Martin Buber

Martin Buber (; , ; ; 8 February 1878 – 13 June 1965) was an Austrian-Israeli philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of existentialism centered on the distinction between the I–Thou relationship and the I–It relationship. Born in Vienna, Buber came from a family of observant Jews, but broke with Jewish custom to pursue secular studies in philosophy. He produced writings about Zionism and worked with various bodies within the Zionist movement extensively over a nearly 50-year period spanning his time in Europe and the Near East. In 1923, Buber wrote his famous essay on existence, '' Ich und Du'' (later translated into English as ''I and Thou''), and in 1925 he began translating the Hebrew Bible.

He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature ten times, and the Nobel Peace Prize seven times.

Biography

Martin (Hebrew name: ''מָרְדֳּכַי,'' ''Mordechai'') Buber was born in Vienna to an Orthodox Jewish family. Buber was a direct descendant of the 16th-century rabbi Meir Katzenellenbogen, known as the Maharam (מהר"ם), the Hebrew acronym for “Mordechai, HaRav (the Rabbi), Meir”, of Padua. Karl Marx is another notable relative. After the divorce of his parents when he was three years old, he was raised by his grandfather in Lemberg (now Lviv in Ukraine). His grandfather, Solomon Buber, was a scholar of Midrash and Rabbinic Literature. At home, Buber spoke Yiddish and German. In 1892, Buber returned to his father's house in Lemberg.

Despite Buber's putative connection to the Davidic line as a descendant of Katzenellenbogen, a personal religious crisis led him to break with Jewish religious customs. He began reading Immanuel Kant, Søren Kierkegaard, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The latter two, in particular, inspired him to pursue studies in philosophy. In 1896, Buber went to study in Vienna (philosophy, art history, German studies, philology).

In 1898, he joined the Zionist movement, participating in congresses and organizational work. In 1899, while studying in Zürich, Buber met his future wife, Paula Winkler, a "brilliant Catholic writer from a Bavarian peasant family" who in 1901 left the Catholic Church and in 1907 converted to Judaism.

Buber, initially, supported and celebrated the Great War as a "world historical mission" for Germany along with Jewish intellectuals to civilize the Near East. Some researchers believe that while in Vienna during and after World War I, he was influenced by the writings of Jacob L. Moreno, particularly the use of the term ‘encounter’.

In 1930, Buber became an honorary professor at the University of Frankfurt am Main, but resigned from his professorship in protest immediately after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. He then founded the Central Office for Jewish Adult Education, which became an increasingly important body as the German government forbade Jews from public education. In 1938, Buber left Germany and settled in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine, receiving a professorship at Hebrew University and lecturing in anthropology and introductory sociology. In 1947, he was forced to flee his home in Abu Tor, Jerusalem, due to the advance of the Arab Liberation Army. After the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, Buber became the best known Israeli philosopher.

Buber and Paula had two children: a son, Rafael Buber, and a daughter, Eva Strauss-Steinitz. They helped raise their granddaughters Barbara Goldschmidt (1921–2013) and Judith Buber Agassi (1924–2018), born by their son Rafael's marriage to Margarete Buber-Neumann.
Buber's wife Paula Winkler died in 1958 in Venice, and he died at his home in the Talbiya neighborhood of Jerusalem on 13 June 1965.

Buber was a vegetarian.

Major themes

Buber's evocative, sometimes poetic, writing style marked the major themes in his work: the retelling of Hasidic and Chinese tales, Biblical commentary, and metaphysical dialogue. A cultural Zionist, Buber was active in the Jewish and educational communities of Germany and Israel. He was also a staunch supporter of a binational solution in Palestine, and, after the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel, of a regional federation of Israel and Arab states. His influence extends across the humanities, particularly in the fields of social psychology, social philosophy, and religious existentialism.

Buber's attitude toward Zionism was tied to his desire to promote a vision of "Hebrew humanism". According to Laurence J. Silberstein, the terminology of "Hebrew humanism" was coined to "distinguish uber'sform of nationalism from that of the official Zionist movement" and to point to how "Israel's problem was but a distinct form of the universal human problem. Accordingly, the task of Israel as a distinct nation was inexorably linked to the task of humanity in general".

