Between Heschel and Buber: A Comparative Study 9781618110855

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Between Heschel and Buber

A COMPARATIVE STUDY ------------  Alexander Even-Chen • Ephraim meir ------------------

Series: Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah

Series Editor: Dov Schwartz (Bar-Ilan University)

EDITORIAL BOARD Ada Rapoport-Albert (University College, London) Gad Freudenthal (C.N.R.S, Paris) Gideon Freudenthal (Tel Aviv University) Moshe Idel (Hebrew University, Jerusalem)

Raphael Jospe (Bar-Ilan University) Ephraim Kanarfogel (Yeshiva University) Menachem Kellner (Haifa University) Daniel Lasker (Ben-Gurion University, Beer Sheva)

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B e t w e e n

Heschel and Buber

A COMPARATIVE STUDY -----  Alexander Even-Chen • Ephraim Meir ----------

Boston 2012

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data : a catalog record for this title is available from the Library of Congress. Copyright © 2012 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved ISBN 978-1-936235-72-8 Book design by Olga Grabovsky Published by Academic Studies Press in 2012 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com

To our dear wives, Michal and Shoshi, for their love, good care, and constant support

Contents

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Chapter I Aieka: Between Man and Man  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  25 Chapter II The Approach to God  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  67 Chapter III The Bible and Its Interpretation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  103 Chapter IV On the Commandments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  159 Chapter V Different Views on Hasidism  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  205 Chapter VI Zionisms  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  239 Chapter VII On Jesus and Christianity  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

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Acknowledgments We wish to thank Professor Norbert M. Samuelson of the Harold and Jean Grossman Chair in Jewish Studies at Arizona State University for his financial contribution to the creation of this book. We further thank Dr. Michal Michelson of Bar Ilan University for her editing work. Many times during the process of writing, we felt the presence of Professor Rivka Horwitz, of blessed memory. Although she did not live to see this book, we think she would be glad for its appearance, since in so many of our conversations with her, she discussed manifold details of Buber’s and Heschel’s writings. She loved to teach Heschel and Buber and to compare them. Professor Steven Kepnes, Professor Edward K. Kaplan, and Professor Susannah Heschel encouraged us in our endeavors. We wholeheartedly thank Professor Yehoyada Amir of Jerusalem’s Hebrew Union College for his careful reading of the manuscript and for his extensive constructive remarks. Finally, we are grateful to Professor Harold Kasimow and Professor Kenneth Kramer, Heschel specialist and Buber specialist, respectively, who generously provided us with helpful suggestions, from which this work much profited.

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Introduction

Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Buber are giant and committed thinkers of the twentieth century who greatly contributed to the understanding of religious consciousness, of the Bible, and of Judaism. Heschel was an observant Jew and a scion of Hasidism, while Buber was nonobservant and was immersed in a haskalah milieu. He visited Sadagora in his youth, however, and was impressed by the Hasidic life there. Heschel was familiar with Hasidism before he met Buber: his paternal grandmother, Rachel Leah Friedman, had her home in Sadagora. The two philosophers considered Hasidism to be an elevated form of religious life, relevant for the world at large. Buber was more interested in creating a meta-religion1 in which morality was central, whereas Heschel was, rather, a modern prophet who saw himself as destined to show his contemporaries the relevance of Judaism together with the loftiness of its commandments and prayer. The lives of Buber and Heschel are intertwined. In their spiritual creations, they are close; nevertheless, they greatly differ. The present study systematically compares the two thinkers, pointing to their common ground and signaling where their paths diverge. Occasionally, scholars have compared them on one point or another, but until today, no systematic comparative study of the central themes in their thoughts has been carried out. In this volume, we discuss a series of topics that appear in their works. We successively treat their perception of human existence as coexistence, consider their notion of the Divine and how they interpret the relationship between man and God, and study their 1.

For a discussion of this notion, see Martina Urban, “Deconstruction Anticipated: Koigen and Buber on Self-corrective Religion,” Shofar 27, no. 1 (2009): 107–135. — 11 —

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understanding of the Hebrew Bible as well as their views on the Divine commandments, Hasidism, Zionism, Jesus, and Christianity. Heschel’s thought was quite stable throughout his life, and we will show its continuity from his early poetry, written in Yiddish, until his manifold post-war scholarly writings. As for Buber, his vast thought underwent more changes: he went through a mystic period that was followed by a dialogical one, which found its crystallization in I and Thou, a work that we consider to be the root of Buber’s further development. Nevertheless, inter alia under the influence of his intense study of the Bible, his philosophy underwent still more quite remarkable changes so that references to his later works will also be found in the present work. The encounters between Buber and Heschel were intense, and they corresponded frequently. Buber greatly influenced Heschel, who, however, went his own way. They first met in Berlin around 1929–1930. At that time, Heschel was preparing his doctorate at the Friedrich Wilhelm University.2 Buber, Heschel’s elder by twenty-nine years, was already a known writer and an active Zionist. In an article that presents a radiography of the correspondence between the two,3 E. K. Kaplan opines that in 1929, Heschel may have published his Yiddish poem “Ikh un Du” as a reaction to I and Thou.4 In 1935, Heschel asked Buber to reexamine his dissertation on the prophets after Buber had given a negative assessment to Salman Schocken, his good friend and the publisher of his works, advising him not to accept Heschel’s dissertation for publication. Heschel was profoundly hurt by Buber’s censorious evaluation; he spoke of the “lasting pain” (unvergaenglicher Schmerz)5 it caused, and wanted to discuss the issue. In a letter of July 18, 1935,6 Heschel once again checked Buber’s opinion on his book 2.

3.

4.

5. 6.

According to his own testimony, Abraham Joshua Heschel sought for answers to his existential questions at the Berlin University. His disillusion was great when he found out that his questions were not the ones of his teachers. See Heschel, “Toward an Understanding of Halacha,” Yearbook of the Central Council of American Rabbis 63 (1953): 127. Edward K. Kaplan, “Sacred Versus Symbolic Religion: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Buber,” Modern Judaism 14 (1994): 225. The poem was published in the New York Yiddish periodical Zukunft in 1929 and again in 1931 in Berliner Bleter. See Kaplan, “Sacred,” 213–214. Martin Buber Archive, Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem, 290: 2. Buber Archive, 290: 1. — 12 —

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on prophetology and Divine pathos. Buber answered Heschel’s letter and included an offprint of his article “Symbolic and Sacramental Existence in Judaism.”7 Heschel responded promptly in a letter on July 24,8 analyzing the article and objecting to Buber’s interpretation of the prophets’ behavior as being symbolic.9 The Divine, the original, he declared, was thus replaced by an image of it; symbols were a reduction of Divine reality to philosophical anthropology. Clearly, Heschel did not accept Buber’s view. Buber’s characterization of the prophet as “Zeichen,” symbol, was “a generalization”: in this perspective, the prophet has no value himself (Eigenwert), only a symbolic significance (Zeichenwert); in such a rendering, the prophet merely illustrates, without possessing meaning in itself (Sinn) — he is but a symbol (Sinnbild). Was the image (Bild) more perfect than the essence (Wesen)? Following Buber’s logic, and playing heavily on Jewish sensibilities, Heschel complained that according to this rendition he could even materialize God and reduce Him to a symbol (Warum soll man dann nicht Got selbst verleiblichen und im Zeichen bringen?). The prophetic experience of God is a reality; a symbol is nothing in comparison to the experienced reality of actual history, Heschel declared. Later on, in his Man’s Quest for God, published in 1954, Heschel returned to these polemics against a symbolic interpretation of the prophetic existence. He wrote: “If God is a symbol, He is a fiction.”10 Heschel and Buber differed substantially on their views on the essence of prophetic existence. In the later version of his dissertation, published as The Prophets, Heschel stressed the Divine initiative as 7.

8. 9.

10.

The article, republished in Die Chassidische Botschaft, is a collection of essays that were written between 1927 and 1943. In the chapter “Sinnbildliche und Sakramentale Existenz” (Buber, Werke, Dritter Band. Schriften zum Chassidismus [Munich and Heidelberg: Koesel and Lambert Schneider, 1963], 829–849; hereafter cited as Werke III), Buber distinguishes between a “symbol” and “sacrament.” A “symbol” is a mirror of the invisible, and in it, meaning becomes transparent. In a “sacrament,” meaning takes place; it is an occasion where God and man are linked without merging one into the other (Werke III, 838). Previously, Heschel had sent his Maimonides biography to Buber (Buber Archive, 290: 1). Buber Archive, 290: 2. Alexander Even-Chen, “On Symbols and Prayer in Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Thought,” Iggud. Ma’amarim be-mada’e ha-yahadut alef (2008): 341–55. Heschel, Man’s Quest for God (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1954), 144. — 13 —

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well as the necessity of identifying with the prophets, leaving out the option of an impartial approach to the prophets.11 Buber, from his side, opposed Heschel’s theocentric approach in which the prophets foster a sympathetic view toward God’s pathos in a kind of unio sympatica.12 For Buber, the prophets did not feel with God, as Heschel proposes in his 1936 dissertation on the prophets.13 The correspondence of 1935 between Buber and Heschel reflects a debate, which was also the debate between Buber and Rosenzweig, concerning the status of revelation in Buber’s pre-dialogical, early thought. The debate was first initiated by Rosenzweig in his “Atheistic Theology” that made the “orientation” of revelation  —  understood as exterior, opposite, transcendent, or jenseitig — central. Heschel continued this line of thought, one which emphasized revelation as coming from the living God. The 1935 correspondence between Heschel and Buber was the beginning of a lifelong relationship between both men. After the thirties, the relationship was dominantly epistolary,14 although the two also met face-to-face after World War II. They differed but developed parallel lines of thought. In the thirties, Buber frequently traveled to Berlin, where he met Heschel and exchanged views. Heschel wanted to know,

11.

12. 13.

14.

In this context, Heschel also opposed Chancellor Louis Finkelstein’s “Judaism as a System of Symbols,” in Essays in Judaism, Series I (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1954), 5–33. In this, Heschel was influenced by Max Scheler’s thoughts on sympathy. See Buber, The Prophetic Faith (New York: Macmillan, 1949), 96–109. In note 11, Buber refers explicitly to Heschel’s dissertation Die Prophetie (1936). For instance, in a letter from November 25, 1938, Heschel informed Buber that he gave his first lecture at the Institute for Jewish Studies in Warsaw and that he regretted not having followed his advice on the post-Kristallnacht tax levy on Jews (the Judenabgabe), although Buber would have approved of his decision in the matter. He also mentioned that it was difficult for him to work in Warsaw and that he had left all his manuscripts in Frankfurt. See Nahum N. Glatzer and Paul Mendes-Flohr (eds.), The Letters of Martin Buber: A Life of Dialogue, trans. by Richard and Clara Winston and Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1991), 474–75. On November 22, 1939, he wrote from London how pained he was about what had happened and that “hardly a day passes when my thoughts are not with you.” He also updated Buber about his new contract from Cincinnati as a teaching member of the Hebrew Union College and asked Buber for permission to duplicate and disseminate his lecture about election (Letters, 490). — 14 —

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for instance, what Buber thought about the phenomenon of tradition.15 He praised Buber who, after an interchange, left the impression of brightness (so etwas wie eine Helligkeit).16 Heschel moved to Frankfurt on March 1, 1937,17 after Buber had invited him to work at the central organization for Jewish adult education, the Mittelstelle fuer juedische Erwachsenenbildung. In the same year, Buber even appointed Heschel as his successor in the Mittelstelle as well as at the Lehrhaus, where Rosenzweig functioned as the first director. The young Heschel was appointed to these two important functions. Buber’s recommendation is rather surprising, given that he had refused to recommend Heschel’s doctorate on the prophets for publication in the Schocken publishing house. Apparently, Buber trusted Heschel and presumed that the young man would be the most fitting person for these tasks; he was Buber’s tutor in modern Hebrew. On March 12, 1938, one day after the annexation of Austria by the Germans, Buber and his wife Paula left Frankfurt for Jerusalem. Buber and Heschel continued their relationship by mail, as both personalities felt linked to each other by much more than an academic connection; there was a sense that they shared a common fate. In a letter dated April 25, 1938, for instance, Heschel shared his anguish with Buber, writing about the difficult times and the “epidemic of despair” (Verzweiflungsseuche) in Poland.18 His letters to Buber were frequent at this time, and when on October 28, 1938, Heschel was expelled from Germany together with another 18,000 Jews, he gently asked Buber what he could do for him. He also requested that Buber help him in obtaining a position in Palestine.19 However, the American Jewish institutions of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and Dropsie College in Philadelphia seemed to be a more realistic 15. 16. 17. 18.

19.

Letters dated 24.1.1937 and 21.5.1938; Buber Archive, 290:4 and 290:13. See letter from Berlin dated 24.1.1937; Buber Archive, 290: 4. See letter of 2.3.1937; Buber Archive, 290: 6. Kaplan and Samuel H. Dresner, Abraham Joshua Heschel — Prophetic Witness (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 266; Kaplan, “Sacred versus Symbolic Religion: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Buber,” Modern Judaism 14 (1994): 213-231. Gewiss wuerde ich eine wissenschaftliche Arbeitsmoeglichkeit in Jerusalem als den Weg fuer mich erblicken”; letter dated 22.5.1938; Buber Archive, 290: 14. — 15 —

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option.20 At Heschel’s urging in June 1938,21 Buber wrote a letter of recommendation for Heschel to Julian Morgenstern of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. Heschel wrote to Buber from Warsaw on November 9, 1938, the day of the Kristallnacht, that he had been expelled from Germany together with many Jews from all over the country. He wrote that people had bitter presentiments and that it was of foremost importance to flee.22 He described the unrest and the lack of direction, significantly utilizing the word Weisung, a word that had been used by Buber in order to translate the word Torah. Heschel worried about the fact that his manuscripts remained in Frankfurt.23 He was also concerned about the present and future of Jewish life in Poland,24 where Buber had visited in 1939. Heschel traveled to Lvov in order to meet Buber in Poland.25 Not once did his letters to Buber mention Eduard Strauss, a biochemist, who was also lecturing on Bible in the Frankfurt Lehrhaus and had emigrated in time to the United States.26 Heschel communicated to Buber April 30, 1939, that he had received a formal appointment as research fellow on Bible and Jewish philosophy with relative good conditions from Julian Morgenstern.27 However, he did not immediately emigrate to the States, since he did not yet possess the required visa for emigration. Consequently, he had to remain in London for a while. He informed Buber that they had approved a visa for London for him and that he appreciated Buber’s “Answer to Gandhi.”28 Later, he told Buber about Morgenstern’s new proposal of becoming a teaching member of the faculty — rather than

20.

21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26.

27. 28.

Letter dated 22.5.1938, Buber Archive, 290: 14; Kaplan and Dresner, Prophetic Witness, 269. Letter dated 19.6.1938, Buber Archive, 290: 15. Buber Archive, 290: 23. Letter of 25.11.1938, Buber Archive, 290: 25; letter of 1.2.1939, Buber Archive, 206: 28. Letter of 20.6.1929, Buber Archive, 290: 32. Letter of 3 April 1939, Buber Archive, 290: 31. E.g., 1.2.1939, Buber 290: 28; 16 April 1940, Buber Archive, 290: 38. Once in the United States, Heschel visited Strauss in New York; letter of 1 March 1942, Buber Archive, 290: 39. Buber Archive, 290: 32. Letter of 20.6.1939, Buber Archive, 290:32. — 16 —

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being a research fellow29 — and that he had received a “non quota visum” for Cincinnati.30 In the letters of the thirties, Heschel repeatedly asked Buber if he could do something for the master. He longed to see him and to talk with him.31 In the meantime, they kept in touch by exchanging publications. Before his trip to the United States, Heschel wrote that he was now going to sail on the sea and that he would therefore think about the “sea of suffering” in Poland.32 In a letter to Fritz A. Rothschild dated November 21, 1943, Buber responded to Rothschild, who had asked to be informed “whether Dr. Abraham Heschel is still alive and how he is.” He wrote that “Heschel is a lecturer at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and he is doing all right. I have written him that you inquired about him.”33 Heschel and Buber’s relationship lasted a long time, and it seems that the two became more and more involved with each other over the years. With time, Heschel felt more secure in this relationship, which had started as the connection between a student and his master, who was already an accomplished scholar at the time of their initial acquaintance. In 1942, Heschel tried to get Buber’s For the Sake of Heaven published in the Jewish Publication Society in Philadelphia; he wrote an approval for it.34 He was also involved in the attempt to publish an English version of Buber’s “Der Glaube Israels.”35 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35.

Letter of 22.11.1939, Buber Archive, 290: 35. Letter of 7.2.1940; Buber Archive, 290: 37. Letter of 13.12.1939, Buber Archive, 290: 36. Letter of 7.2.1940, Buber Archive 290: 37. Glatzer and Mendes-Flohr, 503. Letter of 2 June 1942, Buber Archive, 290: 40; March 1, 1943, Buber Archive, 290: 41. The chronicle was serially published in Davar, from October 23, 1941, until January 10, 1942; Lambert Schneider published a German version in 1949. On August 3, 1943, Heschel wrote Buber that the decision of the Jewish Publication Society was positive, and he added some criticism on the book. See Buber Archive, Jerusalem, 290: 42. The book appeared in 1945 in the translation of Ludwig Lewisohn. Letter of 2 June 1942, Buber Archive, 290: 40. “Der Glaube Israels” first appeared in the Netherlands in Dutch translation as “Het geloof van Israel.” Buber rewrote this work in Hebrew, and this version was published by Bialik under the title Torat haneviim in 1942; an English version was published by Macmillan in New York in 1949; the German “Der Glaube der Propheten” was published in 1950 by Manesse, Zuerich. According to Heschel, Scribners liked the manuscript of “Der Glaube Israels,” but it was finally Macmillan that published the work. — 17 —

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This work formed the basis for Buber’s “Torat haneviim” that appeared first in Hebrew in 1942 and was published in English in 1949. As is well known, Heschel left the Hebrew Union College for the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he joined the faculty in 1945. From there, he wrote to Buber that he was reading “be-pardes ha-hasidut,” a work that was published by Bialik in 1945, with pleasure.36 Buber’s upcoming Tales of the Hasidim would become important, and his I and Thou was now a much-read book in the USA.37 On August 14, 1946, Heschel looked forward with great interest to reading Buber’s “big history book on Hasidism” (grosses chassidisches Geschichtenbuch). He regretted that his whole library remained in Warsaw and asked if Buber had received his essay on Maimonides and prophetic inspiration that had recently appeared in the Louis Ginzberg Jubilee volume, as well as his Yiddish article on East European Jewry, which had been published in the Yivo Bleter.38 An extended version of this last article, he mentions, appeared in Schocken. He intended to publish three articles that he had recently finished in the form of a book, together with four other articles with which Buber was already familiar. In 1951, Louis Finkelstein, the chancellor of JTS, invited Buber to take a six-month lecture tour of the United States, during which Buber would deliver about seventy lectures, including at JTS. Heschel was not appointed as Buber’s host at JTS since — as Kaplan points out — the chancellor thought that this was his own project and an excellent opportunity for the seminary; in effect, “Heschel was put aside, snubbed.”39 Kaplan further writes that Finkelstein envied Heschel for his growing success among the gentiles.40 One may add that Heschel’s attitude toward symbolism,41 as it came to the fore in Man’s Quest for God, was totally different from and indeed opposed to that of Finkelstein, who published an article with the title “Judaism as 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41.

Letter of June 13, 1946, Buber Archive 290: 43. Ibid. Both articles appeared in 1945. Kaplan, Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940–1972 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 134. Kaplan, Spiritual Radical, 130. Even-Chen, Symbols. — 18 —

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a System of Symbols” in the same year.42 Scholarly divergences between the two learned men were already tangible in 1951.43 Upon arrival in the United States, Buber had wanted to meet Heschel immediately, and they had embraced warmly.44 In anticipation of Buber’s visit to America, and after many months of silence on his part, Heschel had assured Buber that he had many readers in the USA and that they would certainly value his stay.45 Afterward, he wrote Buber that from time to time he imagined having a discussion with him, and that he regretted that in America their talk — he significantly used the word “Gespraech,” conversation  —  had not been more extensive. He also mentioned Maurice Friedman’s book on Buber.46 In 1957, Buber visited the USA again, where he met Carl Rogers and gave a lecture in the School of Psychiatry in Washington on the reality of guilt; Heschel was glad to be able to see him once more.47 In 1958, Paula Buber passed away in Venice, when she and her husband were in transit on their way back from a trip to the United States and Europe, and Heschel expressed his condolences to Buber.48 There are a few letters from 1958 in which Heschel writes about his Heavenly Torah.49 He had sent Buber four chapters (without footnotes) 42. 43.

44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49.

Finkelstein, “ System of Symbols.” Seymour Siegel, “Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Contributions to Jewish Scholarship,” Proceedings of the Rabbinical Assembly 32 (March 24–28, 1968): 72–85. Kaplan, Spiritual Radical, 134. 20.4. 1951, Buber Archive, 290: 45 and July 5, 1951, Buber Archive, 290: 46. Letter of 23.5.1954, Buber Archive, 290: 47. Buber was enthusiast about Friedman’s dissertation. He wrote to Friedman on August 20, 1950, that he did “very well to concentrate [his] work around the problem of evil and its redemption, the central human problem indeed.” Friedman would not only have gained a unifying center but the best of all possible. Buber praised Friedman that he had given a comprehending and systematic representation of his ideas and that he had shown their essential unity. His work, Buber wrote, would be “the first successful attempt of this kind” (Glatzer and Mendes-Flohr, 556). Additionally, he wrote a letter to University of Chicago Press for Friedman. See Friedman’s letter to Buber, September 9, 1950 (Glatzer and MendesFlohr, 557). Friedman’s book, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue, was published in 1955. Letter of 21.2.1957, Buber Archive 290: 48. Letter of Buber Archive, 290: 50. This book encountered harsh criticism as well as great praise. See L. Levin, “Heschel’s Homage to the Rabbis — Torah min ha-shamayim as Historical Theology,” Conservative Judaism 50 (1998): 56–66. — 19 —

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of a book he had written on this subject. Buber had indeed asked him to forward him a few chapters from the book and had advised him to publish it with Bialik Press. Heschel wrote him that he had finished Heavenly Torah, which in his letter he calls a book “on the problem of revelation” (das Problem der Offenbarung); he was hoping to hear about possible publication by Bialik.50 Heschel gained insights from Buber’s postscript in the new 1957 edition of Ich und Du. 51 When in Jerusalem, he of course visited Buber. 52 He told Buber about Cardinal Bea, to whom he was the major Jewish consultant, for which purpose Bea visited him in the USA. He further informed Buber about his endeavors in the dialogue with the Catholic Church. 53 The letters from Heschel to Buber testify to the permanent interest of these two personalities in this issue, in both their work and their personal lives In support of one of Heschel’s projects, Buber wrote a letter of recommendation with words of praise noting that Heschel had “a vast and authentic knowledge, a reliable intuition into phenomena of religious life, the true scholarly spirit of text interpretation, and independent thinking.”54 Heschel, in turn, called Buber “the most erudite” man he had ever met.55 It is plausible to presume that Heschel’s sentence came to defend Buber’s status as an academic scholar who had mastered several academic disciplines. If this supposition is true, it could be that at the same time he defended his own position as a scholar with spiritual interests, a fragile position that in JTS was cynically beleaguered by people such as Saul Lieberman.56 His positive attitude vis-à-vis Buber did not prevent Heschel from criticizing him, however. In an interview at Notre Dame that was published in 1967, he proclaimed: “One of the weaknesses in Buber, who was an exceedingly learned man, was that he was not at home in rabbinic literature. That covers many years. A lot has happened between the Bible and Hasidism 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

Letter of 11.19.1958, Buber Archive, 290: 51; 3.6.1959, Buber Archive, 290: 53. Letter of 1.19.1958, Buber Archive, 290: 51. Letter of July 29, 1962, Buber Archive, 209: 55. July 19, 1962, Buber Archive, 209: 55; 4.4.1963, Buber Archive, 290: 56. Kaplan, Spiritual Radical, 161–162 Kaplan, Spiritual Radical, 403, note 42. Kaplan, Spiritual Radical, 108–110, 209. — 20 —

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that Buber did not pay attention to.” He added that the weakness of Buber’s conception lay in his prioritizing Aggada over Halakha.57 He nevertheless himself stresses the extraordinary significance of Aggada: “Modern scholars have tended to the prejudice that the Sages were concerned exclusively with the practical Halakha and there was not to be found in aggadic teachings a basic, cohesive theology — that the Talmudic Sages theologized in a sober, repressed way, that they were never singed by the fires of doubt and fear, and that they never explored the secrets or rationale of faith.”58 Heschel appreciated Buber as “a profound thinker, a major surprise in the intellectual climate of the twentieth century.”59 He praised his colleague for having presented Hasidism to Western culture, to the non-Jews, as well as to Jews who had no knowledge of it. Buber interpreted the Hasidic phenomenon in philosophical terms. In addition, Heschel mentions Buber’s writings on Zionism and his “creative” translation of the Bible in this context.60 As noted, Heschel uncompromisingly distanced himself from Buber’s view of revelation: “A Jew cannot live by such a conception of revelation. Buber does not do justice to the claims of the prophets. So I have to choose between him and the Bible itself. The Bible says that God spoke to men — a challenging, embarrassing, and overwhelming claim. I have trouble with many of the things he [Buber] said, but I have to accept them. If I don’t accept the claim that God spoke to the prophets, then I detach myself from the biblical roots.”61 57.

58.

59. 60. 61.

In one of his lectures, Heschel defined himself not as a man of Halakha but as a man of Aggada. He reminded his audience also that there is no Aggada without Halakha because there is no Jewish holiness without mitzvot (Dresner, “Heschel and Halakhah: The Vital center,” Conservative Judaism 43, no. 4 (1991): 22). Heschel, Heavenly Torah as Refracted through the Generations, eds. and trans. Gordon Tucker and Leonard Levin (New York and London: Continuum, 2005), 7. Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 384. Ibid. Heschel, “Carl Stern’s Interview with Dr. Heschel,” in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, ed. Susannah Heschel (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1996), 385. In Buber’s writings, one may find early pantheistic-Spinozistic thoughts, as well as panentheistic and theistic positions that accept Divine transcendence. As we will demonstrate, with time, also under the influence of his focus on the Bible, Buber gave more weight to revelation as coming from outside and not merely growing from within human beings, — 21 —

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And yet, Heschel thought about Buber as “a person of depth and greatness.”62 Heschel’s student Fritz A. Rothschild published a selection of Heschel’s writings under the title Between God and Man. 63 This title differs from the title of Buber’s book, Between Man and Man. In Between Man and Man, there is a chapter “What is Man?”64 which is the translation of “Das Problem des Menschen,”65 whereas the title of another of Heschel’s books is Who Is Man? Buber’s title is more philosophical; Heschel’s, more personal. Earlier, in 1933, Heschel published a collection of Yiddish poems, Der Shem Ham’forash: Mentsh. This title does not merely refer to man but introduces a qualification of man: the term implies values such as confidence, truthfulness, and sociality. The first poem in that volume is the already mentioned poem “Ikh un Du,” bearing the same name as Buber’s book Ich und Du, which was published in the same year that the poem appeared. Although the titles are identical, Heschel’s poem conveys a completely different meaning, highlighting the great intimacy between God and man. The title of Heschel’s early collection of poems points to his vision of man as closely connected to the Divine: “Am I not — you? Are you not — I?”66 From this verse, one could infer that there is a quasi-identity between God and man, or at least a meeting between the Divine and the human will. In Buber’s I and Thou, on the other hand, the emphasis is foremost upon the interrelation between men, including a perspective upon the connection with the eternal You. The foregoing exemplifies the basis of some major differences between these two towering thinkers. Comparing Heschel and Buber, we frequently focused upon Heschel’s early Yiddish written poems and upon Buber’s I and Thou. Yet Buber changed his views in the course of his long life; therefore, we had to

62. 63.

64.

65. 66.

who strive for unity. Ibid. In Between God and Man. An Interpretation of Judaism, ed. Fritz A. Rothschild (New York: Macmillan, 1959), Rothschild presents a collection of Heschel’s papers. Buber, “What is Man?” in Between Man and Man, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith, intro. Maurice Friedman (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 118–205. Buber, Das Problem des Menschen (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1948). Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God: Man, trans. Morton M. Leifman, with an introduction by Edward K. Kaplan (New York: Continuum, 2005), 31. — 22 —

---------------------------------------------------------------------  Introduction ---------------------------------------------------------------------

take into consideration the entire scope of his voluminous writing, whereas Heschel in writing on Kotzk at the end of his life expressed profound religious feelings that already were expressed in the poems of the thirties.67 As the title of our own book we choose Between Heschel and Buber because the two thinkers were closely related and had much in common, but they also differed on substantial points. This title also points to the fact that not only were both Buber and Heschel the authors of Between Man and Man and Between God and Man, respectively, but that there was an intense and fruitful interaction between them. Seventeen years ago, Heschel’s biographer Edward Kaplan expressed his hope that scholars would pursue a comparative analysis of Buber and Heschel as two eminent interpreters of the Jewish tradition.68 We took upon ourselves this challenge of monitoring their consents and dissents; to compare Heschel and Buber is the purpose of the present volume.

67.

68.

Personal religious experiences are at the center of Heschel’s writings. In fact, his entire oeuvre and not only his poetic work in the thirties is characterized by a poetic style that aims at bringing the reader to identify with what is written (Kaplan, Holiness in Words [New York: State University of New York Press, 1996], 19). Heschel’s way of writing was criticized by, for example, Arthur Cohen, who blamed Heschel for adopting a rhetoric style. See Arthur A. Cohen, “The Rhetoric of Faith: Abraham Joshua Heschel,” in The Natural and Supernatural Jew (New York, Toronto, London: Mac Graw Hill Book, 1964), 258–259. For a response to Heschel’s opponents, see Lawrence Perlman, Abraham Heschel’s Idea of Revelation (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1989), 8–11. Kaplan, “Sacred,” 225. — 23 —

----------------------------------------------------  Aieka: Between Man and Man  ----------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------- Chapter I  -----------------------------------

Aieka: Between Man and Man1 For Buber as well as for Heschel, “to be” means to be with other human beings. In their anthropology, they define existence as essentially coexistence. They lived in a period that suffered from two kinds of terrible totalitarianism: Stalinist communism and German nationalism. Heschel highlighted the eclipse of man,2 and Buber spoke about the eclipse of God, which could be caused by man being caught in merely I-it relationships or by a God who veils his Divine countenance.3 Both views originated in their reactions to the profound crisis of humanism. In the following, we compare Buber’s dialogical thinking on what occurs between people with Heschel’s view in which “the ultimate validity of being human depends upon prophetic moments.”4 Buber approached the I as ideally in relation, coining the almost biblical phrase “in the beginning was relation,” whereas Heschel changed the known Cartesian dictum on the ego as cogito into the phrase: “I am commanded, therefore I am.”5 Heschel thought that “there is no man who is not shaken for an instant by the eternal.”6 Human dignity depended upon “man’s sense 1.

2.

3.

4. 5. 6.

See Ephraim Meir, “Reading Buber’s ‘I and Thou’ as a Guide to Conflict Management and Social Transformation,” in The Legacy of the German-Jewish Religious and Cultural Heritage: A Basis for German-Israeli Dialogue? Proceedings of an International Conference Held at Bar-Ilan University June 1, 2005, ed. Ben Mollov (Jerusalem: Yuval Press 2006), 119–131. Alexander Even-Chen, “I-You-Other-God — Buber, Heschel and Levinas,” Hagut bechinukh ha-yehudi 9 (2010): 217-244. Buber, “Replies to my Critics,” in The Philosophy of Martin Buber (The Library of Living Philosophers, 12), eds. A. Schilpp and M. Friedman (Lasalle, IL: Open Court, 1967), 716. Heschel, Who Is Man? (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1963), 111. Ibid. Heschel, Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion (New York: Farrar, Straus and — 25 —

--------------------------------------------------------------------------   Chapter I --------------------------------------------------------------------------

of indebtedness being a response to transcendent requiredness.”7 Responsiveness was imperative in the anthropology of both thinkers. They both cite the biblical Divine address to man: “Aieka,” “Where are you?” (Gen.3:9) as defining Man, who therefore was a being who is called upon to respond, to become an answerable person.8 In this chapter, we compare Heschel’s and Buber’s views on human society and politics, which they constructed in answer to the crises during which they lived. Neither thinker enclosed himself in a piety that was estranged from and inimical to the world, for they were less interested in discovering the mysteries of heaven; their common main concern was man’s everyday life in his being situated in a concrete social and political setting. They did not flee in a Gnostic way from a sublunary, terrestrial reality, nor did they construct a theology that deals with abstract metaphysical categories. Rather, they stood firmly in an earthly reality that they strove to interpret as essentially dialogical.

I and Thou Buber’s most influential philosophical work was I and Thou. In this work, on the background of a world progressively augmenting the “it,” Buber gave much weight to responsiveness and to the significance of the sphere of the “I-you.” He developed a dialogical-relational transformative model of thinking, in which the central ideas are not the self, self-consciousness, or self-interest, but rather the orientation of an I to a you. His intent was to create a dialogical “between-man,” a Zwischenmensch. In his anthropology, a person becomes a person when face-to-face with a fellow human being. Through the you, a person becomes I. The Buberian I is thus not isolated but a related “I-you”; the interhuman is as a primal category of human reality. Philosophy had to break with the subject-object ontology; its task was to be a gateway that indicated and pointed to meeting as being beyond philosophical

7. 8.

Giroux, 1951), 78. Heschel, Who Is Man, 110. Bondi writes that from Heschel’s perspective, the uniqueness of the Jewish people lies in their answer to the Divine question. Dror Bondi, Where Art Thou (Jerusalem: Merkaz Shalem, 2007), 176. — 26 —

----------------------------------------------------  Aieka: Between Man and Man  ----------------------------------------------------

conceptualization. Its vocation would lie in witnessing to the primal act of meeting and to the plenitude of presence.9 In Buber’s humanism, meeting and encounter come into being through the address of an I to a you. In this address, an “it” turns into a “you”: the object (Gegenstand) changes into a presence (Gegenwart). Alienation from the other by an objectifying attitude and partial approach toward him is replaced by the animation of the other. The “you” jumps from an “it” but does not originate in that “it.” The I is destined to meet the other, not to approach him in a purely cognitive way or to use and manipulate him; it is basically an I-in-relation. The relating I and the addressed you, which reveals itself, may meet, and this mutual “relation” (Beziehung) is “encounter” (Begegnung).10 Buber highlights that in the sphere of the “between” (zwischen) and its role as the humanizing factor in human society, institutions are too much “outside,” whereas feelings are too much “inside.” That is, institutions are objective and feelings are subjective, whereas the meeting is intersubjective. In I and Thou, Buber develops an ontology of presence which asks for this reciprocity.11 In Buber’s perspective, the mutual relationship between I and Thou is also the locus theologicus, the place where one meets God. The I who says “you” addresses at the same time the eternal “You.” The relationship to God occurs in the relationship with human beings, and it is therefore nonsensical, if one wants to make present the eternal You, to attempt to do so without creating a true dialogical society. In Buber’s philosophy, the word and is central: I and Thou, God and man, and God and involvement in the world. The animation of the world is the kernel of real spirituality. In meeting the world and uttering the primary word 9.

10.

11.

See Alan Udoff, introduction to The Knowledge of Man, by Martin Buber, ed. Maurice Friedman (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1988), viii-xxii. The opposite is what Buber calls “Vergegnung,” misencounter or failure of a real meeting. See Buber, Begegnung: Autobiographische Fragmente (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1960), 6. For Franz Fischer (1929–1070) too, reciprocity is essential in the relationship. See Meir, “Fischer’s Essay ‘Love and Wisdom’ in Light of Jewish Dialogical Thought,” in Die Bildung von Gewissen und Verantwortung — Zur Philosophie und Paedagogik Franz Fischers (Franz Fischer Jahrbuecher). (Norderstedt and Leipzig: Anne Fischer Verlag and Leipziger Universitaetsverlag, 2010), 226–245. — 27 —

--------------------------------------------------------------------------   Chapter I --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I-you, we “gaze toward the train of the eternal You” (blicken wir an den Saum des Ewigen Du hin) and “we perceive a breath of it [of the eternal You]” (aus jedem vernehmen wir ein Wehen von ihm).12 In his panentheistic thought, which was influenced by Hasidism, the intersubjective meeting conditions the contact with the eternal You. In the process of a meeting of a particular “you,” one receives “a glimpse” through to the eternal You (ein Durchblick zu ihm).13 The world does not of itself lead to God, but neither does one find Him by leaving the world. Man’s turn, his return (Umkehr) to the real ex-centric kernel of himself, to his “inborn you” — in other words, his presence to the other — makes the eternal You present. The human existence thus becomes a kind of sacrament: in meeting and encounter, in contemplating the other,14 God becomes present in the world. One can find in I and Thou an expression as the “realization” of God because one makes God real in solidarity with others.15 The eternal You, however, never becomes “it.” God is called “the eternal presence” (die ewige Gegenwart)16 who is present for human beings when they are present to each other. Buber thus situated the conversation with God within the conversation between human beings. Anthropology led to metaphysics. Mainly in the third part of I and Thou, after having analyzed the relationship between men and the situation of man in the social and political world, he discusses the relationship of man with God. In 12.

13. 14.

15.

16.

Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970), 57; Ich und Du: Um ein Nachwort erweiterte Neuausgabe (Heidelberg, Lambert Schneider: 1958), 12. The sentences are repeated in I and Thou, 150; Ich und Du, 90. Kramer draws our attention to the fact that Kaufmann’s use of the pronoun “You” (and not the uncommon “Thou”) as translation of “Du” prevents the reader from assuming that Buber’s “Du” meant exclusively God. At the same time, Kaufmann’s “You” loses the intimacy and commitment suggested by Buber’s “Du.” In Buber’s time, “Du” was only used to address people toward whom one felt close and to whom one felt committed, ready to be there for the other no matter what may happen. Our gratitude is extended to Kenneth Kramer. Buber, I and Thou, 123; Ich und Du, 69. “Schauen,” contemplate, and “zublicken,” glance, are in contrast to “beobachten,” observe (I and Thou, 90; Ich und Du, 39). Buber, I and Thou, 161; Ich und Du, 100. Kaufmann translates “verwirklichen” by “actualize,” Smith in his translation has the more literal “realize”; I and Thou, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 114. Buber, I and Thou, 155; Ich und Du, 93. — 28 —

----------------------------------------------------  Aieka: Between Man and Man  ----------------------------------------------------

Heschel’s thought, in contrast, the relationship with the Divine comes first and is of utmost importance in order to talk about the human being. Significant in this respect is Heschel’s Yiddish poem “Ikh un Du,” in which a direct, intimate relationship with God is described.17 Since Heschel elaborated upon this position, detailing and developing it, later on in his life, we offer here the entire poem in Yiddish, along with the English translation:18 ‫טראנסמיסיעס גייען פון דיין הארץ צו מיינעס‬ .‫ פארמישן מיין ליידן מיט דיינעם‬,‫פארטוישן‬ ?‫בין איך נישט — דו? ביסטו נישט — איך‬ ‫עס זענען מיינע נערוון צונויפעגעקנוילט מיט דיינע‬ .‫עס האבן דיינע טרוימען געטראפן זיך מיט מיינע‬ ?‫צי זענען מיר נישט איינער אין לייבער מיליאנען‬

Transmissions flow from your heart to Mine Trading, twining my pain with yours, Am I not — you? Are you not — I? My nerves are clustered with Yours. Your dreams have met with mine. Are we not one in the bodies of millions?

,‫אפט דערזע איך מיך אליין אין אלעמענס געשטאלטן‬ ,‫ רייד מיינס א ווייטע‬,‫דערהער אין מענטשנס ווינען‬ ,‫שטילע שטים‬

Often I glimpse Myself in everyone’s form, hear My own speech — a distant, quiet voice — in people’s weeping

‫גלייך אונטער מאסקעס מיליאנען ס’וואלט מיין פנים זיין‬ ,‫באהאלטן‬

As if under millions of masks My face would lie hidden

.‫כ’ לעב אין מיר און אין דיר‬ ,‫דורך דיינע ליפן גייט א ווארט פון מיר צו מיר‬ ‫ וואס קוועלט אין מיר‬,‫פון דיינע אויגן טריפט א טרער‬ !‫ווען א נויט דיך קוועלט –אלארמיר‬ --‫ווען א מענטש דיר פעלט‬ !‫רייס אויף מיין טיר‬ .‫ דו לעבסט אין מיר‬,‫דו לעבסט אין דיר‬

I live in Me and in you. Through your lips goes a word from Me to Me, From your eyes drips a tear — its source in Me When a need pains You, alarm me! When You miss a human being —  tear open my door! You live in Yourself, You live in me.

As we mentioned in the foreword, the title of the poem is parallel to the title of Buber’s book. But it refers here not to the relationship between man and man, but to the intimate association between man and God. Heschel almost obliterates the boundaries between man 17.

18.

