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A Shift of Emphasis; Communal to Personal Faith
Epilogue; Faith Vs Faith:
Emil Brunner who once said that Buber's discovery and analysis of the I-Thou relationship set up a Copernician revolution in the thinking of the whole of mankind, described Buber's 'faith versus faith' essay as; "An all-out attack on Christianity", and an attempt by Buber to clarify why he came short of becoming a Christian! (Dogmatic Theology, E. Brunner)
It may be that Buber glittering philosophic rhetoric, at once attracted and repelled, despite his literary talent, as his best analytical critic, Monsignor Oesterreicher described him, borrowing william James useful taxonomy, "Buber seemed 'tender minded' to one whose nature and philosophical nurture honor by preference 'tough minded' thinkers!

A shift Of emphasis:
It may be to my support for Amazon.com readership and the theologically trained Practical.Org review visitors, to recall a similar reaction to mine, by Thieme, a German theologian.
The late Karl Thieme joined Catholicism, leaving his Lutheran Church due to the latter adjustment to Nazi policy, excluding clergy of Jewish origins from its service. Thieme, rejecting the 'two types of faith' whimsical view, asserted that Christian's faith differed from Jewish faith by a 'Shift of emphasis.' He criticized Buber's reading of Paul's theology, encountering in his letter to the Romans 'A wrathful God' rather than 'A Loving Father.'
"I am saddened that Buber's aversion to Paul was so strong that he was unable to appreciate the Apostle's loving avowal of God's special bond to His people in Romans 9 to 11...I am at a loss to understand why Buber did not give Paul the regard that is his due.' comments Oesterreicher on Thieme parallel views.

Buber's faith Vs Torah:
In his exploration of the 'two forms' of faith, first as a member of community, whose covenant with the unconditioned, trusts in a person, vs. an individual converted to faith, in acceptance of a truth, associating with other converts to form a community.
While Hillel, the great rabbi, held his Golden rule of Jewish faith as; "The whole Torah, and, the rest is commentary," Buber writes, "I do not believe that revelation is ever a formulation of law. It is only through Man in his self-contradiction that revelation becomes legislation." Buber' Letter to Rosenzweig

The Risen Christ:
It is clear why the resurrection was such a stumbling block to Buber, that he took offense debating; "the Jew of Paul's time,...believed in the resurrection of the dead as a great community at the end of time; but the resurrection of an individual was unknown to the Jew from scripture..." Buber's conclusion against the core of Christian faith is : "Theresurrection of an individual (Jesus) is incredible to Jews,"
Shmuel Bergmann, a great Jewish thinker, and a friend of Buber whom he asked to review the manuscript (Two Types of Faith), wrote in 1949; "If the resurrection (of Jesus) really happened, it was such a decisive event-the fact that a human being conquered death-such a new beginning in human history that Paul was right to attribute to faith in that fact a decisive significance."

Martin Buber:
One of the foremost religious thinkers of the twentieth century, M. Buber made a tremendous impact, not only on Jewish but also on Christian thinkers. Reinhold Niebuhr has described him as "the greatest Jewish philosopher of our time"
In nominating Buber for a Nobel Prize in literature in 1949, H. Hesse stated that, "He has enriched world-literature with a genuine treasure as has no other living author."

Jewish Emunah and Christian Pistis
Buber outlines here the difference between two kinds of faith the emunah of the Jews, and the pistis of the Christians. In doing so he also writes sympathetically about Jesus who he sees in some way as part of the spiritual history of Israel. For Buber the Jews faith is communal and centers on their persistence in history in continuing their communal religious life. He sees Christianity as having a different kind of faith one which focuses on individuals, and the individual salvation. In his concluding chapter he suggests that in the future each might take a bit more of the character of the other( not in doctrine) but in the Jewish faith becoming more pistis and the Christians moving more toward a communal faith. In the introduction to the work Buber thanks great Christian scholars with whom he was in dialogue, Rudolf Bultmann, Schweitzer, and Rudolf Otto. Clearly he was living and working toward Jewish- Christian dialogue as extension of his belief in the importance of meeting and making relationships with others in which the full humanity of both parties could be lived and expressed.
... Read more

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Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue, the first study in any language to provide a complete overview of Buber's thought, remains the definitive guide to the full range of his work and the starting point for all modern Buber scholarship. Maurice S. Friedman reveals the implications of Buber's thought for theory of knowledge, education, philosophy, myth, history and Judaic and Christian belief.
This fully revised and expanded fourth edition includes a new preface by the author, an expanded bibliography incorporating new Buber scholarship, and two new appendices in the form of essays on Buber's influence on Emmanuel Levinas and Mikhail Bakhtin. ... Read more

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The loving work of a foremost pupil
Maurice S. Friedman was one of Buber's closest pupils, and one devoted his life to expounding the thought of Buber. This work tells of Buber's life and work and gives a good idea of his fundamental outlook. ... Read more

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Traces the life of the renowned Jewish religious philosopher, discussing his youth, his education in turn-of-the-century Vienna, his Zionism, and the impact of world politics on his life and thought. ... Read more

