First class intro- buber bio

1. Introduction
1. Martin Buber was, quite simply, a giant of Jewish thought and life in the 20th century. Before
we consider specifically how, let's just marvel at the times in which he lived.
2. Buber was born in 1878 in Vienna and died in 1965 in Israel.
3. Think about it. Jewish emancipation in Europe began with Napoleon at the beginning of the
19th century, and nations proceeded to enact policies of emancipation throughout the century.
This means that Buber and other Jewish intellectuals and activists and artists and writers of his
time were among the first Jews born in the modern era in Europe into the freedom to think and
work and write and create and organize together with other Jews and indeed openly with non-
Jewish leading figures. This in itself makes Buber and his peers significant.
4. Further, and in particular, Buber was a major player in so much of consequence to us in that
century.
a) He was an early organizer of the Zionist movement.
b) He was a leader in promoting Jewish education and culture.

2. c) He promoted Hasidism and especially its tales and literature in ways really like no other.
d) He advanced unique and significant Jewish theological thought, and, with his friend, Franz
Rosenzweig, made major contributions that resonate and benefit us today.
e) He was in Germany during both World War I and later the rise of Nazism and was a witness to
the terror before he fled and and followed it closely throughout. His personal experiences and
observations of that period and the Holocaust are special and invaluable to us.
f) His writings on Judaism and Christianity are profound and brilliant and have been the source
of study by scholars, thinkers, and practitioners of all faiths.
g) Finally, he contributed much to the creation of the state of Israel, especially intellectually and
culturally, and served toward the end of his life from there really as sage to the world.
5. We are so fortunate today to be able to study Buber through the many books and articles he
wrote. And indeed I hope this course will inspire you to go read some of them.

3. 6. But we are also lucky to have a treasure trove of the hundreds of letters Buber wrote and
received to and from major figures from these times.
We're talking about Leo Baeck, David Ben-Gurion, Albert Camus, Albert Einstein, Mohandas
Gandhi, Dag Hammarskjold, Theodor Herzl, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Hermann Hesse, Franz
Kafka, Franz Rosenzweig, Albert Schweizer, and so many others.
7. Buber's letters are a particularly appropriate lens through which we can understand this
brilliant man. For, after all, we shouldn't be surprised that the author of I-Thou, who was so
fascinated by the mystery of contact through "the interhuman," loved conversation and sought
out through these communications "a confrontation with the Thou" to kindle the spark of his and
others' work and creativity.
Our course of study over these four weeks will be to read and review some of the finest and best
of these letters. We'll do that by following the trajectory of Buber's life. So, today, for example,
we'll begin with letters early in Buber's career that carry through the early development of his
seminal thinking on I-Thou.
8. In each session I'll give you some important biographical details that correspond to the letters
we will examine. Generally, I'll set the stage a bit for each letter. But I hope most of our time will
be spent in discussion of issues that arise from the letters themselves. What an exciting journey!

4. 8. So, for today: Buber's early life.
a) raised by grandparents (grandfather, a scholar with both an interest in enlightenment and
traditional Judaism) after parents' divorce, then returned to live with father (a businessman with
little interest in religion) at 14;
b) spent considerable time in Zionist work (he was the literary leader in it) while finishing
college (literature, philosophy, art, a Jew definitely in the broader, mostly German
world), married Paula Winkler (a Catholic who converted to Judaism, brilliant, thinker, writer),
wife for whole life;
c) lived in Germany until 1938 when he and wife fled to Jerusalem;
d) chose to live principally as a "writer"and scholar (much like grandfather) rather than a
traditional academic;
e) though interested in all things political and cultural, he turned inward to look more and more
at spiritual, theological matters - human to human, wanted a renaissance of Judaism, in literature,
culture, and eventually depth of spiritual thought and expression, with a focus on shared
humanity and the future of humanity ;
f) fascinated by Hasidism and took on the task of writing out and spreading its tales, and
promoting Jewish poetry, as well as writing and working with other Jewish thinkers in writing,
teaching, and organizing other such activity;

5. g) increasingly focused on the idea of active love of neighbor, ways in which the interhuman
relationship becomes the actualization of God, with links to the best in broader philosophy,
literature, and thought and Buber's sense of Judaism;
h) increasingly committed to adult education, especially as to all things, Jewish (so he would
have been pleased with our emphasis at TBS!);
i) under influence of his friend, the giant thinker, Franz Rosenzweig, Buber began to teach more,
and through their works, The Star of Redemption and I-Thou, they, even with their differences,
began to move Jewish thought forward in powerful ways. Though complex and we'll see a lot
more of it in the letters, let's generalize to this:
God speaks to man through Creation and Revelation. Humankind relates to God directly
(through movement in the direction of God) and then through interrelationship of human to
human, in which, as Buber thought, we treat our fellow not as an object but as a Thou. Living
this way, essentially for Rosenzweig, furthered God's aim of effecting redemption. Judaism was
not an abstraction, nor just a culture or a teaching or a historical phenomenon; it is a religious
reality.
For Buber: "The Divine...attains its earthly fullness only where, having awakened to an
awareness of their universal being, individual beings open themselves up to one another, disclose
themselves to one another; where immediacy is established between one human being and
another; where the sublime stronghold of the individual is unbolted, and man breaks free to meet
other man."

6. Also, "the more man realizes God in this world, the greater His reality."
Finally: "for the one who chooses, who decides, who is unconditioned, God is the closest, most
familiar Being, whom man through his own action, realizes ever anew, experiencing thereby the
mystery of mysteries."
Both dug ever more deeply into Bible and other ancient texts to enrich their own thinking and
ground it in fundamental Jewish ideas and thought. This led to a deeper understanding of
contrasts (and likenesses) with Christianity, which in itself led to remarkable dialogue with
Christian thinkers and practitioners throughout his life. We'll touch on some of this extraordinary
thought in the letters.
So, let's get going with letters in the first phase - roughly 1900-1928, on the path to I-Thou.