According to Siegel, Heschel combined reason and mystery in his work. The deep religious experience comes into expression in his thought and, of course, in social activity. Yet, this experience contains more than what can be expressed. See Siegel, “Scholarship,” 77; “Divine Pathos, Prophetic Sympathy,” Conservative Judaism 28, no. 1 (1973): 72. Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God, 30–31. — 29 —

--------------------------------------------------------------------------   Chapter I --------------------------------------------------------------------------

and the Divine. His poem expresses a kind of unio mystica, in which the I is not absorbed in the Divine, but God and man are quasiidentical: God’s ineffable name is “man.” In almost all of his poems, Heschel meditates upon the relationship between God and man.19 The first part of his collection of poems is called “Der Mentsch iz hailiq” (“Man Is Holy”), and the last part is called “Tiqqunim” (“Repairing the World”). Although between the first and the last part we find love poems and poems about the world, Heschel does not distinguish between the religious and the secular songs because, in his view, holiness pervades all of the poems. In the specific poem “Ikh un Du,” Heschel writes about a pain that is common to God and man. In the poem, which was first published in 1929 in the journal Zukunft, Heschel gives expression to what lives in his soul when he impatiently implores God to relate to man’s pain, which is in fact God’s pain. There is an interdependence between man’s pain and God’s pain, a certain tension, but also an expectation. This does not mean that man’s existence is negated; on the contrary, it is elevated to the level of God’s existence: God and man are mutually dependent. Later on, Heschel develops this idea in his masterpiece “God in Search of Man.” In this work, Husserl’s thought on intentionality with noesis and noema is inversed: not man’s consciousness is characterized by intentional acts, but rather the opposite — man is the object of God’s intentionality and care. Heschel’s address to God in “Ikh un Du” is full of pain and distress. His God suffers, and Heschel comes to His rescue. The poem is far from a theoretical treatise on the omnipotence or impotence of God. Man has closed the doors of the world from beneath, and God is now asked to open Heschel’s door from above. It is possible that the earthly doors are closed, but Heschel implores God to open his door. God may open Heschel’s private door through which He may enter again into 19.

Arthur Green defines Heschel as a mystic, not as a kabbalist. Green describes the common ground between three Warsaw thinkers: Rabbi Yehuda Loeb Alter of Gur, Hillel Zeitlin, and Heschel. All three are post-kabbalist thinkers, who do not characterize religious experience in kabbalistic terms such as sphirot, partsufim, or mending. See Green, “Three Warsaw Mystics,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought XIII (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1996), 5*; 51*. — 30 —

----------------------------------------------------  Aieka: Between Man and Man  ----------------------------------------------------

the world. This is a prophetic call. Heschel is ready to fight in order to enable God to enter into the world. His person is in the service of God.20 The verse “I live in me and in you” is contrasted to the final verse “You live in Yourself, You live in me.” However, the contrast emphasizes that Heschel’s life in God and God’s life in him are one and the same. First, Heschel talks about himself and about his pain; at the end, he demands from God, from the personal God who is more than simply the Divine, to open his existential door: You live in me in my earthly life down here, and You are responsible for my terrestrial life, just as I am responsible for You. The verse “Through Your lips goes a word from me to me” does not indicate that God speaks to man, but that His word is in Heschel and resonates in his soul as the direct word of God. In the verse “From Your eyes drips a tear — its source in me,” we read the opposite: God drops a tear, but this tear originates in Heschel. The two verses are complementary: it is as if Heschel and God are intermingled. One cannot distinguish any more from whom the word comes or who drops the tear. The empathy is clear and Heschel’s I and God’s I are interwoven. Friedman notes: “‘I do not really mean,’ Heschel explained to me, ‘that we have no right to say I. But we have the right to say I only when we understand that the I is transcendence in disguise.’”21 On a parallel with his poetical-religious thought as it comes into expression in “Ikh un Du,” Heschel writes on the last page of The Prophets22 that the categorical imperative of the biblical man is “know thy God” (1 Chron. 28:9) rather than “know thyself.”23 Yet in his song “The Most Precious Word,” he writes about the ineffable Divine 20.

21.

22. 23.

Heschel’s prophet has the characteristic of the tsaddiq in Hasidism. As Moshe Idel writes: “Hasidic masters would in most cases consider the mystical experience as a stage on the way toward another goal, namely the return of the enriched mystic who becomes even more powerful and effective in and for the group for which he is responsible.” See Moshe Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 209. Maurice Friedman, “Divine Need and Human Wonder: The Philosophy of Abraham J. Heschel,” Judaism 25 (1976): 74. Heschel, The Prophets (New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1962), vol. II, 268. Shaul Magid notes: “Self-discovery for Heschel is not the discovery of the unconscious or one’s inner-self but the discovery of the mystery of God, the part of oneself that is beyond the self.” See Magid, “Abraham Joshua Heschel and Thomas Merton,” Conservative Judaism 50 (1998): 118. — 31 —

--------------------------------------------------------------------------   Chapter I --------------------------------------------------------------------------

name: “Your name is already my home.” In writing this, Heschel nearly identifies his own existence with that of the ineffable name, which for him is the most precious word.24 Ineffable is not only God, but also the deep experience of Heschel with God. By intermingling God’s existence and his own human existence, Heschel substantially differs from Buber. Another significant difference with Buber lies in Heschel’s definition of the I, which is not constituted primarily by the non-I but rather characterized, in the footsteps of his master the rebbe of Kotzk, by an unalienable individuality. Heschel quotes the rather cryptic saying of the Kotzker rebbe: “If I am I because I am I, and you are you because you are you, then I am I and you are you. However, if I am I because you are you, and you are you because I am I, then I am not I and you are not you.”25 With this utterance, Heschel points to the importance of the individual, not immediately in relation to the other, in contrast to Buber’s philosophy, although in the footsteps of Israel Ba’al Shem Tov, he considers the I as fundamentally related. A further difference between Buber and Heschel is evident from the terminology: Buber’s basic categories are meeting and encounter, while Heschel prefers the word communion, 26 but he also says in what is a noticeably Buberian mode: “To meet a human being is an opportunity to sense the image of God, the presence of God.”27 Lastly, whereas in Buber’s thought there may be a kind of mutuality between man and things, in Heschel’s biblical theology, things do not speak to man, things speak to God: “Inanimate objects are dead in relation to man; they are alive in relation to God.”28 To summarize: Buber’s I and Thou defined the I as an I in relation: the I-it may became an I-you. Buber thinks foremost from one person to another. In “Ikh un Du,” Heschel’s I is emotionally involved and almost identical with the I of God: in his later thought, the I becomes an object of God’s concern, although already in 1936 Heschel writes about

24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God, 58–59. Heschel, A Passion for Truth (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973), 144. See, for example, Heschel, Who Is Man, 87; Heschel, The Prophets, vol. I, 26. Heschel, “No Religion Is an Island,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 21, 2 (1966): 121. Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976), 97. — 32 —

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the human being as an “object of God’s attention.”29 A human being is more than being, it is a living being, looking for the transcendence that is called the living God.30 Heschel approaches man from above, from God’s perspective so to speak, and Buber from below, from the interaction between man and man that reveals the Divine presence. Revelation for Buber takes place in the interhuman relationship. For Heschel, God reveals himself to man and man reveals himself to God. Buber’s aim is to arrive at a self-understanding of the I as essentially dialogical, Heschel’s purpose lies in coming to a self-understanding which is only possible by means of God-understanding.

“I-you” and “I-it” versus the “I” as “It” In I and Thou, Buber wants his readers to leave their individuality, their ego (Eigenwesen) that differentiates them from other individuals in favor of becoming a person (eine Person).31 Not like the individual, the person shares in reality: the more contact one has with a you, the more real one is, and the fuller one shares in reality. Buber thus felt that the human being in confirming the other and being confirmed by him or her was a fundamental feature of the human existence. Being looked upon as an object is dehumanizing; living in relation to a real community was the true aim of human existence. One would wish that Buber would less separate the “I-you” from “I-it” and that he would diminish the dualism or gap between the rationality of relationship — the rationality of the heart — and institutional rationality. Buber largely neglects the institutional sides

29. 30. 31.

Hechel, “The Meaning of Repentance,” in Moral Grandeur, 69. Heschel, Who Is Man, 69. Buber, I and Thou, 113; Ich und Du, 58. Buber had a very early interest in the individuation of man, already evident in his dissertation in 1904, “Zur Geschichte des Individuationsproblems (Nikolaus von Cues und Jakob Böhme).” Against Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, he evaluated the individuation positively and studied the metaphysical individualism of Cusanus and Böhme. Whereas Jung dealt with the individuation as the process of becoming conscious of subconscious content, the I in Buber’s thought becomes I through a you. In his I and Thou, the individual or ego becomes a “person” in the context of a relationship. — 33 —

--------------------------------------------------------------------------   Chapter I --------------------------------------------------------------------------

of human existence in I and Thou.32 Economic, political, and scientific structures are not necessarily evil, and strategic rationality is important. Buber, however, wanted to highlight the rationality of the heart, and as such, he protested against purely economic or political thoughts and qualified them as partial approaches. He preferred the adventure of the you over the security and continuity of the it. He pointed to the possibility of walking on the narrow ridge of the “between,” avoiding both subjectivism and objectivism. In his essay “Distance and relation,” he developed an ontology in which distance and relation were two basic movements: distance conditioned relation.33 In I and Thou, however, he described the actual development of man, in which I-you came first.34 Relating and distancing belonged together in I and Thou, but were frequently opposed in a dualistic manner. There was an alternation between I-you and I-it, but often the world of it and the world of you were in binary opposition. The preponderant I-it obstructed the I-you, the world of ordered objectivity disturbed the confirmation of the other. Reason was not the distinctive feature of man: man as a whole had the extraordinary and unique capacity to enter into relation. Although Buber starts his I and Thou with a remark on the “twofold” nature of the primary words (Zwiefalt der Grundworte),35 as different from the dichotomy between them; and although he confirms the passage from “it” to “you,” the world of “I-it” and the world of “I-you” largely remain separated realms. He writes on the “sublime melancholy of our lot [die erhabene Schwermut unsres Loses] that every You must 32.

33. 34. 35.

In discussion with Levinas, he maintained that “If all were clothed and well-nourished, then the real ethical problem would become wholly visible for the first time” (Buber, “Replies to my Critics,” 723). Nevertheless, in his later work, the relationship between I-you and I-it is much smoother and both realms are less contrasted and more interrelated. Rivka Horwitz compares Buber’s thinking of 1922 with that of Kierkegaard, as described and attacked by him in later years. See Horowitz, Buber’s Way to “I and Thou”: The Development of Martin Buber’s Thought and His “Religion as Presence” Lectures (Philadelphia-New York-Jerusalem: JPS, 1988), 213. Buber, The Knowledge of Man, 49–61. Sic Friedman, introduction to The Knowledge of Man, 11–13. Buber, I and Thou, 53; Ich und Du, 9. For an analysis of various polar dualities such as I-you and I-it or distance and relation in Buber’s work, see Avraham Shapira, Between Spirit and Reality. Dual Structures in the Thought of M. M. Buber (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1994). — 34 —

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become an It.”36 The “melancholy” is sublime, but it nevertheless retains its sadness: Buber regrets that one falls back into it. In moments that are too rare, he connects the world of perception with the world of realization, arenas that belong together in the “mystery of reciprocity” (“Geheimnis der Wechselwirkung).37 He writes, for instance, that the spirit penetrates and transforms the world of “it.” Living in God’s face is living in the world of “it” and in the world of “you.” The double movement of a turn toward “you” and of an estrangement from “you” are brought together by grace in creation. He further writes that “the It is the chrysalis, the You the butterfly.”38 There is a movement, a fluctuation or oscillation (ein Schwingen) between you and it.39 One can always set foot on the threshold of the sanctuary, but one has to leave the sanctuary again and again, which is the meaning and destiny of life. In the unholy and indigent land, one has to hold the spark;40 there is an alternation between actuality and latency in the relationship.41 In “Replies to my critics,” in answer to Gabriel Marcel, Buber writes poetically about the little bird “whose wings are crippled in this moment” but that “secretly seeks its soaring.”42 In the tension between causality and freedom, one finds again the complex relationship between you and it: one may “forget” causality in freedom and come to a decision; on the other hand, man’s destiny does not limit freedom but complements it. 43 A bit further in I and Thou, we again hear about the contrast that man must sacrifice his little will and come to his great will, “that moves away from being determined to find destiny.”44 Buber’s own hesitations concerning the relationship between the “it”-world and the “you”-world explain such different interpretations as those of Michael Theunissen and Jochanan Bloch, who both highlight 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

Buber, I and Thou, 68; Ich und Du, 20. Ibid. Buber, I and Thou, 69; Ich und Du, 20. Buber, I and Thou, 62; Ich und Du, 16 Buber, I and Thou, 101–102; Ich und Du, 49. Buber, I and Thou, 148; Ich und Du, 88. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 705. Buber, I and Thou, 102; Ich und Du, 49. Buber, I and Thou, 109; Ich und Du, 55: “der vom Bestimmtsein weg und auf die Bestimmung zu geht.” — 35 —

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the Buberian contrast between “I-it” and “I-you.”45 Theunissen thinks that Buber snatches “you” out of the world in his dialogical thinking that tries to overcome idealism and Husserl’s intentionality, whereas Bloch is of the opinion that “you” is not transcendent to the world but rather rooted in it. Our own position in this debate is that Buber insists upon the relationship between I-it and I-you since “you” must necessarily become “it” because of the concrete situation of man, and an “it” may be transformed into a “you” because of the dialogical possibilities of man. There is some connection between the two worlds, but Buber separates them too much. There is a tension between I-you and I-it, which in his I and Thou evolves too quickly into opposition. One may criticize Buber for not stressing the interrelation between I-it and I-you enough, as the German philosopher Franz Fischer does,46 but his spirituality does remain world-oriented, although this is somewhat problematic. Buber basically loved the world, and did not leave it in order to be in touch with the eternal You, as did Søren Kierkegaard, against whom Buber reacted. Rosenzweig harshly criticized Buber for being obsessed, “intoxicated” by I-you in revelation: in Rosenzweig’s view, Buber did not give enough attention to I-It, which typifies creation, and we-It, which characterizes redemption.47 This criticism was taken into account by Buber mainly after writing I and Thou. In contrast to the Buberian polar duality described above between the approach of the I as I-you and as I-it, Heschel thinks that the “I” is an “it,” as the object of God’s care.48 The I may be self-inflated and self45.

46.

47. 48.

Michael Theunissen, Der Andere. Sudien zur Sozialontologie der Gegenwart ( Berlin: de Gruyter, 1965) and Jochanan Bloch, Die Aporie Die Aporie des Du. Probleme der Dialogik Martin Bubers (Phronesis, Bd. 2) (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1977). Fischer brought the two realms closer together and thought, for instance, that objective knowledge and human tasks are intimately linked to each other. See Meir, “Fischer’s Essay‚ ‘Love and Wisdom’ in Light of Jewish Dialogical Thought,” in Die Bildung von Gewissen und Verantwortung — Zur Philosophie und Paedagogik Franz Fischers (Franz Fischer Jahrbuecher) (Norderstedt and Leipzig: Anne Fischer Verlag and Leipziger Universitaetsverlag, 2010), 226–245. Horwitz, Buber’s Way to “I and Thou,” 226–229. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 125–129. Friedman reports a conversation with Heschel on this subject: “‘To say that the I is an ‘it’ to God does not mean that God regards us as an ‘it’. The I is an ‘it’ in the light of our awareness of God.’ Therefore, Heschel felt — 36 —

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celebrating, but inversely, it may be receptive and undetached from the sense of the ineffable. In the second case, Heschel declares, “We begin to understand that what is an ‘I’ to our minds is an ‘it’ to God. This is why object-consciousness rather than self-consciousness is the starting point for our thoughts about Him. It is in our object-consciousness that we first learn to understand that God is more than the Divine.” Heschel’s vision of man is inseparable from what he sees as God’s vision of man. Whereas Heschel conceives of the I as “something transcendent in disguise,”49 Buber does not envision an I that is not I-it or I-you. For Heschel, the I does not originate in itself — it is not a subject — but rather an object of God.50 Buber, on the other hand, describes the nature of I-you as an I-in-relation. Both, however, conceive of human beings as sons of the King.51 The Divine vision of man is not Heschel’s invention. He takes it, in fact, from the Bible: “It is an accepted fact that the Bible has given the world a new concept of God. What is not realized is the fact that the Bible has given the world a new vision of man. The Bible is not a book about God; it is a book about man.” The Bible as a book about man contains a vision of man from the point of view of God, he explains. It testifies to the vertical dimension in the human existence. Man is therefore defined as “a being in travail with God’s dreams and designs, with God’s dream of a world redeemed, of reconciliation of heaven and earth, of a mankind which is truly His image, reflecting His wisdom, justice and compassion. God’s dream is not to be alone, to have mankind as a partner in the drama of continuous creation. By whatever we do, by every act we carry out, we either advance or obstruct the drama of redemption; we either reduce or enhance the power of evil,” he writes. 52 In his description of the relationship between God and man, between

49. 50. 51.

52.

that my objection applied to what he said but not to what he meant.” See Friedman, “Divine Need,” 74. Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, 47. Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, 48. “Das groesste Boese ist, wenn du vergisst, das du ein Koenigssohn bist” (Buber, Die Legende des Ba’alschem [1908] [Frankfurt o.M.: Rütten & Loening, 1922], 32); compare with Heschel, A Passion for Truth, 19. Heschel, Who Is Man, 119. — 37 —

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heaven and earth, Heschel avoids the pitfall of Gnosticism. He contests the contrast between earth and heaven and brings them together in an attempt to reconcile the earthly and Divine realities. In this manner, he comes close to Buber, who also fought against the postulation of too great a rift between heaven and earth. On the other hand, in both Heschel’s and in Buber’s view, this world is evil and separated from God. Both thinkers recognized a great tension between heaven and earth, God and man, I-you and I-it, realization and orientation, and a self-inflated and a God-oriented I. At the same time, they endeavored to close these gap by stressing the priority of I-you and of man in the image of God over I-it and self-assertion. The similarities between both thinkers should not make us blind to the differences between them. Heschel writes that to our knowledge the world and the I are separated as object and subject, but “within our wonder the world and the ‘I’ are one in being, in eternity.”53 The experience of wonder is therefore a fundamental religious and biblical occurrence, the chief characteristic of religious man. In this experience as a fundamental category, one does not regard events as the natural course of things, one is not aware of the regularity and pattern of events. In amazement, the world appears to be marvelous. “This is the Lord’s doing, it is marvelous in our eyes” (Psalms 118:23).54 This a priori of looking at the world in radical amazement and wonder is absent in Buber. Heschel continues that when we see only objects, we are alone. But through singing, we sing for everything: the world becomes the partitur of an eternal music and we are the voice.55 Already in his book on the Sabbath, published in the same year as Man Is Not Alone (1951), Heschel depicts how the creation is God’s language. In his poetical language, he writes that we sanctify time in singing with God the vowels of His song and things as the consonants.56 Buber meets nature in relationship and brings the I in contact with you but does not contrast nature or the I as explorable, graspable, and decipherable with

53. 54. 55. 56.

Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, 39. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 45. Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, 41. Heschel, The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988), 101. — 38 —

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the ineffable that is “in search of a song.”57 In Heschel’s view, radical amazement is the prerequisite for any elevated religiosity; such an attitude colors one’s approach to the world. We have noted that Buber distances himself from Kierkegaard. Heschel brings the Kotzker rebbe and Kierkegaard together in their common endeavor to liberate man from a routine life; self-criticism is the condition for an authentic life in faith, for without criticism there is no real faith. The Kotzker rebbe and Kierkegaard challenge institutional religion. In this, Heschel is close to Buber, who shows the incompatibility between the interpersonal and intersubjective relations and sterile objective institutions that prevent real human interaction. Heschel again comes close to Buber’s thought when he says that not “a leap of faith” but “a leap of action” is what counts.58 Both relate to the world, rather than fleeing it in order to reach an acosmic relationship with God. In modern philosophy, from Descartes until German idealism, philosophy put the I at the center. Heschel protests against this world vision, writing that not self-centeredness but the readiness to sacrifice the problematic ego is what is demanded of humanity. “The most preposterous falsehood is the most common, most cherished one: selfcenteredness. Man tends to act as if his ego were the hub of the world, the source and purpose of existence. What a shameless affront to deny that God is that source and purpose, the sap and the meaning. The twin themes of the Kotzker — how to discard falsehood and how to overcome self-regard — are essentially one.”59 In other words: Heschel, along with the Kotzker rebbe and Kierkegaard, strove for an authentic life of faith, in which self-centeredness has to be given up in the recognition of the centrality of God in our lives. It is not Heschel’s intention to negate or sacrifice the I but rather to sanctify life before the Creator and to take one’s own life seriously as being called upon to answer the Divine appeal, where God asks man to sacrifice his egoistic interests. Buber 57. 58.

59.

Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, 41. Heschel of course alludes here to Kierkegaard’s leap of faith. See F. A. Rothschild, “Varieties of Heschelian Thought,” in Abraham Joshua Heschel, ed. John C. Merkle (New York and London: Macmillan and Collier Macmillan, 1985), 91. Heschel, A Passion for Truth, 133. — 39 —

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likewise did not ask man to abnegate his ego or to devaluate it, as in German mysticism, not in interhuman relationships and not in the relationship between man and God. In his view, a person had to hallow the whole of life, as in Hasidism,60 and to strive for the dominance of the domain of I-you above the domain of the I-it. For Heschel and Buber, body and soul were interwoven and one had to sanctify one’s entire life in all its concreteness.61 Neither Heschel nor Buber denied the importance of this world; they affirmed the world and oriented it to something that is above it and expresses itself into the world.

Antitotalitarian Dialogical Anthropology and the Prophetic Struggle for a Righteous Society Further shaping his dialogical anthropology after I and Thou, Buber accentuated more and more the importance of the authentic community. He reflected deeply on the phenomenon of totalitarianism and contributed to the creation of dialogical communities. The twentieth century was the century of totalitarianism, and it was precisely in Germany that a number of Jewish thinkers protested against this phenomenon. One may easily detect anti-totalitarian thoughts in the works of Rosenzweig, Buber, and Arendt. Some central passages in Buber’s oeuvre after I and Thou manifest his firm position against totalitarianism, the illness of the preceding century. In the time of brown and red totalitarianism, Buber reminded his readers that dialogue is the most elevated human activity and that real dialogue prevents human beings from becoming absorbed in a totalizing, dehumanizing system. With his politico-religious thoughts on dialogue and fraternity, he tried to avoid violent conflicts and to heal situations 60.

61.

J. H. Schravesande, “Jichud,” Eenheid inhet Werk van Martin Buber (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum Academic, 2009), 103; 162. Buber distinguishes between the “Entwerdung,” giving up one’s own individuality (the term “Entwerdung” was borrowed from Eckhart) and “Entfaltung,” the growth and development of the soul in hallowing everyday life. In “Replies to My Critics,” 736, Buber refers to the Polnaer tradition, which compares the relationship between flesh and spirit to that between husband and wife. — 40 —

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by going to the root of the problem, namely, the seeming incapacity of the human being to create dialogical societies. Parallel with Buber, Heschel is actively involved in the world. In one of his Yiddish poems, entitled “God Follows Me Everywhere,” published in 1933 in the collection Der Shem Hameforash: Mentsh. Lider (The Ineffable Name of God: Man. Poems), 62 Heschel describes his own inner prophetic struggle: .‫גאט גייט מיר נאך ווי א שוידער אומעטום‬ !‫קום‬-- :‫ עס מאנט אין מיר‬,‫עס גלוסט זיך מיר רו‬ .‫קוק ווי זעונגען וואלגערן אויף גאסן זיך ארום‬

God follows me like a shiver everywhere. My desire is for rest; the demand within me is: Rise up, See how prophetic visions are scattered in the streets.63

63

The young Heschel felt that God followed him “in tramways, in cafés” and urged Him to realize the prophetic vision that is only visible “with the backs of the pupils of one’s eyes.” For him, the danger of totalitarianism in all its ugliness came into expression foremost in the Shoah. In Nietzsche, God is dead, yet Heschel thought that with the Shoah, man died.64 In one of his famous antithetical formulations, he writes: “In the Middle Ages thinkers were trying to discover proofs for the existence of God. Today we seem to look for proof for the existence of man.”65 After the Shoah, thinking itself was affected: “Philosophy cannot be the same after Auschwitz and Hiroshima.”66 In a manner similar to Buber’s dialogical thought, Heschel writes: “To know others I must know myself, just as understanding others is a necessary prerequisite for understanding myself.”67 Another sentence echoes Buber’s dialogical thinking: “For man to be means to be with other human beings. His existence is coexistence.”68 However, more than in Buber’s I and Thou, Heschel stresses an asymmetry in the relationship: man has to become a spiritual Atlas, supporting the other human being: “Man achieves fullness of being in fellowship, in care for others. He 62. 63 . 64.

65. 66. 67. 68.

Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God, 57. Ibid. For the death of man, see also Heschel, “What We Might Do Together,” in Moral Grandeur, 290. Heschel, Who Is Man, 26. Heschel, Who Is Man, 13. Heschel, Who Is Man, 18. Heschel, Who Is Man, 45. — 41 —

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expands his existence by ‘bearing his fellow-man’s burden.’ As we have said, animals are concerned for their own needs; the degree of our being human stands in direct proportion to the degree in which we care for others.”69 He states: “Who is Man? is really, How is Man?”70 Alluding to the theological eclipse of God and perhaps in reaction to Buber’s writing about it, Heschel writes about “the eclipse of humanity.”71 He utters his fear of a collapse of human society: “Auschwitz is in our veins… We, the generation that witnessed the holocaust, should stand by calmly while rulers proclaim their intention to bring about a new holocaust?”72 Writing on the Holocaust, Heschel was concerned not only with the Jewish history but also with the fate of all human beings. One of his ancestors, his great-great-grandfather, was called ohev Yisrael, lover of Israel, and Heschel himself was named ohev adam, lover of humanity. He was extremely conscious of the fragility of a just human society and was anxious that man could destroy such a society. One of his articles in The Insecurity of Freedom bears the significant title: “The White Man on Trial.”73 His religious soul becomes visible in his courageous defense of the rights of the black people in the United States, in his fight against prejudices and apartheid, and in his call for social and legal change in America. The problem of the Negro would be the problem of the white man, he proclaimed. Implicitly comparing the white man in the US with Pharaoh of Egypt, he writes: “The tragedy of Pharaoh was the failure to realize that the exodus from slavery could have spelled redemption for both Israel and Egypt. Would that Pharaoh and the Egyptians had joined the Israelites in the desert and together stood at the foot of Sinai.”74 With these words, Heschel actualized the biblical story about the exodus of the children of Israel. He defined twentieth-century black people as those who are in slavery and associated the oppressing ruler of Egypt with the dominating white society in the US. The social 69. 70. 71. 72. 73.

74.

Heschel, Who Is Man, 47. Heschel, Who Is Man, 48. Heschel, Who Is Man, 65. Heschel, Israel — an Echo of Eternity (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974), 206. Heschel, “The White Man on Trial,” in The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966), 101–111. Heschel, “White Man,” 103. — 42 —

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involvement of Heschel and Martin Luther King, Jr., was the result in both cases of a religious commitment that united both personalities; Heschel and Buber were both actively involved in social and political action.

Individualism and Collectivism Together with other German-Jewish thinkers such as Mendelssohn, Hirsch, Cohen, and Rosenzweig, Buber fully took part in German culture and invited Jews to live in the different cultures of the world in a distinctive way. When discussing the complex relationship between the same and the other, he emphasized the importance of the same, without forgetting the other. The identity of the one, he asserted, was dependent upon the recognition of the alterity of the other. His dialogical thoughts provide the basis for what is known as conflict management today, in which alertness for totalitarianism and action against it, as well as the permanent effort of living a dialogical life, are central. At the end of his book on the problem of man, published in German in 1948, Buber criticizes both individualism and collectivism.75 The first phenomenon considers man only in relationship to himself, while the latter does not see individuals at all and only thinks in terms of the collective. Both phenomena have their roots in the feeling of an unease in the world, of not being at home in society. Individualism, he felt, isolates the human being as a monad. In order to escape the despair and hopelessness inherent to this situation, one glorifies the isolation. No real meeting is possible in this fictive mastering of the existential situation, however. Collectivism, on the other hand, succeeds the reaction of individualism and tries to escape loneliness by disappearing in anonymous masses and their “general will,” without acknowledging individual responsibility. This illusionary solution guarantees total security, but in totality man is not man with others (der Mensch mit dem Menschen); he even flees from contact with himself. In Buber’s dialogical perspective, only the individual who meets the 75.

Buber, Das Problem, 158–169. — 43 —

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other (Mitmensch) in his otherness (in all seiner Anderheit) is capable of vanquishing his loneliness and isolation. One does not have to choose between an individualistic anthropology and a collectivistic sociology. There is a third way. Man is not a mere isolated individual, nor part of a whole. What is crucial in Buber’s integrative thought is what happens between individuals (zwischen Wesen und Wesen). The sphere of the “between” (die Sphaere des Zwischen) thus becomes a fundamental category (Urkategorie) of human reality. The “between” of the interhuman relationship (zwischenmenschliches Geschehen) is not to be found in the interiority of the isolated being or in an allencompassing neutral totality but in the reality of a meeting that is not reducible to one’s interiority or to an all-absorbing exteriority. While not reducing religiosity to mere interhuman dialogue, Buber notes that in real dialogue between people, something irreducible is present that transcends both partners and cannot be neutralized.76 Dialogue that connects people with the eternal permits touching the real individual and the real community. It comes as no surprise that Buber’s dialogical thinking creates a distance from individualism and collectivism. However, in the passage in the book under discussion, Buber gives more attention to the dangers of collectivism since the obsession with and threat of collectivism dominated the thirties and forties of the preceding century. The realistic alertness for the danger of collectivism shows the impact of the tragic Jewish experience in the Third Reich even upon Buber’s eminently idealistic thought. Buber’s resistance to totalitarianism and political violence is rooted in his Hebrew humanism. Judaism at its best was understood as dialogical pioneering and as harboring a suspicion of totalizing thought. Buber criticized the political Messianism of the Nazis, who wanted to overthrow universal human rights. The inspiration for his critique of a society in which all values had collapsed stemmed from his

76.

The metaphysical idea that in the pure relationship one receives a “more,” connected to one’s being touched by the eternal, is already formulated in I and Thou, which was first published in 1923 and then published again at the occasion of Buber’s eightieth birthday with a postscriptum of Buber. See I and Thou, 158; Ich und Du, 96. — 44 —

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own Jewish tradition. Of course, dialogical behavior is not exclusively Jewish, but it was something that Buber knew was eminently present in the most brilliant periods of Jewish history. The Problem of Man, first published in Hebrew in 1942, discusses different philosophical anthropologies and constructs a dialogical view of humanity. In this manner, the book constitutes a protest against the inequality, submission, and enslavement inherent in the collectivist enterprise of Hitlerism. Like Hannah Arendt, Buber knew about the possible collapse of the political, which is the common ground and binding connection between different people. He constructed a vision in which not the will to power but the will to dialogue was central. Like Buber, Heschel opposed man’s individualism and his exaggerated concentration upon the satisfaction of his own needs. He felt that the (Freudian) circle of a person’s need and satisfaction is “too narrow for the fullness of his existence.”77 Heschel formulated his religious anthropology as follows: “Shamed, shocked at the misery of an overloaded ego, we seek to break out of the circle of the ego.” 78 Man’s dignity, rather, lay in the power of reciprocity.79 Instead of a collection of needs, man is God’s need. More specifically, the essence of Judaism is the awareness of the reciprocity in the Divine-human relationship, of the togetherness of God and man.80 Heschel considered Judaism as “an attempt to prove that in order to be a man, you have to be more than a man, that in order to be a people we have to be more than a people.” Israel is called upon to be a “holy people.” For Jews, there is no fellowship with God without the fellowship with Israel.81 In a larger perspective, the relationship with God takes place in the relationship with the human being. An anti-individualistic tendency characterizes Heschel’s writings: man is essentially linked to other human beings. It is our impression that Heschel had less interest in an analysis of collectivism. Buber’s warning against collectivism and narrow nationalism is not echoed in Heschel’s writings, where he focused 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

Heschel, Who Is Man, 57. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 402. Heschel, Who Is Man, 46. Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, 242. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 422–423. — 45 —

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more attention upon illnesses of the American society, such as the war in Vietnam and the oppression of the black citizenry. Georg Simmel, Buber’s teacher, had by this time already given a theoretical, sociological explanation of the complex tension between the individual and his society. In the fashion industry, for instance, one made a compromise between equalizing functions and individualization: there is individualization with distinguishing features, but there is also an equalizing factor that makes those who belong to the same class socially equal.82 A lifestyle was the result of a systematization of life as well as of the individual formation of life.83 Simmel’s pupil, Buber, was also aware of this creative tension, and he wanted to save the individual from the suffocating grip of totality without losing the connection from one person to another in society.

The Temptation of Nationalistic Egoism As pointed out by Paul Mendes-Flohr, Buber developed a universalistic vision after he himself was attracted to German patriotism, which he forcefully defended during World War I.84 In the course of this war, he became aware of the problem of collective egoism and constructed a politico-religious vision in which all people are organically linked to one other. The nation as the “extended ego” would not be the highest instance, since the King of Kings is above every earthly ruler.85 Buber now unmasked exaggerated nationalism as idolatry and advocated a dialogical spirit that he proposed would be the spirit of Israel that

82.

83. 84.

85.

Simmel, “Zur Psychologie der Mode. Soziologische Studie,” [1895] in Aufsaetze 1894– 1900 (Frankfurt o.M.: Suhrkamp, 1992), 106–107. Simmel, “Philosophie des Geldes,” in Aufsaetze, 689–690. Mendes-Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue. Martin Buber’s Transformation of German Social Thought (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989), 93–113. Typical for Buber’s patriotic engagement is his “Die Tempelweihe,” a speech held December 1914 at the occasion of the festival of Chanuka: Jews, who now fight each other, would fight for their Judaism, he declared, in a meaning that is still hidden. Jews would learn in the war what community is; and in blood and tears the desire for unity would grow. Buber, “Der Geist Israels und die Welt von heute” in An der Wende. Reden ueber das Judentum (Cologne and Olten: Jakob Hegner, 1952), 13–16. — 46 —

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sought the realization of unity.86 Nazism, a political force in Germany, was a pagan patriotism, totalitarian, racist, and anti-Semitic. Monologist propaganda and racism replaced dialogic ethics and destroyed the public space where all persons have rights. Slogans and lies became common. Instead of the art of politics, a tyranny was installed. Confronted with and threatened by such a pathological society, Buber highlighted the irreducibility of personal relations and of answerability in the community. He wanted to save human dignity by insisting upon the importance of human relationship and meeting, which would constitute the kernel of any healthy society. The will to dialogue in real communities had to replace the will to power of the totalitarianism of the left and the right. A dialogical community living organically in relation with other social and political entities would stand opposed to chauvinistic ultranationalism.

Judaism, Newly Formulated Buber rethought several central categories of the Jewish tradition, such as God, faith, religion, religiosity, Zionism, holiness, and Judaism itself, and took the radical step of linking them to his dialogical anthropology. The existence of one God, the “King of kings and Master of the world,”87 implied striving for a unified humanity. God is above men, and substituting men for God is an idolatrous act, he contends. Against the tribalism and tyranny of Nazi and Stalinist totalitarianism, he writes about one universal God unifying mankind. “Faith” is redefined as the development of a dialogical attitude that will lead to the experience of the eternal You. “Religion” as system could in itself become totalitarian, replacing God Himself by something human. Real “religiosity,” to the contrary, would lead to the creation of a just society. In Buber’s reformulation of Judaism, “Zionism” is less a normalizing national movement than the invitation to a peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians. “Holiness” does not lie in a land but in an ethical relationship with other persons, which is always above the political. 86. 87.

Buber, “Der Geist Israels,” 18–19. Buber, “Der Geist Israels,” 15. — 47 —

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Finally, Judaism itself is reformulated as the pioneer of humanity, the spiritual power that moves the human being toward the humanization of economy, society, and politics. While Buber distinguished between what Jews factually do and what they are required to do,88 at the same time he believed in the dialogical power revealed in Jewish history.

Responsibility of the Individual versus Totalitarianism Already in 1936, in “The Question of the Single One” (Die Frage an den Einzelnen), Buber related his dialogical thoughts to the political and social situation of his time.89 Frequently one finds in the literature on Buber the idea that his dialogical philosophy is irrelevant in the political domain. A close reading of “The Question to the Single One,” however, proves the contrary. In the essay, he discusses not only Kierkegaard’s thought on the individual but also the sacrifice of the person and the personal in a totalitarian system and finally the problem of an ideology that is not interested in truth and so suffocates dialogical relationships. The problematic of individualism and collectivism discussed in The Problem of Man was therefore already anticipated in this essay. Kierkegaard’s religious existentialism celebrated the ideal of the single one before God, without community. Buber reacted to this contention, positing that God and men are not rivals and that God is in fact the God of people, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He blamed Kierkegaard for the imagined separation, since Kierkegaard associated with God without relating to his beloved Regine Olsen. In his concentration upon himself and God alone, Kierkegaard forgot his relation to other human beings. His problem thus lies in his searching for God in the margin of life rather than in the midst of life. Buber quoted Kierkegaard, who wrote that the highest piety, when conceived of as a separation from the world, could be, in fact, the highest egoism. He remarked smilingly that there is no better argument against 88. 89.

Buber, “Der Geist Israels,” 31. Buber, Das dialogische Prinzip (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1962), 197–267; Buber, Werke. Erster Band. Schriften zur Philosophie (Munich and Heidelberg: Koesel and Lambert Schneider, 1962), 215–265. Hereafter referred to as Werke I. — 48 —

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Kierkegaard than Kierkegaard himself. The Danish existentialist could have overcome his anguish concerning the world and women by becoming related to God and his creatures, Buber contended. His polar, dualistic thinking about God as opposed to the finite world prevented him from experiencing salvation. For Buber, it is axiomatic that one only reaches God through His creatures, the divine through the human, the infinite through fulfilled finitude. In Buber’s dialogical and social thought, the spirit wants to be realized in the world and the finite human being desires a relationship with God. In his essay of 1936, as in The Problem of Man,90 he unmasks Kierkegaard’s philosophy as a spirituality estranged from the world. True religiosity does not flee from the world, but rather embraces the possibility of saying “you,” of living a dialogical existence in the midst of life. Yet Buber’s real concern in the essay, as in The Problem of Man, is the totalitarian society that suppresses even the relationship with God in its narcissistic fixation upon itself. Starting with the discussion of Kierkegaard’s single “one” before God, Buber therefore passes quickly to the discussion of the unique one, who is responsible for and engaged in the world and the political situation. The singular one does not leave the world; on the contrary, he is engaged in it in order to realize the spirit. In other words, spirit (i.e., dialogue) and politics are of necessity connected. According to Buber, a person should not be absorbed in the masses that do not comprehend the significance of individuals and otherness. In his eyes, the individual is not wrapped in a whole, but connected to others. Kierkegaard’s individual was lonely, separated from the rest of humanity. Buber’s individual, on the other hand, is related to others; he connects to them as fellow human beings (Genosse). Buber’s critique of Nazism is thus manifest in this essay of the thirties. He perceives the individual and his decisions as not absorbable into or consistent with a party system that decides for everyone. No program or command is allowed to dictate what a man has to do. Responsibility, on the contrary, works in “the consciousness of the spark” (das Gewissen des Fuenkleins), and once one takes upon himself responsibility, there is no security, 90.