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El autor hace una revaloracion de los socialistas llamadosutopicos. Libro polemico, bien documentado y estrictamente objetivo, enel cual palpita la ansiedad de un pensador que se enfrenta a la preguntaacerca del destino proximo del hombre como ente social. ... Read more

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A master on a master
Rabbi Nachman is one of the great leaders of Hasidism. Even today there is a whole group of Hasidism who consider him their ' rebbe' and walk in his way. The great presenter of the Hasidic message as he interpreted it to the Western world , Martin Buber in this work presents an introduction to the life and work of Rabbi Nachman, and presents six of his tales which he translated to German and which have been translated from the German by Maurice Friedman. These tales are truly 'parable-likemystical tales' and compel the reader to seek new interpretations of them. The volume concludes with an essay by Buber on Rabbi Nachman's Journey to the Holy Land. This is an excerpt from the concluding chapter. "Herein the land of Israel, the purification of the imagination takes place.It is not for nothing that the sounds of the word adama soil, and medame imagination , resemble one another: the fullness of the elements comes to the imagination from the earth.But the purification of the imagination by faith can take place no other way than through the consecrated earth and the consecrated earth is here in the land of Israel".

The resurrection of a great culture
What an extraordinary enterprise this is: the reconstruction, largely from oral or late sources, of the celebrated fables or parables told by a once-famous rabbinical teacher and thinker from Eastern Europe, from a culture which, though European and Jewish, is as strange to the average Westerner as any alien civilization.These Jews believed in reincarnation; they developped complex historical schemes of interpretation; they had their own numerology and their own philosophy.Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav was, according to Buber, both the last and the greatest of this line of mystical philosophers.Always a controversial figure - he suffered the violent opposition of a whole opposing Jewish party in his own shtetl, which he seems to have taken with Gandhi-like non-violence - he was above all the author of a number of complex, elaborate and, dare I say, beautiful tales expressing his own view of the nature, origin and destiny of man and God.A later and rather different Jewish genius, the cartoonist Jack Kirby, has unhesitatingly ascribed the success of Jews in all the American arts and media to the influence of the Jewish tradition of storytelling, learned at home at one's mother's knee, and bearing fruit throughout life in a natural aptitude for putting complex ideas and views of life in narrative form.These tales show you where he came from; they are of a complexity that bespeaks an ancient and proud narrative culture, and they are capable of bearing the most profound intellectual meaning.As for their author, Rabbi Nachman himself, they reveal not only deep humanity and a visionary imagination, but also features very unexpected in a Chassidic Jewish teacher - a warm appreciation of human and animal beauty, and a temper to understand and forgive rather than condemn or exclude.However, this book is to be treasured not only, perhaps not even mainly, because of its own literary and intellectual excellence, but because it is the resurrection of the last testimony of a great European tradition, now vanished or changed out of all recognition, but fascinating and worthy of respect in its own right. ... Read more

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The holy life - explained
It is Buber, who more than any other writer or thinker,made the works of Hasidism first known to the Western world. He found in their lives of devoutedness to God, in their holy simplicity a message for Modern Man.
In this work Buber outlines the principles of Hasidism, and provides us a picture of a whole way, not simply of seeing holiness, but of living in Holiness in the world.

a very readable exposition of a particular philosophy
Martin Buber recounts tales and parables of previous generations of central European hasidic Jewry to illuminate a life philosophy with appeal for today and tomorrow's interested generations.He communicates his vast love and respect for what he sees as a treasure trove of wisdom and insight into the human condition as found in hasidic lore.This book is very readable and speaks more directly to the reader without the dense philosophical phraseology which makes other of his books difficult to get into .I have heard criticism that one is actually hearing Martin Buber's humanistic philosophy of life with reference to his interpretation of hasidic folk culture.Be that as it may there is a universal self help appeal to this book.Martin Buber communicates the idea of humankind as consisting of free thinking individuals who can shape destiny,"every man's foremost task is the actualization of his unique ,unprecedented and never recurring potentialities,and not the repetition of something another,and be it even the greatest,has already achieved"This is a book that might change the reader's life. ... Read more

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'Letters' of the Great Teacherof I- Thou Dialogue
In a comprehensive review of this collection of Buber's Letters, Werner Dannehauser points out one great paradox of the philosopher of Dialogue and 'I- Thou'. He apparently was not the greatest listener in the world. Nonetheless this collection contains not only Buber's letters, but a sample of the letters written to him. Perhaps for Buber himself the most important were those written by his great collaborator in Biblical Translation, Franz Rosenzweig. Buber courageously calls for the most candid and serious criticism of himself, and thanks Rosenzweig for giving it. Rosenzweig and Buber were divided on the question of the vital significance of Halachah for Jewish life and continuity.
Buber's world is a vast one intellectually, encompassing the greatest minds of his time. He is masterly and confident in tone , and words of sudden depth and profundity emanate from these pages.
This is an invaluable collection for all those who take interest in both Jewish and general intellectual history.

