissed it as evolutionarily primitive; Martin Buber rejected it as rigidly formalistic and hence not capable of being a true response; and Zionistic thinkers such as Gershom Scholem saw it as a deferred...

... in its section on modern Zionism. Here it presents both the peaceable and warlike faces of the Zionist movement before and since the creation of Israel. Separately from his evenhanded discussion of more violence-ready and more peace-oriented Zionisms (devoting considerable space to both Martin Buber...

... and begin to become present to each other so that we can at last (suddenly but not yet securely) each recognize the other as a Thou, to use the beautiful word Martin Buber gave to this experience of recognition. And in this book, taken together with my prior book The Bank Teller and Other Essays...

... ar in Vietnam. Buber—warned of the consequences of a Jewish state. Einstein True, Israel’s claim of “security,” given its geographical posi­ wrote, at the very inception of Israel: tion, seemed to have more substance than the one made by the “My...

... of thoughtful scholars? If every German book containing anti-Jewish remarks were banished, the libraries would shrink dramatically. . . . During the 1992-93 academic year I held the Martin Buber visiting professorship in Jewish religious philosophy at the University of Frankfurt. . . . At the university, I...

... forgotten the so­ cialist Zionism of M artin Buber and Judah Magnes who knew that this “land without a people” was inhabited by Arabs, and ar­ gued early on for a binational state rather than the British partition plan in the 1940s. But after the state was established in 1948, the myth of nationhood...

... offorgiveness. Christians (and others) habits, we shift from debate to dialogue. by the victim upon the offender. I would take as their model Jesus on the cross, who M artin Buber defined dialogue as a con­ be very surprised if this is the only such prayed, “Father, forgive them, they know versation...

... Land. The issue is an unjust interpretation of Zionism that was right: we are all bound up in an inescapable network of mutu­ has sought and seeks to rid the land of Palestine and Israel of its ality. Buber was right: we achieve our full humanity when the “I” is Arab inhabitants, and render them...

... for himself,” David Shaddock writes. In order to fully encounter the Divine, we need to develop what Martin Buber famously called an “I/Thou” relationship with him. Buber drew on the legacy of Hasidism for his notion of what I am calling an intersubjective relationship with God, just as Levertov, from...

... and the Kabbalah that followed in its wake resisted this notion of radical transcendence but never rejected it outright. The Baal Shem Tov and Hasidism pushed Jews further in this pantheistic direction. Jewish theologians such as Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Buber pushed even further but still maintained...