Buber, Das Problem, 109. — 49 —

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only being called upon and being designated. For Buber, all are called and responsible and every individual challenges collectivity. The anti-totalitarian thoughts of Buber become even more clear and concrete in his discussion of the problematic theories of Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), Carl Schmitt (1888–1985), and Friedrich Gogarten (1887–1968). He is not wary of attacking these wellknown figures and speaks out loudly and clearly. Buber maintains, in opposition to Spengler, that man is not to be comprehended from a biologistic standpoint and that history is not purely allocation of power. Man is rather a dialogical being, called upon for intercultural acts that enrich and change the other. One should replace the exclusivist conflict model of existence with the dialogical, inclusive mode. Carl Schmitt, a theoretician of Nazism, advocated political homogeneity. He configured the political framework in polar terms of friend or enemy. Dissimilar to Schmitt, Buber does not conceive politics as a separate domain, with antithetic groups of friends and enemies. Politics, linked to ethics, is less ordained to separate than to bring together. Gogarten, finally, defined as the theological companion of Schmitt, postulates that ethical relevance is dependent upon politics. His theory forms the theological basis for the concept of the old police state, in which power is wielded as absolute. Buber, when it comes to political theory, for his part, is adamant that the state cannot decide instead of the individual and cannot usurp the responsibility of the individual, who is accountable to a higher, dialogical order, the Ordnung Gottes. He concludes his essay with some remarks on the Divine address to the individual and on truth. Collectivity cannot absorb the individual, who remains responsible for the world and for the other human being as a consequence of the Divine address. Truth is not to be politicized. One must realize the truth (Wahrheit), which is true (wahrhaft) if man concretizes it (wenn er sie bewaehrt). Truth therefore does not belong to me, or to us; it is linked to the responsibility of bringing the infinite into the finite. One does not have the truth; it is given to us to be enacted. A true community is only possible when individuals engage in public life in responsibility. It is a small miracle that Die Frage an den Einzelnen was published in 1936, because the article contained an unambiguous protest against the Nazi regime. In this essay, Buber reveals himself not — 50 —

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only as a foremost expositor of dialogical thoughts but also as a fierce opponent of any form of totalitarianism. In the thirties, Heschel was likewise anxious over what was happening in Germany. In the song “Millions of Eyes, Clogged,” published in 1933, he states that millions suffer from calamities and cry. In an explosion of emotions, he writes: .‫מיליאנען אויגן שטיקן זיך מיט איין טרער‬ .‫צוליב פארפלאנטערטע שיקזאלן – אומענדלעכע מאלער‬ !‫ דערלאנג מיר דיין געווער‬,‫גאט‬ ‫לאמיך דורכהאקן די גארדישע קנוילן‬ !‫אין געטלעכן וועבשטול פון אלעמענס מזלות‬

91

!‫ נישט וויל איך דיינע פויסטן טראגן‬,‫ניין‬ ,‫איך פארלאנג און בעט פון דיר נאר‬ ,‫דו זאלסט צו באצילן “לא תרצח!” זאגן‬ ,‫קאטאסטראפעס צו ווילדעווען פארזאגן‬ !‫ פון חיות פאריאגן‬,‫בלוטדארשט פון מענטשן‬

Millions of eyes are clogged with a common tear Because of tangled fates — endless calamities God, pass me Your weapons! Let me slash through the Gordian knots Of that idolatrous embroidery of people’s star-shaped fate! No, I don’t want to wear Your fists! I only beg, demand of You That You tell bacillae “Do not murder!” Avert catastrophe and rampage, Chase away bloodthirst in man and beast! 91

It is highly plausible that the song, published in 1933, is to be read as a protest against the great violence that was currently unfolding in German society. Heschel asks God to intervene in order to stop the viruses that destroy humanity. He is bewildered and wants to counter this sick violence in man and beast. Yet Heschel did not analyze the phenomenon of German totalitarianism as did Buber, who saw in Kierkegaard’s Enkelte a figure who did not engage with others. In his own relation to Kierkegaard, Heschel also highlights the problem of Kierkegaard’s dilemmatic thinking. But he, in turn, concentrates more upon the gap between man and God than upon the gap between man and man: “We are not told to decide between ‘Either-Or’, either God or the world, either this world or the world to come,” he declares. “We are told to accept Either and Or, God and the world. It is upon us to strive for a share in the world to come, as well as to let God have a share in this world.”92

91. 92.

Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God, 35. Heschel, Who Is Man, 93. — 51 —

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On a Suspension of the Ethical and on the Blessings of Individualism Another central text in Buber’s oeuvre that is relevant to his antitotalitarian position concerns the suspension of the ethical. This text was first published in 1952.93 The title “On a Suspension of the Ethical” (Von einer Suspension des ethischen) is already suggestive. How is it possible to put ethics into brackets? As in “The Question to the Single One,” Buber explicitly discusses Kierkegaard’s theory of obedience to a higher power, which brings the human being into a religious sphere that surpasses the ethical one. In the present text, he further debates real-life problems. But now, after the Shoah, his views become more incisive. Kierkegaard qualified Abraham as “knight of faith” because Abraham surpassed the boundary of ethics and general rules in order to enter the realm of faith as a single one. In his Christian reading of this story, Kierkegaard did not take into account that God only “tempted” Abraham and that He was satisfied with Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son. Ultimately, God prevented the act. Buber writes that people imitate the Absolute, a phenomenon already attested to in the Bible. False absolutes always command to sacrifice the thing that is dearest, with the aim of achieving a different goal. One cannot but think about what happened in Germany when Buber concludes his article with the disturbing idea that one still sacrifices to Moloch in order to form and unite societies, as if fratricide could pave the way to fraternity. It would be easy to provide Hasidic parallels for what Buber writes on the binding of Isaac and on the nonsacrifice as a religious act. Elsewhere, Ephraim Meir has compared Buber’s thought with that of Elimelekh of Lizansk and with that of Mordechai Joseph Leiner of Isbica.94 The 93.

94.

This text on Kierkegaard’s interpretation of the binding of Isaac appears in Eclipse of God (Gottesfinsternis), which was first published in English in 1952 and in German in 1953. See Buber, Eclipse of God: Studies in the Relation Between Religion and Philosophy (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952); and Gottesfinsternis, in Werke I, 589–593. Meir, “Buber’s Dialogical Interpretation of the Binding of Isaac — between Kierkegaard and Hasidism” (Hebrew), in The Faith of Abraham. In the Light of Interpretation throughout the Ages, M. Hallamish, H. Kasher, and Y. Silman, eds. (Ramat-Gan: BarIlan University Press, 2002), 281–293. — 52 —

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former wrote that Abraham as the “foundation of the world” with the tremendous power of his prayer, knew that at the end Isaac would be saved. The latter wrote that Abraham had to find out what God, Elohim, revealed to him “in an unclear mirror,” meaning in a way that had to be clarified. In order to understand the revelation, Abraham purified himself from any outside interest, even that of being the father of his son, but finally he acted according to his paternal feelings, which paradoxically confirmed Divine will, that is, that he did not have to sacrifice his son. Also, even disregarding possible Hasidic influences or parallels, Buber’s protest against a religiosity devoid of humanism is loud and clear. Sacrificing sons seems to be an eternal human temptation, which according to Buber was already dealt with in the Bible as something that is forbidden for every Jew after Abraham and, in fact, for every human being. In the framework of his protest against totalitarianism, the Binding of Isaac functioned as a prototypical story, which forbids the sacrificing of our dear ones or the dearest in ourselves. Buber’s dialogical teaching shows a different way: Abraham could only say to God “Here I am” (Gen. 22:1) because he also said to his son “Here I am” (Gen. 22:7). God and men are not opposed to each other, they are rather partners. In Buber’s eyes, the eternal You is only approachable in I-you relationships and in societies that respect plurality and create a dialogue with other societies. No greater contrast could be imagined than the ways of such societies and that of totalitarian regimes, which separated politics and morality. Buber’s focus on the interhuman relationship can be found in Heschel too, who, more than Buber, paralleled this relationship with the bond between man and God: “To be is to stand for, and what man stands for is the great mystery of being His partner. God is in need of man,” he writes.95 Both thinkers presented man as the partner of God, yet, this partnership had a different theological connotation in Heschel: man is, for Heschel, a need of God. Heschel’s interpretation of Kierkegaard, in contrast to Buber, positively evaluates Kierkegaard’s position: like the Kotzker rebbe, Kierkegaard stresses the interiority of the soul. What interests the 95.

Heschel, God in Search of Man, 413. — 53 —

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Kotzker rebbe and Kierkegaard is less the relationship to fellow man but rather the individual face-to-face with the Absolute. Individualism characterizes their positions; real religiosity would not exist in the masses, in their vision, but instead in the souls of an elite. Heschel learned from two masters: the Ba’al Shem Tov, who loved every creature immensely, and the Kotzker rebbe, who searched out the truth without compromise. The rebbe of Kotzk as well as Kierkegaard developed an anti-institutional attitude in which they protested against a frozen religiosity and the norms of the masses. Heschel’s appreciation of the rebbe of Kotzk and consequently of Kierkegaard, who both lauded the individuality of the religious person, is in contrast to Buber, who did not appreciate Kierkegaard because he was afraid of the sacrifice of the dearest in oneself, which could become a prototypical example in a totalitarian society. For Buber, the individuality of man was immediately linked to the fellow man. For Heschel, the individuality of man and even the separation from the masses in loneliness was a necessity in order to come to the truth: each individual had a special, relevant role toward God.96 This does not imply that Heschel neglected the concern with the other, an area in which one could surpass himself, but that focus must be centered also on the individual, who does not merely negate the other but is the source that gives man his unique quality. 97 True, the existence of others is a prerequisite for the I to know itself, but in order to know the others, one must, in turn, know oneself.98 From the Ba’al Shem Tov, Heschel learned the anti-Kierkegaard lesson that one had to be connected with others; from the Kotzker rebbe he inherited the thought that man was an irreducible individual. Man is not alone not only because he is the object of God’s care, but also because he is situated in a social context. In his personal life, Heschel considered loneliness as both a burden and a blessing, indispensable for the stillness that he needed to confront the perplexities in life. Three events changed his attitude. 96.

97. 98.

Even-Chen, “Lonely Man of Faith? Loneliness in the Poetry of Abraham Joshua Heschel as Background for His Later Thought” (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Bet Morasha, forthcoming). Heschel, A Passion for Truth, 144. Heschel, Who Is Man, 18. — 54 —

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There were first the numerous onslaughts upon his inner being, which deprived him of his ability to remain in his stillness. The second event was “the discovery that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself.” The third event that changed his attitude toward social involvement was his study of the prophets. He discerned that there is an immense agony in the world, and that one has to give a voice to the poor in order “to prevent the desecration of the soul and the violation of our dream of honesty.”99 Nevertheless, although he talks about the loneliness that he appreciates in Kierkegaard, Heschel joins Buber’s thoughts about the problem of the sacrifice of Isaac. In Heschel’s account of the Binding of Isaac, Abraham first enthusiastically followed the Divine will to sacrifice his son, but the greatest sacrifice still had to take place: to hear to the voice of the angel that prevented him from sacrificing his son.100 Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son, to follow God’s command, but at the moment of the sacrifice itself he had to destroy the entire vision he had erected. Returning to the world, however, his point of view had changed forever. Abraham had had to leave everything in order to become an individual before God, but at the same time, he had to know that this is impossible without his son.101 After that greatest temptation, Abraham returned to the world. Finally, Buber and Heschel unite in their account of the Binding of Isaac, positing that the most important thing is that Abraham embraced his son, and with his son, he embraced the world.

The Spirit of Israel Buber not only criticized totalitarianism but also wanted to shape reality by permanently promoting the soft power of dialogue, through which man can be transformed. The quintessence of his own socio-religious vision on the relation between politics and ethics is to be found in a 99.

100. 101.

Heschel, “The Reasons for My Involvement in the Peace Movement,” in Moral Grandeur, 224. Heschel, A Passion for Truth, 227. Even-Chen, The Binding of Isaac — Mystical and Philosophical Interpretations of the Bible (Hebrew) (Tel-Aviv: Yediot Aharonot and Chemed, 2006), 201–226. — 55 —

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speech made in Jerusalem in 1939, where he talks about “The spirit of Israel and the world of today” (“Der Geist Israels und die Welt von heute”).102 Buber dreamed about the creation of a dialogical society. He brings together faith and political behavior, Sinai and society, Israel and the Kingdom of God. He defines the spirit of Israel as a way of living in which one does not confuse the nation, which constitutes an expanded ego with the Kingdom of God itself. It is Israel’s destiny to bring the Kingdom of God into the world and to fight the idolatrous idea of the nation in its role as a godhead. However, Buber warns his Jerusalem public that the Jewish people do not “have” the spirit that unites human beings. This spirit has to be attained and may, in fact, take possession of us. He explains the hatred of the Jews as a consequence of the fact that nations want the God of Israel, yet not His high demands. The only way to solve this problem lies in the realization of God’s demands to come to unity and to create an authentic society. In an outline of a complicated history of ideas, Buber describes how the horrible events of the thirties, which are for him the result of the survival of Gnostic ideas, came into being. Jews always distinguished between creation, revelation, and redemption. For Paul of Tarsus, however, revelation and redemption became one in the person of Christ. A few decades later, Marcion separated in a Gnostic way the Old Testament from the New One: the redeeming God would have no connection at all with the Creator. In Marcion’s theology, this world is worthless, and only God’s grace is able to redeem men. Buber remarks that the Church did not accept Marcionism, but in the twentieth century Adolf von Harnack drew consequences from the Gnostic thesis when he branded the “preservation” of the Old Testament in the Protestant canon as “the consequence of religious and ecclesiastical paralysis.”103 102. 103.

Buber, “Der Geist Israels,” 13–33. See A. von Scheliha on Adolf von Harnack. The liberal theologian von Harnack (1851– 1930) contrasted the light of the Jesus with the darkness of the Judaism at that time. Jesus could not be understood without Judaism, for Jews had the prophets and monotheism, but unfortunately they added much more (aber sie hatten leider noch sehr viel anderes daneben). Their religion became like a complaint (beschwert), pale (getruebt), distorted (verzerrt), and unefficient (unwirksam) (A. von Scheliha, “Adolf — 56 —

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Buber concludes his historico-theological survey with the perception that, three years after Harnack’s death in 1930, his ideas became reality through violence and terror.104 The dualistic separation of spirit and world that started with Paul had therefore in Buber’s eyes catastrophic consequences for Christianity and for Germany, in which the original unity of the worldly order and the spiritual order was broken. A genuine people, Buber concludes, is a nation of great peace. Against the dualism of a redeemed soul in an unredeemed world stands the reality that one has to live in the concrete world a life of responsibility in the service of unity (das Leben der Verantwortung im Dienst der Einheit). In his Jerusalem speech, Buber therefore explained Hitlerism as a Gnostic way of thinking, in which Judaism is rejected and condemned as too occupied with the reparation of the world, whereas true “redemption” would lie in a racial and biologist phantasm, detached from this world. In his own alternative, dialogical thought, unity had to be achieved in the recognition that a national spirit is never to be made absolute. Buber promoted the dialogical man, whereas Heschel characterized his own ideal of man, the prophet, as the “individual who said No to his society, condemning its habits and assumptions, its complacency,

104.

von Harnack und Leo Baeck. Zwei liberale Theologen, ein verpasster Dialog,” in S. von Kortzfleisch, W. Gruenberg, T. Schramm, eds., Wende-Zeit im Verhaeltnis von Juden und Christen [Berlin: EBVerlag, 2009], 176). Von Harnack perceived Judaism through “Paulinian glasses” with focus upon critique on the Law and neglect of the perspective of the history of salvation that gave an autonomous place to Judaism (182). Already in “The Faith of Judaism,” which was first published in 1933, Buber notes (263) that John (not Paul!) wove revelation and redemption into one and so substituted a dyad for the traditional triad creation-revelation-redemption. Marcion tore the Creator away from the redeeming God. He reduced the triad creation-revelation-redemption to one moment: Jesus became both the revelator and redeemer, who freed humanity from the bad material world that had been created by a demiurge. The Old Testament with its Law was rejected. Buber notes that what started with John and then Marcion continued in Adolf von Harnack’s theology (Buber, “The Faith of Judaism,” in The Writings of Martin Buber, ed. W. Herberg [New York: Meridian Books, 1958], 263). In his Jerusalem speech of 1939, he more directly defines Marcion’s Gnostic dualism as a spiritual contribution to the destruction of Israel. Marcion’s spiritual gift to emperor Hadrian was continued by Adolf von Harnack. His gift now changed hands, and this Messianic thought that negated the world prepared the domain for Hitler’s actions against the Jews. Buber, “Der Geist Israels,” 27–31. — 57 —

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waywardness, and syncretism.”105 He thus rescued the individual from the masses, who could never neutralize the prophetic task of reconciling man and God. As Buber’s responsible individual, the prophet of Heschel often swam against the stream. The prophetic “no” was and is necessary, since “man’s true fulfillment depends upon communion with that which transcends him.”106 In spite of all the parallels between Buber’s individual and Heschel’s prophet, Buber’s social rescue of the individual out of a totalitarian society is nevertheless different from Heschel’s view on the social and political protests that will follow from the prophet’s openness “to the presence and emotion of the transcendent Subject.”107 In his utopian thought, Buber considers the people of Israel to be the antitotalitarian pioneering force in the world, who are able to unite the world. Heschel also believed in the possibility of bringing salvation to the world. In his poems, he attributed to himself, as a son of the Jewish people who bore within them prophetic powers, a quasi-messianic function.108 Although his family, especially his mother, expected him to be a leader of a Hasidic community, Heschel felt an even greater task was given to him: to be the savior of an entire generation.109 Jacob Teshima, the Japanese student of Heschel, asked him why he did not accept the invitation of Abraham Joshua Heschel of Brooklyn, the Kopicziniczer Rebbe, who urged Heschel to succeed him several times.110 Heschel replied: “I thought that there were other people who could take the leadership of the Kopicziniczer Hasidim […] So I decided to leave the care of the Kopicziniczers to the hand of someone else. It is my duty to care for the world outside of the Tabernacle.”111 The same spirit hovers in the poems of the young Heschel: 105. 106. 107. 108.

109. 110.

111.

Heschel. The Prophet, vol. II, xvii. Heschel, Who Is Man, 87. Heschel, The Prophets, vol. II, 89. Even-Chen, “On the Holiness of the People of Israel in the Thought of Abraham Joshua Heschel,” in M. Poorthuis and J. Schwartz, eds., A Holy People: Jewish and Christian Perspectives on Religious Communal Identity (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006), 361–377. Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God, 118–119. Jacob Y. Teshima, “My Teacher,” in No Religion Is an Island: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Interreligious Dialogue in America, 1940–1972, eds. Harold Kasimow and Byron L. Sherwin (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), 65. Ibid. — 58 —

----------------------------------------------------  Aieka: Between Man and Man  ---------------------------------------------------Yet sometimes my feelings grow large, And I think: I am the ark, Where every creature’s craving waits, And my heart, its latch trembling, pounds and constantly bends to open itself. Though I stand alone behind the door With the secrets of my longing —  yet everyone raps at my door.

,‫דאך טיילמאל ווערט מיין פילן גרויס‬ ,‫ איך בין די תיבה‬:‫אז מיר דאכט‬ ‫ווו אלע ברואימס תשוקה ווארט‬ ‫ שפארט‬,‫ איר קלאמקע ציטערט‬,‫און מיין הארץ‬ .‫און בייגט זיך כסדר אויפצומאכן‬ ‫כאטש כ’שטיי אליין גאר אונטער טיר‬ — ‫ביי די סודות פון מיין בענקשאפט‬ .‫קלאפן אלע דאך ביי מיר‬

In another poem, called “People’s Eyes Wait,” he promised himself: ‫דרייסט‬-‫און איך האב צוגעזאגט פארעקשנט‬ — ‫אז כ’וועל די צארטקייט אויף דער וועלט פארמערן‬ ‫ אז וועל נאך אומגיין אויף דער ערד‬,‫און מיר דאכט‬

112

‫מיט ליכט פון אלע שטערן‬ !‫אין מיינע אויגן‬

And I, with stubborn boldness, have promised that I will increase tenderness in this world —  And it seems to me that I will, in time Move on through this earth With the brightness of all the stars In my eyes! 112

In his poems, Heschel expresses loneliness, but he also mentions feeling responsible and burdened with the enormous task of bringing salvation to the world. Later on, he considered the entire Jewish nation as a people who had a prophetic task. In his introduction of The Prophets, he describes how he still thinks that the method of phenomenology used in Die Prophetie is sound.113 Nevertheless, he adds: I have long since become wary of impartiality, which is itself a way of being partial. The prophet’s existence is either relevant or irrelevant. If irrelevant, I cannot truly be involved in it; if relevant, then my impartiality is but a pretense. Reflection may succeed in isolating an object; reflection itself cannot be isolated. Reflection is part of a situation. 112. 113.

Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God, 119, 39. Perlman argues that one cannot understand Heschel’s work without recognizing its link to phenomenology (Perlman, Revelation, 1–2). Nathan Rotenstreich relates to Heschel’s doctoral thesis “Die Prophetie” and notes: “We find in Heschel the awareness of his indebtedness to phenomenology when he explicitly says that he is concerned with the description of the essence of prophetic assertions and not with their truth” (Rotenstreich, “On Prophetic Consciousness,” The Journal of Religion 54, no. 3 (1974): 186. In The Prophets, however, Heschel goes beyond phenomenology. John C. Merkle remarks that Heschel only uses the phenomenological method in a first stage. He is not merely interested in understanding a phenomenon but also in clarifying its existence; and in this way, he goes beyond the borders of the phenomenological method. See Merkle, The Genesis of Faith (New York and London: Macmillan Publishing Company and Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1985), 32. — 59 —

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The situation of a person immersed in the prophets’ words is one of being exposed to a ceaseless shattering of indifference, and one needs a skull of stone to remain callous to such blows.114

In his situational thinking, Heschel thus develops a sympathetic view of the prophets that identify with God’s pathos: the people of Israel have the task to realize God’s vision in the world. In his 1935 correspondence with Buber, mentioned in the foreword, Heschel criticizes him, for giving to the prophetic existence a paradigmatic meaning instead of a real one. The prophet does not merely illustrate something, Heschel declares, he is a partner of God, and as such his existence has special significance. For Buber, the unification of the world was the aim in society; for Heschel, the aim was to realize God’s dream of the world as understood by the different prophets and by prophetic people until today.

How to Be in the Land of Israel Buber highlighted the necessity of a critical dimension in the notions of the people and the land Israel. Leaving Germany for Zion in 1938, he saw the land of Israel as a place where social justice could be realized and where cooperation between different people could come into being. Israel was for him destined not to assimilate into the nationalisms of the nations. Buber was a critical, nonideological participant in the Zionist movement. Socialism would replace a form of individualism that praises a solitarian existence, and individual responsibility would always contest collectivism.115. Is not also the gorilla an individual and aren’t termites a collective? A third way was possible, however, a way that leads to a real person and a real community. In his utopian, dialogical thinking, Buber could not agree with group collectivism or collective egoism. National life would have to take into account supranational, Divine demands (see Judges 8:23). He expected from Israel no less than that it would play a central function in the 114. 115.

Heschel, The Prophets, vol. I, xii. Buber, Pfade in Utopia (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1950). Buber finished this book in 1945; it wasn’t published until 1950. — 60 —

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creation of a new world.116 He believed that the spirit could influence reality and pave the way to a vision in which politics and ethics are interwoven. The challenge of Buber’s social and political thinking remains relevant until today, inter alia in the Middle East, as well as in the European Union. At a public hearing in the European Parliament on September 18, 2008, Mr. Pavel Zacek from the Prague-based Institute for Totalitarian Studies stressed the idea that Europe as a whole has not come to terms with its own past. The Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes, he said, are “the main disasters that blighted the 20th century.” The plague and threat of totalitarianism has to be neutralized, not only by hard power but also by the soft power of the creation of dialogical situations. Buber resisted collectivism, which is today called totalitarianism. The temptation of a total thought and organization satisfying everybody and giving all men a feeling of grandiosity because of their belonging to an all-absorbing matrix is attractive, especially in religious fanatical movements. Buber’s antitotalitarian thought offers an antidote for the addiction to a homogeneous society that suppresses dialogue, which unites different people and groups.117 Buber did not have the last word on the renewal of societies, but he contributed to the construction of civilization in his emphasis on the irreplaceable responsibility of all in each and every period of history. Since civilization is something that can be destroyed, progress is never guaranteed and regression may take place. The idea of a civilization as a process of creating and maintaining the link between people is present in what one could call Buber’s “active memory.”118 Active memory asks for alertness, and Buber was attentive to the possible deterioration and decomposition of the social bond between people.

116.

117. 118.

In this sense, Buber’s view is close to that of Heschel, who wrote that the meaning of the State of Israel in prophetic terms lies in the redemption of the entire humanity. See Heschel, Israel, 225. Meir, Reading. See Meir, Towards an Active Memory. Society, Man and God after Auschwitz (Hebrew) (Tel-Aviv: Resling, 2006) and Meir, “On a New Age in Democracy as Part of the Holocaust Memory,” Review of Shmuel Trigano, The Democratic Ideal and the Shoah, trans. Gila Walker (Albany: Suny Press, 2009), in SPME, September 14, 2010. — 61 —

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He was conscious that negative, destructive forces are real, and that civilization might be destroyed. The kernel of an “active memory” is correlative to the reflection on what makes a human being really human. For Buber, the nearness and presence of one human being to another, of one group to another, in other words, dialogical life, is the theme of such a reflection. Courageous opposition to totalitarianism is necessary in the creation of an active memory. The reaction against discrimination, segregation, and collectivism, as it comes to the fore in central texts in Buber’s oeuvre analyzed above, as well as in Buber’s 1939 response to Mahatma Gandhi,119 who proposed that the Jews who wanted to flee Germany remain there and pursue an attitude of radical nonviolence (satyagraha or soul force) to the Nazi atrocities, is vital in an active memory. In an integrative, non-dilemmatic approach, realistic and idealistic approaches are not opposed, but rather they complement each other and are both necessary in navigating conflict management efforts.120

Responsibility for God’s Kingdom In the 1944 article “The Meaning of This War (World War II),” Heschel writes about fascism, but he explicitly says that fascism cannot serve “as an alibi for our conscience.” In a critical way, he looks upon our own acts. All of mankind is involved, and all men are responsible: We have failed to fight for right, for justice, for goodness; as a result we must fight against wrong, against injustice, against evil. We have failed to offer sacrifices on the altar of peace; now we must offer sacrifices on the altar of war.121

119.

120.

121.

Buber’s letter is dated February 24, 1939. It was sent together with a similar letter by Judah L. Magnes, president of the Hebrew University on March 9, 1939. Gandhi did not reply. Martin Buber and Judah Magnes, Two Letters to Ghandi (Jerusalem: Reuben Mass, 1939); Glatzer and Mendes-Flohr, The Letters of Martin Buber, 476–486. Meir, “An Integrated Strategy for Peacebuilding: Judaic Approaches” (together with Ben Mollov and Chaim Lavie), Die Friedens-Warte. Journal of International Peace and Organization, 82, 2–3 (2007): 137–158. Heschel, “The Meaning of This War,” in Moral Grandeur, 210. — 62 —

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Buber too has a critical view of the Jewish people itself, and he expresses his thought that the Jewish people had not fulfilled the task he envisioned for them and that the life of the people did not become a life of justice.122 Heschel was even more explicit in talking about the responsibility of all for the terrible situation. In 1936, Heschel published in Berlin “The Meaning of Repentance.” The article deals with the Days of Awe. It begins: “When we pray we fulfill a sacred function. At stake is the sovereignty and the judgment of God.”123 These sentences surprise the reader because one is used to seeing the praying individual as the one who stands trial. What is Heschel’s intention? Does he mean to say that Divine rule and power are at peril? Heschel answers this question by addressing the nature of the relationship between the Creator and his creation. The eternal God existed before creation, and indeed creation reflects His will: Sovereignty can exist only in a relationship. Without subordinates this honor remains abstract. God desired kingship and from that will creation emerged. But now the kingly dignity of God depends upon us.124

God’s rule is dependent upon human recognition. Man may revolt and “overthrow” God’s rule, in which case God shall no longer be “King.” In reference to his own times, Heschel writes: The establishment or destruction of the kingly dignity of God occurs now and in the present, through and in us. In all that happens in the world, in thought, conversation, actions, the kingdom of God is at stake.125

Heschel alludes to the immense power held by man. His is not an abstract philosophical thought, for he writes his words in the midst of an era of dire anti-Semitism which casts doubt over the reign of God. In the rage of these terrible times, the people of Israel have to assume the Divine rule. Although Heschel does not address the question of God’s absolute power directly, it seems that in creating the world God 122. 123. 124. 125.

Buber, “Der Geist Israels,” 21. Heschel, “The Meaning of Repentance,” in Moral Grandeur, 68. Ibid. Ibid. — 63 —

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willingly chose to minimize His own power. As a consequence, man is responsible for God’s Kingdom.126 In the article of 1944, with the problematic title “Meaning of This War,” Heschel writes that the Nietzschean will to power reigns and that we worshipped force: Good and evil, which were once as real as day and night, have become a blurred mist. In our everyday life we worshipped force, despised compassion, and obeyed no law but our unappeasable appetite. The vision of the sacred has all but died in the soul of man. And when greed, envy, and the reckless will to power, the serpents that were cherished in the bosom of our civilization, came to maturity, they broke out of their dens to fall upon the helpless nations.127

The remedy for the present situation lies therefore in Heschel’s eyes in the human responsibility for the Kingdom of God upon earth. Heschel wrote magnificent pages on the sublime value of freedom, which is “an act of engagement of the self to the spirit, a spiritual event.” 128 Freedom, which has to be actualized again and again, is a great value that can be trampled down in society. Heschel is aware of the danger of delegating power to any human institution in order to make ultimate decisions. The refusal to do so “derives its strength either from the awareness of one’s mysterious dignity or from the awareness of one’s ultimate responsibility.” The vulgarization of society could “deprive man of his ability to appreciate the sublime burden of freedom. Like Esau he may be ready to sell his birthright for a pot of lentils.”129 Against this enslaving of man in totalitarian systems, Heschel endeavors to bring man to his freedom. Heschel, as Buber, thought that all of life had to be sanctified, and that religion is not limited to some spiritual realm in human culture. 126.

127. 128.

129.

Even-Chen, “God’s Omnipotence and Presence in Heschel’s Philosophy,” Shofar 26, no. 1 (2007): 41–71. This idea of the contraction of God’s power is also present in Hans Jonas (1903–1993) who, however, considered the contraction to be more radical since he did not count with any Divine intervention. See Jonas, “Der Gottesbegriff”; Meir, Active Memory, 61–65. Heschel, “The Meaning of This War,” in Moral Grandeur, 210. Heschel, “Religion in a Free Society,” in The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence (1958: reprint, New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1966), 16. Ibid. — 64 —

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Religiosity in that sense would have to take into account politics. The weakness of many systems of moral philosophy for Heschel lies in their isolationism, as if neutral acts were possible. One does not have to seek morality in a certain region and to cut it off from the rest of life.130 It should pervade all life. As Rosenzweig linked the Divine commandments to the whole of Jewish life and as Buber linked religiosity to the whole man in all his acts, Heschel linked morality to the entire life. To be or not to be is not the question: how to be and how not to be is the essence of the question.131 Like Buber, Heschel had a utopian vision of the return of the Jews to the land of Israel. He thought that this return marked “a major event within the mysterious history that began with a lonely man — Abraham — whose destiny was to be a blessing to all nations.” The present generation had “to assert that promise and that destiny: to be a blessing to all nations.”132 Heschel saw the Zionist enterprise as “a chapter of an encompassing, meaning-bestowing drama.” The Bible would be “an unfinished drama,” and being in the land involved “sharing the consciousness of the ancient biblical dwellers in the land, a sense of carrying out the biblical legacy.”133 To be sure, Heschel did not identify the State of Israel with the messianic promise, but for him it did make the messianic promise plausible134 since the ultimate meaning of being in the land had to be formulated in terms of the vision of the prophets who had dreamed about the redemption of all man. “The religious duty of the Jew is to participate in the process of continuous redemption, in seeing that justice prevails over power, that awareness of God penetrates human understanding.” 135 In our chapter on Zionism, we will come back to the attitudes of Heschel and Buber on the land of Israel. Meanwhile, it is clear that both thinkers did not limit the scope of their visions to the importance of being in the land, for how to be in the land was the deeper question. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135.

Heschel, God in Search of Man, 382. Heschel, Israel, 225. Heschel, Israel, 221. Heschel, Israel, 222. Heschel, Israel, 223. Heschel, Israel, 225. — 65 —

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Heschel and Buber both urged their readers to respond to the Divine address “Where are you?” They approached the human being as called upon. Buber in I and Thou proceeded from the human being to the Divine presence, whereas Heschel started the other way around, with the Divine vision of man. Buber considered the I as authentic when it is in relation; Heschel wanted to save primarily a person’s individuality and viewed the I as object of God’s care. In the thoughts of both men, authentic religiosity had implications for society and politics, and the people of Israel occupied a special place in establishing the kingdom of God. Their standpoints on society and politics and on the role of the people of Israel can be understood more particularly through depicting the common ground and divergences in their approach to God, with which the next chapter deals.

— 66 —

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---------------------------------- Chapter II  -----------------------------------

The Approach to God

Since Buber and Heschel are both religious thinkers, they developed a concept of man that cannot be separated from their approach to God. Heschel’s and Buber’s approaches to the Divine reality differ substantially, however. With his Hasidic background, Heschel experienced God as intimately connected to his own existence. His poem “Petition”1 expresses this in a sublime way: :‫ זע‬,‫ א‬.‫פארוואר באהאלטסט פאר אונדזער תשוקה זיך‬ ‫אונדזערע ליידנשאפטן זענען פארשטעלטע בענקשאפט‬ ,‫נאך דיר‬ ,‫אונדזערע זינד – א נויטגעטראנק אין דארשט נאך דיר‬ ‫און דיין שוויגן איז גיהנם אויף דער ערד‬ -- -‫איך שפיר דיין אויער נאנט צו מיינע בעטנדיקע ליפן‬ .‫ ס’איז דיין הקפדה הארציקער ווי מיין רחמנות‬:‫און וויס‬ ‫נאר טיילמאל טוט א שפריץ די גאל פון גרויל און שרייט‬ !‫ גאט אליין איז אונדזער קטיגור‬-- :‫פון טויזנט מיילער‬

Truly, You hide from our craving for You. Oh, see: Our lustful passions disguise our need for You, Our sins — a desperate thirst for You, And Your silence — gehinnom, hell on earth. I feel Your ear near to my beseeching lips, and know that Your strict rule is kinder than my pity. But at times bile spurts from horror, and screams Through a thousand mouths: God Himself is our prosecutor!

Heschel’s familiarity with a personal God has no parallel in Buber’s thought, as Buber conceived of God as “also” a person and had different notions about God at different periods of his life. Buber’s most dominant tenet on God is that one approaches Him through interhuman dialogue. Both thinkers had different visions of God before and after the Shoah; neither approached God as an idea, an ideal, or a concept, but rather as a living reality. For Heschel, as for Rosenzweig, God is a “name,” not to be absorbed in an objectifying totality: God is exceptional and extraordinary.2 Buber’s alternate approach identified 1. 2.

Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God, 195. Heschel, “Jewish Theology,” The Synagogue school 28, no. 1 (1969): 4–18; reprint in S. — 67 —

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God with the presence that never becomes an “it.” That is, Heschel conceives of God more from outside, and Buber, more from inside. Heschel’s “metasymbolic” protest against the use of God as a symbol could be understood as a protest mainly against Buber’s thoughts in his early predialogical period, when he interpreted the unification of man as the realization of God. The technique of symbolization was for Heschel in human thought, in which there was also the awareness of the ineffable, the possibility of radical amazement. The mind produces ideas and translates insights into symbols, but deeper knowledge is about the impossibility of saying what “is.”3 Heschel wrote: “The awareness of the unknown is earlier than the awareness of the known. Next to our mind are not names, words, symbols, but the nameless, the inexpressible, being.” For the early Buber, it was not the ineffable that was important but the potential within the human being, who in a Nietzschean mode could “become what he is.” Buber’s approach to God as it comes into the fore in his mature thought remains a riddle unless one is aware of his all-pervading dialogical

3.

Heschel, Moral Grandeur, 162: “The God of Israel is a name, not a notion. There is a difference between a ‘name’ and a ‘notion.’ I am suggesting to you: don’t teach notions of God, teach the name of God. A notion applies to all objects of similar properties. A name applies to an individual. The name ‘God of Israel’ applies to the one and only God of all men. A notion describes, defines; a name evokes. A notion is derived from a generalization; a name is learned through acquaintance. A notion you can conceive; a name you call.” Rosenzweig, in his The Star of Redemption, also stressed the importance of one’s name that challenges totality. He wrote that a person’s name is not “sound and fury” (Schall und Rauch) but “word and fire” (Wort und Feuer): a person’s given name makes up his uniqueness and denotates human individuation. See Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erloesung (Bibliothek Suhrkamp, 973) (Frankfurt o.M.: Suhrkamp, 1988), 209; Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, trans. W. W. Hallo (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), 188; and Meir, Letters of Love. Franz Rosenzweig’s Spiritual Biography and Oeuvre in Light of the Gritli Letters (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), 40. According to Idel, Gershom Scholem understood Jewish mysticism differently from Heschel, who undermined the importance of symbolism. Scholem reacted against Heschel categorically and rather sharply. He wrote: “I cannot by any means support the view, here put forth […] that Rabbinic Judaism is outside the categories of symbolism.” Idel notes that Heschel touched a central nerve in the phenomenology of Kabbalah as offered by Scholem, who reacted. Heschel believed in the possibility of a direct contact with God, and this contradicted the general mode of Scholem’s understanding of Jewish mysticism (“Abraham J. Heschel on Mysticism and Hasidism,” Modern Judaism 29 [2009]: 94). — 68 —

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perception. In this chapter we will situate his approach to God in the framework of his reflections on Beziehung — the idealistic orientation of the I to a you — and on Begegnung as an event, which is more than a mere subjective attitude but rather points to mutuality in relationships. However, one cannot understand Buber’s dialogical approach to the Divine reality without taking into account the evolution of his thinking from an approach to God as immanent to an approach to God as more transcendent. Buber’s idea of God substantially changed after he wrote his I and Thou (1923),4 in which he exposed and detailed his position on the relationship to others and to God. We may suppose that Heschel knew well this masterpiece of Buber and that he had it in mind when he developed his own view on the Divine. In the beginning of the twentieth century, however, before his dialogical thought, Buber knew a more mystical phase, which he left aside after what he called a “conversion” (eine Bekehrung).5 It is certainly plausible that Heschel, in his rejection of mysticism, had in mind Buber’s early mystical position, which has some remnants in his dialogical period. After I and Thou, in his post-Shoah thought and even before the Shoah, that is, under the influence of the Bible, which he studied intensively in the twenties and the thirties, but foremost under Rosenzweig’s influence,6 Buber changed his earlier view on God in favor of a personal and transcendent God, who is “above” and who in later works, after the Shoah, is also absent and hiding, in hester panim, but still reveals His will in a dialogical way. In these ulterior stages as well as in I and Thou, Buber leaves his view on God as to be realized by the subject and he opposes man’s magic manipulation of God, situating Him first of all in the interhuman relationship.7 4.

5. 6. 7.

Buber planned to write a five-volume system, but finally he produced this unsystematic essay, which he wrote in an overpowering inspiration. Friedman, Encounter on the Narrow Ridge: A Life of Martin Buber (New York: Paragon House, 1991), 126, 129. Horwitz, Buber’s Way to “I and Thou” described how Buber’s fourth, fifth, sixth, and eighth lectures in the Lehrhaus form an early version of parts I and III of I and Thou. Buber, “Eine Bekehrung,” in Werke I, 186–187. Horwitz, Buber’s Way to “I and Thou,” 226–229. In “Eclipse of God,” Buber states that human deeds obscure God’s face. The incapacity to say “you” is the “Lord of the hour.” This means that the human being has an unavoidable responsibility for the dialogue with God. See “Gottesfinsternis,” in Werke I, 598–599. — 69 —

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Already in the 1923 written foreword of Reden ueber das Judentum, where he assembles lectures from 1909 until 1918, Buber corrects his own previous vision. He intends to avoid inexact and inauthentic elements (das Ungenaue und Uneigentliche) that appear in his speeches and clarifies things (eine Klaerung). In his notable foreword, Judaism is not a teaching or culture, but a religious reality. It is not a religious phenomenon, an interiority, but a relationship between man and God. God is therefore not a metaphysical idea or a moral ideal, a psychological or social projection, or something that becomes and develops in the human being. In Judaism, Buber states, one meets God. In this famous foreword that marks his dialogical turn, Buber distances himself from his previous position that God’s transcendence and immanence are man’s problem. He now thinks that it is a question of relationship. Previously, he had thought that God follows man’s tendency to realize unity in himself. At this time, living experience (Erlebnis) interests him only in as far as this is linked to the “real” God. He also clarifies his speaking of the “realization of God” (Verwirklichung Gottes). Such a notion is only right when understood, in Cohen’s terms, as “a relational concept of thought linked to experience” (Beziehungsbegriff des Denkens auf die Empfindung). Cohen rightly draws the conclusion that God cannot have reality. There is a rift between being and reality. Cohen, however, separates thought and feeling too radically. One does not have to start from the artificial narrowness of the subject, but from the fullness in which we live. “To realize God” is to assist the world in becoming God-real (gottwirklich); it is to unite reality (die Wirklichkeit einen). Buber notes that all men come to God, but the Jews, close to this world, relate to God in an immediate relationship, as Jews. They were the first to answer the addressing God. In a letter of February 1923,8 Rosenzweig expressed his joy over this foreword. In a letter of December 1922, he had already remarked that Buber was not the mystical subjectivist he had known anymore.9 In his essay “The Builders” of 1923, he clearly states that the foreword does not imply a 8.

9.

Buber, Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten. Band II: 1918–1938 (Heidelberg: L. Schneider, 1973), 160. Hereafter cited as Briefwechsel II. Franz Rosenzweig, Briefe, ed. Edith Rosenzweig (Berlin: Schocken, 1935), 46. — 70 —

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mere clarification (Klaerung) but a conversion (Bekehrung).10 The year 1923, in which the foreword was written, was therefore crucial in order to understand Buber’s more mature position on God. Buber’s starting point in I and Thou is an approach to the I as nonegological and as oriented to the other. This relating I, called “I-you,” is separated from an “I-it,” which perceives, catalogues, experiences, possesses, masters, and controls. Buber’s approach to God — called “the eternal You” — cannot be separated from the approach of the I as I-you, holistically linked to the non-I. It is exactly in the inter-subjective encounter that the term God receives its logical place. In other words, nonfragmentary, whole relationships constitute real religiosity for Buber. Reaching out to the other, being present to him or her, points to the presence of the eternal You. And there is more: in the presence of the I to the other, the eternal You “realizes” itself. We remark that here Buber still uses his previous terminology.11 The eternal You becomes manifest as the ground of all being. It is noteworthy that Buber does not write in I and Thou on “God” or “the eternal one.” The term he uses is the impersonal “everlasting You,” next to the neutral gender “that what is eternal” (das ewige) and “that which has being” (das Seiende).12 The “everlasting You” has permanent presence in the inter-human relationship; the everlasting You is always there, even if we are not there for the other and fall back in the I-it relationship. But our presence to each other makes the Divine presence, which does not retreat, clear to us. Unmasking any false religiosity that does away with the centrality of the inter-human relationship, Buber makes the Divine Presence dependent upon the presence of the one for the other. He also writes about the eternal You in the natural world and in things of the spirit, but his focus on fellow man is evident. By saying “you” to the non-I, one catches a glimpse of God. Formulated concisely: God comes in Buber’s I and Thou from inside, so to speak, from below. He situates God in the

10.