Buber's own words still resonate
This gem is worthy of 100 stars. Bubar's early writings, the work with Gustav Landaur and Franz Rosenweig in synthesizing "Ich und Du", as well as his editorial comments to writers of Der Jude. A true Passover Feast of wisdom and compassion, even including his letter to Gandhi. The forward by Paul Mendes-Flohr serves as an excellant background.As vital today as he was at the birth of the State of Israel. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

'Letters' of the Great Teacherof I- Thou Dialogue
In a comprehensive review of this collection of Buber's Letters, Werner Dannehauser points out one great paradox of the philosopher of Dialogue and 'I- Thou'. He apparently was not the greatest listener in the world. Nonetheless this collection contains not only Buber's letters, but a sample of the letters written to him. Perhaps for Buber himself the most important were those written by his great collaborator in Biblical Translation, Franz Rosenzweig. Buber courageously calls for the most candid and serious criticism of himself, and thanks Rosenzweig for giving it. Rosenzweig and Buber were divided on the question of the vital significance of Halachah for Jewish life and continuity.
Buber's world is a vast one intellectually, encompassing the greatest minds of his time. He is masterly and confident in tone , and words of sudden depth and profundity emanate from these pages.
This is an invaluable collection for all those who take interest in both Jewish and general intellectual history.

Buber's own words still resonate
This gem is worthy of 100 stars. Bubar's early writings, the work with Gustav Landaur and Franz Rosenweig in synthesizing "Ich und Du", as well as his editorial comments to writers of Der Jude. A true Passover Feast of wisdom and compassion, even including his letter to Gandhi. The forward by Paul Mendes-Flohr serves as an excellant background.As vital today as he was at the birth of the State of Israel. ... Read more

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softcover book ... Read more

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Ian Myles Slater on: Buber's Exodus and Wilderness
"Moses," usually published as "Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant,"is probably the most readable of Martin Buber's longer Biblical studies. It combines a sense of narrative movement with ingenious interpretations (often backed by formidable, if now obsolete, scholarship, almost always tucked away in endnotes), rhapsodies on freedom and the desert, reflections on the experiences described as miracles, and some hard political thought. For those familiar with traditional Jewish biblical interpretation, its influence on Buber's thought, and his willingness to work out implications by suggesting supplements to the biblical narrative, will be apparent. This combination makes "Moses" interesting to read, but difficult to classify. (It may also be a surprise to those who know Buber only from the philosophy of"I and Thou," or the story-telling of "Tales of the Hasidim.")

Together with a much more difficult book by Buber, "The Kingship of God," it presents early Israelite religion as including a revolutionary social movement, egalitarian and anti-state, yet demanding accountability and public order. Similar ideas, usually less attractively expressed, and often less carefully nuanced, began to appear in the late 1960s or early 1970s, and in some cases remain influential. Buber's priority is not always acknowledged. Of course it is easy to believe that the ferment of their time was as influential on these interpreters as the first part of the twentieth century was on Buber, and that they came to their conclusions independently. Buber's "The Prophetic Faith" deals with the Genesis narratives, some of the Prophets, and Job, and for much of its length is less obviously political; in some ways, his study of modern socialist movements, "Paths in Utopia," is at least as closely related.

Some readers, looking for traditional religious edification, will probably find Buber's presentation too rationalistic and secular. I am sure that there are those who will be upset by Buber's interpretation of Moses asking God for His true name, and the unhelpful answer, as showing the influence of Egyptian name magic. Others, encouraged at first by the footnotes and the assumption that the biblical text cannot be taken literally, will find him, well, too religious. If you approach "Moses" as the work of a religious philosopher with a strong interest in social issues, and a willingness to take the ancient text very seriously, but not literally, you will find much of interest.

(Reposted from my "anonymous" review of June 15, 2003.) ... Read more

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Servant of YHVH explained
As a born and raised Christian I was taught that the songs of the Servant of YHVH in Isaiah were all about Jesus, but for many years I have believed that this servant is a composite figure. Buber explains that this is well known in Judaism and goes into it in detail, including his own inspired take on it. ... Read more

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In this study of Martin Buber's life and work, Donald Moore focuses in on Buber's central message about what it means to be a human being and a person of faith. ... Read more

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Meetings sets forth the life of one of the twentieth-century's greatest spiritual philosophers in his own words. A glittering series of reflections and narratives, it seeks not to describe his life in its full entirety, but rather to convey some of his defining moments of uncertainty, revelation and meaning. Recalling the question on the infinity of space and time which nearly drove Buber to suicide at the age of fourteen, his adolescent 'seduction' by Nietzsche's work, his hero-worship of Ferdinand Lassalle and his love of Bach's music, Meetings has no equal as a portrait of an unique intellect in progress. Like Buber's great works Between Man and Man and The Way of Man, it evokes a tactile, earthly concept of meaning ultimately found, as Maurice Friedman writes in his introduction, 'not in conceptual or systematic thought but in the four-dimensional reality of events and meetings'. ... Read more

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Here are two famous Chinese classics in versions provided by one of the most seminal and beloved philosophers of the twentieth century, Martin Buber, first published individually in German in 1910 and 1911, but never before available in English. ... Read more