Zionist views

Pre-1915: Early engagement with Zionism

Approaching Zionism from his own personal viewpoint, a young Buber disagreed with Theodor Herzl about their respective positions on Zionism. Herzl did not envision Zionism as a movement with religious objectives. In contrast, Buber believed the potential of Zionism was for social and spiritual enrichment. For example, Buber argued that following the formation of the Israeli state, there would need to be reforms to Judaism: "We need someone who would do for Judaism what Pope John XXIII has done for the Catholic Church". Herzl and Buber would continue, in mutual respect and disagreement, to work towards their respective goals for the rest of their lives. In 1902, Buber became the editor of the weekly ''Die Welt'', the central organ of the Zionist movement. However, a year later he became involved with the Jewish Hasidic movement. Buber admired how the Hasidic communities actualized their religion in daily life and culture. In stark contrast to the busy Zionist organizations, which were always mulling political concerns, the Hasidim were focused on the values which Buber had long advocated for Zionism to adopt. In 1904, he withdrew from much of his Zionist organizational work, and devoted himself to study and writing, as in that same year, he published his thesis, ''Beiträge zur Geschichte des Individuationsproblems'', on Jakob Böhme and Nikolaus Cusanus.

In a 1910 essay entitled "He and We", Buber established himself and Herzl (who had died in 1904) as diametrically opposed in their perspectives on Zionism. Buber described Herzl by saying, "The impulse of the elementally active person (Elementaraktiver) to act is so strong that it prevents him from acquiring knowledge for the sake of knowledge," and, according to Buber, when a person like Herzl is aware of his Jewishness, "In him awakens the will to help the Jews to whom he belongs, to lead the where they can experience freedom and security. Now he does what his will tells him. He does not see anything else." In that same essay, Buber would draw a parallel between Herzl and Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, arguing that both seek to reinstate the Jewish people, the difference coming in their approaches; Herzl affecting change indirectly via history whereas Baal Shem Tov sought to achieve improvement directly through religion.

1915–38: Further development

Buber produced multiple writings on Zionism and nationalism during this period, expanding upon broader ideas related to Zionism. In light of the outbreak of WWI, Buber engaged in debates with fellow German philosopher Hermann Cohen in 1915 on the nature of nationalism and Zionism. Whereas Cohen, whose argument was based in messianic principles, believed that a Jewish minority was essential to a broader German national identity, Buber argued that, "Judaism may well be taken up in messianic humanity, to be melted into it; we do not, however, consider that the Jewish people must disappear among contemporary humanity so that a messianic humanity might arise."

Buber continued to explore and develop his views on Zionism in these years. One such notable piece of writing is a letter to a professor entitled "Concepts and Reality" in 1916. In this letter, Buber addresses the issues of nationalism, Messianism, and Hebrew within the Zionist movement of the period. Buber argued that nationalism is not a natural phenomenon, and that Zionism is a movement centered around religiosity, not nationalism. However, according to Buber, the messianic movement within Zionism is obscured by those in liberal Jewish and anti-Zionist circles, who argue that Messianism necessitates a diaspora. On the importance of the Hebrew language, Buber believed, "Hebrew is not first and foremost a vernacular but the single language that can fully absorb and express the sublime values of Judaism."

In the early 1920s, Martin Buber started advocating a binational Jewish-Arab state, stating that the Jewish people should proclaim "its desire to live in peace and brotherhood with the Arab people, and to develop the common homeland into a republic in which both peoples will have the possibility of free development."

Buber rejected the idea of Zionism as just another national movement, and wanted instead to see the creation of an exemplary society; a society which would not be characterized by Jewish domination of the Arabs. He was influenced by cultural Zionist Ahad Ha'am.Rubenberg, Cheryl. “Peace: ‘The Other Zionism: Reconciliation Attempts between Arabs and Jews in Palestine Prior to 1948.’” In ''Encyclopedia of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict'', 1147–51. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2009. Buber believed that it was necessary for the Zionist movement to reach a consensus with the Arabs even at the cost of the Jews remaining a minority in the country. In 1925, he, alongside his friend Judah Magnes, was involved in the creation of the organization Brit Shalom (Covenant of Peace), which advocated the creation of a binational state, and throughout the rest of his life, he hoped and believed that Jews and Arabs one day would live in peace in a joint nation.