11. 12.

Rosenzweig, Kleinere Schriften (Berlin: Schocken Verlag/Jüdischer Buchverlag, 1937), 106–107. Buber, I and Thou, 163; Ich und Du, 100. Buber, I and Thou, 157, 160; Buber, Ich und Du, 95, 98. — 71 —

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non-fragmentary, whole approach to another human being. The living God is thus encountered in dialogue, He is spoken to, in the second person — not spoken about, in the third person. Only after I and Thou did Buber internalize the sharp criticism of his friend Franz Rosenzweig, who had remarked that he forgot to speak of God in the third person, as the One who creates the world. Rosenzweig attacked Buber, who, in his obsession with I-you, had forgotten Heit: the relationship of God with the world in creation. Rosenzweig’s friend had further neglected the relationship of We-it as the stage of redemption, where communities realize — each in its own way — the reparation of the world. Although Buber lectured on his I and Thou in Rosenzweig’s Lehrhaus and although he read Star of Redemption as early as December 1921, he only later integrated Rosenzweig’s ideas on creation and redemption in his own religious philosophy; he remained largely focused in his I and Thou on an almost all-mastering revelation interpreted as Divine presence.13 Buber was ready to listen to Rosenzweig’s criticism, but his I and Thou had already taken a more or less definitive form, and his dialogical thought as expressed in this work remained somewhat acosmic. The too dualistic, quasi-Gnostic approach of the I, which is now split into I-you and I-it, is dominant, and one had to choose in the dichotomy between I-you or I-it, although passages between I-you and I-it occur. Consequently, God was the One who reveals himself, but his quality of Creator, which comes into perspective in the response to the other’s needs was largely absent. Redemption too, as one’s relationship to the world in a movement of reparation of it, was absorbed in the alldetermining Divine presence. To be sure, Buber was not a Gnostic 13.

In 1936, in “Die Frage an den Einzelnen,” in Werke I, 220, he wrote about the Creator and the Redeemer, whose existence is denied in mysticism. In 1930, Buber wrote an article on Franz Rosenzweig’s Star, with special attention to the meeting and cooperation between theology and philosophy in the work. See Buber, “Franz Rosenzweig,” in Pointing the Way: Collected Essays, ed. and trans. M. S. Friedman (New York: Schocken Books, 1957), 87–92. He closed his article with an anti-mystical remark on the truth, which for Rosenzweig must be verified and concluded in a typical manner: “The realization of truth depends ever and again upon the verifying power of a life-reality. The crisis of the human relation to reality can only be overcome through realization” (92). — 72 —

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thinker. He fulminated against Kierkegaard’s neglect of the Creator. But he himself was occupied more with spirituality and the purity of the approach to the other than with caring for material needs of the fellow human being, which is a matter related to creation as well as to redemption. Buber even preferred the violence of primitive society, which was not indifferent and knew about relationships, to the “ghostly solicitude for faceless digits.”14 In his sharp criticism of Buber, Levinas favored the Heideggerian (!) “Fuersorge,” care above Buber’s spiritualism. Heschel could not be suspected of such a spiritualism, given his concrete care for persons, for example, for fugitives or the black community. Buber, however, defended himself against Levinas’s opposition to the I-you relation as “amitié toute spirituelle” by holding the view that this connection is not a spiritualized relationship but one of recognition and confirmation of the other, even in conflicts and fight. “This is no friendship, this is only the comradeship of the human creature, a comradeship that has reached fulfillment. No ‘ether,’ as Levinas thinks, but the shared human earth, the common in the uncommon.”15 He strides to the decisive blow with the sentence: “If all were well clothed and well nourished, then the real ethical problem would become wholly visible for the first time.”16 In formulating his approach to God, Buber at the same time fought against gnosis and magic, which are forms of “it”: the first phenomenon wants mastery through secret knowledge; the second one consists in manipulating the higher reality through prescribed formulas and gestures. They both want to replace the meeting, but gnosis misinterprets it and magic offends it. Buber approaches the meeting as the exclusive locus theologicus, where the Divine presence is revealed. He favored a religiosity that is rooted in everyday life, where revelation takes place in the openness from the one to the other. Revelation as an ongoing event is a gift that causes man to return to his own dialogical core. It occurs between human beings, it is without content

14. 15. 16.

Buber, I and Thou, 75; Ich und Du, 25; “solicitude” translates the word “Fuersorge.” Buber, “Replies to my Critics,” 723. Ibid. — 73 —

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or commands, and it is pure presence of the eternal You.17 That is, the presence of the eternal You is revealed par excellence in the empathic, immediate, spontaneous relationship with the fellow human being. Buber specified later on18 that in the interhuman dialogue, contents that are not codifiable are manifold. Of the dialogue of God with man, however, it must be said that even the most universal commands attain, in the dialogue of God with the individual persons, unforeseen interpretations: the situation furnishes the interpretation. Interpretations are needed, however, because history is real and God is the God of history.19

Although Buber’s emphasis is upon the immanent God, the transcendent aspect of God is not absent in I and Thou. God is wholly present, but He is also the “wholly other” of Karl Barth.20 He is Rudolf Otto’s mysterium tremendum that overthrows, but also fascinans, nearer to me than I am to myself. After I and Thou, Buber distinguishes between “above” and “beneath,” putting the man-God relationship in a hierarchical order. Heschel too distinguishes between two aspects of the Divine. Sanders points out the relationship between Heschel’s thought and that of Paul Tillich and Karl Barth. Whereas Barth called God the Wholly Other, Heschel called Him the One who is involved, near, and concerned. And whereas Tillich referred to God as man’s Ultimate Concern,21 Heschel called him the Ultimately Concerned.22 In The Prophets, however, Heschel writes that the God of the prophets is not the Wholly Other, “a strange, weird, uncanny Being, shrouded in unfathomable darkness, but the God of the covenant.”23 He is not

17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

23.

Buber, “The Faith of Judaism,” 260–262. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 697. Ibid. Buber, I and Thou, 127; Ich und Du, 72. Rothschild, “God and Modern Man: The Approach of Abraham J. Heschel,” Judaism 8, no. 2 (1959): 117. James A. Sanders, “An Apostle to the Gentiles,” Conservative Judaism 28, no. 1 (Fall, 1973): 61–63. Bondi writes that in Heschel’s depth-theology, the covenant between God and the Jewish people is constitutive for Judaism. Bondi, Where Art Thou, 210. — 74 —

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the “Remote One, but the One Who is involved, near and concerned.”24 This comes also into expression in the title of his book God in Search of Man.25 In that sense, Heschel and Buber meet again in their emphasis upon the nearness of God. Heschel’s prototypical man, the prophet, does not have a theory or an idea of God but rather identifies with the Divine pathos. In Heschel’s epistemology, the prophetic knowledge of God does not stem from any intellectual reflection or from a meeting with God, a notion eminent in Buber’s thought. In Heschel, it is rather God that meets man.26 The prophet does not “know” God, who is not an abstraction or an object of his thoughts, he “testifies” of a God who is revealed to him. And if he testifies, God is; if not, not.27 The prophet looks at the world from God’s point of view: he is attentive to the world, in which he looks for signs of the Divine presence. He is sad for God’s sadness and joyful for God’s joy. God has a personal relation to the world and does not simply command and demand obedience. He is moved by what happens among human beings and reacts in joy and sorrow, pleasure and wrath. 24.

25.

26. 27.

Heschel, The Prophets, vol. II, 7. That God is “concerned” is not to be understood as showing interest: He is identifying and emotionally involved with the fate of His children. F. A. Rothschild, “Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Thought,” Daat 22 (1989): 134 note 39a. Unlike existentialist philosophers for whom man is alone, without God, Heschel does not doubt the existence of God or His meeting with man. Kaplan wonders how the philosopher Heschel and the believing Heschel coexist (Edward K. Kaplan, “Mysticism and Despair in Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Buber,” Journal of Religion 57,1 [1977]:35. In our eyes, there is no contradiction between mysticism and philosophy in Heschel’s mind. Friedman reports that Heschel told him about two kinds of Jewish thought: one based upon reason and another based upon phantasm and intuition. There are figures such as Maimonides and Jehuda Halevi, Mendelssohn, and the Ba’al Shem Tov. Heschel further told Friedman that he combined both forms of thought and that he is neither a rationalist nor an anti-rationalist (Friedman, “Divine Need,” 67). Elsewhere, Kaplan rightly notes that in Heschel’s personality, different ways of thinking are present that in other contexts would be contradictory. In Heschel’s personality, however, they meet and exist together. Heschel is at the same time a Hasidic mystic who studies the inner life, a mitnaged who wants to study Talmud and Halakha, and a German maskil who uses critical methods and stresses the universal value of Judaism (Kaplan, Heschel, 132). Heschel, The Prophets, vol. II, 7. Psikta de-RavKahana, ed. B. Mandelbaum (New York: JTS, 1962), 208; Shoher Tov, Psalm 123. — 75 —

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The prophetic consciousness of God is connected to the notion that He can be intimately affected, that He is a God of pathos.28 Also Heschel feels this prophetic consciousness within himself. In the words of the already quoted poem: “God Follows Me Everywhere,” dedicated to his mentor David Koigan: “Rise up, See how prophetic visions are scattered in the streets.” One looks in vain for such a God with pathos in Buber’s writings. The revelation is a dual one in Heschel: God reveals himself to the prophet, but the prophet also reveals himself to God. Heschel’s God comes from the outside, but the prophet feels God’s pathos from the inside at the moment of revelation itself. Again differing from Buber, Heschel prefers the prophetic experience that is the experience of God’s turning toward man to the mystical experience,29 as a way of man’s turning toward God.30 In Buber, we find the opposite direction. For Heschel, God does not turn to man as a God of power, but as a God of pathos, of care for the human being,31 and the prophet is not the Stoic homo apathetikos, but a homo sympathetikos, a type sui generis, in whom the Divine pathos “breaks out like a storm, in the soul, overwhelming his inner life, his thoughts, feelings, wishes, and hopes.”32 Rotenstreich remarks that Heschel did not look for a “unio mystica,” but for a “unio sympatica”: “The unio sympathetica is not a merger but a response on the human level to the Divine intention.”33 From Heschel’s point of view, talking about the joy, wrath, and sorrow in God with which the prophet identifies is not problematic at all, as it was for Maimonides, who avoided anthropomorphic features for God: God who lives has to change as related to the world, He cannot be immovable, He is

28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33.

Heschel, The Prophets, vol. II, 3–4. Green notes that Heschel was not happy that he had to write an article on Jewish mysticism. He thought that by writing, he would lend an autonomous status to mysticism, separated from Judaism. Heschel did not like such a separation, but he could not refuse the demand of Finkelstein, who was Chancellor of JTS and his employer. See Green, “Three Warsaw Mystics,” 54*-55*; see Heschel, “The Mystical Element in Judaism” in Moral Grandeur, 164–184. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 198. Heschel, The Prophets, vol. II, 21. Heschel, The Prophets, vol. II, 88. Rotenstreich, “Prophetic Consciousness,” 191. — 76 —

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the most moved one.34 In biblical ontology, the basic category is not immobility but action. One cannot separate being from doing: the God of Israel is one who acts, a God of mighty deeds; His acts are acts of pathos in history.35 God has feelings, in Heschel’s understanding, and these feelings do not point to imperfection as they would have in Maimonides, for whom God does not need or lack anything since if He would, He would not be perfect. Such a God without change is dead for Heschel, since a living God is moved and brings time into the world: A world without time would be a world without God, a world existing in and by itself, without renewal, without a Creator. A world without time would be a world detached from God, a thing in itself, reality without realization. A world in time is a world going on through God; realization of an infinite design.

The world for Heschel is therefore not “a thing in itself but a thing for God.”36 In other words: God cares for and gives meaning to the world, whose entire aim lies in bringing testimony to its Creator. “To men alone,” Heschel writes, “time is elusive; to man with God time is eternity in disguise.”37 God is not indifferent to man, therefore, and He has feelings. The early Heschel asks from God that He feel for the world. In the poem “Intimate Hymn,”38 he identifies himself with God in a prophetic way: he feels the world and considers it his task to bring light into the world and to unveil God’s presence: 34.

35. 36. 37. 38.

On Heschel’s theology of pathos, see Heschel, The Prophets, vol. II, 1–11; EvenChen, A Voice from the Darkness, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Phenomenology and Mysticism (Hebrew) (Tel-Aviv: Am Oved, 1999), 94–103. Berkovits criticizes the “anthropomorphic presentation of the divine pathos” (Eliezer Berkovits, “Dr. A. J. Heschel’s Theology of Pathos,” Tradition 6 [1964]: 71). However, Heschel is conscious of his use of anthropomorphisms, which function within the prophetic poetic expression: “We must not fail to remember that there is a difference between anthropomorphic conceptions and anthropomorphic expressions” (The Prophets, vol. II, 51). See also: Merkle, “Heschel’s Theology of Divine Pathos,” in Merkle, Abraham Joshua Heschel — Exploring His Life and Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1985), 66–83. Heschel, The Prophets, vol. II, 44. Heschel, The Sabbath, 100. Heschel, The Sabbath, 101. Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God, 68–69. — 77 —

--------------------------------------------------------------------------  Chapter II -------------------------------------------------------------------------!‫ — פיל אונדז‬:‫אלץ מאנט פון מיר‬ !‫ — זע אונדז‬:‫אלע בעטן ביי מיר‬ ! ‫— גאט בארג מיר דיינע אויגן‬ — —‫כ’בין געקומן זייען זעע אין דער וועלט‬ ‫ וואס האט זיך אין דער וועלט‬,‫אנטשלייערן גאט‬ — ‫פארשטעלט‬ — :‫ דעם ערשטן שריי צו טון‬,‫און ווארט‬ !‫— עס העלט‬

Everything demands of me: Feel us! Everyone begs of me; See us! God lend me Your eyes! I’ve come to sow seeing in the world  —  To unveil God — Who has disguised Himself in the world —  To wait to give the first cry: It’s becoming light!1

God is hiding and Heschel desires to disclose His presence in this world.39 Man cannot hide, and Heschel considers it his sublime task to cause God come out of his hiding. Arthur Green notes that the Yiddish phrase “kh’bin gekumen zayen zeyen in der velt” is a line of great power and daring. The turn of phrase is specific to the Ba’al Shem Tov, but it reappears in the speeches of other great religious teachers as well. Apparently, Heschel thought of himself as having the task of bringing religious awareness to the world.40 In another already-quoted poem, “Millions of Eyes, Clogged,”41 Heschel even criticizes God in that He does not fulfill His task and so he — Heschel — has to do that, in God’s place. He challenges God that He feel like him. ‫איך טראג אחריות אויך פאר דיר‬ !‫ — שפיר‬:‫און מאן ביי דיר‬ .‫ ווי איך‬,‫ווי מיר‬ ,‫ וויל איך אומגיין און שרייען‬,‫און אויב נישט‬ — — ‫אז גאט פארגעסן זיין הארץ ביי מיר‬

I am responsible for You too And demand of you — feel! Like us, like me. If not, I’ll wander all around and scream That God has forgotten his heart with me

Heschel feels accountable for God with an absolute liability. God’s heart is “with him,” in him. He asks to do what God fails to do. In still another poem, he further expresses his disillusion stemming from God’s nonintervention: God does not relate to his pain; when he is in pain, God is absent.42 For Nietzsche, God is dead; for Heschel, He is very much alive, but he complains in distress that He is not involved with man and urges His presence. In the poem “Petition,” from which 39. 40.

41. 42.

Even-Chen, “Omnipotence.” Green, “Abraham Joshua Heschel: Recasting Hasidism for Moderns,” Modern Judaism 29, no. 3 (2009): 66. Even-Chen, “Omnipotence,” 34–35. Even-Chen, “Omnipotence,” 36–37. — 78 —

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we quoted previously,43 Heschel combines our hiding from God’s face and God’s hiding His face for us. He asks why God teases man’s trust in Him and mocks man’s pride in Him. God is hiding His face for us: ?‫פארוואס רייצטו זיך מיט אונדזער צוטרוי‬ ?‫לאכסטו אויס דען אונדזער שטאלץ אויף דיר‬ :‫ זע‬,‫ א‬.‫פארוואס באהאלטסט פאר אונדזער תשוקה זיך‬ ‫אונדזערע ליידנשאפטן זענען פארשטעלטע בענקשאפט‬ ,‫נאך דיר‬ ,‫אונדזערע זינד — א נויטגעטראנק אין דארשט נאך דיר‬ — ‫און דיין שוויגן איז גהינם אויף דער ערד‬

Why do You tease our trust in You? Mock our pride in You? Truly, You hide from our craving for You. Oh, see: Our lustful passions disguise our need for You, Our sins — a desperate thirst for You, And Your silence — gehinnom, hell on earth.44

44

After the Shoah, Heschel stresses even more that everything is in the hands of man. In “The Meaning of This War,” he asks a series of difficult questions: “Where is God? Why dost Thou not halt the trains loaded with Jews being led to slaughter? It is so hard to rear a child, to nourish and to educate. Why dost Thou make it so easy to kill?” 45 The present mankind is like Moses, who hides his face and is afraid to look upon God and His power of judgment.46 Hence our endless responsibility for God’s presence: “God will return to us when we are willing to let Him in — into our banks and factories, into our Congress and clubs, into our homes and theaters. For God is everywhere or nowhere, the father of all men or no man, concerned about everything or nothing.”47 In referring to Nietzsche, Heschel writes: “Only in His presence shall we learn that the glory of man is not in his will to power but in his power of compassion. Man reflects either the image of His presence or that of a beast.”48 In his book The Earth Is the Lord’s, in which he describes the inner world of the East European Jews that perished in the Shoah, he writes that man is more than man: each individual carries “the gold of God” in his soul “to forge the gate of the kingdom”49 One has to wage a universal war “against the vulgar, 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

See Even-Chen, “Omnipotence,” 48. Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God, 194–195. Heschel, “The Meaning of this War,” in Moral Grandeur, 209–210. Heschel, “The Meaning of this War,” in Moral Grandeur, 210. Heschel, “The Meaning of this War,” in Moral Grandeur, 211. Ibid. Heschel, The Earth Is the Lord’s: The Inner World of the Jew in Eastern Europe (New York: Henry Schuman, 1950), 109. — 79 —

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against the glorification of the absurd.” In this finite world, man is thus able to perceive the infinite. Buber’s view on God in I and Thou is the outlook upon the deepest possible presence in our world, a presence that cannot be absent and that only can be approached as “You.” Heschel’s God is very personal; He hides his face and man complaints about His absence: it is our task to bring God into the world and to establish His Kingdom. With time, Buber’s God becomes more personal. For example, in his 1957 Postscript to I and Thou, in which God is understood as “absolute person”;50 Heschel’s God is personal from the beginning until the end. In I and Thou Buber mentions God’s face, but this is an exceptional sentence in that book.51 In Heschel’s writings, in contrast, one reads about man’s face-to-face relationship with God. God has a “faceless face,” sinfully hiding His face from man, but man may likewise hide his face from God.52 Heschel’s words about a very personal God who may hide His face or about our hiding of our faces before the personal God is characteristic for his entire corpus of writing. In Buber’s work, on the other hand, God only gradually becomes personal.

From Erlebnis and Panentheism to Meeting GOD and God’s Eclipse Buber’s view on God matured from Erlebnis, “experience,” a rather psychological category that belonged to the individualized psychic sphere, into a real meeting, which transcends this sphere. In his predialogical period, he had also a panentheistic, Spinozistic notion of a God who is within the world: Deus sive natura. Later, he claims that religiosity is no longer a subjectivist feeling in a person or concentrated

50.

51. 52.

I and Thou, 181; Ich und Du, 117. Buber insists that the concept of personhood is not capable of describing God’s nature. It says nothing about His essence, but everything about a person’s loving relationship to Him. In a private communication, Ken Kramer communicated to us that Buber’s image of God as person is a significant contribution to theology and that the shift characterizes the immanence-presence dimension of the eternal You. Buber, I and Thou, 131; Ich und Du, 75. Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God, 57, 69. — 80 —

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on God as part of the one substance, Deus sive natura. It is certainly not found in institutions.53 Rather, it is something that takes place in the living encounter, in the meeting with otherness; it takes place in the “between” (zwischen). The religious person is thus a between-man, zwischenmensch, a pontifex, one who makes bridges to the other.54 The I-you relationship with one’s fellow man as the condition for the I-You relation with God lies at the basis of Buber’s books after I and Thou, on Hasidism and on the Bible, but the direct relationship to God is “in no way contested.”55 The dialogical principle pervades his later books on Hasidism as it did not his first ones. Buber criticized Ferdinand Ebner (1882–1931), who, in a manner similar to Kierkegaard, turned away from the interpersonal relationship in order to write on the connection with God.56 It is more than plausible that Buber heard Rosenzweig’s criticism on Ebner and took it into account. In his essay “The New Thinking,” Rosenzweig mentioned Ebner as, like Buber, one of the dialogical thinkers. Buber’s I and Thou and Ebner’s The Word and the Spiritual Realities are parallel to what Rosenzweig himself brings to the fore in Part II of the Star.57 This did not prevent him from severely criticizing Ebner. In a letter to Eugen Rosenstock,58 he calls Ebner the “Austrian pneumatologist”; some letters to Eugen’s wife, Gritli, written in 1921, explain this term. 59 Ebner was the most Christian Christian Rosenzweig had ever heard of. The German thinker was, Rosenzweig claimed, ignorant of the fact that God had created the world and that He is the Redeemer, but he knew everything about revelation; he developed a language theory in which there is no “we” 53.

54. 55. 56.

57.

58.

59.

As Friedman remarks, institutions equal “otherness” without involvement, whereas feelings equal “involvement,” deprived from otherness. See Friedman, Encounter, 135. Friedman, Encounter, 127–128. Buber, “Replies to my Critics,” 710. F. Ebner’s Das Wort und die geistigen Realitaeten appeared two years before “Ich und Du,” the same year as Star. Rosenzweig, Zweistromland. Kleinere Schriften zu Glauben und Denken (F. Rosenzweig. Der Mensch und sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften III), Reinhold and Annemarie Mayer eds. (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984), 152. Rosenzweig, Die “Gritli”-Briefe. Briefe an Margrit Rosenstock-Huessy, eds. Inken Ruehle and Reinhold Mayer, with a preface by Rafael Rosenzweig (Tuebingen: Bilam, 2002), 808. Rosenzweig, Die “Gritli”-Briefe, 783, 784, 785, 786. — 81 —

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but beautiful things on “I” and “you.” Rosenzweig loved Ebner’s book, but — he says — it is only II, 2 and not II, 1 or II, 3 of the Star, that is, on revelation (Song of Songs); not on creation (Genesis) or on redemption (Psalms). In Rosenzweig’s perspective, the third person is necessary because the first person is believed only at times and too fleetingly. Many passages, Rosenzweig admitted, could be in the Star: he even talks about overlapping passages, “Doubletten.”60 Buber’s reflections on God are linked to his language theory. One cannot speak about God in the third person, but one may address Him in the second person. One again notes the gap between the twofold attitude of I-you and I-it and between meeting (Beziehung) and primal distance (Urdistanz), which in I and Thou are more than a bipolar duality. To the German philosopher Paul Natorp, in whose house he was a guest in 1922 and who remarked that God is above all human comprehension and that the word “God” has been desecrated by innocent blood, Buber replied that the word has indeed become soiled. But “this most heavy laden of all human words” shall not be abandoned, since it is “the word of appeal,” the word with which one addresses “the One Living God, the God of the children of man.”61 In I and Thou, Buber writes that God is not merely spoken about, but one speaks to Him. Analogously, revelation is not a subjective experience and certainly not an objective truth but a meeting, a hearing and responding to an appealing voice.62 After the Holocaust, under the additional influence of his translation of and commentary upon the Bible, Buber writes about God’s concealment, the Gottesfinsternis, which can be understood subjectively as the result of a reification of the world by a human being or objectively as the Divine design not to temporally participate in what happens in the world. He discusses the perseverance of the human being in the it-world and the nonrecognition of real transcendence.63 This new approach to God substantially differs from the pre-Holocaust notion. Friedman remarks that “even God’s hiding His face is only an

60. 61. 62. 63.

See Meir, Letters of Love, 167. Friedman, Encounter, 139. Friedman, Encounter, 143. Buber, Werke I, 520. — 82 —

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apparent hiding which does not contradict the statement in I and Thou that only we, and not God, are absent. God does not actually withdraw His presence; He only seems to do so.”64 God’s hester panim would be a subjective matter — as Heschel writes, man was the first one, hiding his face for God.65 This is as seen from man’s point of view. But is Buber’s God not also objectively hiding His face, saving His own transcendence, which guarantees at the same time man’s freedom and responsibility, and which allows for “temptation”? In order to avoid a Gnostic dualism, Buber further locates both good and evil together in God. In his biblical exegesis of the Moses cycle, a propos Exodus 5, where God wants to kill Moses, he writes on “Divine daemony.”66 God is the one “who makes peace and creates evil” (Isaiah 15:7) and man has to stand the temptation of God, as did Abraham or Job.67 This viewpoint on God differs significantly from the one Buber evidences in I and Thou.

Religiosity and Religion Buber took a critical stance toward religion and linked God to the creation of real dialogical communities in a meta-religious perspective. As is well known, Franz Rosenzweig did not use the word “religion” in his Star of Redemption. He also wrote that God did not create religion; He created the world. Nevertheless, he was more affirmative toward positive religion than his friend Buber, who went beyond religion and its framework, which he found too narrow for the truly religious person. Buber was critical of every religion. More than anything else, he averred, religion could hide the face of God.68 He was skeptical about institutions that know “otherness” but entail no engagement, whereas

64.

65. 66.

67. 68.

Maurice S. Friedman, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue (1955; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 254. Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, 153. Buber, Werke. Zweiter Band. Schriften zur Bibel (Munich and Heidelberg: Koesel and Lambert Schneider, 1964), 67–71. Hereafter referred to as Werke II. Friedman, Martin Buber, 253–254. R. Pfisterer, “Martin Buber et les chrétiens,” in Martin Buber — Dialogue et voix prophétique  —  Colloque international Martin Buber 30–31 Octobre 1978 (ParisStrasbourg: Istina, 1980), 143. — 83 —

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feelings have “engagement” without otherness.69 Although I and Thou starts with two opposite worlds, the world of it and the world of you, Buber subsequently combines both worlds in his reflections on liturgy and Bible. He writes positively about the Gestalt, the form in liturgy and faith that is a mixture between you and it,70 but prefers the formless over the form. In I and Thou, he highlights the idea that God in his revelations creates ever-new forms (eine neue Gestalt) and that He is “close to his forms when man does not remove them from him.”71 In this way, he prophetically saved God from being enclosed in a certain form that quickly becomes absolute and consequently objectifies God. Following this stance, he adopted an anti-institutional attitude and favored forming a dynamic relationship with God. His was a metareligious view that allowed him to be critical of positive religion and its absolute truth claims, while enabling him to warn people of the “it” dimension inherent in many religions. The same meta-religious view comes to the fore when Buber considers the Bible as a mixture of you and it: one has to listen to the word in its spokenness (Gesprochenheit), to the Divine voice that addresses the human being, and not fall into the pitfall of considering the Bible a book or a dogmatic treatise. One did not have to read the Bible, but one had to hear the voice coming from it. It was David Koigen (1877–1933) who coined the term meta-religion. Buber and Koigen, who knew each other for many years, both developed a self-critical view on theistic faith.72 Buber did not dislodge religion from tradition, as deconstructionists do, however. Derrida, for instance, developed a “religion without religion,” a religionless faith in a global community; he wanted to renew religion with “a linguistic makeover and an alternative semantics,” “without insular tendencies.”73 Buber’s metareligious perspective takes into account historical, positive religion, but also fulfills a corrective function toward it. In this critical standpoint, Buber does not go “as far as to adopt Derrida’s aporia of a community 69. 70.

71. 72. 73.

Friedman, Encounter, 135. Of course, the danger is that this mixture (Mischung) of you and it freezes into an object. See Buber, I and Thou, 167; Ich und Du, 102. Buber, I and Thou, 166–167; Ich und Du, 102–103. See Urban, “Deconstruction,” 107–135. Urban, “Deconstruction,” 109, 112. — 84 —

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without community.”74 Every person may make a turn (Umkehr) to the dialogical kernel in himself, he claims, and in that way he addresses God, without expressing Him; everyone may hear the Divine voice and answer it.75 Buber advocated an inner renewal and a dialogical life for everybody. Correspondingly, his “reflective faith” in which one is asked to “continuously turn to the origin of its spirit”76 allowed him to be critical toward Jewish history. He was not only a member but a critical member of the Jewish community. In the same vein, the “spirit of Israel” about which he speaks is not a given fact but a permanent task. Also, Zionism is to be realized and is not a mere historical fact in his nonegotistic philosophy of dialogue. There is a critical tension between Buber’s self-reflective faith that has to be realized and religion itself. Like Koigen, Buber had a critical view of religion; he did not get rid of it but instead critically examined the religious ethos. In the famous article “No Religion Is an Island,” Heschel writes, parallel to Buber, that religion is not an end in itself but is a means, positing that it is idolatrous if it becomes an end in itself. God the Creator and Lord of history is above all; therefore, “to equate religion and God is idolatry.”77 In “No Time for Neutrality,”78 he refuses to define God in terms of an idea: the prophets, he writes, had no idea of God. They had an understanding of God, who is in search of man. Buber as well as Heschel maintained that God cannot be encapsulated in an idea and that He is far from any notion or from being contained within an intellectual, philosophical, or religious system. In a chapter entitled “The Love of God and the Idea of Deity,” in his Eclipse of God, Buber deals with Pascal, Kant, and Cohen’s approach to God. He concludes that Cohen renounced the God of the philosophers, “even though he may not confess it to himself.”79 Cohen did not consciously choose

74. 75.

76. 77. 78. 79.

Urban, “Deconstruction,” 115. For Heschel too, man has the possibility of hearing God’s voice and one has to remain alert for this possibility. A person has an “inner ear” by which they may hear God’s voice. See Heschel,“Faith,” in Moral Grandeur, 332. Urban, “Deconstruction,” 128. Heschel, “No Religion Is an Island,” 243. Heschel, “Jewish Theology,” 163. Buber, Eclipse of God, 84. — 85 —

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between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, for he believed that they were identical. “Yet, his inmost heart, that force from which thought too derives its vitality, had chosen and decided from him.”80 For Buber, as for Cohen, the supposed identity between the philosophical God and the living God failed, since when “man learns to love God, he senses an actuality which rises above the idea.”81 In Heschel’s mind, too, the living encounter with God takes place not on a level of conceptualization but on a level that is “responsive, immediate, preconceptual, and presymbolic.”82 In reference to Maimonides, he states that the source of our knowledge of God is the inner eye, “the eye of the heart,” which is a medieval term for intuition, employed, for example, in Jehuda Halevi’s Kuzari.83 Is Buber’s “contemplating” or “beholding” of the other (schauen)84 far removed from Heschel’s seeing with “the inner heart,” and is this kind of higher viewing with the eye of the soul, not the condition for every meeting with the eternal You? Heschel criticizes devout thoughts about God that enclose Him in temples or religious mystical systems. For him, God is certainly the Almighty,85 transcendent, but also a brother,86 nearby and to be found in the streets. In the poem “Brother God,” he writes: ,‫גאט איז איינגעזעט אין תפיסה‬ .‫סוף‬-‫אין לאבירינטן פון אין‬ ,‫אנטלויפסט אוןנקומסט דורך אלע גאסן‬ !‫ גאט‬,‫נאר געטלעכקייט פארשטעלט דיך‬ !‫ ניין‬,‫ביזט נישט נאר האר און אלמאכט‬ .‫ טרויעריק זיין‬,‫קאנסט אויך ארעם‬ ,‫פירסט זיך טיילמאל אויף ווי קינד‬ .‫גלייך איך וואלט זיין דער גרויסער‬ !‫ גאט‬, ‫ברודער אונדזער‬ ‫פון אומענדלעך – לעצטן שטאק‬ ‫נידער צארט צו אונדז אראפ‬ ‫און קוש זיך ווייך און קלאר‬ .‫מיט יעדער קרעאטור‬

80. 81. 82. 83. 84 . 85. 86.

God is fettered in jail In labyrinths of infinity. You escape and go through all the streets. But Your divinity masks you, God You are not only Lord and Almighty, no! You can also be poor and sorrowful. Sometimes You behave like a child As if I were the bigger boy. Our brother God! From the last, endless height Bend down to us, tenderly And kiss every creature; kiss us soft and clear

Ibid. Ibid. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 115. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 148 and 151, note 17. Buber, I and Thou, 90; Ich und Du, 39. After the Holocaust, he no longer uses this term. Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God, 64–65. — 86 —

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Heschel’s most unusual way of talking about God, as if He behaves as a little child might, ruptures any dogmatic system and any fixed religious framework. It testifies to a high degree of intimacy that can never become objectified. This God with childish behavior is perhaps the One to whom childish religious systems, with their shallow thoughts regarding, for instance, automatic retribution or hiding one’s face when confronted with distress, are referring. In that case, confronted with a childish God, Heschel takes upon himself the responsibility of the “bigger boy.” He asks the distant God to come near and bestow upon human beings the Divine kiss. The anti-institutional blend in his thought comes clearly into expression in his writing on the unusual figure of the Kotzker rebbe, to whom he devoted much time toward the end of his life. Shortly before his death, he delivered a manuscript on this figure to the publishing house. This was of great importance to him because he also recognized himself in this Hasidic master. For Heschel, praying was a personal task. It meant foremost to take notice of the wonder and regain a sense of the mystery that is present in all creation. Routine recitation without any kavvanah was therefore most problematic. To be mindful of God and to see the world through His perspective remained the aim of prayer, which could not be performed by stepping out of the world but by being involved in it and embracing it as the mirror of the holy;87 it cannot be performed in spiritual absenteeism.88 Heschel opposed “religious behaviorism.”89 To pray was, therefore, an eminently personal task of the individual as God’s partner,90 although the Jew does not stand alone before God.91 In prayer, one does not attain any nirvana, but one hears the voice of God and relates to this world through His perspective, mending the world. Prayer was meaningless if it was not both verified by conduct and subversive: a person’s deeds had to be in accordance with his prayer.92 The ego of man may hide God’s presence like a wall that prevents him from being conscious of it. This 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92.

Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 5–7. Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 51. Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 53. Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 18. Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 45. Heschel, On Prayer, in Moral Grandeur, 262. — 87 —

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consciousness leads to a radical self-understanding. In this way, prayer is never an automatic procedure: one remains before God and thus understands himself. Prayer is the end of any spiritual experience of the ego; it is rather the readiness to hear God’s voice. One does not eliminate the I in prayer, but instead one uncovers the relationship between the I and God. With this interpretation, we are far removed here from Rivka Schatz’s interpretation of Hasidism as quietism.93 What is pivotal in Heschel’s Hasidism is not the elimination of the ego, but the discovery of its deepest layer. The fact that Heschel left his family could have been a sign of his looking for the authentic religiosity that is always a personal matter. Heschel conceived of worshipping as an opportunity “to expand the presence of God in the world.” True, God is transcendent, but prayer makes Him immanent.94 Praying consists of removing the fog that hides God’s presence. Heschel gives an account of his personal experience: But then, a moment comes like a thunderbolt, in which a flash of the undisclosed rends our apathy asunder. It is full of overpowering brilliance, like a point in which all moments of life are focused or a thought which outweighs all thoughts ever conceived of. There is so much light in our cage, in our world, it is as if it were suspended amidst the stars.95

In this personal experience of which Heschel testifies, we can see how anti-Gnostic his thoughts are: the dark world beneath and the light above are not separated; the light above is also beneath. Heschel relates to this world in relating to God. In prayer, God is here and there. Heschel formulates the relation to God in prayer in a panentheistic way, similar to what we find in Buber: “He is not a being, but being in and beyond all beings.”96 In real prayer, he declares, one does not experience an emotion or a stir within one’s self but “a power, a marvel beyond us, tearing the world apart.”97 93.

94. 95. 96. 97.

Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer, Hasidism As Mysticism — Quietistic Elements in Eighteenth Century Hasidic Thought, trans. Jonathan Chipman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press and Jerusalem: Magnes, 2000). Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 62. Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, 78. Ibid. Ibid. — 88 —

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Buber did not write about prayer as did Heschel. He too much feared magic elements in prayer and the possible creation of a cultural domain apart from our daily lives. But saying “You” to God was also for him the expression of the deepest layer in human existence. And as Buber, Heschel did not separate the heavenly sphere from the earthly. In the wording of the poem “People’s Eyes Wait,” he asserts: ‫ אז וועל נאך אומגיין אויף דער ערד‬,‫און מיר דאכט‬

98

‫מיט ליכט פון אלע שטערן‬ !‫אין מיינע אויגן‬

and it seems to me that I will, in time move on through this earth with the brightness of all the stars in my eyes!98

Heschel’s depth-theology does not relate to principles of faith but to faith itself and how one educates people in order to become sensible to the wonders in life.99 Theological language would have no meaning without the underlying religious experience, which is not situated on the level of man’s consciousness but on the level of his participation in Divine power. Beyond what is commonly accepted, beyond any conceptual framework, man in faith links his life to the insecurity of the adventure with God, which is a challenge to all he knows. Buber and Heschel criticized the institutionalization of religious life; hence, they both had a meta-religious perspective. Heschel opposes the religious life, but he would never come to the conclusion that religion is the prison of man, as Buber did. For him, religion could be a prison, but it also could give the possibility of discovering the deepest layer in a human being. For Buber, it is something in which man has to remain, but one that too readily becomes a substitute for God himself. Heschel did not come to the resolution that religion could be a prison for him, for he lived religion in such a manner that for him it was the natural, concrete setting in life for serving God. For both figures, sanctity, meaning the sanctification of everyday life, is the kernel of any authentic religiosity.

98. 99.

Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God, 39. Merkle, “The Sublime, the Human, and the Divine in the Depth-Theology of Abraham Joshua Heschel,” The Journal of Religion 58, no. 4 (1978): 365–379. — 89 —

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Revelation For Buber, God is presence; He cannot become an It. Revelation has no specific content: “Man receives, and what he receives is not a specific ‘content’ but a presence, a presence as strength.”100 Although Heschel maintains that God reveals Himself in several ways, the revelation at Sinai with its specific content remains central for him; each one may become a Moses and hear different things in the Divine message.101 The revelation at Sinai is therefore the peak in the history of the Jewish people with God, but everyone may reach this level: revelation did not stop; it still continues, and everyone may add to it a special content. In contrast to this position, Buber in I and Thou did not give centrality to the revelation at Mount Sinai with its multiple human interpretations, and he did not think that there is a specific content in this revelation.102 There is no real difference between the great historical revelations and personal revelations in his eyes. Neither is there a fixed center of history in the self-understanding of Judaism.103 Concerning revelation, Buber states that we shape eternally the form of God: “Although we on earth never behold God without world but only the world in God, by beholding we eternally form God’s form.” 104 As we have noted, God is near His forms, which are a mixture of you and it, so long as the human being does not remove the forms from Him. There is a clear corollary with Rosenzweig’s thought on anthropomorphisms. Rosenzweig referred to a story told by Buber about the Apter Rebbe — one of Heschel’s forefathers — who thought that when one performs an act of grace, one forms God’s right hand, and when one performs an act of justice, fighting evil, one forms God’s left hand.105 In Buber’s mind, in the course of history, new provinces of the world and the spirit continually “are 100. 101.

102. 103. 104.

105.

Buber, I and Thou, 158; Ich und Du, 96. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 146: “Every Israelite is able to attain that level, the level of standing at Sinai.” Buber, I and Thou, 160; Ich und Du, 98. See Buber, “Replies to my Critics,” 726. Buber, I and Thou, 166–167; Ich und Du, 102. Kaufmann translates the German “schauen” with “behold.” This is more exact than Ronald Gregor Smith, who translates it to: “look.” See Buber, I and Thou, transl. Smith, 118. Meir, Letters of Love, 63. — 90 —

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thus lifted up into form, called to divine form, in the course of history, in the transformations of the human element. Ever new spheres become the place of a theophany.”106 Heschel, for his part, envisioned the Divine revelation as an ongoing revelation, wherein the past is highly relevant for the present: the revelation to Moses is actual happening today. Heschel felt that the past is very much alive; he had the feeling that he met prophets in the streets and that one may at any time identify himself with the prophetic figures. Buber, in I and Thou, did not bring revelation from the past to the present but rather from the present to the past. The present is the most important time in I and Thou; one identifies less intimately with figures of the past but receives a glimpse of God in the actual meeting with others and through relationship and meeting attains a life “before the countenance” of God. In Heschel’s mind, “The giving of the written Torah is the beginning, not the end, of Torah.”107 God’s voice as it was heard from Mount Horeb was never silenced.108 The words “on this very day” (Exodus 19:1) in the report on Israel’s entrance in the wilderness of Sinai, “on the third new moon after the Israelites had gone forth from the land of Egypt,” refer to a past which is never forgotten in our present. The phrasing “on this very day” and not “on that very day” comes to teach that “the Torah is as beloved to those who study [in the original Hebrew: oseq, meaning, dealing with, living with] it as it was on the day it was given at Mount Sinai.”109 The past is present in Heschel’s thought on revelation, as if the differences in times were blotted out. The revelation in Heschel’s thought is a double one: from God to man and from man to God. In Buber’s I and Thou, revelation takes place in the here and the now, but in a movement from down to up, from below to above, not vice versa. In his comments on the Bible, his perspective changes, and one may discern a movement from earth to heaven as well as from heaven to earth. For Heschel, all that is written in the Bible, also in its plain sense (pshat), is midrash: in his epistemology, any reference to God

106. 107. 108. 109.

Buber, I and Thou, 166; Ich und Du, 102. Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 663. Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 670. Ibid. — 91 —

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is necessarily interpretation. Man is not homo sapiens but homo interpretator. Buber, at least in I and Thou, seems to struggle with the relationship between it and you, also when he mentions God. Later, this ambiguous position is largely discarded in favor of a more positive evaluation of the human talk of the Divine, of his “forming God,” in the Bible. His biblical commentaries with the accent on the interaction between God and man, which was transmitted by man, served to consolidate the Jewish existence, foremost in Zion. Heschel’s view on revelation in the Bible was that these references are midrash;110 the midrash was carried on by the Sages, and the midrashic work persists until today. Buber too approached the Bible as midrash but not as God’s “anthropology,” His knowledge and His love of man,111 but as the meeting between God and man from a human viewpoint. The most universal commands that belong to the dialogue with God receive “unforeseen interpretations” by the individual.112

Differences and Parallels When Buber’s approach to God is compared with that of Heschel, differences become clear. Heschel writes of a person’s experience of God, whereas Buber in I and Thou contrasts the subjective experience with the intersubjective relationship;113 in an impersonal way he calls God the eternal You, das ewige Du (“das” indicating the neutrum). Buber does not envision God as an idea or a principle: He is “also” personal.114 For Heschel, God has to be personal first of all; although His face, as we have noted, may be “faceless,” that means it may hide itself from man. Heschel’s God is personal, as is made clear by his reaction to Einstein’s impersonal concept of God. Buber focuses upon man’s intention to enter into a relationship with others, and in this manner, he reaches God from the consciousness of man. For Heschel, this is not enough, since human consciousness is only one side of the story; the other is 110. 111. 112. 113. 114.

Heschel, God in Search of Man, 185. Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, 129. Buber, “Replies to my Critics,” 697. Buber, I and Thou, 60; Ich und Du, 14. In the postface of Ich und Du, written in 1957, 116. — 92 —

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God’s revelation itself, which precedes and constitutes man’s subjective consciousness of it. The difference between the two thinkers concerning their vision of God is finally anchored in a deeper difference between them in their concept of man. In Heschel’s theory on the symmetry, mutuality, and interdependence between God and man, man’s honor stems from his being formed in God’s likeness, from his Divine-like character. Buber, in turn, concentrates upon the dialogical kernel in the human being, which leads him — from down to up — to the Divine presence. Both Heschel and Buber115 think that God needs man, but in Heschel’s thought this is a key motif,116 while in Buber’s I and Thou the theme is mentioned117 but not developed. One of the biggest differences between Heschel’s depth-theology and Buber’s I and Thou lies in the fact that, for Heschel, God as “the most powerful Subject of all”118 confronts the prophet, who identifies with God’s pathos and shares in God’s suffering, whereas in Buber’s view, man connects dialogically to others and via them subjectively discovers the highest in himself as his own dialogical kernel, which links him to the Divine presence. The prophet in Heschel is therefore first of all “Mentsch” as both the image of God and one who fights the case of God, while in Buber he is first of all the dialogical person; Heschel and Buber’s prophet alike calls for a just society. Moreover, Heschel’s God shows feelings; he is suffering or glad, and makes demands. Heschel is even critical of God, urging Him to act as He is supposed to act in conformity with Heschel’s own engagement. He feels responsible for God as well, and demands of God to feel “like us, like me.”119 In Buber’s I and Thou, the eternal You does not show feelings, with only one exception: when God needs man.120 The eternal You is not meant to have more feelings; he is silently present, and His pure presence is beyond any demand. Our authentic relationship to this pure presence, which as pure presence never falls back to the level of I-it, is not one of 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120.

Buber, I and Thou, 130; Ich und Du, 74; Heschel, God in Search of Man. See Friedman, “Divine Need,” 69. Buber, I and Thou, 130; Ich und Du, 74. Heschel, The Prophets, vol. II, 169. Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God, 34–35. Buber, I and Thou, 130; Ich und Du, 74. — 93 —

--------------------------------------------------------------------------  Chapter II --------------------------------------------------------------------------

sympathy or empathy but a holistic approach to the other that brings God’s eternal presence into the human horizon. Notwithstanding their differences, both thinkers agree on various aspects of the Divine reality. Both highlight the task of the human being in making God’s presence manifest on earth: Heschel writes that God is “in search of man,” and Buber in I and Thou makes God’s presence dependent upon interaction between the human beings. Negatively, man may make it impossible to feel the Divine presence by putting a barrier between himself and the Creator.121 Another point of contact between both thinkers on the theme of God is their stress upon the living presence of God and their refusal to talk about God as a dead, scientific hypothesis. The pre-conceptual experience of God precedes any focus on the theoretical, which contains in itself the danger of a frozen and immobile effigy. In this sense, theology as science is for both problematic. For Heschel and Buber, God is eminently present in the human world.122 The two philosophers do not talk “about God,” but — if we use a Levinasian expression — “à-Dieu, to God.”123 Heschel does not conceive of God as an object of our thought; man is rather the object of concern of a personal God. Buber wrote about God as the impersonal, eternal You. He did not think about God as “He” and so attracted the criticism of Rosenzweig.124 Heschel as well as Buber analyzed the way biblical man thinks, as a chance for modern man to go in his footsteps. Like Heschel, Buber, after I and Thou, writes about the will of God, which manifests itself to man. For Buber, even if God hides his face, the Divine will is revealed and asks man to bring his own will into harmony with it. In his biblical hermeneutics, the God of the Bible is exterior to man and wants his dialogical attitude. Buber stimulates his audience to hear the Divine voice again through the translation of the Bible (Miqra, to be read) and through the presentation of the dialogical kernel in biblical stories. Heschel, in turn, concentrates largely upon the prophetic consciousness. 121. 122. 123.

124.

Buber, “Gottesfinsternis,” Werke I, 597; Even-Chen, “Omnipotence.” On omnipresence, see Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, 68. See, for instance, E. Levinas, Entre nous. Essais sur le penser-à-l’autre (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1991), 89. See Horwitz, Buber’s Way to “I and Thou,” 226–229. — 94 —

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Like Heschel, Buber approaches nature in a noninstrumental manner. Heschel writes about the radical amazement of man, confronted with nature, which leads him to the recognition of mystery — a dimension that is disregarded in religious behaviorism and not to be neutralized by scientific means. Buber developed a rather dialogical attitude toward nature, but his approach is not that of nature as object of human tools and manipulation. And whereas Heschel sees nature as creation, as “the language of God,” and the song to God,125 Buber notes that the I may develop a dialogical relationship toward nature. These are significant differences. Nevertheless, surprising convergences emerge when one compares Buber’s and Heschel’s attitudes toward nature in detail. For instance, in one of his poems entitled “I Befriend the Forests,” Heschel turns to a tree and says: “My beloved du — Oh tree!” Did Heschel take the idea from the master, who in I and Thou approached the tree as “you”? Or was the Hasidic experience of walking in the woods as in a sanctuary enough to inspire him this beautiful dialogical approach to nature? Didn’t Heschel put on a head covering when he entered the woods?126 Buber’s dialogical attitude to nature, however, is less colored by a familiar empathy and a feeling of nearness: for Heschel, the oak tree is called “grandpa,” in the presence of whom he defines himself as “grandchild.”127 There is a kind of animation of nature in Heschel but also a “sacred love” for the trees, and they find each other in their loneliness. In a further distinction from Heschel, Buber adds that one may develop a dialogical attitude toward spiritual realities. On the subject of the relationship to nature, Heschel and Buber, of course, knew Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption, in which the process of redemption is dependent upon the human approach to the world: the human being can animate the neighbor, the one who is near to him, as well as the entire world, until the crown upon the creation by the Divine kiss that puts the seal upon an accomplished human life, the moment of meaningful silence after a life-long animation of others in

125.

126. 127.

“Creation is the language of God, Time is His song, and things of space the consonants in the song” (Heschel, The Sabbath, 100). Kaplan and Dresner, Prophetic Witness, 88. Ibid. — 95 —

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dialogue.128 At the end of natural life comes death, which for Buber was “also of grace”;129 and for Heschel, a “privilege”: This is the meaning of death: the ultimate self-dedication to the Divine. Death so understood will not be distorted by the craving for immortality, for this act of giving away is reciprocity on man’s part for God’s gift of life. For the pious man it is a privilege to die.130

One has frequently, but perhaps wrongly, called Heschel’s concept of God “theocentric.” The term masks the dialogical dimension in the Godman relationship. As it develops, Heschel’s view is far removed from the theocentrism of Karl Barth, in which the human being’s projects and thoughts are not seen as valuable. Heschel’s standpoint is as much “anthropocentric” as “theocentric” since the prophets are looking at the world when they adopt the Divine viewpoint.131 Heschel was interested in man as God’s partner, who could reach the higher worlds without flying away from the world. In Heschel’s view, man has to transform the world into the house of God. Heschel and the mature Buber both developed a philosophy of religion in which the human contribution to this world is seen as real and as an answer to the Divine presence. Both conceive of man as a partner of God, who is linked to the reality of this world; this reality is not necessarily bad and indeed can be redeemed. Their approach to God is therefore not in contradiction with man’s concern for the world.132 God wants the completion of the world, its mending. In this perspective, Buber’s God in I and Thou and Heschel’s God in search of man — the God of pathos — are one and the same. Buber’s anti-Gnostic thought is parallel with Heschel’s idea that the Divine reality has to be brought into this world. They shared the same tradition, in which God and man are not contradictory but rather 128. 129. 130. 131.

132.

Rosenzweig, Der Stern, 471. Buber, Werke I, 723 (auch er [der Tod] ist in der Gnade). Heschel, “Death as Homecoming,” in S. Heschel, Moral Grandeur, 378. Also, Rosenzweig explained that anthropomorphisms and theomorphisms take their significance from the correlation between God and man. Rosenzweig, “Zur Encyclopaedia Judaica (1928/1929),” in Kleinere Schriften, 528. In the interview with Carl Stern, he says: “God is more in search of man than man is in search of God.” Heschel, “Carl Stern’s Interview,” 397. — 96 —

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related to each other in a common concern for the world. They did not develop a set of premises about God that would necessitate a negation of the world, but rather highlighted the necessity of acting for the reparation of the world in the perspective of the Kingdom of God. For both, God is not separate from the world, although Heschel was more attentive to the institutional aspects of religiosity as a privileged relationship with God than Buber, who harshly criticized institutionalized religion, which for him had a magical connotation most of the time. Heschel was equally critical of institutionalized religion when he wrote about the “genius” Kotzker rebbe, whose outcries sometimes had the ring of defying God, especially “to the ears of homespun pietists.”133 Heschel, however, paid more attention to fixed prayer and the concrete commandments than did Buber. He was critical of the decorum of American liberal Judaism and of the behaviorism of American orthodoxy, which he claimed was responsible for the crisis in prayer. But his position was different from that of Buber, who from the beginning was critical of every form of fixed prayer. Heschel considered himself part of a concrete people who searched for God, although he recognized the existence of other groups that were answerable to God as well. God, he reasoned, had wanted plurality. Buber felt part of a world that, also outside of institutionalized religions, searched for God. His religiosity was anti-institutional, and the commandments were not for him a means for spiritual elevation. Buber did not feel that at every moment, Sinai was at stake. He was criticized by Rosenzweig on his position concerning the mitzvot, but did not change his “anarchic” stance since one cannot nail God down to just one of his manifestations as being eternally valid.134 God, for Buber, was not a “giver of Law”; man was a receiver of the Law. The Torah was Weisung, instruction-

133. 134.

Heschel, A Passion for Truth, 156. Glatzer, “Buber as Interpreter of the Bible,” in Paul Arthur Schilpp and Maurice Friedman (eds.), The Philosophy of Martin Buber (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1967), 377; See Rosenzweig, “Die Bauleute” in Kleinere Schriften, 106–121; “The Builders: Concerning the Law,” in Franz Rosenzweig: On Jewish Learning, ed. Nahum N. Glazer (New York: Schocken, 1955), 72–92, and the correspondence between Buber and Rosenzweig on the subject, following Rosenzweig’s essay. — 97 —

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teaching, not Law. The soul of Israel was for him pre-Sinaitic.135 Sinai for him was not the mount of the Law, for Buber adhered to Sinai as the mount of revelation.136 Glatzer remarks that Buber in his discussion of Paul’s theology in Two Types of Faith defends the yoke of the Law and the freedom that follows from it instead of adhering to the Paulinian doctrine of the lack of freedom under the Law, an idea that “had such far-reaching consequences in the history of faith.”137 Yet did Buber intend to present Judaism in Two Types of Faith as a faith in which the commandments, also in their cultic meaning, were central? Or did he rather present a criticism of Paul’s looking toward heaven, whereas he — Buber — with his prophetic faith and his eyes on the world, wanted to present the Jewish faith as mending the world? Did he disregard the Torah as instruction for building a just society? Didn’t he conceive of the Torah not as Law but rather as the revelation of God’s presence, demanding man’s social activities? Buber opposed the Paulinian reduction of Torah to Law. The anti-institutional approach of Buber partly corresponds to Heschel’s pre-institutional attitude and to his criticism of religion, which cannot be reduced to institution, symbol, or theology. In his “depth-theology,” Heschel wanted to lay bare what is ultimately implicated in religious life. He wanted to go back to the core of situations that precede theology and recall “the antecedents of religious commitment.” In order to do that, he had to rediscover the questions to which religion offers an answer.138 In other words, Buber and Heschel both developed a metareligious standpoint. But whereas for Heschel meta-religion is the heart and kernel of religion, Buber saw not only a tension between religion and religiosity but a gap, an unbridgeable rift. The leap of action was important for Heschel and Buber alike, although Heschel included in this leap the commandments of traditional Judaism, whereas Buber removed the entire complex of ceremonial acts from his anti-magical model of religiosity. There is, however, a text in Heschel’s God in Search of Man that is worth

135. 136. 137. 138.

Buber, Kampf um Israel. Reden und Schriften (1921–1932) ( Berlin: Schocken, 1933), 51. Glatzer, “Buber as Interpreter,” 379. Glatzer, “Buber as Interpreter,” 380. Heschel, “Depth Theology,” in The Insecurity of Freedom, 115–116. — 98 —

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pondering in this context:139 after having written on the confusion between good and evil, Heschel reminds the reader that on the Day of Atonement, one sends a goat in the desert for Azazel in order to atone for the transgressions, the sins of Israel, and in the same ritual, the purpose of the goat upon which the lot fell for the Lord is to atone for the holy. Isn’t this indicating that evil is present also in religion? For Buber and Heschel, God needs man. In Buber’s words: “That you need God more than anything, you know at all times in your heart. But don’t you know also that God needs you –in the fullness of his eternity, you?”140 Like Rosenzweig, they wanted man to be redeemer,141 a partner of God and responsible for God’s presence in the world.142 In Heschel’s words, God’s return to the world depends upon man. The prophets did not say “Where is the Lord?” They knew that God needs man in order to redeem the world.143 For both spiritual men, God needs the human being — man is God’s need, in Heschel’s terms — and God is also a core need of man. What is challenging is Heschel’s view that God is a “non-religious person,” in the sense that religion as pure spirituality is not linked to politics, economy, and all other worldly affairs. God, in Heschel’s mind, “always mixes in politics and in social issues,”144 is concerned with man, takes man seriously, and is profoundly interested in each human being. One specific point worth noting is that Heschel contests the idea that God is a symbol. In our view, this is not only a protest against Buber, who replaces a theology of the prophets by a philosophical anthropology, as Heschel scholar Edward Kaplan proposes: Buber’s notion of God developed over time, as we noticed supra. Heschel disagreed with the early, pre-war Buber. Later, Buber himself affirmed that he “turned against the popular reduction of God to a psychologicum.”145 With his anti-symbolic God, Heschel contested 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145.

Heschel, God in Search of Man, 371–372. Buber, I and Thou, 130; Ich und Du, 74. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 313. Ibid. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 369–370. Heschel, “Carl Stern’s Interview,” 400. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 713. — 99 —

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Tillich’s psychological stand that God is the depth of existence or the ground of being. In a direct allusion to Tillich’s theology, Heschel asks ironically if God is not above the ground.146 Against Tillich’s attempt to deliver a psychological explanation of the Divine existence that is acceptable to modern man, Heschel highlights the independent, autonomic reality of a transcendent God.147 In Buber’s I and Thou, the eternal You is also not a psychological reality but rather the ontological reality of an eternal presence, which the human being may obscure or not discover if he remains closed to the existence of another you. We have mentioned that in his poem “Ikh un Du,” Heschel gave expression to his own prophetic soul. He feels such an empathy with God that the distance between the human and the Divine becomes blurred. The dichotomy between God and man is diminished, and the revelation of the self is at the same time the revelation of God. Buber’s early mystic thought is close to this symbiotic thinking, in which there is almost no distinction between the highest in man and the Divine reality. Buber even wrote in this early stage of his thought about the “realization” of God. But also in a later stage, the Buberian I that becomes an I-you discovers in itself the dialogical kernel in a kind of self-discovery that is almost identical to the revelation of the Divine presence, as formulated in Exodus 25:8: “I will dwell amongst them” (ve-shakhanti be-tokham). Of course, the God of I and Thou does not suffer and does not manifest the pathos about which Heschel writes. He does not even talk. But is, in Heschel’s poem, the quasiidentification between the Divine and the prophet, who empathizes with the Divine care and cry, very far removed from the nearness of the I to the non-I in I and Thou, through which the I receives a glimpse of the eternal You? Is Buber’s man not also called to be a mentsch, a full human being, a tsaddiq, a united, whole, and perfect man, as Shem ha-meforash? In Buber’s dialogical thought, the I who discovers his own self is the I that lives the Divine presence and answers to it. And

146. 147.

Heschel, “Carl Stern’s Interview,” 408. Even-Chen, “Faith and the Courage To Be — Heschel and Tillich,” in Identity on the Making (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University and Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, 2006), 337–355. — 100 —

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like Heschel, Buber protests against the emanation of the world from the Divine substance. For both thinkers, with all the nearness of man to God, dialogue supposes not one but two: a plurality. In I and Thou, Buber explicitly rejects the unio mystica, in which the I is absorbed in a higher reality. Neither does he adopt Heschel’s unio sympatica, which differs from the mystical union through its sympathy with God’s care and pathos. As does Heschel, he sees interaction between the human I and the Divine you.

— 101 —

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--------------------------------- Chapter III  ----------------------------------

The Bible and Its Interpretation Over the course of decades, Buber commented upon the Bible and translated it. His commentaries are frequently disregarded by scholars who study the Bible in a historical-philological manner. His literal translation is often considered not respectful enough of the German vernacular. Yet Buber’s contribution to the study of the biblical world has been tremendous, and his co-translation with Rosenzweig is a great moment in the history of Bible translation. Heschel too studied the Bible in order to depict the religious experience: it was, to him, a book about man more than about God. The problems of man that come into expression in the Bible had to be taken seriously since the approach to religion as an agent for bringing peace of mind was, for him, erroneous to begin with. Religion only makes sense when it concerns man with all his problems. Heschel found a pre-institutional, primary religiosity in the Bible. It was the figure of the prophet, who was an uneasy, disturbing person calling for repentance, that was most appealing to him. The Bible gave mankind a bad conscience. The requirements are “Ye shall be holy”; “Thou shalt love thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy might”; and “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”1 The prophets, as “the most disturbing people who ever lived,”2 felt embarrassment since they had an intuition of greatness and an awareness of grandeur. Given his convictions and concerns, it is therefore not surprising that Heschel wrote his doctoral thesis on the prophets. He further explains his involvement in the peace movement as a result of events that changed his life. His study of the prophets 1. 2.

Heschel, “Depth Theology,” 124. Heschel, “Carl Stern’s Interview,” 400. — 103 —

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of ancient Israel, which led to his 1962 book on that subject, was one of these events. From the prophets he learned man’s incapability of sensing the depth of misery caused by his own failures. According to Heschel, we witness the cruelty of man, but our hearts try to efface memories and to silence our consciences.3 In this chapter, we study Buber’s and Heschel’s attitude to the Bible and specifically toward the prophets. It is their point of view that revelation did not stop; it continues, but it did begin during biblical times, although it is in no way limited to those times. We discuss Buber’s commentaries on and translation of the Bible, as well as Heschel’s study of the prophets and his view of the Bible as the starting point of the heavenly Torah that continues until today. Buber’s oeuvre on the Bible became an increasingly dominant part of his thinking once he entered his dialogical period. Next to his philosophical, Jewish, and Hasidic work, translation and interpretation of the Bible became one of his main activities.4 Grete Schaeder notes that biblical studies were Buber’s “most fruitful field of research.”5 His thought in this area may be divided into three parts. There are (1) his extensive biblical studies, Kingship of God, The Prophetic Faith, Moses, and Der Gesalbte, 6 as well as other essays that deal with the Bible in its actuality for contemporary readers, and his interpretations of several Psalms;7 (2) different articles that contain his hermeneutic reflections 3. 4. 5.

6.

7.

Heschel, “The Reasons,” 224. The entire volume of Buber’s writings on the Bible comprises not less than 1239 pages. Grete Schaeder, “Martin Buber: A Biographical Sketch,” in Glatzer and Mendes-Flohr, Letters, 5. Buber, Koenigtum Gottes (Berlin: 1932); Kingship of God, trans. R. Scheimann (New York: Harper and Row, 1967); Der Glaube der Propheten; Moses; Der Gesalbte. Buber characterizes “Der Gesalbte” on King Saul as the unfinished continuation of Koenigtum Gottes (Buber, Werke II, foreword, 7); he planned a trilogy on the problem of Messianism in Israel. Parts of the two projected books were published, and the main thesis of the planned third book is to be found in The Prophetic Faith. See Glatzer, “Interpreter of the Bible,” 368, note 14. On 27.12.1938 Heschel asked Buber what was happening with the second book of Koenigtum Gottes (Buber Archive, 290: 21). Buber, Werke II, second and third section. See further in Werke II: “Recht und Unrecht,” as well as the first part of Buber, Israel and Palestine: The History of an Idea, trans. Stanley Godman (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1952); Israel und Palaestina. Zur Geschichte einer Idee (Zuerich: Artemis, 1950). — 104 —

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on the Bible;8 and last but not least (3) a very literal translation that he commenced with Franz Rosenzweig.9 We will relate to all the three parts of Buber’s Bible project. Nahum N. Glatzer rightly states: His [Buber’s] studies resist classification into any of the current schools of biblical interpretation; they resist all classification. Any serious attempt at critical analysis would have to consider the status of Buber’s work on the Bible in the context of his own religious, historical, linguistic and personal philosophy.10

Until now, nobody has undertaken such a task. Only on the basis of acquaintance with Buber’s anthropology and with his religious thought is one able to rightly understand Buber’s exegesis, in which he put his knowledge in the service of the Divine word, as he believed that it asked to be heard. In order to hear this word, he declared, one had to go back beyond the influence of the Septuagint, the Vulgate, or Luther’s translation, to the primal meaning of the word in the original writing (Grundschrift).11 Editor Lambert Schneider invited Buber to translate the Bible into German. Buber accepted this invitation on the condition that his friend Rosenzweig also participate in the project. Rosenzweig already had experience in translating poems of Yehuda Ha-Levi. The men corresponded and met regularly, working on the translation. They continued to work together until Rosenzweig’s death in 1929. At that time, the project had reached the book of Isaiah. When Rosenzweig passed away, Buber continued the task alone and completed the entire translation in February 1961. The translation was, in fact, an act of peace, since in writing it he took into account two different worlds and cultures that had been torn apart in the Shoah. The cynical remark of Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) that this translation no longer had any 8.

9.

10. 11.

Buber, Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung in Werke II and Darko shel Miqra. Iyyunim bidfuse signon batanakh (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1978). The last book contains articles on the translation of the Bible in German and also Buber’s work on Saul in Samuel 1. Buber and Rosenzweig, Die Schrift, a reviewed and improved edition of the 1954 edition, the so-called Hegner edition (Heidelberg: Jakob Hegner, 1962). Glatzer, “Interpreter of the Bible,” 362. Glatzer, “Interpreter of the Bible,” 364. — 105 —

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public12 does not lessen Buber’s merit; he surprised Germany with a non-German source that could work to fructify the German culture. With their translation, Buber and Rosenzweig wanted to bring people back to the original, oral character of the Bible so that the Divine word could be heard in all its sonority, its Gesprochenheit, “now.” For this, the written text had to be spoken and heard.13

Method Buber developed a unique method with which to approach the Bible. He accepted biblical criticism — historical criticism and the criticism of literary types  —  but was primarily interested in a dialogicalphilosophical interpretation of this text. The Book of Genesis, for instance, was composed of a series of traditional materials, including adaptations and insertions. The book was not of a single period of time, an individual, or a group of individuals. Buber disputed the source theory, which was remote from life. Most of all, he tried to proceed without premises and to expose himself to the written word without preconceived notions.14 He knew the scholarly literature on the Bible and discussed it, but he mainly focused upon the existential meaning of the text. One has to situate and understand Buber’s biblical work in the framework of his dialogical thinking, which is not done sufficiently in current scholarship. This is surprising, since there is a clear link between these two types of writings. Kepnes has done pioneering work in this direction,15 and his endeavors must be continued. Kepnes remarks that in developing his dialogical hermeneutics, which replaced 12.

13. 14. 15.

Scholem, “An einem denkwuerdigen Tage,” in Judaica I (Frankfurt o.M: Suhrkamp, 1963), 214–215. Scholem characterized the completed translation as a “guest gift” (Gastgeschenk) of the Jews to Germany but also as a “memorial” (Grabmal). He remarked that the public for which they translated does not exist anymore, that the children of those who perished do not know German anymore, and that the gap between the German of 1925 and the German of the present translation had become even bigger after thirty-five years. Glatzer, “Interpreter of the Bible,” 364. See the letter to Karl Thieme dated February 20, 1946, in Glatzer and Mendes-Flohr, 511. Steven Kepnes, The Text as Thou. Martin Buber’s Dialogical Hermeneutics and Narrative Theology (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992). — 106 —

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the earlier neo-romantic hermeneutics that were carried out under the influence of Dilthey, Buber paradoxically also made use of technical devices and methods that belong to the I-it sphere of explanation.16 In using such technical methods as arrangement of the text according to collometric unities (according to “cola” or breath unities, which often followed the masoretic diacritical marks), and with his special attention to Leitworte, leading words that reveal a central theme and mark the unity of a text,17 he thought he would come nearer to the original text than had the scholars who merely used the historical critical method. Buber, for his part, combined literary sensibility and the historical method, through which he hoped to come to a reconstruction of events of meeting that were central in the prophetic faith of Israel. His method was not without archeology as the science of reconstruction of the past, but he did not forget the teleology: God’s word that had reached real people in the past asks to be heard again by present-day humanity; it must be heard again in all its freshness by future generations.

Dialogic Hermeneutic Kepnes has situated Buber in the history of modern hermeneutics and delineated his method of interpretation of the Bible.18 In his analysis of the biblical literature, Buber develops an I-you attitude toward the texts that may astonish and baffle the reader. Reading the Bible anew, the reader has to leave behind preconceived notions and prejudgments. As a consequence of this practice, Buber reads differently from the

16.

17.

18.

Kepnes, The Text as Thou, 42. One may ask if Buber was not conscious of this process in which he mixed “you” and “it.” The Bible too, as everything else, contains “it” and “you”: if it is a mere book, one falls into the realm of “it”; if it becomes a voice, it is transformed into “you.” One of the important leading words in the Bible is “ammi,” “my people.” Dan Avnon claims that Buber in his later years incorporated in his own writings hermeneutical principles that he had attributed to the redactor of the Hebrew Bible. Dan Avnon, “Limmud and Limmudim: Guiding Words of Buber’s Prophetic Teaching,” in Martin Buber. A Contemporary Perspective: Proceedings of an International Conference Held at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 2002), 101–119. Kepnes, The Text as Thou, 61–78. — 107 —

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Protestant exegetes, although he shared with them a kind of sola scriptura. He felt that one had to respect the otherness of the biblical text, which was not to be approached in a fixed tradition. Once the otherness is recognized and the distance created, the text may bring a reorientation to the reader’s life. He then finds himself in a community of interpreters, because — as the Sages say — the text has seventy faces. Buber conceived of the Bible as a unity, an account of the meetings between God and His people. He wanted to reconstruct the primal narrative on the encounter between the Divine and the human, which led him to a narrative biblical theology. Kepnes rightly notes that Buber’s biblical theology does not entirely overlap his I-you philosophy, which concentrates upon the present.19 He used the concepts of Rosenzweig, creation-revelation-redemption, in order to describe the biblical narrative that had transformed him because he related to the Bible as a you. He came to appreciate the past, which continues in the present, and in the future that in turn grows out of the past and the present. Of course, he interpreted the categories creation-revelation-redemption personally as well, but they came to describe what lives in the Jewish collective memory as present today, as the past of the Jewish people, and as the promise of the future. Against the exegesis that was current in his time, Buber endeavored to prove the historicity of the ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and that of Moses, and to show the unity of the Bible. Buber’s hermeneutic is also dialogical in another way. Biblical scholar James Muilenburg writes: Buber is not only the greatest Jewish thinker of our generation, not only a profoundly authentic exponent and representative of the Hebrew way of thinking, speaking, and acting, not only a celebrated teacher “both to Jew and to Greek,” but also the foremost Jewish speaker to the Christian community. He, more than any other Jew in our time, tells the Christian what is to be heard in the Old Testament, what the Old Testament is really saying and what it certainly is not saying, what the direction is in which the words are moving on their way through history. He, more than any other Jewish writer, tells the Christian what he ought to know and what he ought to see, what the road on which he walks is like, whence the 19.

We are following here Kepnes’s reflections; The Text as Thou, 120–125. — 108 —

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journey begins and whither it leads. Whatever else may be said of him, Buber is the great Jewish teacher of Christians.20

It is indeed significant that Buber frequently had the Christian reader in mind when he explained the Bible, correcting a prioris and at the same time giving hints to Christians so that they might better understand Jesus, since he is cut off from a long history of dogmatic Christianity. Muilenberg points to Buber’s sympathy for the historical Jesus, to his description of the different paths of Judaism and Christianity, and finally to the fact that among the prophets, Buber privileges Hosea, Jeremiah, and “above all,” the Second Book of Isaiah over Ezekiel, a fact with which Christians “will heartily agree.”21

The Bible and Man of Today Buber would have preferred to teach Bible at the Hebrew University. Instead, he had to teach social philosophy. But his research activities on the Bible were substantial. In his article “The Man of Today and the Jewish Bible,” Buber plays upon a known theme: the spirit is not an isolated reality, a kind of superstructure above daily life or simply a by-product of daily life belonging to some psychological or sociological sphere. Spirit is rather a question of betweenness; it happens between persons and is concretized in dialogue. It is the result of a human answer to the Divine address by hallowing everyday life. As such, spirit makes religion alive; without it, religion is lifeless. Without this lively dialogue, religion itself belongs to a culture that is separated from daily life and therefore does not touch the whole man. The Bible, not as biblia, mute books, but as miqra, as living word to be heard, is an extraordinary document about encounters, he professed. Buber was convinced that if modern man would approach the Bible without preconceived ideas or prejudices, he would be able to hear God’s transforming word again. He mentions the problems of man’s understanding of the categories of creation, revelation, and redemption, which occupy a central place in the 20.

21.

James Muilenburg, “Buber as an Interpreter of the Bible,” in Schilpp and Friedman, The Philosophy, 382. Muilenburg, 382–383. — 109 —

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Bible. Instead of revelation, one believes that everything is within man, eventually in our sub-conscience, without otherness.22 Yet revelation is linked to a gift, and when one does experience the giving, one finds out that revelation does exist and that man is addressed. Man of today also has problems with the category of creation. His psycho-physical makeup is not mysterious anymore. Notwithstanding the dominance of the scientific approach, Buber draws the attention to the fact that creation remains meaningful, since every human being is unique, with an untouched residue; he is underived, underivable, unprecedented, and incomparable, in other words: not to be reduced to what precedes him. Finally, instead of redemption, modern man makes plans, dreaming about change, but he is not interested in transformation. He knows about development but does not realize that there is an outstretched hand that he has to take. Modern man finds it difficult to feel the hand that draws him up out of the darkness and hard to experience that our “redeemer lives” (Job 19:18).23 If he would hear anew the Divine word, without a prioris or ready-made knowledge, man of today would be able to sense that creation, revelation, and redemption pertain to him personally. In fact, Buber regarded the Bible as therapy for modern man. Judaism as it comes into expression in the Bible corroborates the three periods of time: creation, revelation, and redemption. Buber noted that John replaced the triad with a dyad, weaving revelation and redemption in one, and that Marcion went further by denying creation and substituting a monad for the dyad. In the twentieth century, Adolf von Harnack built a Marcionizing thesis, stamping the preservation of the Bible as the consequence of religious paralysis. Basing himself upon the biblical text, Buber wrote that redemption must take place in the concrete world and scripture consequently addresses man as a whole, in his material and spiritual existence. He thus saw the Bible as the way man learns about the three times, which are themselves separated and which link God to the world, God to man, and man 22.

23.

Socrates, for instance, thought that everything is in man. One only had to maieutically bring the truth out of him and realize what was potentially in him. Yet, he received his concept of love from his instructress Diotima. See Plato, Symposium, 79. Buber, “The Man of Today and the Jewish Bible,” in The Writings of Martin Buber, ed. W. Herberg (New York: Meridian Books, 1958), 246–250. — 110 —

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to the world.24 It is clear that Buber espoused the triad creationrevelation-redemption of his friend, Rosenzweig. His own agenda, however, was not to fight Hegelian monism as such, or the monism prevailing from Ionia until Jena, but to combat Gnosticism, which he saw as threatening real religiosity. According to Jacob Taubes, Buber had to strike Paul’s theocentric conception of history as a mystery determined by God in order to attack Hegel’s philosophy, which made history into the high court of reality. He even employed the Divine, lifegiving Law against Paul.25 This is certainly true: Buber had to present history not as the inevitable, deterministic outcome of a Divine plan, in which human beings are only passive players. He was determined to show that redemption is the result of man’s activity, of his “turn,” and “inner transformation”26 and that creation is not problematic; while incompatible with science, it is linked to the uniqueness of the human being, and as such, it was the basis for revelation. It is more than plausible to assume that Buber had his own agenda in translating and commenting upon the Bible: to fight Gnostic tendencies, to which he himself was attracted in his pre-dialogical, mystical period and which one finds in the pietistic-protestant exegesis, estranged from this world.27 By translating and commenting, Buber avoided eschewing earthly reality; it was vital to him to proclaim that the holy had to enter history, the word of God had to be heard in this concrete world, and evil had to be confronted. He translated and retold the biblical stories that took history seriously and hallowed daily life. Rehearing and retelling would make the reality of dialogue for man of today possible again.28 24. 25.

26. 27.

28.

Buber, “The Faith of Judaism,” 263–265. Jacob Taubes, “Buber and Philosophy of History,” in Schilpp and Friedman, The Philosophy, 452–453. Buber, “Prophecy, Apocalyptic, and the Historical Hour,” in Pointing the Way, 207. Hans Schravesande notes that at the beginning of their common undertaking of the translation of the Bible, Rosenzweig wrote that they had to fight neo-Marcionist tendencies that wanted/aimed to do away with the Jewish heritage: Buber and he, therefore, would have to “proselytize” (Also werden wir missionieren). Buber agreed with the idea (Schravesande, Jichud: Eenheid inhet werk van Martin Buber (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum Academic, 2009), 256. See also Kepnes, The Text as Thou, 125–127. — 111 —

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Anti-apocalyptic Messianism Buber was fascinated by the biblical stories and songs. More especially, he wanted to depict the development of Messianism from its earliest manifestations through Jesus and Paul. In his early period, he characterizes Messianism as “the most deeply original idea of Judaism.”29 Later, he left his immanent interpretation of Messianism in favor of a more transcendent view on God as King (melekh). Israel had heard in history the Divine appeal to recognize Him as their King. Messianism had to establish the Kingdom of God. The dialogical Buber saw Israel’s Messianic faith as the readiness of realizing the relationship between God and man: this faith was already present before the Sinaitic covenant, with Abraham being called upon. Buber’s Messianism was continuous; it was the task to overcome alienation by the relationship with human beings and with God. Taubes charged Buber with inconsistency in his description of Deutero-Isaiah as representing the type of an “apocalyptic” theology of world history: one had to atone for the guilt, and the atonement is fulfilled through the suffering of the people. Buber missed the chance to “[strike] at the heart of Paul’s theology of history,” he claimed, by connecting Deutero-Isaiah’s theology of history to Paul’s apocalyptic thinking. Paying attention to this connection, he could have met “his great antagonist face to face.” However, Taubes weakens his own argument when he notes: Nevertheless, throughout his work, in the historical studies of biblical as well as Hasidic literature, Buber is guided by an “open” messianic interpretation of Deutero-Isaiah’s theologem on the servant that contests implicitly (by unfolding the motif of the suffering servant throughout the history of Jewish faith) the Christological encystment of the messianic secret in Pauline Christianity.30

29.

30.

Buber, “Der Geist des Orients und das Judentum,” in Buber, Reden ueber das Judentum (Berlin: Schocken, 1932), 91 (die am tiefsten urspruengliche Schoepfung des Judentums, der Messianismus). Taubes, “Philosophy of History,” 459–462. — 112 —

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In his reply to Taubes, Buber denied that Deutero-Isaiah was an apocalyptic prophet. The alternative of man’s nonapocalyptic return to God, of active turn, is silent in Deutero-Isaiah because in these texts, “the historical-superhistorical dialogic between God and man reaches its height.” Moreover, the dualistic-apocalyptic dualism of sons of the light against sons of the darkness, about which Taubes had written, is entirely absent in Deutero-Isaiah, “whose God ‘forms the light and creates the darkness.’”31 Buber could not agree with a view that qualified what was for him the highpoint of biblical prophecy as apocalyptic. He acknowledged that the anonymous prophet of the Babylonian exile, Deutero-Isaiah, was a man who had to herald world history as divinely predestined and who, instead of dialogue, brought comfort to the people in distress. The future is spoken of in this text as established from the days of old. In Deutero-Isaiah, there was no longer room for an alternative, but “essentially the transformation had been made possible by the unheard-of new character of the historical situation.” The alternative was silenced; one no longer chooses between two ways, but this perception opens the perspective of the series of “the servants of the Lord,” atonement through suffering.32 With these ideas in mind, it becomes understandable why Buber composed his chronicle or novel For the Sake of Heaven. As he himself writes,33 for twenty-five years he was unable to write this work, but with the events of World War II and the manifestation of false Messianism, the writing became easy. In it, Buber contrasts two schools: that of Lublin and that of Pshysha. He contrasts two persons, who, however, bear the same name and are linked by the bond of teacher and disciple: Jaacob Yitzchaq. The Seer of Lublin interpreted the Napoleontic wars in a magic-theurgic manner as part of the apocalyptic battle between Gog and Magog that is to precede redemption. He deemed that God uses evil for His own purposes. His disciple, Jaacob Yitzchaq, “the holy Jew” (“the Yehudi”), believed that all depends upon turning and repentance: the conflict against the Gogs and Magogs are in everyone’s heart. The 31. 32. 33.

Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 730–731. Buber, “Prophecy,” 198–199. See the postface of “Gog und Magog” in Buber, Werke III, 1256–1261. — 113 —

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Seer believed that one may use evil for the purpose of the good, and that man can be compelled by it; all depends upon God. The Yehudi believed, in contrast, that if one makes use of evil, one participates in it. One did not have to hasten the end but to hallow every day. Buber identified with the Yehudi, who wanted to redeem evil by turning and who was indeed one of the individuals who acted as a “suffering servant of the Lord” and so worked to bring redemption nearer.34 In his analysis of the novel, Taubes contends that “the Jew[s],” as Jesus (who was the arrow that emerged from the hiddenness of the quiver [Isaiah 49:2]), are “beautiful souls” who remain passive and flee the world.35 Yet can one overlook Buber’s emphasis upon “realization,” a topic that permeated his entire work? Can one forget that Buber himself objected to the pure soul that would not allow any splashes of blood to fall? Can one neglect Buber’s war against magicizing Gnosis that does not give credit to the act of turning to this concrete world? One had to act in the world, in other words: “our hands, ready to mold, reach deep into the mud.”36 Had one not to serve God with his whole soul in this always harsh reality? With his heart and his flesh? Buber himself replied to Taubes that the Yehudi’s and Jesus’s relation to the word is not “entirely passive.” The opposite is true: “There is no higher activity than the call to the turning.”37 Buber disapproved of an apocalyptic Messianism as the one proclaimed by Paul and ecstatic visionaries; he held to an antithetical position. In the apocalyptic vision, the catastrophe would be inevitable; the prophets wanted man’s return, his teshuva. In the apocalypse, man does not have a choice; in the prophetic vision, however, the future is not fixed and man may change the course of history. Instead of a predetermined, necessary redemption, as in Hegelianism and dogmatic Marxism, Buber saw the future as open; man had to “realize” it, foremost in Zion, where Jews could live a national life that — in Buber’s dreams  —  was dominated by I-you relationships and man’s inner

34. 35. 36. 37.