In a 1929 essay entitled "The National Home and National Policy in Palestine," Buber explores Jewish right to the land of Israel before engaging with the question of Jewish-Arab relations. According to Buber, the Zionist right to establish a country in Israel originates from their ancient, ancestral connection to the land, the fact that Jews have worked to cultivate the land in recent years, and the future prospect that a Jewish state offers as both a cultural center for Judaism and a model for creating a new social organization, referencing the emergence of kibbutzim. Buber goes on to discuss, broadly, the necessity for injustice in order to survive, and focuses it to the Zionist perspective by writing, "It is indeed true that there can be no life without injustice. The fact that there is no living creature that can live and thrive without destroying another existing organism has a symbolic significance as regards our human life. But the human aspect of life begins the moment we say to ourselves: We will not do more injustice to others than we are forced to do to exist." Buber then uses this perspective to argue in favor of Binationalism as means to establish a combination of potential coexistence and national independence.

Post 1938: Zionist views from Israel and post-Independence Zionism

Living and writing in Jerusalem, Buber increased his political involvement, and continued to develop his ideas on Zionism. In 1942, he co‑founded the Ihud party, which advocated a bi-nationalist program. Nevertheless, he was connected with decades of friendship to Zionists and philosophers such as Chaim Weizmann, Max Brod, Hugo Bergmann, and Felix Weltsch, who were close friends of his from old European times in Prague, Berlin, and Vienna to the Jerusalem of the 1940s through the 1960s.

Buber evaluated the competing strains of cultural and political Zionism from a somewhat teleological perspective in a 1948 piece "Zionism and Zionism". He summarizes these two competing perspectives as, on the one hand, "returning and restoring the true Israel, whose spirit and life would once again no longer exist beside each other," and, on the other hand, as a process of "normalization," and that to be "normal," a "nation needs a land, a language, and independence. Thus, one must only go and acquire those commodities, and the rest will take care of itself." According to Buber, as Jews and Israel succeed at being a "normal nation," the drive for a spiritual and cultural rebirth is lost, and the war being waged over political structure threatens to become a war for survival. After the establishment of Israel in 1948, Buber advocated Israel's participation in a federation of "Near East" states wider than just Palestine. Buber outlines this concept in "Zionism and Zionism". For Buber, Israel has the potential to serve as an example for the "Near East" as, in his Binationalist perspective, two independent nations, could each maintain their own cultural identity, "but both united in the enterprise of developing their common homeland and in the federal management of shared matters. On the strength of that covenant we wish to return once more to the union of Near Eastern nations, to build an economy integrated in that of the Near East, to carry out policies in the framework of the life of the Near East, and, God willing, to send the "living idea" forth to the world from the Near East once again." During this same time period Buber remained critical of many policies and leaders of the new Israeli government. He was particularly vocal about the treatment of Arab refugees, and was unafraid to criticize top leadership like David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister.

Literary and academic career

From 1905 he worked for the publishing house Rütten & Loening as a lecturer; there he initiated and supervised the completion of the social psychological monograph series '.

From 1906 until 1914, Buber published editions of Hasidic, mystical, and mythic texts from Jewish and world sources. In 1916, he moved from Berlin to Heppenheim.

During World War I, he helped establish the Jewish National Committee to improve the condition of Eastern European Jews. During that period he became the editor of '' Der Jude'' (German for "The Jew"), a Jewish monthly (until 1924). In 1921, Buber began his close relationship with Franz Rosenzweig. In 1922, he and Rosenzweig co-operated in Rosenzweig's House of Jewish Learning, known in Germany as '' Lehrhaus''.

In 1923, Buber wrote his famous essay on existence, '' Ich und Du'' (later translated into English as ''I and Thou''). Though he edited the work later in his life, he refused to make substantial changes. In 1925, he began, in conjunction with Franz Rosenzweig, translating the Hebrew Bible

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