See Friedman, Martin Buber, 149–158. Friedman, Martin Buber, 466–467. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 721–722. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 715. — 114 —

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transformations. His suprahistorical reality judges history, in which man is really free and not the mere object of the powerful forces of an immutable course of history. Buber recognized that there are apocalyptic motifs among the classical prophets, and that one may find prophetic motifs also among the late apocalyptics, but he marked an unbridgeable difference between the prophets who “call” for return, speaking to particular men and inducing them to recognize their situation’s demand for decision, and the apocalyptic “writers,” who had no audience turned toward them and wrote their thoughts in “a book.” 38 The distinction between the prophetic figure and the apocalyptic writer is therefore also the distinction between I-you and I-it. Real Messianism was not outside history, when “time will no longer be,” as is recorded in the Johannine Revelation,39 but embodied a new direction in the destiny of the world that issues from the turning.40 In a way that undermines Buber’s anti-institutional position, Taubes further remarked that enthusiastic, ecstatic moments in history in which one encounters the other, including early Christianity and early Hasidism, contain seeds of institutionalization and realization. He criticizes Buber’s too-great contrast between what he considered the purity of the heart versus the institutions, between ecstatic moments and the routine everyday ones. Such an opposition exists in Buber, but he also was convinced that Messianism was an elevated reality in Israel that was not limited to some ecstatic moments but had to be realized continuously. Messianism would be the driving force in Jewish history from the early days in Israel until the twentieth-century Zionist enterprise.

Kingdom and JHWH Challenging the biblical scholars of his time, Buber considered the idea of the Kingdom of God in Israel as an early idea, rooted in the memory of an early historical reality. Unmediated theocracy was contrasted 38. 39. 40.

Buber, “Prophecy,” 194, 200. Buber, “Prophecy,” 203. Buber, “Prophecy,” 203, 207. — 115 —

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to hereditary kingship, and the theo-political Kingdom of God was connected immediately to every aspect of the earthly reality. By accepting Divine rule already on Mount Sinai — Buber defended the historical character of the event, against Sigmund Mowinckel — ancient Israel rejected human domination and resolutely chose independence and freedom. The ten commandments were the King’s proclamation,41 and the memory of the Kingdom of God was kept alive by faithful Israelites.42 Buber traces the dialogue between mankind and the Divine King when he writes on Moses, the judges, the prophets, the suffering servant, and Jesus. The kings tended to see their mission and anointment as a Divine right, but the prophets placed spirit above power, reminding the kings and their people of God’s Kingdom, which demands the realization of a real community that shows respect for the poor, the widow, and the orphan. Isaiah’s Messiah, “Immanuel,” is the king of a remnant, of the people who trust in the Divine King and who make God’s leadership real. For Buber, the culmination point of prophecy lies in the suffering servant of the Lord.43 This suffering servant endures for the sake of God. He takes upon himself the sufferings of others, knowing that God suffers with him, and in this way he works toward the mending of the world and making God’s kingship real. In Kingship of God, Buber discusses Gideon’s rejection of the earthly kingship (Judges 8:23).44 In his Prophetic Faith, he starts his discussion of Israel’s faith with the Song of Deborah (Judges 5), goes on with the Shechem assembly (Joshua 24), and studies the covenant at Sinai (Exodus 19–24) and the stories of the Fathers in the book of Genesis. The origins of Israel’s faith are thus, in Buber’s view, earlier than the recognition of YHWH in the time of Moses, where many scholars place 41.

42. 43. 44.

Buber refused to see the Decalogue as a “document” on which the conclusion of the Covenant is established. It is the text of a proclamation, whose origin is to be traced back to a revelation. It is not, in his view, an objectifiable “law.” Buber recognized himself in the Thou of this command. See Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 728. Glatzer, “Interpreter of the Bible,” 368–371. Friedman, Martin Buber, 249–257. Muilenburg has doubts about the historicity of this utterance (vayomer alehem Gideon lo emshol ani bakhem velo yimshol beni bakhem YHWH yimshol bakhem). More broadly, he questions what Buber calls his “intuitively scientific method” as against what he styles “speculative theory.” See Muilenburg, “Interpreter of the Bible,” 389–390. — 116 —

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it.45 Buber maintains that the God who revealed himself to Moses at the Burning Bush as YHWH was also the God of the fathers, El Shadai. This fits well in Buber’s concept of the Jewish soul that is pre-Sinaitic. The Divine name degenerated and became empty and half-forgotten.46

Decalogue It is significant that, for Buber, the Decalogue was not the basis upon which the covenant was made. Muilenburg remarks that the omission of the Decalogue from its present context, from the theophany, is contrary to what we know of all other biblical theophanies, where words are always spoken. This also cancels out Israel as the people of the Torah in its covenantal origins, as teaching and guidance.47 This may be true, but it does not explain Buber’s deliberate detachment of the Mosaic Decalogue from the covenant context; this happened because of his philosophical position concerning the relationship between man and God, which is not primarily a relationship of commandments but one of dialogue and covenant.

The Influence of the Biblical, Historical God Upon Buber’s Approach to God As we have noted, in an early stage of his thought Buber conceived God as to be “realized.”48 Starting from his Daniel, published in 1913, God became the “eternal You” with whom the human being is in relation, but finally — not least because of the impression of the traumatic events of the Shoah — He became more and more transcendent, silent, hiding 45. 46.

47. 48.

Muilenburg, “Interpreter of the Bible,” 392. Muilenburg characterizes this opinion of Buber as “neither persuasive nor likely.” He further calls Buber’s arguments in favor of his rejection of the Kenite theory of the origins of Israel’s faith in YHWH “by no means coercive”: “It must be admitted again that the Kenite theory has not been demonstrated, but the arguments in its favor are somewhat more impressive than is suggested by Buber’s analysis of the narrative” (“Interpreter of the Bible,” 393, 394–395). Muilenburg, “Interpreter of the Bible,” 397. Buber, Ekstatische Konfessionen; Ecstatic Confessions: The Heart of Mysticism, ed. P. MendesFlohr, transl. Esther Cameron (Syracuse NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996). — 117 —

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not hidden,49 good (guetig), terrible (grausam), and even absent, which does not prevent His will from being revealed to the human being. God may hide his face, and man may prevent himself from seeing God, but God permanently reveals His will to realize a Divine justice.50 Buber once concentrated upon the present alone, but under the influence of Rosenzweig51 and as a result of their common work on the Bible, he realized the importance of the past, that is, of God as Creator, and of the future, that is, of God who wants redemption through the formation of a real society. History then became more central in his oeuvre on the Bible. In the Bible, God creates the world and the human being. And as the God of history, He wants the repair and redemption of the world in cooperation with the human being as His partner. With time, Buber gradually discovered the profound layers in the Bible that pertain to history. With the dominance of his biblical discourse, he became conscious that the God of the world and of Israel is the God related to history, in which man has to realize the redemption in an active way so that the Divine Kingdom may be realized in the world as such.52 Moreover, after I and Thou, in his work on the Bible, Buber paid more attention to the appellation, the Anrede: God addresses man. In his existential exegesis, Buber coped with the Shoah and found in the Bible words that were relevant for post-Holocaust Jewry. On the last page of The Prophetic Faith, published in Hebrew in 1942, he speaks about the Messiah not as an individual but as a name for the collective Jewish people, for the collective Suffering Servant.53 He presents Job as someone who, like the Holocaust survivor, searches for trust despite 49.

50.

51. 52. 53.

In Buber’s work, God does conceal himself, not as deus absconditus. There is only an “eclipse of God,” not a concealment; this can be compared to Heschel, in Man Is Not Alone: “The prophets do not speak of the hidden God but of the hiding God” (153). Buber, Der Glaube der Propheten (Zuerich: Manesse, 1950), 277–278. Christianity prevents God from being hidden since it fixes God in the image of Christ. See Buber, Zwei Glaubensweisen, in Werke I, 777–779. See Horwitz, Buber’s Way to “I and Thou” 207–218. Buber, “The Faith of Judaism,” 263–265. The suffering Messiah, whose substitution (Stellvertretung) is his identity, is a wellknown notion in Christianity. Buber refers to all of Israel as “Ebed.” Israel, he writes in 1942 (Buber, Werke II, 483–484), knows the “mystery of suffering,” but on all his paths recognizes God as shepherd and “Fuehrer” (sic). — 118 —

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evil and who experiences the presence of God despite evil. The God of Job is the continual Creator, from the beginning until now. Buber felt close to Job, whom he called his “father.” Also the Psalms offered the promise of a trusting relationship and the fundamental feeling that God is good, despite evil.54 Over and over again, Buber teaches his readers, for instance in his commentary on Psalm 1, that even if man’s fate as seen from the outside is cruel and a pure failure, as the object of God’s “knowledge” (Ps. 1:6), his way is successful (Ps. 1:4); this was man’s real happiness (Ps. 1:6).55 In the sanctuaries (miqdeshey el), that is, in the holy mysteries of God (Ps.73:17a), the psalmist becomes conscious that the evil ones who have a good life in fact have a non-existence, whereas the ones whose heart is pure (bare levav: Ps. 73:1) are always with God (vaa-ani tamid imakh; Ps. 73:23). When the person with a pure heart dies, his existence as whole existence (volkommene Existenz) enters eternity: God takes his hand (achazta beyad yemini; Ps. 73:17b), in kavod, in the completion of his life (kavod tiqaheni; Ps. 73:24).56 Thus Buber coped with the problem of evil, which remains in contrast to God’s very existence. Even in the dark hours, Buber uttered his belief that the nearness to God is the highest good for man (Ps. 73:28, va’ani qirvat elohim li tov). He trusted the “rock” (Ps. 73: 26, tsur levavi), where the soul finds its shelter (Ps. 73: 28, makhasi). Also in the darkness, man may in his wholeness address the Divine You and express his trust, notwithstanding the terrible situation in which he may be. 54. 55.



56.

Kepnes, The Text as Thou, 138–143. Buber, Werke II, 984–990. In light of Buber’s translation of “Torah” by “Weisung,” we cannot understand the opinion of Muilenburg, who writes, concerning Buber’s interpretation of Ps. 1: “[…] due recognition is given to the Law, which elsewhere in Buber’s writings seems to receive less than its due” (J. Muilenburg, “Buber as an Interpreter of the Bible,” in Schilpp and Friedman, The Philosophy, 391). Our argument is confirmed by Buber himself, who in “Replies to My Critics,” writes: “Neither in the original nor in my translation of Psalm 1 does “the Law” appear. Torah is spoken of, the “instruction,” namely the instruction of the right “way” by God. In distinction to the “Law” (nomos) Torah is first of all a dynamic concept, i.e., the verbal origin and character cleaves to the name and is repeatedly emphasized (“the Instruction that one will instruct you,” Deuteronomy 17:11), and second, the tie between the Divine instructor, the “moreh” (Isaiah 30:20), and his instruction is given in the word itself. Thus the objectification of the concept contradicts its essence.” (727)

Buber, Werke II, 971–983. Buber recited Ps. 73 on the grave of Franz Rosenzweig. — 119 —

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The Prophet Glatzer describes Buber’s approach to the prophets: of all the biblical leaders, Buber considered the prophet to be the most important person in ancient Israel. Before Buber, Hermann Cohen considered biblical prophecy to be the pure expression of ethical monotheism. Buber offered a discerning description of a wide range of prophets, amongst whom was Moses, who descended from a family of “seers” and desired that all would be nebiim, prophets, in immediate contact with God. Glatzer — like Friedman — rightly observes that the Suffering Servant was the culmination point of the prophets for Buber, and this figure replaces the royal Messiah. As we noted, Buber contrasts the dialogical figure of the prophet to the apocalyptic man, who evaded human choice, return, and decision, and spoke in terms of a rigid necessity. Apocalyptic abandonment of the world was to be found in Marcion’s dualism, and modern apocalypse was present in, for instance, Karl Marx’s system, although one may find also in Marx’s view “flashing sparks of the prophetic fire.”57 In his theological thoughts, Buber connected revelation — ehye asher ehye, “I am there as whoever I am there”58 — to creation and to redemption: God wanted a world to attain unity and fulfillment in the Kingdom of God. Job, who wants “to see” God and who prays for his friends, is also put in the company of the prophets.59 In accordance with his distinction between the I as I-you and the I as I-it, Buber opposed the unspecialized prophet, a unified, entire man, to the specialized priest, a divided man who is expert in sacral rites. This view of the prophets astutely reflects Buber’s refusal to restrict the Divine word to a complex of fixed observances. The prophets, men of faith rather than of religion, had a dialogical relationship with God; they received the Divine message and wanted the realization of the Kingdom of God in an unredeemed world. Fulfillment of the Torah meant the hearing of the Divine word in the totality of human life.60 57. 58. 59. 60.

Buber, “Prophecy,” 204. Buber, I and Thou, 160; Ich und Du, 97–98. Glatzer, “Interpreter of the Bible,” 371–377. See Alexander S. Kohanski, An Analytical Interpretation of Martin Buber’s I and Thou (Woodbury, NY: Barron’s Educational Series, 1975), 18–25. — 120 —

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Heschel and the Bible For Heschel, biblical man is an eminent example of the strived-for relationship between man and God. In his epistemology, Heschel describes preconceptual faith and thinking.61 Biblical man did not have an “ontological presupposition,” he did not think in logical concepts, and he did not think abstractly, but he did have an immediate relationship to God. Biblical man’s listening to the Divine voice was on a level that is responsive and presymbolic. Heschel was very much aware of the rift between biblical and Greek thinking: “The categories in which biblical man conceived of God, man and the world are so very different from the presuppositions of metaphysics upon which most of Western philosophy is based that certain insights that are meaningful within the biblical mind seems to be meaningless to the Greek mind.”62 He adds significantly: It would be an achievement of the first magnitude to reconstruct the peculiar nature of biblical thinking and to spell out its divergence from all other types of thinking. It would open new perspectives for the understanding of moral, social and religious issues and enrich the whole of our thinking. Biblical thinking may have a part to play in shaping our philosophical views about the world.63

Levinas’s and Heschel’s projects may be far removed from each other, but Heschel’s wish to come to a philosophy that takes into account the relevance of the Bible and biblical thinking has been tentatively achieved in Levinas’s thinking, which is situated between Athens and Jerusalem, although in the latter’s writings, the Talmud is brought in contact with philosophy more than the Bible. Biblical man responded to God with his life. He responded to revelation. Heschel writes that the revelation is Divine, but that each of the prophets expressed it in his own way: “The event is Divine, but the formulation is done by the individual prophet… the idea is revealed; 61. 62. 63.

Heschel, God in Search of Man, 115–116. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 23, note 8. Ibid. — 121 —

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the expression is coined by the prophet.”64 Heschel expresses his view that the Divine voice was heard through the human ears of the prophet; no man is able to hear the Divine voice in its primary state.65 He writes: “Our creed is, like music, a translation of the unutterable into sounds, thoughts, words, deeds. The original is known to God alone.”66 Through his own words, the prophet tried to express his experience of the unutterable. His character and the cultural environment in which he lived influenced the way he expressed this experience. Consequently, meaning for Heschel does not stem from rational thinking, neither does it stem from routine life. Faith, rather, constitutes a challenge for routine life. It further puts into question man’s security and his spontaneous living, which is another point of contact he shares with Levinas but also with Buber. Believing is, for Heschel, not remaining within the known and the agreed upon. Faith gives man freedom, and as a free being he meets God, who is the source of freedom. Everybody may become free. What typifies the prophet more particularly as a free man is that he has a great sensitivity to evil.67 The prophet looks at this world from a Divine perspective. He is therefore the opposite of the mystical man, who wants to gnostically unite with God and disengage from the material world. In a mode dissimilar to Kierkegaard’s, the prophet refers to the world: the prophet desires the repair of the world, which follows from his empathy with the Divine pathos. Ed Kaplan writes that the fulfilled mystic must become a moral activist.68 Criterion for the real mystical man is indeed his involvement in the world. In Heschel’s words: “A prophet is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times.”69 Instead of “unio mystica,” Heschel talks about the “communion” of the prophet, that is, not union in which the personality is blotted out, but the full identification of a person with God’s care. In order to elucidate how he sees the substance of the religious experience, Heschel 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

Heschel, God in Search of Man, 265. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 261. Heschel, “Faith,” in Moral Grandeur, 335. Heschel, The Prophets, vol. I, 3–5. Kaplan, “Mysticism,” 43. Heschel, “Religion and Race,” in The Insecurity of Freedom, 93. — 122 —

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distinguishes between prophecy and ecstasy. He devotes a few chapters in The Prophets70 to characterizing the prophetic experience against the ecstatic experience of the mystical man. Scholars of the science of religion frequently see prophecy as a kind of ecstasy. This is a problem for Heschel because the prophet is not ecstatic. Heschel first depicts a few conceptions in which one separates body and spirit. In the Greek world, for instance, the term “ecstasy” pointed to a situation in which the spirit is cut off from the body and unites with Divine worlds. Heschel depicts this mystical situation by referring to Eveline Underhill. This specialist in mysticism writes that the ecstatic person cuts himself off from this world and his self-consciousness is nullified; mystical man wants to unite with God. The prophet, however, Heschel continues, wants a different union, one without the nullification of his ego. For biblical man, mystical union is heretical, because in such a union one does not respect the limit between God and man that comes into expression in Moses’s desire to see God; he is answered: “No man shall see Me and live” (lo yireni ha-adam ve-hai; Exodus 33: 20). Instead of nullifying his own ego, the prophet’s personality is energized; he receives supplementary strength: “The prophetic personality, far from being dissolved, is intensely present and fervently involved in what he perceives.”71 The personality of the prophet is therefore present and involved in the religious event itself, not partly and accidentally but substantially: “Unlike mystical insight, which takes place in ‘the abyss of the mind,’ in ‘the ground of consciousness,’ prophetic illumination seems to take place in the full light of the mind, in the very center of consciousness.”72 Prophetic inspiration is often assumed to have been a form of ecstasy. For Heschel, however, the prophet is not in a state of trance in which the soul is out of its place, separated from the body. Heschel deemed that labeling prophecy as ecstasy is too psychological an explanation, one that fails to acknowledge the rich phenomenon of prophecy that includes communion and communication. The prophet’s soul was not separated from the body as in sleep or trance; Moses received revelation in full consciousness. Heschel considers ecstatic prophetism 70. 71. 72.

Heschel, The Prophets, vol. II, 104–164. Heschel, The Prophets, vol. II, 137. Heschel, The Prophets, vol. II, 139. — 123 —

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alien to the Israelite mode of thinking. The biblical prophets could not be like the depersonalized Divine men who participated in the orgiastic cults of primitive societies. The Bible, in fact, does not report signs of ecstasy for the leading prophetic figures between the time of Moses and the time of Amos. The root of ecstatic experience lies, for Heschel, in the thirst to become possessed with a god or to become one with him. Such a thirst is alien to biblical man. The personality of the prophet is therefore not dissolved but present and involved in the revelation.73 Ecstasis is an experience that is incommunicable, but prophecy is meaningless without expression.74 The prophet did not want to conceal but to reveal. He wanted to take into account “heaven and the marketplace.”75 Prophecy is the experience of a relationship, the receipt of a message.76 We do not know in how familiar Heschel was with the writings of the young Buber, who loved to write about ecstacy and characterized Hasidic piety as a phenomenon of this order. With time, Buber discarded his focus on the absorption of the religious man in God. His early mystical tendencies were replaced by a concentration on communion, about which Heschel wrote aptly. Heschel as well as Buber felt the urgent need to describe the prophetic consciousness not as an obsession by God or a being absorbed in God; they highlighted, rather, the communion between man and God that was present in exemplary form in the prophet. Heschel’s prophet is “a crossing point of God and man.” God has thrust a burden upon his soul, and he consequently feels compelled to give voice to God’s raging.77 The prophet is in sympathy with God, a sympathy that “is not, like love, an attraction to the Divine Being, but the assimilation of the prophet’s emotional life to the Divine, an assimilation of function, not of being.” The prophet lives his personal 73.

74. 75. 76.

77.

As Rotenstreich notes: “Once sympathy is made the focus of prophetic consciousness, the contradiction between sympathy and ecstasy becomes prominent.” (Rotenstreich, “Prophetic Consciousness,” 193). Heschel, The Prophets, vol. II, 140–141. Heschel, The Prophets, vol. II, 143. Heschel, The Prophets, vol. II, 144. The prophetic existence was characterized by an interpersonal relationship. Unlike the experience of the numinous, sympathy referred to persons (The Prophet, vol. II, 89). Heschel, The Prophets, vol. I, 5. — 124 —

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life as well as the life of God.78 In contrast to Heschel, Buber distanced himself from having empathy with the feeling of God for the world. Both thinkers hold that the prophet and God were related in a dialogical relationship, although in very dissimilar modes. Both highlighted the conception that the Bible does not posit an idea. For Heschel, we are, rather, confronted with a claim of the prophets; they claim to convey the will of God. The prophets felt inspired, and it is illegitimate to reduce their message to a product of their own hearts.79 Heschel’s conviction is that they bring God’s message in their own words.

Bible and Language in Heschel As has been stated, nobody may hear the words of God as they are. The more the language is descriptive, the less it is apt to describe revelation.80 One has to take into account the poetic, indicative style of the Bible.81 What is important for Heschel is that descriptive words exist in order to evoke in one’s memory “preconceived meanings,” whereas indicative words call for “a response, ideas unheard of, meanings not fully realized before.”82 Therefore, one cannot find a systematic theology in the Bible. Heschel distinguishes between concepts and the “hearing” of God’s words. In Buber’s thought too, hearing God’s word before considering abstract concepts is an absolute requirement. Prayer, which for Heschel is first of all praise (as it is for Buber), seeks to praise the Name of God, which is not a concept. God is a Name, and prayer, in fact, is a song. Both thinkers under discussion in this study opposed a literal explanation of the Bible and interpreted it, rather, as a response to a call, one that required the response of present man.

78. 79 . 80.

81. 82.

Heschel, The Prophets, vol. I, 26. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 176–177. Holtz maintains that the more one expresses faith poetically, the more one describes faith accurately. Only the language of poetry is able to come near to the ineffable. The clear language of doctrine is not capable of expressing the depth of the experience of the living encounter between God and man. See Avraham Holtz, “Religion and the Arts in the Theology of A. J. Heschel,” Conservative Judaism 28, no. 1 (1973): 29. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 181–182. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 182. — 125 —

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Midrash As mentioned, the Bible is for Heschel a midrash, because it is the attempt of the human being to understand and to communicate the experiences of meetings that took place between Israel and God. The Bible is human and Divine. The “sola scriptura” attitude misses a major point: the biblical message is open and available to be interpreted generation after generation. This aspect, stressed by Heschel, is less present in Buber, whose project was to hear the biblical word in its purity, without the interpretations of centuries, which would often obscure it. But Buber as well as Heschel could not escape the necessity of understanding the Bible “today,” in seventy languages.

Torah from Heaven and Torah from Sinai Heschel, unlike Buber, gave a central place in his writings to the revelation at Sinai as well as to the relationship between the Torah from heaven and the Torah from Sinai. For him, biblical man does not stand immediately before God as he does for Buber. He stands, rather, before God with the Torah. For Heschel, there are two conceptions about the Torah, according to the two versions in the Mishna. One place in the Mishna proclaims: “Moses received from Sinai” (Avot 1a; Yerushalmi Sanhedrin 50, a), whereas in another place, it is written: “Torah from Heaven” (Mishna Sanhedrin 10a). The two Mishna passages describe two different views. In the first perspective, one sees the Torah from beneath, as in a mirror; the revelation of the Torah takes place at a certain time and in a certain space. In the second outlook, revelation is conceived of as eternity, a mysterious event between God and man that is not limited by human space or time. The two versions in the Mishna correspond to two attitudes: that of Rabbi Akiva and that of Rabbi Ishmael. Rabbi Akiva’s school was mystical and enthusiastic, whereas the school of Ishmael was rationalistic and critical. In that time, the more radical ideas of Rabbi Akiva took precedence over the more liberal theology of Ishmael.83 Heschel thinks that the ideas of Ishmael, which 83.

S. Heschel, Introduction to Moral Grandeur, xix. — 126 —

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were once the opinion of the minority, could become today the attitude of the majority. In a passage of the Hebrew original of his work, which for some reason was not translated into English, one reads that Heschel thinks that in the present hour we need the teachings of Rabbi Ishmael, in which the meaning of Torah from heaven in its mystical dimension is diminished.84 Akiva’s mystical understanding of the Torah was not at all rooted into this earthly reality, and we are less in need of the otherworldly position now, he believed. Heschel mentions that one talks about the Divine character of the Torah as the meeting between God and man, and this Torah is eternal. One could be inclined to think that Heschel therefore opts for the viewpoint of Akiva, but he also opts for Ishmael, because the Torah reflects the historical relationship between God and man. Torah is therefore human-critical and historical, as well as eternal. For Akiva, it was eternal in the sense of not being dependent upon time. For Heschel, it was eternal because the dialogue between God and man depends upon time; without continuous debate, the Torah is not eternal but merely literature. The event at Mount Sinai is only the beginning of the revelation, Heschel proclaims. In his book on revelation, he points to the problems inherent in fanatic teaching that do not take into account the human. Today we need Rabbi Ishmael, who accentuated the Divine to a lesser degree and put more emphasis on the human. For Heschel, the Torah is both Divine and human; his perspective causes him to prefer the teachings of Ishmael in the present times. A central issue comes to the fore in the discussion of the question of Ishmael about what exactly Moses received from heaven. The debate circles around the question of whether only the principles were given at Sinai or the great lines were cited, together with all the details. A tannaitic tradition preserved in the Talmud says: “Rabbi Ishmael klalot neemru besinai, pratot neemru be-ohel moed.” In contrast, Rabbi Akiva contends: “klalot ufratot neemru besinai ve-nishnu be-ohel moed ve-nishtlashelu be-arbot moav” (Sota 37b; Hagiga 6b; Zvachim 115b). According to Ishmael, the principles were said on Mount Sinai; only the Decalogue is from Heaven. In Akiva’s thought, the entire Torah in all its details comes from heaven. Heschel comments that in this discussion 84.

Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 85. — 127 —

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it becomes clear that Akiva did not think that Moses said anything on his own accord, since all comes from Heaven. According to Ishmael, however, Moses added elements of his own. The discussion between Ishmael and Akiva mirrors the present-day broader controversy about the prophets and the essence of prophecy. On the one hand, the antimystical attitude of Ishmael reflects the idea of partnership between the human and the Divine that is also in the writing of the Torah, whereas Akiva represents a concept of the prophet as a channel of God who passively receives the Divine message.85 Heschel concurs with Ishmael, who thinks that the prophet is a full partner, whereas for Akiva, the Divine spirit comes over that prophet and overwhelms him. Thus, for Ishmael, the prophet is an active partner in the bringing of the Divine message. Heschel himself prefers the school of Ishmael because this preference allowed him inter alia to put the prophet above the mystical man. Heschel thought that concurrently with reception of the Divine word, the prophet already interprets: “As a report about revelation the Bible itself is a midrash.”86 In Buber’s work, the differences between the schools of Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael are not discussed at all; his interest was less in the period of the Sages. He preferred other eras: that of the prophets, the Essenes, and Early Christianity, and that of Hasidism and presentday Zionism. However, he also thought that the Bible was written by man, who testifies of the dialogue between heaven and earth. Without referring to Rabbi Ishmael, Buber likewise thought that the Decalogue is not from Heaven: in Heschel’s terminology: it is “midrash.”

Unity and Biblical Criticism Heschel qualifies the words of Akiva about the Torah being perfect and from heaven as poetic. These words were subsequently interpreted as Halakha. The present-day students of Rabbi Akiva quote their master against those who take the position that the Torah consists of numerous layers as results of historical circumstances. Against these 85. 86.

Even-Chen, “Omnipotence.” Heschel, God in Search of Man, 185. — 128 —

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adherents of biblical criticism, they maintain that every consonant and sign is Divine. This connotes that Heschel on the one hand accepts biblical criticism, but on the other he underlines the Divine character of the Torah. Buber also maintained the unity of the Bible against any exaggerated fragmentation of it, but he nevertheless situated the Divine words in particular historical circumstances and interpreted them as having been uttered by human beings. Another important feature of Heschel’s view on the Bible is that the scriptures depict the spiritual events of the meetings between man and God. As a consequence, the Bible cannot be understood with only the tools one uses in the analysis of literature. In order to sense the Divine dimension of the Torah, one has to develop a religious sensibility, without which the Bible remains only a book. The historical perspective, which wants to know dates and background, is not a question of faith. The Torah does not depend upon the authorship of Moses; this or another prophet wrote the Torah. The authors are, however, prophets, who stay under Divine inspiration and relay it in their own words. Their position as prophets lends holiness to the Torah. And Torah, the people of Israel, and the land of Yisrael are not holy in themselves; they are holy only in their interaction with each other. Without Israel, God would remain in His solitude. Sinai is therefore Divine proclamation as well as human perception. “It was a moment in which God was not alone.”87 The Bible is neither a series of historical events nor a conglomerate of spiritual experiences: there is an interaction between Bible and history; in Heschel’s view, spirit and history are interrelated.

Continuous Torah One of Heschel’s theses is that the Sages continue the Torah. Man participates in the Torah, which was given as corn and must be transformed into bread; the flax had to be made into a garment. One had to make the text of the Torah into a Torah that lends and promotes life, a Torah that is alive, Torat hayyim. The Sages translated 87.

Heschel, God in Search of Man, 260. — 129 —

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the meaning of the Torah in terms of deeds. All this is in accordance with the spirit of Rabbi Ishmael, who taught that the Sages had to actually create the Torah. The Sages practically defined what the Torah says; they assumed the authority to interpret even if their rendition was contrary to what is literally written. Heschel quotes the Maharal (Rabbi Judah Loew ben Betsalel from Prague, c. 1520–1609), who deemed that the Sages do not simply transmit the Divine words, but bring them to completion. The Sages had to repair the world. Because God created everything in six days, “la’asot,” in order that one does (=completes), God asks humanity to bring His creation to completion. Creation is not finished, and man has the task to finish it; therefore, he has to complete and to create. One is perhaps tempted to conclude that from this point on everything is relative. Heschel considers, however, that this relativizing viewpoint is erroneous and that in thinking that way, one does not honor the Divine inspiration. The human being is related to transcendence, and the Divine inspiration requires a great religious sensibility. If not, the Bible becomes mere literature without the inspirational dimension that makes it so exceptional. In the footsteps of Maharal, Heschel concludes from the fact that Moses “received from Sinai” and not “from God” that everyone may receive the Torah. His intention is to stress that the event of revelation is an occurrence not only for Moses but for everybody. God gives from His wisdom every day, and every day we say “ve-ha’er ‘enenu betoratekha” (“let our eyes be illuminated by your Torah”), and this is not only meant for Moses. Ezra was also worthy of this illumination, but Moses preceded him. As the midrash says: in every generation there is someone like Moses: ein dor she ein bo kemoshe (Bereshit Rabba 56, 9). The meaning of this utterance in Bereshit Rabba is that the prophecy has not stopped, and that the Bible continues to be written: Israel writes ever-new chapters of the Bible. True, the revelation took place for only a few moments, but one may enter into the eternity of it and understand that it can happen every moment. Revelation is therefore eternal; God’s voice can be heard continuously. Rosenzweig and Buber thought that in learning, the material, — 130 —

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written text becomes a force and a living voice.88 Rosenzweig added that in studying together, one relates to the previous generations: our learning and their learning become one. Along with the unity of the Bible, there is the unity of learning.89 The idea of the Torah as the living word that can be heard “today,” which was discussed by Rosenzweig, is also present in Heschel and in Buber. It was Heschel’s intention to convey the idea that “constant revelation” from God’s side implied “constant understanding” from Israel’s side. The Torah can be found in the encounter with the Divine will in revelation and the will of the children of Israel. Heschel claims that Judaism is based upon minimum revelation and maximum interpretation.90 His concept of continuous revelation is connected to his understanding of the prophets. In the prophets’ words, “the invisible God becomes audible.”91 That is, the prophet reveals through his words God’s presence; he discloses the Divine presence and brings Him into the world. This continuous revelation in the prophets’ mind is on par with the Divine Presence, which can be experienced in every generation.

Heschel’s Prophets in Relation to Morals and Ritual In his book The Prophets, Heschel writes that prophecy was seen as a kind of Protestantism, directed against pagan customs and ritualism, and that the prophets were thought of as having placed their main emphases upon faith. The result of this concept was that the prophets were understood as preachers of morals who put a spiritualized religion as counter to ceremonialism. This view, Heschel maintains, 88.

89.

90.

91.

Rosenzweig wrote: “[…] all this that can and should be known is not really knowledge! All this that can and should be taught is not teaching! Teaching begins where the subject matter ceases to be subject matter and changes into inner power…” (Rosenzweig, “The Builders: Concerning the Law,” in Franz Rosenzweig. On Jewish Learning. ed. Glatzer (New York: Schocken, 1955), 76. Rosenzweig, “Die Einheit der Bibel. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Orthodoxie und Liberalismus,” in Rosenzweig, Kleinere Schriften, 129. Even-Chen, “The Torah, Revelation, and Scientific Critique in the Teachings of Abraham Joshua Heschel,” Conservative Judaism, 50, 2–3 (1998): 75. Heschel, The Prophets I, 22. — 131 —

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is now being questioned, because the prophets are not isolated from the common Israelite environment in which ritual was part and parcel of religious life. What the prophets thought did not conflict with what was commonly accepted in the religious life of ancient Israel.92 The prophets were therefore not opposed to ritual per se, but rather they were critical toward what actually happened in religious life of their time. That is, they did not criticize ritual as such but only the deviations and distortions that were occurring in the framework of the community. Heschel thus thinks that protestant exegesis, which wanted to abolish the material aspect of sacrifices and to stress the spirituality of religion as detached from matters such as sacrifices and temple cult, is problematic. For Heschel, the most holy can become unclean, and one atones for this on Yom Kippur. From this position, we may infer that Heschel, by situating the prophets within and contra to ritual life, implicitly also criticized Buber’s standpoint that opposed the prophetic mode to the priestly one. Buber’s view on the prophets was indeed characterized by an anti-ritual tendency.

Translation of the Bible The translation of the Bible into German (Verdeutschung der Schrift) by Buber and his friend Rosenzweig, nine years his junior, is a unique enterprise.93 Buber spent an extended period of time in the realization of this project. They worked together from 1925 until Rosenweig’s death in 1929. From 1953 until 1961, Buber worked on the completion of the translation alone. In the following, we explain the mode in which Buber and Rosenzweig translated this founding document of Judaism. We compare their method of translating with the new Science of Literature method employed by Meir Weiss, who used a style similar to both Buber and Rosenzweig’s literary approach to the Bible in its unity and pointed to 92. 93.

Heschel, The Prophets I, 218. See Shemaryahu Talmon, “Martin Buber als Bibel-Interpret,” Freiburger Rundbrief 27, 101–104 (1975): 6–11; M. A. Beek and J. Sperna Weiland, Martin Buber (Baarn: Het Wereldvenster, 1964), 38–64; and Michael Fishbane, “Martin Buber as Interpreter of the Bible,” Judaism 27, no. 3 (1978): 84–195. — 132 —

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the contribution of their translation to Europe at large. Buber and Rosenzweig wanted to have access to the biblical Divine word in a form that was apart from available traditional and scientificconventional interpretations.94 However, they took into account the Midrashim95 as well as the tradition that was interested in the acoustic element, in the Bible’s “spokenness” and in its attention to the accents that were evident in the masoretic system. They wanted to relate to the Bible as a literary-religious totality. They discovered the deeper connections beyond the different sources and layers in the text. Disregarding more original strata, they concentrated upon the document as it lay before them. Their translation closed a period that had started with Moses Mendelssohn’s translation of the Pentateuch. Mendelssohn wanted the Jews to participate in general culture, while Buber and Rosenzweig wanted to bring the reader back to the original text. The three of them were convinced that the Jewish tradition was first of all an oral one. The translation principles of Buber and Rosenzweig as well as their view on Hebrew language and literary units are expressed in Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung.96 Rosenzweig and Buber did not want their translation used as a palimpsest that obscures the underlying text. They wanted to get rid of a prioris; and so, by uniting form and content, they went back to the original spokenness of the primary text, in its rhythm, keywords, and assonances.

A. Etymology In their attempt to read the Bible anew, without the ballast of ages that frequently deformed the original meaning, Buber and Rosenzweig paid attention to the etymology of words. Thus, Torah was not translated 94.

95.

96.

Fishbane writes that “He [Buber] tries to hear the text beyond the conventions of tradition and scholarly orthodoxy” (188). An example is given by Rosenzweig in Die Einheit der Bible, 130. In the case of Deut. 17:16 (vayyomer ki yad al kes yah milhama la-shem baamaleq midor dor), they did not accept the usual correction of kes in nes and opted for the masoretic text because of the midrash, which links God’s throne (kes, abbreviation of kiseh) to the defeat of Amalek. Buber and Rosenzweig, Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung (Berlin: Schocken, 1936). — 133 —

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by Gesetz, law, but by Weisung, pointing or instruction. This translation evoked a wider reality than the traditional rendering of “law.” Of course, such a translation fit Buber’s anomistic standpoint in which Torah cannot be essentially Law, or positively formulated, it was compatible with his focus upon God’s presence. “Qorban,” or offering — a cultic word almost never used outside of Leviticus and Numbers — was not translated into the usual Opfer, sacrifice, but by Darnahung. This unusual translation suggests a meeting between two personalities since it echoes the original meaning of le-qarev, “to come near,” “to approach,” and le-haqriv, to bring near. Such a rendering also explains the lessening of the gap between God and man and the spiritual elevation of Israel, as is also evident in the Midrash.97 Malakh, a being of a special order, was translated by Bote, messenger, not angel. In Buber’s view, the original meaning or etymological background under the worn-out concepts must become visible again. Thus the words navi, olah, and mizbeah were rendered respectively by Kuender — the “announcer” of the Divine word, from the root “to call,” not a prognosticator; Darhoehung — “what one brings up,” from the root “to ascend,” not burnt-offering; and Schlachtstatt — “a place of slaughter,” from the root “to slaughter.” With the last example, Buber wanted to distance himself from the Christian “tabernacle” or “altar” at which one prays: the item he translated is rather the place of slaughter. It is noteworthy that in the case of qorban and olah the translation is spiritualizing, whereas in the case of mizbeah, the translation is antispiritualizing. This is not an inconsistency but rather explainable through the fact that qorban as “bringing near” is present in the Midrash, whereas the translation of mizbeah as “place of slaughter” becomes understandable as an alternative to the Christian altar. Kipper was translated as the pre-theological decken, “to cover,” and not as the overly theological suehnen, “atone.” Ohel moed was translated with the consciousness that it comes from the root ya’ad, “to be present” (gegenwaertig sein), and thus rendered as Zelt der Gegenwart, “the tent in which God is present” instead of the Lutherian “tabernacle of foundation” (Huette des Stifts).98 S. R. Hirsch was also fascinated by the etymology of words, and he underlined the meanings 97. 98.

See, for example, Bereshit Rabba 49, 8; Psiqta Rabbati alef, alef. Glatzer, “Interpreter of the Bible,” 364–365. — 134 —

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of words that have a similar sound. It is no surprise that Rosenzweig felt an affinity to the translation of Hirsch.99 Of special importance is the translation of the personal Divine Name (by I, You, and He) and of the translation of “ehyeh asher ehyeh,” in Exodus 3:14. Before 1957, Buber translated the last expression as “I am that I am” (Ich bin der ich bin)100; in 1957, with the enlarged and revised edition of I and Thou, Buber changed his translation: “I am there as whoever I am there” or “I shall be present as I shall be present” (Ich bin da als der ich da bin).101 The 1957 translation fitted Buber’s own theology of the Divine presence wonderfully. He had already rejected the first translation, opting for the second in Koenigtum Gottes and in Moses.102 This second translation “does not seem convincing,” according to Muilenburg, who prefers to translate the sentence “I cause to come to pass what I cause to come to pass,” which demonstrated that God is the Lord of history.103 Without providing detailed discussion of the meaning of the Hebrew verb “hayah,” Buber’s revised translation of the sentence remarkably suits his dialogical philosophy: God is not the One who unalterably persists in His being; he is the one who will always be present, although we do not know how. Buber and Rosenzweig departed from the traditional translation of the tetragrammaton. Instead of the “Eternal,” an abstract philosophical concept that was used by Mendelssohn in the eighteenth century for the ineffable Divine name, they chose for the personal pronoun I-You-He, Ich-Du-Er, in order to render the personal, dynamic, and historically bound God.

B. Sentence structure Buber and Rosenzweig wanted to maintain as much as possible the sentence structure of the primary text. Because they respected the original rhythm and idioms, their translation is easily readable. To be sure, the translators could refer to the large dictionary of Grimm 99. 100. 101. 102. 103.

See Rosenzweig in a letter to Jakob Rosenheim dated 21.4.1927 (Rosenzweig, Briefe, 581.) Sic still in Smith’s translation of 1958 (I and Thou [Smith], 112). Buber, I and Thou, 160; Ich und Du, 97–98. Buber, Moses, 51–52, 160; and Koenigtum Gottes, 83 ff. Muilenburg, “Interpreter of the Bible,” 393–394. — 135 —

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for the German words they used, but this did not prevent the problem that a number of the words they use do not belong to the usual German vocabulary or the German spoken in everyday speech. Fidelity to the basic text sometimes led the translators to unusual renditions, to neologisms and odd sentence structures. They brought something unfamiliar in the German translation, which made a special contribution, as it consists of their efforts to produce a text that is as close to the Hebrew original as possible.

C. Leitworte or leading words Buber and Rosenzweig gave additional attention to key terms and the manner in which theme words and key sentences connect biblical passages to each other. This constituted more than a simple literary device: to the translators, the leading words led to the message itself. The discovery of these terms was Buber’s great contribution to the field of the translation of the Bible. For instance: Isaac says to Esau in Gen. 27:35 that Jacob is a deceiver. The deceiver must, however, recognize in Gen. 29:25 that he in turn is deceived by Laban. The connection between the two verses becomes visible in the repetition of the root rimmah, “to deceive,” “to cheat.” In this manner, the motif of the biter bit is worked out: Jacob is both the deceiver and the deceived. Another example is offered in Kingship of God, where the word mashal is used and repeated, and not the word malakh: the rule of God is important, more than the rule of an earthly King, the malakh (Judges 8:23; cp. 9:2). The repetition of words in miqra (the Hebrew for scripture), understood as “calling out,” indicated units. Buber and Rosenzweig chose expressive words, which are more easily recognized when they return in the text. They followed a double principle: one Hebrew word is rendered by one German word, and synonyms are kept in their specific meanings. They came close to the method of the Midrash, in which one finds analogies on the basis of the recurrence of a word (gezera shava) and similar sounds, paranomasy (lashon nofel al lashon). In this sense, their translation uses “Jewish” methodology, although it was certainly not meant to be read only by Jews. One had to be attentive to the form — as Rosenzweig called it, the Formgeheimnis — of the biblical narrative. — 136 —

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D. Unity of the Bible The interest in key and motif words is related to the translators’ idea regarding the unity of the Bible. The individual sections and books are considered to be components of one text. Naturally they did not deny that, for example, the Torah stems from different traditions. Taking issue with the nineteenth-century exegesis, they refused to divide the Bible into miniscule pieces: they approached it, rather, from the perspective of the final redactor. For Buber, for instance, the sigla J and E had only a limited validity. The existence of the documents J and E could not be proved.104 Buber preferred to discuss traditions and wanted to reach the original tradition and so to provide a reconstruction of the different stages in the history of Israel’s faith. More important than sources that could be identified in a literary manner were the religious development and primitive religious elements that can also be present in late literary forms.105 Significant in this context is the fact that Rosenzweig understood the scientific siglum of the final redactor, namely “R,” as the abbreviation of Rabbenu, “our teacher,” Moses. The translators read the Bible as one book in which the different parts clarify each other: in each crucial passage, identical, similar, or related words recall other passages that are associatively linked to the verses in question and force a theologoumenon upon the mind of the reader.106 Words with similar or identical sounds may be repeated, and they indicate that one stands before a smaller or a greater section.107 The reader had to become a listener, and in this way he would for instance understand the connection between what is said about the creation of the world in Genesis and about the tent of tabernacles in Exodus, in homological terms. The Bible is not for Buber and Rosenzweig a book to be read. Miqra, they noted, is derived from qara, to call. In this manner, they followed the philosopher and theologian Johann Gottfried Herder, who preferred 104. 105. 106.

107.

Buber, Prophetic Faith, 4, 88. Buber, Prophetic Faith, 4. Buber, Zur Verdeutschung des letzten Bandes der Schrift. Beilage zum vierten Band. Die Schriftwerke (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1976), 3. Ibid. — 137 —

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the oral over the written and preceded Jacques Derrida’s phonocentrism. Through the attention to the original sequence of words and rhythm to repetitions of motif words and to key words and associations, the Bible would deliver its own exegesis. The Bible is first of all a book to be heard, as if the Divine word is spoken to us today. Hoeren, to hear, should lead to hoerig sein, to belong — through submission — to the word of God. Of course, Buber and Rosenzweig did not endorse following the Divine word in a slavish way; they intended to bring modern man into existential connection with the Divine word. Buber averred that exegesis is first of all existential and should be a function of listening to the Divine word.108 With their rendering, these translators had one goal in mind: to avoid the peril of overlooking the depth of the biblical words — a real danger for anyone who has known the Bible from childhood. The BuberRosenzweig translation purported to hear again the original words in their spokenness. One had to hear the Divine word fresh and anew, as if one had no knowledge of religious and scientific certainties. Of course, they did not merely want an aesthetic translation; they wanted to be in direct dialogue with the word of God as it comes into expression in all the richness of the primary text. Buber would have appreciated it if those who read his Bible translation would say what his son Rafael wrote to him on January 2, 1926, about the translation of Genesis. Rafael wrote that he loved to read it; it is a faithful translation in the rhythm of the Bible, and it is the original text in beautiful German; one reads German but understands Hebrew.109 Buber wanted his audience to relate to the sacred text as a meeting, as a “you,” demanding an answer from the man of today.

Buber and Weiss Buber and Rosenzweig approached the Bible from a linguistic and artistic-literary perspective. In this sense, they are forerunners of the new Science of Literature approach as applied by Meir Weiss, who was a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and with whom 108. 109.

For an example of such an existential exegesis, see Buber, “Recht und Unrecht.” Buber, Briefwechsel II, 240. — 138 —

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one of these authors had the privilege to study.110 A close look at this approach reveals the similarity of the Buber-Rosenzweig translation to its methodology. It is common knowledge that the biblical text as we have it now is the result of a long transmission process. The modern exegete is aware of the extent of the complexities that are inherent in this process. He is cognizant of the mulitiplicity of changes made in the text. Buber too was conscious of the fact that the text is not without mistakes, that sometimes marginal notes slipped into the manuscript, and that besides additions and interpolations, the text was reworked. Nonetheless, he translated the transmitted text without making improvements upon it because he claimed that those responsible for the present text knew no less Hebrew than we do. He did not keep the text as it is because he was a fundamentalist. Only when the text as a whole was unintelligible and when the meaning could be elucidated by a minimal change did he intervene. The same reluctance to make so-called improvements is to be found in the Science of Literature method of Meir Weiss.111 Present-day exegesis is interested in the various layers that are found in the text. With the assistance of methodology, the modern exegete attempts to point to the multiplicity of sources behind the text, in the hope of exposing its stratification. Buber and Weiss, however, did not seek to find the sources, different layers, and more original strata underneath the written words: both merely wanted to transmit what was there. Exegesis, in their understanding, should not depart from the text but bring one to its “soul.” Buber and Weiss refused to separate content from form. Buber explored the syntactic structure of the verses and the structure of the 110.

111.

Meir Weiss’s Hebrew book The Bible from Within contains in addition to theoreticalmethodological remarks many concrete examples of interpretation (English translation: The Bible from Within. The Method of Total Interpretation, trans. B. J. Schwartz [Jerusalem: Magnes, 1984]). Rosenzweig too was rather hesitant to correct the biblical text if not necessary. In a letter to Gritli Rosenstock-Huessy (Die “Gritli”-Briefe, 353), he writes in a play on words that Bernhard Duhm’s known commentary on Isaiah is sophistry, limited and “dumm” (foolish). The surest results of the critical exegetes are based on the impossibility of imagining a different logic than their own. They corrected the prophets as if they were essays written by high-school students. — 139 —

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passages. Each passage had to resonate with its numerous alliterations, its assonances,112 its rhythm, and its word-plays. These qualities did not have a merely esthetic value; they were expressive of the religious significance of the document. Weiss agreed with this: he focused on the meaning, on what is expressed by the literary creation. For both, understanding did not lie in cataloguing stylistic elements, but in assessing them as means of expression in a literary work. Weiss goes even further than Buber and Rosenzweig. His point of departure was the new critical trend of the general Science of Literature method. Through this method, basic rules have been crystallized that can appropriately be applied in the practice of interpretation. The disclosure of an artistic work takes place by explaining each detail on the basis of the whole and the whole on the basis of each detail. The meaning of a poem, for instance, can only be expressed in these words, this syntax, this assonance, in this rhythm, and in this specific connection of the parts to each other and of the parts to the whole, in short: in its own well-established unique structure. In Weiss’s view, only such an approach to the linguistic work of art in its totality and uniqueness can guarantee accurate interpretation. For his structuralanalytic method, he employed a term used earlier by Buber, TotalInterpretation.

A Few Reflections on the Translation of Buber and Rosenzweig Not only the study of the prehistory of a text in its different levels is important; of equal significance is the study of the redactional reworking of the sources, traditional formal elements, and motifs. Weiss, following Buber, pays attention to the final text and what is expressed in it. One may search for the original form and motif of the body of writing. Yet in a Total-Interpretation one does not investigate what each traditional form element or motif originally meant; first of all one seeks to understand its present function in the text.113 Buber appreciated the archival, scientific 112. 113.

For instance, reah nihoah is translated as “Ruch des Geruhens,” “scent of soothing.” We agree with Robert Gordis, who writes: “As is almost universal in the history of — 140 —

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work of biblical scholars who restore the different layers in a text but believed that one does not have to stop there: the biblical text is not the result of mere layers, and one has to keep in mind that the text can become alive again as a dialogue between God and man. Additionally, it is a sound principle to respect the Masoretic text as much as possible and to uphold the principle of retaining the more difficult reading — lectio difficilior potior. Rosenzweig suspected the “necessarily hypothetical character of all the sciences.”114 Nevertheless, this principle of giving priority to the more difficult reading cannot be rigidly applied. Buber felt free to stray from the masoretic marks if the meaning of the text demanded it. Finally, Buber and Rosenzweig wanted to translate identical words or expressions using the same German words or expressions. Literal translations contain Hebraisms and therefore have the flaw of not taking the target language sufficiently into account. But although the dynamic-equivalent translation takes into consideration the idiom of the second language, this does not mean that a formal-equivalent translation is not useful in order to bring the reader or listener indirectly into contact with the Divine voice as one hears it in the Hebrew source. True, some passages in Buber’s translation are only comprehensible if one returns to the primary source, and that is problematic. On the other hand, his attempt to be faithful to the Hebrew in order to bring the German-speaking people into contact with the particular language and atmosphere of the Bible is quite impressive and corrects some standing misunderstandings that had heavy theological consequences. Talmon wrote that Buber’s translation shared the same fate as the Septuagint, which was first intended for Hellenistic Jews but later became the authorized version of the early Church.115 For Christians, indeed, Buber’s translation was and remains useful. However, his translation was and is able to bring more than just Hebrew-speaking

114. 115.

literary, musical, and artistic movements, the New Criticism has vigorously attacked the earlier schools of literary interpretation. We do not, however, have to deny the validity of these older views to appreciate the contribution of the new.” See Gordis, The Book of God and Man. A Study of Job (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 198. Rosenzweig, “Die Einheit der Bibel,” 128. Talmon, “Bibel-Interpret,” note 12. — 141 —

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and assimilated Jews back from the German target language to the Hebrew source language and to their own roots. The translation wants everybody, Jews and non-Jews, to listen to the Divine word in a rendition that has a spoken character and addresses modern man. Buber and Rosenzweig wanted to reach Jews as well as Christians. They felt that the Christians in Germany were — as Marcion — estranged from the “Old Testament.”116 Given this background, Rosenzweig’s words to Buber that they will have to missionize (Also werden wir missionieren) receive their full meaning.117 Buber’s Bible translation was a profoundly dialogical undertaking that aimed to build a bridge between languages and people and to interweave form and content. Buber and Heschel agreed on the fact that the form of the Torah and the content of it belong inseparably together.

Between Text and Reader/Hearer There is a pronounced parallel between Buber’s discussion of the Bible in its spokenness and Heschel’s discourse on prayer. In 1939, Heschel wrote an article with the title “Das Gebet als Aeusserung und Einfuehlung” (Prayer as Expression and Empathy) for the Monatschrift fuer Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums.118 The publication was confiscated by the Nazis and not published until September 1941. In this piece, Heschel describes the special character of the relationship between the praying person and the words of prayer. Whereas one generally sees a loose one-next-to-the-other and not the interaction between them, Heschel maintains that something does transpire between them (zwischen diesen beiden).119 This is remarkably parallel with what Kepnes describes as the dialogical hermeneutics of Buber, in which a person is transformed upon hearing the living biblical word. For Heschel, one becomes a praying person through the word. 116.

117. 118.

119.

Reinhold Mayer, Franz Rosenzweig. Eine Philosophie der dialogischen Erfahrung (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1973), 107–108. See his letter to Buber of 29.7.1925. Rosenzweig, Briefe, 544. Heschel, “Das Gebet als Aeusserung und Einfuehlung, “in Monatschrift fuer Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 83 (1939): 562–267. Heschel, “Das Gebet,” 562. — 142 —

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The word of the prayer exists independently of the praying person. It has object-character (Gegenstaendlichkeit). Yet one may internalize the power of the word, which goes beyond human consciousness and will. In such a case, it becomes a realization (Vergegenwaertigung) of man’s avowal or of God’s promise.120 One is reminded here of Buber’s opposition between the I-it relationship with its object and the I-you relationship with its realization and making present of the other, although we have to add that Heschel appreciates the objective character of the words of prayer. The parallel with Buber’s understanding of the power of the biblical word when it is heard in all its sonority is even more apt. Heschel writes about the “tone” of the words, which carries those words further than they themselves could go.121 He points to the tension between the text of the prayer and the praying person who can be moved and sense the potential energy of the word.122 In contact with these words, one may be reminded of forgotten insights and impressions. Man may allow the word to take place in oneself and hear the voice of the conscience, of the soul, and of the world. The word is the master; and the praying person, the receiver.123 The praying person does not possess the word once and for all; he enters into it, he goes from word to word, from thought to thought, and from impression to impression and is finally led to deeds. The act of intensive empathy with the word differs from conventional communication.124 Prayer does not start from the I, which would lead too often to entanglement in oneself and reflection upon oneself.125 The words or prayer are not a tool; in praying, the relationship becomes powerful.126 The words of the prayer are thus first of all a primal power that enables connection.127 In praying, one may intend God (Ihn meinen: das ist Gebet).128 As Buber believes in the transforming power of the biblical word, Heschel asserts 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128.

Heschel, “Das Gebet,” 563. Heschel, “Das Gebet,” 565. Heschel, “Das Gebet,” 564. Ibid. Ibid. Heschel, “Das Gebet,” 565. Ibid. Heschel, “Das Gebet,” 566. Heschel, “Das Gebet,” 567. — 143 —

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that in praying one is not self-concerned, but may become conscious that one is an object of God’s concern. Moyshe Kulbak (1896–c. 1940) was one of Heschel’s teachers who had a significant impact upon him. He was “a marvelous communicator,” and his classes were “masterpieces of collaborative learning.”129 According to Kaplan,130 Kulbak developed a sensitivity to words that anticipated Heschel’s thoughts on prayer as “expression and empathy.” Literature was a marriage between the text of the writer and the feelings of the reader in his view. He also read, recited, or sung out interpretations. The intonation of his voice or a wrinkle of his forehead added as much meaning to the text as the words themselves imparted. Just as Dilthey influenced Buber’s writings on the biblical text, Kulbak influenced Heschel’s thoughts about prayer. Kulbak’s ideas that words have a soul and on the relationship between text and reader are echoed in Heschel’s German article on prayer. In his book on prayer, Heschel further explains his thoughts on this subject, taking up some insights from his article in Monatschrift fuer Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums. Prayer, he now writes, is “forgotten language.”131 The words in prayer speak, as in poetry. In both genres, words are not signs for things, but rather one may see things by the light of the words.132 Man is God’s partner: one agrees with God in prayer in a form of “spiritual ecstasy,” not in the sense of unio mystica but in the sense of identifying with God.133 In prayer, one establishes a connection between our concern and His will, between despair and promise.134 Kaplan notes that a “completely transformed vision of reality arises from depression and from the old self: Apathy turns to splendor unawares.”135 Like in a promise, an oath, or a vow, by giving a word of honor or making a pledge, one learns in prayer

129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135.

Kaplan and Dresner, Prophetic Witness, 84. Kaplan and Dresner, Prophetic Witness, 85. Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, xi. Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 26. Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 18. Ibid. Kaplan, “Mysticism,” 40. Comp. Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, 77–78, where Heschel writes that in despair, there can be a moment of Divine light. — 144 —

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that any given word exists independently: it has its own reality and is something that exists for itself, and the praying person becomes alive to its power.136 Words are therefore far from “mental beasts of burden”; upholding such a representation would be the same as only seeing a porter in the unique individual who carries luggage to the train. The essence of the word is not in being a sign, just as the essence of a person is not in carrying luggage.137 Praying is no less than becoming the object of God’s thought; it is an event “in which man surpasses himself.”138 In it “the spirit of Israel speaks, the self is silent.”139 Finally, in a clear allusion to Buber, Heschel writes: “Our relationship to Him [God] is not as an I to a Thou, but as a We to a Thou.”140

Heschel’s Non-legalistic Interpretation of the Bible Heschel, like Buber, opposes the translation of the Torah by “nomos,” by Law. In a pan-halakhic attitude, one disregards Aggada and sees the Law as the only authentic source of Jewish life and thought. Heschel quotes Rashi, who opens his commentary on Genesis with the following sentence: “Rabbi Isaac said: The Torah [which is the Law book of Israel] should have commenced with chapter 12 of Exodus” since prior to that chapter hardly any laws are set forth.141 A legalistic interpretation of the Torah implies that one should delete the non-legal chapters in the Bible, such “as those on creation, the sins of Adam and Cain, the flood, the tower of Babel, the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the lives of the twelve tribes, the suffering and miracles in Egypt!”142 Although Heschel disagrees with such a pan-halakhic interpretation of the Torah, he nevertheless promotes the necessity of commandments as a “leap of deeds,” which is asked for by the Bible. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142.

Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 25–26. Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 26. Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 10, 29. Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 44. Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 45. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 328. Ibid. — 145 —

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Buber and Heschel on the Ethical Interpretation of the Bible Buber published his essay “Wie Saul Koenig wurde” (How Saul Became King) in 1949. He described Saul as a suffering Jew, one who is rejected by God. God did not reveal Himself to Saul; it is as if He gave the king only loneliness and obligations. Buber defends Saul, in line with Tchernichowsky in his “Be’eyin’dor” (1893). As is clear from his interpretation of the Binding of Isaac, Buber could not accept that one can commit unethical acts in submission to a Divine command. In his eyes, this cannot be the original biblical story. He criticized Samuel’s killing of Agag and concluded that Samuel had misunderstood God. This is only one example of how Buber’s philosophical-dialogical insights determined his commentary on biblical stories, which for him reflected the dialogical situation.143 Heschel in his book on the Kotzker rebbe categorically does not agree with Buber’s interpretation of Saul: Martin Buber’s declaration “Nothing can make me believe in a God who punishes Saul because he did not murder his enemy” must be contrasted with the Kotzker’s statement “A God whom any Tom, Dick, and Harry could comprehend, I would not believe in.”144

This sounds as a terrible criticism of Buber, who now belongs to ordinary people who do not possess the elitist, critical spirit of the Kotzker rebbe, with whom Heschel closely identifies. However, Heschel also declares that one has to be critical toward what is written. One stays in dialogue with the Divine word, but one does not have to accept everything without questioning it. Prophecy, he says, is not equal to God. True, prophecy is higher than human wisdom, but God’s love is superior to prophecy. In a remarkable sentence, he notes:

143.

144.

See further M. Urban, “Retelling Biblical Mythos Through the Hasidic Tale: Buber’s ‘Saul and David’ and the Question of Leadership,” Modern Judaism 24, no. 1 (2004): 59–78. Heschel, A Passion for Truth, 292–293. — 146 —

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Not every utterance contained in the Bible is to be regarded as a norm or a standard of behavior. We are told that Moses, Elijah, Isaiah were reproved by the Lord for uttering harsh words about the people, though these words are a part of the Bible (Exodus 4:1; 1 Kings 19:14; Isaiah 6:5).145

Heschel is aware that the Bible is often abused; one may even commit murder in the name of the Torah and be a scoundrel with the Law in his hand. As a consequence, one has even to “save” the Bible “from the hand of its admirers.”146

Subjective Interpretation of the Bible As was the case with his work on Hasidism, Buber in his comments on the Bible felt that he was not a subjectivist in his presentations. He found “the strongest witness for the primacy of the dialogical” that he has ever seen in the biblical as in the Hasidic traditions. He could not accept the Bible or Hasidism in their integrality: he had to distinguish between what became evident to him out of his own experience and that which was not apparent to him.147 He denied that he had subjective preferences and defended the objectivity of his choices, which all had their roots in the anti-magical, dialogical kernel of Judaism that he championed. Heschel likewise defended his explanation of the Bible against the charge of subjectivism. At the same time, he endorsed the subjectivepersonal understanding of God’s word. Commenting upon the event of Sinai, he writes that the Decalogue started with “I am the Lord thy God” in the second person singular, and not in the second person plural, because God addresses every person according to his level of comprehension. The “power of God’s voice” (Psalm 29:4) is that He spoke to every man, to each according to his capacity. The voice split up into seventy voices so that every individual understood.148 Heschel highlights the personal understanding of the Torah because, in the living dialogue, God adapts Himself to each and every partner in the 145. 146. 147. 148.

Heschel, God in Search of Man, 268. Ibid., 275. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 744. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 261. — 147 —

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interchange. What Heschel asserts concerning the multi-interpretability of God’s word and the personal element in the dialogue between God and man corresponds to the task of each and every individual to personally relate to God in Buber’s thought, since the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is also the God of each and every reader of the Bible.

The Oral Torah and Response Heschel, in contrast to Buber, concentrated upon the oral Torah. For a long time, it had been forbidden to write down this part of the Torah. Finally, the ancient rabbis decided to record it, with the argument that there comes a time to abrogate the Torah in order to do the work of God. It would be better to save a part of the Torah than to let it be forgotten in its entirety. Rabbi Mendel of Kotzk, with whom Heschel identified, asked the question of how the ancient rabbis could abolish the fundamental principle not to write down what is intended to be orally transmitted. He answered that the oral Torah, in fact, was never written down. “The meaning of the Torah,” Heschel concludes, “has never been contained by books.”149 Is this truth coming from Heschel and related to a famous saying of the Kotzker rebbe, not analogous to the attitude of Buber, who thought that the Torah is not a book — not an It — but a You, appealing in ever-new circumstances to modern man, who has to respond?150 In their allegiance to the Bible, Heschel and Buber developed similar ideas. Heschel deemed that the words of the Bible were a response151 and that they permanently ask for a reply from every person in each generation,152 whereas Buber stressed that the Bible as the word of God calls for a response, for what he calls “a return” (Umkehr).153 With all the equivalencies that can be cited, one should not underestimate the divergences between the two thinkers on the subject of the Bible. 149. 150.

151. 152.

153.

Heschel, God in Search of Man, 275–276. Joseph H. Lookstein, “The Neo-Hasidism of Abraham J. Heschel,” Judaism 5, 3 (1956): 248–255. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 182. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 313. Heschel writes that man has to complete revelation: “Revelation is but a beginning, our deeds must continue, our lives must complete it” (217). Buber, I and Thou, 149; Ich und Du, 89. — 148 —

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Heschel understands the Sages to be in continuity of the prophets, because both interpret the Divine Torah. Buber, however, develops a different view, in which the Sages have a less important role as a linkage between the past and the present. He considers the Bible more as a unity in itself, to which he gives his entire attention. Judaism had a few peak periods: that of the prophets, of early Christianity, of Hasidism, and finally of the Zionist movement; each of these has constituted a chance for renewal in Jewish history. In this set of reflections, the Sages do not belong to any of these exceptional periods. However, Buber was sensitive, as were the Sages, to the spokenness (Gesprochenheit)154 of the text. He used their method of gezerah shava, their plays on words and other literary devices. As an accomplished philologist, he was convinced that only through speech could one properly understand the Bible. Heschel talked about a double revelation, a “co-revelation” of man and God,155 two things that occur concurrently: the one who finds God, finds himself. This conception of the double revelation implies that every generation has to answer the question “where are you,” aieka. This question is also a double one: it comes both from God and from man. The responsibility of each generation to find God and itself is the reason why Heschel called his book Heavenly Torah: As Refracted through the Generations; the same idea is expressed even more aptly in the original title: Torah min hashamayiem be’aspaqlaria shel ha-dorot, without a separation between title and subtitle. The Torah needs to be discovered again and again by every generation, by responding to it. If one neglects to do so, the Torah is not Torah.

Heschel’s Criticism and Buber’s dialogical view on history Susannah Heschel in her introduction to “Moral Grandeur” writes that her father described some of his differences with Buber thus: “In the decisive question I have to say no to him. An apotheosis of the Bible 154.

155.

Buber, “Zu einer neuen Verdeutschung der Schrift,” addition to Buber and Rosenzweig, Die fuenf Buecher Moses. Die Fuenf Buecher der Weisung (Cologne: Jakob Hegner, 1968), [ 8]. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 260. — 149 —

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is not permissible. The holiness of the Bible is due to its origins. There is not autarky in it.” By this, Heschel expressed that he did not think that the Bible could be separated from its natural continuity in the Sages. He reproached Buber for giving the Bible too high a status, a kind of deification, by considering it only in its written form, without the entire world of the Sages. In his criticism of Buber, he refuses to see the Bible as standing by itself but declares: “we” write the Bible. Yet Buber himself did not neglect post-biblical history; he stressed what he acknowledged as brilliant periods in the history of Judaism, among which he did not, however, include the period of the Sages. And Buber, as Heschel, was much interested in bringing the biblical word to man of his day. He too regarded revelation as continuous: through the early prophet Hosea, God asks for return; Jeremiah wanted the people to better their ways so that God might dwell among them. In the late fable of Jonah, the genuine prophet does not predict, but confronts man with alternatives of decision, and in the same line as the prophets, John the Baptist took up the prophetic cry “Return!” Buber concludes his prophetic, non-apocalyptic view of history with the words: “The depths of history, which are continually at work to rejuvenate creation are in league with the prophets.”156

relevance of the Torah Heschel highlights the fact that Moses himself translated the Torah into his own language and that the task of interpretation lives in each and every one of us: we are part of an exegetical, hermeneutical chain. In this way, the Torah changes — in Heavenly Torah, Heschel talks about hidush ha-Torah — because we each see different aspects of the Divine Torah. We have to write the Torah anew, as did the Sages, so that it is always actual and alive; the present is not to be separated from the past: “Abraham endures forever. We are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.”157 Buber considered the Torah to be primarily the founding document that attests to dialogical life. In his unique dialogical hermeneutics, he 156. 157.

Buber, “Prophecy,” 192–207. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 201. — 150 —

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maintained that one may immediately hear the word of God in reading the Bible. In the saga of Moses, Buber reconstructs the historical kernel. Whereas Buber referred to biblical criticism when he intended to prove the historicity of passages or when he sought to demonstrate that some sections of the Bible were old through pointing out their oral, rhythmical formulations,158 Heschel was less concerned about coping with biblical criticism.159 Buber was well informed about biblical criticism and regularly quoted biblical scholars, whereas Heschel referred to them less frequently; he had other concerns. What was most important to Buber was the history of faith, as well as the inspiring aspect of the Bible, through both of which we are challenged today to create a dialogical society. Heschel was less interested in the reconstruction of history than was Buber, but also did not think that the historical questions with which the Science of Judaism concerns itself are the questions that most need to be addressed. Buber and Heschel left out any historicist approach of the Bible and of Judaism in favor of an existential biblical interpretation and a concern with living Judaism. For both thinkers, revelation did not stop, but continues.160 In I and Thou, Buber interpreted universal revelation as a voice that asks for presence, and Heschel understood Judaism itself to be “a relation between man with Torah and God.”161 158.

159.

160.

161.

Karl-Johan Illman discusses Buber’s thesis that the reign of God is a very old idea in ancient Israel. In Jud. 8:23, Gideon is offered sovereignty over Israel, but he rejects the offer: “I will not rule over you myself, nor shall my son rule over you; the Lord alone shall rule over you.” Later, in 1 Sam. 8, the people ask Samuel to provide a king for them “like all the other nations,” and Samuel obeys God’s order to do what they want. However, it is God “that they have rejected as their king.” (1 Sam. 8:5.7). Illman explains that Buber had the need to find his dialogical principle, but his “conceptions of an archaic Semitic and Israelite monotheism and of a primitive theocracy do not stand.” He adds: “There was such a thing as the ‘JHWH alone’ movement, but it probably belongs to a far later age than Buber thought.” The theo-political principle would be “very weak,” and Buber’s appreciated theology of the Bible would relate more to its final than to its original shape. (Karl-Johan Illman, “Buber and the Bible: Guiding Principles and the Legacy of His Interpretation,” in Martin Buber. A Contemporary Perspective, 99, 100). See Even-Chen, The Torah, Revelation, and Scientific Critique in the Teachings of Abraham Joshua Heschel,” Conservative Judaism, 50, no. 2–3 (1998): 67–76. See Heschel, Prophetic Inspiration After the Prophets: Maimonides and Other Medieval Authorities (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 1996). Heschel, God in Search of Man, 167. — 151 —

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Meeting between Man and God: Anti-mysticism For Buber as well as for Heschel, the Divine and the human are both in the Bible. They approach biblical literature as the result of the meeting between God and man. Both Heschel and Buber in their biblical discourse stress that the prophet is not a mere instrument, but that there is an interaction between God and man. The prophet is not a mystical man but one who is related to others and who functions in this concrete world. In Heschel’s rendering, prophets have what may be called a hypersensibility to evil, which is also present in the gruesome solitude of the Kotzker rebbe. Probably polemizing with Buber’s praise of wu wei in I and Thou, Heschel writes that the Tao — the way — of Lao-Tzu forms the antithesis to the prophetic idea of God. Later on, in his essay “What is Common to All,” Buber likewise distances himself from Tao, which he characterizes as a flight from the primeval reality of meeting.162 In Heschel’s view, Tao as the “ultimate ground” — a term that reminds us, of course, of Tillich’s definition of God as “ground of being” — is nameless and indefinite, the everlasting calm and the cosmic order, immanent in everything. According to Tao, freedom from desires and inclinations, from passions and lust, is a person’s highest achievement. The inner freedom gained by this corresponds to the outward non-action, wu-wei. Heschel concludes: “Quietism is the typical manner of life in harmony with Tao.” The antipode of Heschel’s vision is to be found in Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer’s idea of Hasidism as quietism. Heschel’s prophets, as well as their Hasidic descendents, envisioned a God who is not an immanent Law but a transcendent Lawgiver, One who did not establish a rigid unchangeable structure but a historical drama. Not silence but pathos is the prophetic message.163 The prophetic personality is not nullified; it “is intensely present and fervently involved in what he perceives”;164 and “unlike mystical insight, which takes place in 162.

163. 164.

See Alan Udoff’s introduction to Buber, The Knowledge of Man, 31–32. The article “What is Common to All” was first published in the Review of Metaphysics 11, no. 3 (1958). Heschel, The Prophets II, 15–16. Heschel, The Prophets II, 137. — 152 —

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‘the abyss of the mind,’ in ‘the ground of consciousness,’ prophetic illumination seems to take place in the full light of the mind, in the very center of consciousness.”165 The prophets do not silence a person’s conscience, then; although they witness the cruelty of man, they sense the depth of misery caused by our own failures.166 In a broader sense, and parallel with Levinas’s thought on this subject, religion does not aim to make the mind quiet, but rather engenders unrest, the opposite of quietism. Faith is “a fighting faith.”167 Rabbi Ishmael, whom Heschel favors over Rabbi Akiva, challenges the Almighty, who remains silent when He sees the abashment of His people. And Rabbi Mendl of Kotzk, who spoke out audaciously and did not capitulate, even to the Lord, also adopts this position.168

Existential Questions and Biblical Answers Both Heschel and Buber believe that it is out of our everyday experience that we hear the biblical word most clearly. Heschel aimed to tell his audience that after the Holocaust, what is at stake is nothing less than saving humankind for God and God for humankind. Buber thought that the “it”-world was gradually taking more space than the “you”-world. He was concerned that the “you”-world would grow and hoped that man would discover the “you”-kernel in himself. In a similar way, Gabriel Marcel distinguishes between “avoir” (to have) and “être” (to be). Also for Heschel, neutrality is an illusion: one makes an elevated vision fall into ruins or one makes his home a temple and his life a song to God.169 Frequently, religious people give answers but forget the question. In the United States and in Europe one hears or reads the slogan, “Jesus is the answer,” but one doesn’t even hear that a question was raised. In the Christian world, a radical theologian named Dorothea Soelle knew how to ask questions that rose out of the situation of the third world. This allowed her to read the Bible in an unusual, fresh, and original 165. 166. 167. 168. 169.

Heschel, The Prophets II, 139. Heschel, The Prophets I, 5. Heschel, A Passion for Truth, 183. Heschel, A Passion for Truth, 268–269. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 382–383. — 153 —

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way, as an answer to the difficult questions of the minorities, the poor, the dispossessed, the suppressed, and the bereft.170 She, as Heschel’s prophet, is concerned with the plight of man; the God of the prophets does not contemplate eternal ideas but reflects over man’s plight in the here and now. The Divine mind is preoccupied with man with his trivialities: a person’s concerns are His concern.171 Peace of mind is not the issue, but wrestling with and facing the challenge;172 the existential situation of the human being is God’s ultimate concern.173

The Prophets and Suffering Heschel felt empathy with all sufferers, with whom God is believed to feel pathos. In writing on the prophets, Buber put not empathy but dialogue at the center of prophetic faith. His point is that the prophet is a dialogical man, one whom he even criticizes when he does not behave in an ethical-dialogical manner. In the already-mentioned essay “How Saul Became King,” he used biblical criticism in order to show that a Divine command that conflicts with an ethical principle could not have been intended as such by the original narrative, which must have been misinterpreted; obedience to it is not required. Saul was upholding the biblical narrative, therefore, and Samuel would have misunderstood God when he ordered to kill Agag. Buber could not imagine that God would have punished Saul for not killing his enemy.174 Heschel as well as Buber connected the prophets with the realization of justice, as did Hermann Cohen before them.175

170.

171. 172. 173.

174 . 175.

For an analysis of Soelle’s reading of the Bible in the perspective of the third world, see W. Weisse, “Oekumenisches Engagement fuer die Armen,” in Eher eine Kunst als eine Wissenschaft. Resonanzen der Theologie Dorothee Soelles, ed. H. Kuhlmann (Stuttgart: Kreuz, 2007), 72–93. Heschel, The Prophets, vol. 1, 5–6 See Heschel, “Carl Stern’s Interview,” 403. See Even-Chen, “Faith and the Courage To Be — Heschel and Tillich,” in Interaction between Judaisn and Christianity in History, Religion, Art and Literature, eds. M. Poorthuis, J. Schwartz, J. Turner (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2009), 337–355. See Urban, “Retelling.” Hermann Cohen, Die Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums (Leipzig: Gustav Fock, 1919). — 154 —

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Heschel felt it was his task as “descendant of the prophets”176 to remind his contemporaries that they themselves have to bring God into the world. This led him to personal engagement. In one of his songs on what may be termed “Divine omnipotence,” he utters his despair and disillusionment about God, who does not intervene and does not help those who cry out to Him. The poem, which bears the title “Hilf” (Help), is the second poem in the volume entitled The Ineffable Name. The place of the poem in the book is significant. The first poem, “Ikh un Du,” is about the complex relationship between God and man. In the second poem, Heschel articulates his expectations from God. The name of the poem is not the cry of someone who is drowning in the ocean of tragedies and suffocating. It is rather the command of a man who does not agree with Divine behavior. The human order to God is a precursor of what Heschel later writes concerning the Kotzker’s saying that one is forbidden to capitulate before God, and that the prophet has empathy with God’s pathos, with His suffering and love. The poem starts with the following words: ‫שטעל מיך אלע גוססים צו קאפנס‬ ‫ א ידיעה פון דיר‬,‫מיט א גרוס‬ ,‫עלנטע רופן דיך און קומסט נישט‬ ‫טא שיקזשע מיך און וועמען דו ווילסט‬

Set me at the head of all the dying With a greeting, a message from you. The desolate call to You, and You don’t come. So send me, and any others You might choose.

The writer asks God to send him to the dying and the desolate, for God does not answer those who suffer. This complaint returns in Heschel’s writings when he puts these words in the mouth of Rabbi Ishmael: “Mi kamokha baelmim adonai,” “who is like you under the mute, Lord.” God does not speak here; there is no answer from Him. Heschel felt the Messianic-prophetic call: send me or someone else to fulfill the Divine task, which You — God — do not fulfill in face of the screaming needs of man: !‫ גאט‬,‫ א‬,‫דו ביזט צו העלפן דא‬ .‫ ווען נויטן שרייען‬,‫נאר דו שוויגסט‬ 176.

You are meant to help here, Oh God! But You are silent, while needs shriek.

Heschel defined himself as such. Asked if he was a prophet, he answered: “I won’t accept this praise, because it’s not for me to say that I am a descendant of the prophets, which is an old Jewish statement. It is a claim almost arrogant enough to say that I’m a descendant of the prophets, what is called B’nai Nevi’im. So let us hope and pray that I am worthy of being a descendant of the prophets” (“Carl Stern’s Interview,” 400). — 155 —

-------------------------------------------------------------------------  Chapter III ------------------------------------------------------------------------‫טא העלף מיר העלפן! כ’וויל דיין פליכט‬ .‫ דיינע חובות צאלן‬,‫דערפולן‬

So help me to help! I’ll fulfill Your duty, pay Your debts.

The young Heschel does not agree with God’s silence. He exclaims: Why don’t You help? Why don’t You do what it is Your task to do? In poem number 4, entitled “Suicide,” someone cries to God that he will not forgive God for his pain.177 One may think that God killed Himself; He is urged to help the sufferers, who are not being helped, not by man and not by God. In still another, this time untitled, poem, Heschel writes that it is only God who has faith in Himself: “It’s only God who still believes in God.”178 This poem continues with the words: ,‫ ליידן‬,‫לאמיך תמיד פילן‬ ‫ווענן הענט פון מענטשן אין געפארן‬ ,‫שטרעקן זיך צום נויטרעמז פון דיין וועלט‬ !‫וואס האסט פארגעסן אויפצוהענגען‬

Let me always feel, suffer, When human hands in peril Reach for the emergency brakes of Your world which You have forgotten to set up!

The prophet’s God, Heschel’s God, should see the misery, if He is the God of pathos. If God feels, then He knows about men being before the abyss. God’s creation stays before a chasm, but God has forgotten his emergency brakes, and God’s children fall. The poet exclaims: You do not support them; You do not help. Heschel cries out that God behaves in an unforgivable way at a moment when His creation is at the edge of tragedy. He asks God that he — Heschel — may feel what God apparently does not. After this criticism, Heschel writes: ‫און קומען ווי א קנעכט אויף זייער רוף‬ ;‫און פארלעשן אלע ליידן מיט מיין הילף‬ ,‫העלפן יעדן שטיין און יעדער בלום‬ .‫דינען יעדן מענטש און יעדן ווארעם‬

And come like a slave at their call and quench all suffering with my help; to help each stone, each flower, to serve each man, each worm.

The prophetic man, who speaks here angrily, urges God to immediately answer the cry of the creatures: of man, stone, flower, worm, and the entire creation. God has to be a servant before man. There is no place for this or other theodicies. God, who is not present, is asked to put an 177. 178.

Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God, 36–37. Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God, 180–181.

— 156 —

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end to the suffering of the human beings. The poet offers his help: send me and I will act. God will quench all sufferings through me. At the end of this dramatic poem, “Help,” the poet asks of God: “Help me to help.” In Heschel’s poetical world, God is urged to be the “servant” of man. An urgent demand is made that He take care of the suffering human being. In Buber’s dialogical hermeneutics of the Bible, it is the Suffering Servant who bears the misery of other human beings. But for both thinkers, each in their own way, the human being is ordered to diminish suffering in this world. Both Heschel and Buber formulated what they found in the old Bible in a novel way. The prophets as people who answered God’s call fascinated them. But whereas Buber defined the prophets as dialogical men, Heschel’s prophets were sympathetic to God’s pathos. Unlike Buber, Heschel brought the Bible and the Sages together: the oral Torah could not be disconnected from the written one. Unlike Heschel, Buber showed interest in a non-apocalyptic messianism, of which the Suffering Servant was the acme. They greatly differed in their interpretation of the Bible, and differed as well on the subject of the commandments, to which the next chapter is dedicated.

— 157 —

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--------------------------------- Chapter IV  ----------------------------------

On the Commandments

This chapter discusses Heschel’s thought on the mitzvot and on prayer, with special attention to the significance of the sense of wonder and kavvanah (intention) in Jewish religious life. It compares his thought with that of Buber, who asserted that meeting with the eternal You does not allow for fixed rules. Buber debated with Rosenzweig on the subject of the mitzvot and finally returned to the problematics of fulfilling the Law in his volume Two Types of Faith.

Religion and Religiosity Once faith is institutionalized, there arises a tension between religion and religiosity. The institutionalized religion may not allow the immediate religious experience to take place. As a result, anti-nomistic tendencies may occur in Jewish life. In Heschel’s mind, religion has to preserve the primordial religious experience. He relates to the mitzvot as acts that prepare hearts for a religious experience. This is a Hasidic attitude, but Heschel’s writings also contain anti-nomistic elements such as “the sins of the poor are more beautiful than the good deeds of the rich.”1 Debating the uniqueness of Hasidism, he writes: “One can serve God even with the body, even with the evil inclination…”2 Dresner reports an event that happened to the young Heschel and influenced him profoundly. Once, after the prayer of the Sabbath evening, Yitshaq Meir Levin asked Heschel why he was so sad. Heschel explained him his

1. 2.

Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God, 43. Heschel, The Earth Is the Lord’s, 79. — 159 —

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difficult economic situation.3 Levin, a Hasid of the Kotzker rebbe who prayed in the small synagogue of Heschel’s father, told Heschel about a book that would certainly interest him. The day after, on Shabbat, Heschel, sitting in his father’s chair, received the book. To his horror, he saw that it contained money, forbidden to touch on the Sabbath. He dropped the book at once. Levin then explained, countering the boy’s astonishment with a story from Kotzk showing that one may violate a lesser rule pertaining to the Sabbath to remove depression — the most perilous sin, according to Hasidism.4 According to Heschel, a man of faith should not abolish the commandments, but the commandments shall be for him a springboard for the strengthening of his religious experience. The fulfillment of the commandments in moments of weakness allows man to be conscious of God’s presence. Mitzvot that do not fulfill this task are criticized by Heschel. While many Jewish thinkers in the Middle Ages and modern times accentuated this function of the mitzvot, Heschel would certainly not reduce the meaning of the commandments to this function. For him the act of doing a mitzva was important in itself, and to equate mitzvot with something functional would be too Gnostic. In Buber’s mind, the commandments were part of a fixed religious framework, which he opposed to the living dialogical and prophetic religiosity. More than Heschel, he separated religion from religiosity, explaining true religiosity as dynamic and devoid of fixed patterns of behavior. One had to sanctify the whole of life, and undue concentration upon a ready set of commandments would endanger the possible realization of a meeting between people that gives a glimpse into the Divine presence. Religion carries in itself the danger of suffocating real religiosity that itself was never meant to be prescribed. Buber opposed religion to religiosity, preferring religiosity, whereas Heschel showed the tension between both realities, giving necessary weight to the mitzvot but stressing the importance of the intention behind their performance. Dresner in his book on Heschel, Hasidism, and Halakha, reports that Heschel once remarked to him that a main error of Buber’s was 3. 4.

In contrast, Buber was born in a well-to-do family. Kaplan and Dresner, Prophetic Witness, 70. — 160 —

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his antinomism, his rejection of Halakha. Buber thought that nothing must restrain the free human response to a particular situation. When a Zionist youth group mentored by Buber established a kibbutz, they did not consider themselves young idealists but wanted a living, fleshand-blood community, that as such was in need of a path. They rejected the way of Jewish tradition and adopted Marxism. The kibbutz refused a family’s request for a bar mitzva observance, directing the family to a nearby religious colony. 5 This anecdote brought by Dresner illustrates well Heschel’s clear distance from Buber’s rejection of the cultic commandments. Buber, of course, would reply that one has to sanctify the whole of life in all its dynamics and ever-changing situations and not to create a separate domain of religiosity that was not connected to the whole existence and therefore was in danger of becoming “magic” or a supplementary layer imposed upon daily life. Moreover, one could ask if the founders of the Marxist kibbutz really understood Buber’s way of thinking, in which sociality and religiosity constituted two necessary pillars.

Ecstasy and Wonder, and Tradition and Personal Experience The early Buber considered Hasidic religiosity as ecstasy and as a possibility to achieve unity and even to “realize” God. The concept of a religiosity that does not take revelation into account was attacked by Rosenzweig in his 1914 essay “Atheistic Theology,” where he defined revelation as “orientation.” Heschel for his part surprisingly defined revelation as “an ecstasy of God,” meaning God’s turning to man, in contrast with the mystic, ecstatic experience of man who turns to God.6 God’s turn to man is not, in Heschel’s thought, an act of gazing at the Divine reality; it is the act of God becoming audible to man.7 The concept of revelation in Heschel, therefore, is God’s reaching out to man; for the early Buber, religious man reaches out to God. 5. 6. 7.

Dresner, Hasidism and Halacha (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), 87–88. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 199. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 198–199. — 161 —

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The individual experience of “wonder” is necessary and essential in Heschel’s religiosity. This sense of wonder and mystery is “an act of worship.”8 It implies man’s “spiritual ecstasy,”9 his rising above himself, and corresponds to God’s ecstasy. 10 These two kinds of ecstasy characterize the interaction between God and man. Heschel denotes the experience of wonder as the real service of God within institutionalized religion with its set of commandments. Faith, he proclaims, commences with the sense of mystery. One does not have to symbolically reconstruct the exodus from Egypt or the event at Sinai; one has to live again those experiences. By fulfilling the commandments, one must come in presence of the commanding God. In order to understand the Halakha, one should not — as Heschel mentions in his recollection of what he himself experienced in Berlin — forget God: Sinai or the sunset is a Jew’s business, and his task is “to repair the world under God’ s dominion.”11 There are three ways to come near to God: one may sense His presence in the world, in the scriptures, and in the commandments.12 The way to sense God in things is expressed in the verse frequently quoted by Heschel: “Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these” (se’u marom ‘enekhem ure’u mi bara ’eleh; Isaiah 40:26); the way of feeling His presence in the Bible is concisely formulated in the verse “I am the Lord thy God” ( ani haShem elohekha; Exodus 20:2), and the way apprehending Him in sacred deeds is conveyed in the verse “We shall do and we shall hear” (na‘aseh venishma; Exodus 24:7). These three verses delineate the different domains of Jewish existence: worship, learning, and action.13 These terms reflect Heschel’s own interpretation of the traditional dictum of Shimon the Righteous, who used to say: “On three things the world is sustained: on the Torah, on the Divine service, and 8. 9. 10.

11. 12 . 13.

Heschel, God in Search of Man, 118. Ibid. Merkle notes that without mentioning him, Heschel opposed James because the latter wrote about the feeling of “an objective presence,” about “something there” in the consciousness of the human being and not about a personal God. See Merkle, Faith, 244, note 9. Heschel, “Halacha,” 130. Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, 136. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 31. — 162 —

-----------------------------------------------------------  On the Commandments -----------------------------------------------------------

on deeds of loving kindness” (al shlosha devarim ha’olam omed: al torah, al avoda, ve-al-gemilut hasidim; Avot 1:2). The God of nature is the God of history, and one knows Him through the fulfillment of His will. The service of God starts with the consciousness that wonders happen daily and that creation itself is a wonder. For Heschel, in the footsteps of the prophets, the aim of worship and the commandments is to eradicate indifference. Consequently, he adds: “Religion is a means, not an end. It becomes idolatrous when regarded as an end in itself.” To equate religion and God is idolatry, he claims.14 Such a phrase could have been Buber’s. If one makes a blessing over bread, one does not mention the sun and all the other factors that were necessary for the production of bread, but one thanks God, “who brings out bread from the earth.” Blessings like this one rupture spontaneity and are destined to give one the feeling that nothing is evident. Commandments, too, are human interpretation of the Divine Will and therefore “Even the laws of the Torah are not absolutes. Nothing is deified: neither power nor wisdom, neither heroes nor institutions.” The laws are not absolute because Halakha is “an expression” and “interpretation of the will of God.”15 The aim of the laws is to enable man to reach the dimension of wonder in reality. In this manner, Heschel stresses the importance of the individual experience as well as that of the community, which does not absorb the individual and abolish his personal experience but makes individual inner experience possible. One cannot base life upon mere experience, and therefore one has to lean upon the commandments, which enlighten man’s way. Heschel pleaded for a “leap of action,” contrasted to the Kierkegaardian “leap of faith.” This leap suspends man’s self-centeredness, but routine threatens to suffocate living faith, which is constituted from the underlying and necessarily individual experience in the performance of the commandments. This personal experience necessarily excludes blind obedience.16 Heschel combined a radically personal, inner experience with the outer practice of the

14. 15. 16.

Heschel, “No Religion Is an Island,” 243. Heschel, “Halacha,” 135. Heschel, A Passion for Truth, 184–187. — 163 —

-------------------------------------------------------------------------  Chapter IV -------------------------------------------------------------------------

mitzvot. One has to come to an “ecstasy of deeds.” 17 Heschel refers to the Kotzker rebbe, for whom personal commitment to the Torah is necessary. One has to renew daily the intention, the kavvanah that is inherent in the commandment; this inner experience in the performance of the service of God is what the prophets demanded. In this way, the Kotzker rebbe proposed that people maintain their individual kavvanah as well as the framework of the commandments, which is not the result of personal will. Each person with his own personal experience has to achieve renewal in the performance of sacred deeds. Heschel too, following the Kotzker rebbe and the prophets themselves, included the individual and his personal, radical experience within the traditional community. This move of Heschel resembles Rosenzweig’s approach to the mitzvot as expressed in “The Builders,” where the objective law of the community (Gesetz) had to become a personal mitza (Gebot).18 However, Harold Kasimow in his dissertation rightly contends that Heschel, in opposition to many great Jewish scholars, told his audience to perform mitzvot even without intention.19 The “leap of action” or performance of deeds was possible even without a “leap of faith.”20 In other words, even an act performed not for its own sake, that is, not for the sake of God, remained important.21 Heschel therefore insisted not only upon integrity but also upon the “leap of action.” Kasimow refers his readers to the article “Confusion of Good and Evil,” where Heschel related to the question of kavvanah. Heschel indeed argued in this piece that even the saint cannot perform mitzvot with entire integrity. Although our deeds are never pure and perfect, the act is important: “the validity of the good remains regardless of all impurity.”22 Kasimow finally mentions that Heschel’s view has traditional proponents among some Hasidic 17. 18.

19.

20. 21. 22.

Heschel, God in Search of Man, 283. F. Rosenzweig, “Die Bauleute. Über das Gesetz” (1923) in id., Kleinere Schriften (Berlin: Schocken, 1937), 106–121. H. Kasimow, Divine-Human Encounter. A Study of Abraham, Joshua Heschel (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1979), 55–59. Kasimow mentions that Heschel was aware of the view in Rabbinic and medieval sources (e.g., Bahya ibn Paquda) that without kavvanah the performance of the mitzvot was worthless. The two expressions appear in Heschel, God in Search of Man, 283. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 403–404. Heschel, The Insecurity of Freedom, 142. — 164 —

-----------------------------------------------------------  On the Commandments -----------------------------------------------------------

masters, who had difficulty in attaining the proper intention, even though they felt commanded by God. Heschel was critical of religious behaviorism, but at the same time he insisted that contemporary Jews had to take a “leap of action.”23 Dissimilar to Buber, who wrote that “in the beginning was relationship,”24 Heschel emphasized that “at the beginning is the commitment.” It is significant that Heschel did not write that at the beginning was the commandment, but rather the commitment as the religious experience, which is realized practically through the performance of commandments. In the framework of this commitment, Heschel explains that Psalm 19 begins with “The heavens declare the glory of God” and ends with a paean on the mitzvot. The world, including the word and sacred deeds, is full of His glory.25 God’s glory is concealed in this world, however; it becomes revealed in the sacred deed. The presence of God is a majestic expectation, to be sensed and retained, and, when lost, to be regained and resumed. Time is the presence of God in the world. Every moment is His subtle arrival, and man’s task is to be present. His presence is retained in moments in which God is not alone, in which we try to be present in His presence, to let Him enter our daily deeds, in which we coin our thoughts in the mint of eternity. The presence is not one realm and the sacred deed another; the sacred deed is the Divine in disguise.26

Heschel’s above lines on the presence of God and the presence of man before the presence of God remind us of Buber’s dialogical thought, as found exemplarily in I and Thou, with the significant difference that Buber was not referring primarily to the mitzvot but about the sanctification of life in all its aspects, whereas Heschel concentrated 23.

24. 25. 26.

Note that Rosenzweig, in a similar way, advised Mawrik Kahn not to wait for the right intention but instead to start performing mitzvot, and kavvanah would follow. In this viewpoint, the act had precedence over the intention. See his letter of February 26, 1919, in Rachel Rosenzweig and Edith Rosenzweig-Scheinmann (eds.), Franz Roseznweig. Briefe und Tagebücher. 2. Band (Franz Rosenzweig. Der Mensch und sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften I) (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979). 625. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 282. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 311. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 312. — 165 —

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upon the mitzvot as “sacred deeds” and as “the Divine in disguise.” Another difference lies in the fact that Heschel mentions that “God is not alone” as man is not alone; Buber in I and Thou would not discuss God’s searching for man, for his emphasis is upon the presence of one man toward another, which causes God to be present for human beings. For Heschel, our sacred deeds are the manifestation of God. In an apt expression, he terms the goal of man to become “an incarnation of the Torah.”27 If the reader is willing to travel — with Heschel — between different cultures, one may understand the expression as pointing to the task of a continuous incarnation of the Torah, and so, in a way, of God, as a continuous way of making God present in the world. Buber, in turn, wrote in a parallel way, employing a Christian term, about the world as a “sacrament” of God.28 Heschel used the expression incarnation in a more polemic mode, or at least in order to distinguish Judaism from Christianity, while Buber made use of the term “sacrament” specifically because he wrote for Jews and Christians alike.

Prayer Susannah Heschel reports29 that her father accepted Buber’s offer to work in Frankfurt when the two met in Berlin on January 22, 1937. On March 3 of the same year, Heschel left Berlin for Frankfurt, and a few days later he was invited to Buber’s home, where a lively debate on Heschel’s dissertation took place. In a letter of March 26, 1937, he wrote: The last days in Frankfurt were lovely. Many people from throughout Germany took part in the conference of the Mittelstelle. Between Feuchtwanger — a very spiritual man — and me a friendship developed. We understood each other excellently and wished we could spend a few days together. Perhaps for that reason I will one day visit Munich. The most delightful was a discussion with Buber, to whom I gave my article in the Rundschreiben to read. He: “It’s a level too high! The part on prayer [the text] is good, the part on praying [what prayer is] does not belong

27. 28. 29.

Heschel, God in Search of Man, 311. Sic in his “Symbolic and Sacramental Existence In Judaism.” See Buber, Werke III, 841. S. Heschel, introduction to Moral Grandeur by S. Heschel, xv-xvi. — 166 —

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in the Rundschreiben.” I: “The assignment is not to learn to read text but to learn how to pray. The second is more important.” Friendly quarrel. Buber pushed Eduard Strauss into the discussion by saying: “Heschel is a lovely youngster, but so stubborn!” This discussion went on so that I long with joy for the next one… It went so well and I think about the next time with a happy heart.30

Although Buber had sharply criticized Heschel’s dissertation on prophecy, they talked about it in a friendly atmosphere. In the letter under consideration, their differences on prayer become clear: Buber had a text-centered approach, while Heschel — paradoxically in a Buberian way — attacked Buber using his own arguments and talked about what happens “between” the text of the prayer and the one who prays. Contrary to what is commonly thought, and as we will see infra, Buber in I and Thou does not place prayer in time, but valuates it in a kind of philosophical idealism as itself constituting time; he calls prayer and sacrifice “servants.” He considers prayer and sacrifice meaningful if they are before God in a relationship of reciprocity. In his article entitled, “The Ba’alshem-Tov’s Instruction in Intercourse with God,” which he published in 1928, but which he had “completed many years ago,”31 Buber offers the reader “a parable of prayer.” This parable belongs to a series of sayings of the Ba’al Shem Tov, which, according to Maurice Friedman,32 was less colorful and poeticized than Buber’s early writings on Hasidism. The parable contains the Ba’al Shem Tov’s analogy between prayer and sexual intercourse: Prayer is a coupling with the Glory of God. Therefore man should move himself up and down at the beginning of prayer, but then he can stand unmoved and cleave to God in a great cleaving. And because he moves, he can attain to a great awakening so that he must reflect: Why do I move up and down? Certainly, because the Glory of God stands over against me. And over this he enters into a great rapture. 30. 31.

32.

Ibid. Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, ed. and trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Horizon Press, 1958), 179. Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, introduction, 15–17. — 167 —

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“In my flesh,” says Job, “I shall see God.” As in bodily coupling, only he can beget who uses a living limb with longing and joy, so in the spiritual coupling, that is, with the speaker of the teaching and of the prayer, it is he who performs them with living limb in joy and bliss who begets. As the bride at the wedding is clothed and adorned with all kinds of garments, but when the nuptials themselves are to take place, the garments are taken from her in order that the bodies can come close to each other, so it says too: “Out of my flesh shall I see God.” For prayer is the bride who at first is adorned with many garments, but then, when her friend embraces her, all clothing is taken from her.33

These three passages are crucial for Buber’s more mature understanding of the Ba’al Shem Tov’s attitude to prayer. In the three sayings, the sage, who as the leader of Hasidism was the one who wanted “to love the world in God,”34 did not gnostically see the world as an illusion; he knew about the “‘standing over against,’ the real mutuality” between man and God, and he was “destined to be redeemed through the meeting of Divine and human need” for the sake of unification of God with His Shekhina.35 The sayings of the Ba’al Shem Tov preserve the immediacy of the relationship, involving the whole man and his presentness. Buber calls the Ba’al Shem Tov’s mysticism “a realistic and active mysticism,” and one does have to forget all that one knows of mysticism in order to understand him.36 Prayer is therefore no longer the ecstasy of man who “realizes” the Divine but the meeting with the “absolute person.” In an explanatory note, Buber clarifies that the text of Job 19:20, “My bones cleave to my skin and to my flesh,”37 (be-ori u-bivsari davka atsmi) in the second and third saying means at the same time “in the flesh,” indicating the wholeness of man demanded for real life and “out of the flesh,” signifying the inwardness of the word that enters into real life. Man is destined to become whole, and out of his inwardness, out of the Divine light and in the binding to God, out of the “Higher

33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, 196–197. Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, 179. Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, 180. Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, 180–181. The biblical translation is according to the Standard Revised Version. — 168 —

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roots,”38 he lives in the world. Man’s need and the wants of the Divine Glory are satisfied. Prayer is “a high need” and “all, above and below, is one unity.”39 In another explanatory note,40 Buber pays attention to the “directing” of man to God: The Kabbalah succumbed ever again the danger of turning intention into a kind of magic, of narrowing it to a kind of mystical-technical preoccupation with the mysteries of the Divine names — a danger that can be compared with the technicizing of the cult of sacrifice (which was probably also joined with magical and primitive-mystical conceptions); and as, in opposition to this technicizing, the prophets summoned man to or back to true intention of the whole man, so now the founder of Hasidut.41

In his reflections on the Ba’al Shem Tov and prayer, Buber discarded his early ecstatic-mystical thoughts in favor of a mysticism that in a panentheistic manner places the entire world “in” God. Buber likewise relates to evil in a similarly anti-Gnostic way. He voices the idea, however, that evil too is good — a position that he rejects after the Shoah. Evil is the lowest stage in perfect goodness, Buber proclaims, and if one does good, then evil too becomes good.42 God revealed himself in the thorn bush, in evil, but it was not burned. Says the Ba’al Shem Tov: “God called Moses a second time: ‘Moses!’ — then the lowest rung bound itself to the highest in Moses himself, and he said, ‘Here I am.’”43 With his words, which remind us of the “hineni” of Abraham (Gen. 22: 1,7,11), Moses changed evil into good. In his reflections on prayer as the Ba’al Shem Tov conceived it, Buber leaves his early Gnostic tendencies in favor of a world-centered religion that somehow takes evil into account. Prayer emerges from a real meeting between the earthly and the Divine. Later in his life, however, Buber did not treat evil as merely a negative aspect of good. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, 203. Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, 198. Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, 219–220, note 11. Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, 219–220. Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, 207. Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, 208. — 169 —

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Buber depicts the relationship to the eternal You mainly within the relationship between human beings; Heschel, on the other hand, who wrote an entire book on prayer called Man’s Quest for God, defends the immediate relationship to God, which is not necessarily through the relationship with men. Heschel’s conception of prayer is that man through prayer enables direct contact with the divinity. The subtitle of Heschel’s aforementioned book is Studies in Prayer and Symbolism, and its entire fifth chapter is devoted to the problem of symbolism. As Rosenzweig criticized Buber in his “Atheistic Theology” of 1914 because the latter neglected the orientation of revelation of a transcendent God, Heschel attacks the degradation of religion to a system of symbols. For Heschel, the symbol belongs to the outward court of religion. Its center lies in God, who cannot be localized in an object.44 One does not need symbols but immediacy: “The ultimate human need is the need for a meaning of existence. This will not be found through introducing a set of symbols.”45 Judaism’s attitude toward symbols is different from the attitude of Christianity. Heschel mentions that in Christianity, adoration is given to the Sacred Heart and to images and relics of the saints. In contrast, the shofar or lulav are functional items; they merely remind us of our obligation and do not convey any inspiration in and of themselves. The spirit of Christian symbolism has also shaped church architecture. The church, Heschel states, stands for heaven on earth and is a symbol of the crucifixion and resurrection. The cross in itself is a symbol, which has to be venerated.46 But Heschel did more than merely criticize Christianity for its symbolism. He criticizes the splendor or “artistic pageantry” of the synagogues in America that prevent man from concentrating upon God, of whose care he is the object. Significantly, the same term, “artistic pageantry,” designates idolatry. Symbols for Heschel are makeshift items that are necessary for those people who cannot express themselves unambiguously. Wars have been waged over differences in symbols rather than over differences in the love due to God. They separate people, while insights unite people. 44. 45. 46.

Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 121. Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 144. Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 122. — 170 —

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We do not need new symbols, Heschel proclaims, but new insights.47 In the beginning of his book, Heschel relates one of Rabbi Isaac Meir Alter of Ger’s stories concerning a shoemaker and what he should do about his morning prayer. The shoemaker served poor people, who needed their only pair of shoes in the morning. He had to work during the night and part of the morning. When should he say his prayer? Should he first pray, or could he, every once in a while, utter a sigh: “Woe unto me, I haven’t prayed yet!”? Heschel notes that we too face this dilemma. One frequently is occupied and waits for an urge that is complete and unexampled. But such a unique urge is rare, and one may forget that one forgot.48 For Heschel, turning yourself to God and realizing that you are an object of His concern is the aim of prayer. In realizing that one is always before God — shiviti et ha-Shem le-negdi tamid — one enlarges his consciousness and becomes aware of the Divine presence. “To pray,” Heschel writes, “is to take notice of the wonder, to regain a sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the Divine margin in all attainments.”49 In prayer, one makes the usual unusual, one senses the wonder in daily things and brings it before the Divine face. In the “spiritual ecstasy”50 of prayer, one does not step out of the world but sees the world in a different light. Self-consciousness is replaced by self-surrender, which is not a mystical negation of the ego but rather a state where God becomes the center and one sees the world in the mirror of the holy.51 For Buber too, prayer is not fleeing the world; he also believes that in prayer one sees the world from a different point of view. However, Heschel’s prayer puts God in the center by reminding us of our forgotten longings, our ignored pangs, and our true aspirations.52 In other words, it not only brings us into contact with God but also existentially connects us with our own deeper selves: “The supreme goal of prayer is to express God, to discover the self in relation to God.”53 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 144. Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 3–4. Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 5. Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 17. Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 7. Ibid. Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 31. — 171 —

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Heschel reflects upon the saying, “Know before Whom you stand.” Prayer is to religion what thinking is for philosophy; one “knows” the Divine presence not by speculation but in prayer. One has to “know” before “Whom” one “stands”: God is not a “what,” not a power or a sense of values, and one does not pray to an “it,” for God has “at least as much life as I do.” Know before whom “you stand” through prayer: one decides to enter and face the presence of God. To pray is therefore to bring God into the world, to expand the presence of God in the world.54 In diametric contrast to Buber, Heschel is not ready “to accept the ancient concept of prayer as a dialogue.”55 He thinks it is pretentious to enter into a dialogue with God, for there is no symmetry. In further contrast to the dialogical Buber, who opposed this metaphor, Heschel prefers to describe prayer as an act of “immersion” in God. One feels touched by the waters, drowned in the sea of mercy. “In prayer the ‘I’ becomes an ‘it.’ This is the discovery: what is an ‘I’ to me is, first of all and essentially, an ‘it’ to God.”56 Prayer is no dialogue in Heschel’s view; it is not a conversation with God, and we do not communicate with Him. “It [prayer] is not a relationship between person and person, between subject and subject, but an endeavor to become the object of His thought.” 57 At first sight, it is surprising that Heschel refuses to see prayer as a dialogue between man and God, because from his Yiddish poems on until his book on the Kotzker rebbe, we get the impression that the praying person establishes such a dialogue. Yet a passage in The Prophets helps us in understanding Heschel’s view. The focus of the prayer is not the self; it is turning the heart toward God by disregarding one’s own thoughts and concerns. The praying person is not concentrated upon his own interests and needs but upon God alone, upon His grace and power. “Thus, in beseeching Him for bread, there is one instant, at least, in which the mind is directed neither to one’s hunger nor to food, but to His mercy. This instant is prayer.”58 For this reason, Heschel refuses to see prayer as a dialogue; it is not a 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 59–64. Heschel, “Prayer as Discipline,” in The Insecurity of Freedom, 255. Ibid. Heschel, “Faith,” in Moral Grandeur, 345. Heschel, The Prophet, vol. II, 221. — 172 —

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relationship between I and Thou. In a clear dispute with Buber, Heschel writes: “Prayer begins as an “it-He” relationship.”59 The I becomes an it in prayer; the I is not self-conscious but in self-surrender.60 We note that this self-surrender in prayer is different from the prophetic religious experience that does not accept the mystical abolition of the I. Apparently, in Heschel’s mind the anti-mystical prophetic consciousness as well as the quasi-mystical immersion in God dwelt together, just as the opposites of the Kotzker and the Ba’al Shem Tov both dwelled in his mindset. Prayer is the recognition of God, man’s awareness of Him. Prayer is not a dialogue for Heschel, since it appears to be a movement that brings us out of ourselves and into another dimension of life that directs us to God. In that perspective, as we saw supra, Heschel can even write that God has to be concerned and that he is also responsible for God.61 He can impart such a criticism of God, since he sees himself as residing within and surrounded by the Divine interest. Prayer is a different religious experience than dialogue; it is frequently a complaint and a demand of concern for the Divine concern, as it is in the case of the Kotzker rebbe and in the early Yiddish poems. Yet, again like Buber, prayer for Heschel was no substitute for action.62 In another parallel to Buber, Heschel writes that what counts is not our “feeling” but our “certainty” of God’s being close to us.63 In Buber’s words, what counts is God’s presence and what happens “between” God and man.

On Deeds Love is not the sole condition for salvation in Heschel’s eyes. Against the Apostle Paul, who waged a passionate battle against the Law and who thought that man is justified by faith alone, Heschel maintained that good deeds are not only in man’s but also in God’s sphere of 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

Heschel, The Insecurity of Freedom, 255. Ibid. See the poem “Million Eyes, Clogged.” Heschel, “Prayer,” in Moral Grandeur (1945; reprint), 343. Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 62. Sol Tanenzapf criticizes Heschel in that he transgresses the borders of the philosophical discussion and that he accepts the existence of a certainty that is not rationally based (Tanenzapf, “Abraham Heschel and his Critics,” Judaism 23 [1974]: 278–279). — 173 —

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interest. In a way, one could formulate Heschel’s thought in a concise manner by varying the famous dictum of the Shma: “And you shall love the Lord thy God with all your heart, with all your soul and in all your deeds.” Rabbi Ishmael was not swept away by his emotions; it was not spiritual love but good deeds that were important for him. Heschel opts for Rabbi Ishmael and not for the more mystical Rabbi Akiva, who longed for communion with God. With Rabbi Ishmael and the Kotzker rebbe, he decided on a distant relationship to God. God is in heaven, man on earth. Let your words about the Almighty be few, but your deeds many. The early Buber thought more along the lines of Rabbi Akiva, who interpreted devekut, cleaving, as a matter of intention, a “matter of the heart” in Heschel’s phrasing.64 Later, Buber’s ideas on faith became more related to society and to the human tasks in the social order as such. When writing his Two Types of Faith, in which he defended the Law against the Apostle Paul, he leaned to the side of Rabbi Ishmael but enlarged the circle of deeds to the complex of moral obligations in society. Heschel contrasted Rabbi Ishmael’s distant God to Rabbi Akiva’s longing for communion with God. At the same time, the Kotzker and Heschel held that one is never absolutely separated from the Most High since in performing a commandment one unites himself with the Divine will.65 In Treatise Qedushin 40b, the rabbis are asked, “What is greater, study of the Torah or deeds?” (Talmud gadol o maaseh gadol?) Rabbi Tarfon, a senior colleague of Rabbi Akiva, says, in the spirit of Rabbi Ishmael and the Kotzker rebbe, “The deed is greater” (maaseh gadol). For Rabbi Akiva, “Talmud torah (the study of the Torah) is greater” than the deed (talmud gadol). All concluded that the study of the Torah that leads to deeds is greater (Talmud gadol she-hatalmud mevi lide maaseh). We note that “deeds” are larger than the mitzvot for Heschel, and for Buber they are not reducible to ritual acts. Deeds for both Buber and Heschel pertain to the entire spectrum of life, but Heschel had a more traditional approach. Buber was also in this respect an atypical man, as he said himself.66 64. 65. 66.

Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 193. Heschel, A Passion for Truth, 242. Buber, Werke I, 1111. — 174 —

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Anti-behaviorism and Anti-spiritualism Heschel discusses the attitude of “religious behaviorists,” for whom discipline and not religious experience is paramount.67 For these people, Judaism is concerned with deeds alone; it asks for obedience to the Law but is not concerned with ideas. Against such religious behaviorism, Heschel maintains that religious deeds cannot be performed in the absence of the soul. He mentions Spinoza and Moses Mendelssohn, who defined Judaism as legislation: for Spinoza, this was a bondage, while for Mendelssohn it was “revealed legislation.” Heschel’s own idea of Judaism is far removed from that of Spinoza. Judaism is not legalism but rather, “The rules of observance are laws in form and love in substance.”68 Here again, Heschel links Law and love. Torah is more than laws. The Greek translation of Torah by nomos gave rise to misconceptions of Judaism. In the Aramaic translation, Heschel notes, Torah is rendered with oraita, which can only mean teaching, and never Law.69 In the footsteps of the rabbis, Heschel comments upon “I am the Lord thy God–Thou shalt have no other gods” as the utterance of an emperor who first asks that one accept his kingship and afterward issues decrees. Only when God’s kingdom is accepted will God issue His decrees. The parallel with Buber, who gives priority to the acceptance of the Kingdom of God before any laws, is remarkable. Heschel in his traditional but nevertheless radical approach defines the mitzvot as “signposts.”70 Of course, “the law must not be idolized, it is a part, not all, of the Torah.” We remind the reader that for Buber too Torah is Weisung, pointing and teaching first of all. In a dictum that reminds us of Jesus as he is interpreted by Buber (Marc 2:27), Heschel writes: “One must sacrifice mitzvot for the sake of man, rather than sacrifice man for the sake of mitzvot,” since the purpose of the Torah is “vehai ba-hem”: that you may live by it. In this spirit, Heschel also fulminated against the multiplying of rules. He quotes Rabbi Ishmael, who did not agree 67. 68. 69. 70.

Heschel, God in Search of Man, 320–335. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 323. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 325. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 326. — 175 —

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with excessive stringencies, and who taught that “from the destruction of the Temple onward, it would have been proper to decree for ourselves no longer to eat meat or drink wine; but one does not issue a public decree with which a majority of the public cannot live.”71 In Heschel’s mind, religion is certainly not spiritualism. Man’s concrete existence is relevant to the Divine. As one plays music with physical instruments, for the Jew, mitzvot are the instruments through which the holy is carried out. Man is not only mind but also body and soul, and his task is that “his heart and his flesh should sing to the living God.”72 What typifies the thought of the mature Buber is that he connects religiosity with work in the concrete world: all the acts of the human being have to be hallowed in the presence of God.

Autonomy and Heteronomy According to Kant, an act is moral when the intention behind it is good. Heschel disagrees with Kant because Judaism prioritizes the act. The intention is not enough for spiritual elevation, which stems from the commitment to do the will of God. There is another reason why Heschel is not a Kantian. For Heschel, faith involves standing before the living God; ethics is not faith, which “comes over us like a force urging to action.”73 Ethics concerns man’s questions pertaining to the nature of human existence. In religion, man’s questions are God’s questions and man’s answer to them concerns man but also God.74 In the prophetic consciousness that became constitutive for Judaism, the deeds of man are central, and not their intention. One cannot consider moral autonomy without outer reference to external authority. Man has to orient his own human will to the Divine will. Heschel’s approach is therefore “a meta-ethical approach”75: man must listen to his own consciousness and at the same time do the will of God. Autonomy and heteronomy go together; they are not exclusive or contradictory. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 724. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 297. Heschel, “Halacha,” 140. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 285. Ibid. — 176 —

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Interpreting them as a dichotomy is alien to non-binary Jewish thought. In the Jewish-prophetic experience one responds to God. In the meeting between God and man, the Divine will and the human will are brought together, as Rabban Gamaliel used to say: “Do His will as if it was your will that He may do your will as if it was His will” (ase retsono kiretsonkha kedei she-yaaseh retsonkha kirtsono). The very distinction between man’s will and God’s will is abolished here since the two are united. To know ethics and sagacious ethical rules, Heschel added, is not yet to be ethical, just as to be erudite in musical theory does not make one an artist. In his typical antithetical thinking, Heschel wrote that life is not a debate among member faculties within the soul, where the most persuasive wins the argument. Life is often a war, where passions and folly actively participate in the battle, but the war cannot be won by remembering a golden rule. Heschel rightly asks the critical question of how a wise abstraction can compete with rage and the insatiability, cunning, and favoritism of the ego. In a clear antiKantian mode, he argues that reason is “a lonely stranger in the soul, while the irrational forces feel at home and are always in the majority.”76 Why should a person be virtuous? Ethics expects that one consult his power of judgment and decide how one should act in the light of general principles. Such advice, however, does not take into account that general rules have to be applied to particular situations and also that man combines judicial and executive powers. Ethics or a sum of habits cannot embrace the totality of living, Heschel concludes. The last sentence could be found in Buber’s writings as well. Heschel and Buber were both aware that thought is not only reason but also hagut libi, “thought of the heart,” as is written in the beginning of the daily prayer. The “thought of the heart” includes passions, inclinations, as well as values. Heschel’s argument against Kant comprises his view on life as the domain of the autonomous and the heteronymous alike.77 The Jew does not only have to listen to the voice of conscience but should also act according to the norms of a heteronymous Law.78 76. 77. 78.

Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, 184. Ibid. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 298. — 177 —

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In contrast to Heschel, Buber was ready to prefer Saul over Samuel, because he could not imagine that the Divine will is in contrast with morality, although for him as for Heschel, morality was more than what Kant estimated. It was linked to the task of becoming a “whole” person, to the realization of presentness, and to the act of uniting, of generating unity in oneself, in society, and between societies. Morality and religiosity were intertwined since the I had to become I-you and to meet the eternal You in concrete situations. Buber did not base morality on the human will alone, for in his view it concerned the whole person. Was Buber’s approach to ethics, as in Yeshayahu Leibowitz’s Kantian approach, essentially an autonomic one? We seriously doubt this. Moral autonomy does not fit a dialogical philosophy that places presence at the center of a mended world. One has to see the other, to look, so to say, with the other’s eyes, to be wholly present for him.79 This certainly does not imply that Buber defended a slavish ethical heteronomy, one without freedom. Neither did Heschel. Buber’s ethics are not an obedience to an external ethical code but rather an attention to concrete situations, in which one has to come to ever-new decisions. A person is addressed by the other from without, but he responds from within.80 There is no contrast between autonomy and heteronomy. Buber did not oppose autonomic morality with heteronomic religion as did Leibowitz, for religion and morality, for him, were both wedded to the concrete. Ethics was validated in the personal relationship with the Absolute: Only out of a personal relationship with the Absolute can the absoluteness of the ethical co-ordinates arise without which there is no complete awareness of self. Even when the individual calls an absolute criterion handed down by religious tradition his own, it must be reforged in the fire of the truth of his personal essential relation to the Absolute if it is to win true validity. But always it is the religious which bestows, the ethical which receives.81

79. 80. 81.

Friedman, Martin Buber, 204. Friedman, Martin Buber, 198–199. Buber, Eclipse of God. Studies in the Relation Between Religion and Philosophy (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952), 129. — 178 —

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Surprisingly, the last sentence appears in Buber’s Eclipse of God, but it could easily be found in Heschel’s writings as well. Against Kant and in accordance with Heschel, Buber not only leaned upon a universal law of reason, but his morality did not stem from mere intention or will.82 Morality was the result of the entire person, including his will and evil impulse.83 It takes place not in the I, not in the other, but in the dialogical situation, “between” persons. The good, therefore, is not a subjective feeling nor an objective state of affairs.84 One does not subject oneself under the universal law, the good is never impersonal, coming from universal reason; it grows out of the concrete dialogical situation and consists of dynamically reaching out to and being present for the other — a decision through which one directs oneself to God. Buber was not a subjectivist who made everything dependent upon the I, but neither was he a sheer objectivist who gave independent existence to absolute norms. He did not contrast selfishness with unselfishness, or egoism with altruism; like Erich Fromm (and in contrast to Levinas), he did not detach self-love from love for the other.85 One’s decision is qualitative in as far as one sees the other, and seeing the other and responding to the Eternal You amounts to the same outcome. In other words, what matters is the living dialogical situation in which man must make decisions that always depend upon concrete circumstances.

Babylonia and the Land of Israel Heschel’s understanding of the mitzvot is connected to what had been the accepted wisdom in Israel and Babylonia. There were big differences between the sages of Israel and those of Babylonia in Heschel’s analysis.86 The two schools developed attitudes toward poetry and song. The sages of Babylonia did not consider poetry and song a legitimate part of the service of God, whereas the sages of Israel held the opposite position. The two schools had yet more conflicting emphases. The school of the 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

Friedman, Martin Buber, 199. Friedman, Martin Buber, 200. Friedman, Martin Buber, 206. Friedman, Martin Buber, 203. Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 13–17. — 179 —

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land of Israel wanted the inner feeling of the religious experience; the school of Babylonia put the accent upon exterior behavior. In Israel, one performed the commandment in joy and commitment; in Babylonia, one accentuated the yoke of the mitzvot. Babylonia emphasized Halakha, the land of Israel Aggada. In Babylonia, Aggada was frequently trampled underfoot and not studied at all. The Amora of the land of Israel, Shimeon ben Lakish, wanted to prioritize intention in the performance of mitzvot, while the Babylonian Amora Rava declared that the performance of the commandments did not require intention. Kavvana was important in Israel, therefore, and formal commitment in Babylonia. In this famous dispute, Heschel resolutely chose the side of the Sages of the land of Israel; he did not want to trap or imprison God in temples.87 In his protest against the frozen world of Halakha and the minute explanations of every small crown of the Torah, Heschel preferred Shimeon ben Lakish and Rabbi Ishmael over Rava and Rabbi Akiva. The tension between the spiritual inner life and traditional life according to the Torah comes into expression in the different priorities of Shimeon ben Lakish and Rava. There were thinkers who followed Shimeon ben Lakish, but these, who put the emphasis upon the spiritual inner life, were always in the minority. Few contested the way Halakha was lived and practiced, however. Heschel accentuated spirituality in the halakhic lifestyle and found support in Bahya ibn Paquda’s Duties of the Heart and in the work of Israel Ba’al Shem Tov, who preferred the study of the secret lore of Aggada.88 In Orot, Rav Abraham Yitshaq ha-Cohen Kook offers an interesting parallel to the thoughts of Heschel, who consolidated the considerations of Rabbi Shimeon ben Lakish, ibn Paquda, and the Ba’al Shem Tov. Rav Kook regretted that the common “religious feeling” came to hurt the lofty Divine idea and brought it down to a low level that was without inner joy, without spiritual strength, and without melodies or songs. Instead of joining together with the highest ideal strength, one adopted a Pharisaic style, asking the question “What do I have to do?” and

87. 88.

Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 148. Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 17–21. — 180 —

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reducing the Divine light to a small flicker.89 Dresner points out a fine example of Heschel’s thought on the relationship between Halakha and Aggada. When J. B. Soloveitchik’s essay “Halakhic Man,” “Ish Ha-halakha,” was published, Heschel reacted in a seminar session. He said that halakhic man lo hayah velo nivra ela mashal haya: there has never been such a Jew. Heschel judged that Soloveitchik’s essay was brilliant but based on the false notion that Judaism is a cold, logical system with no room for piety. There has been no such typology in Judaism as halakhic man, he proclaimed. Ish Tora, a Torah man, combines Halakha and Aggada. Heschel tells that when he came to Berlin he was shocked to hear that Halakha was a central topic of talk among his fellow students. In Poland, it had been a foreign expression to him. Halakha is not an all-inclusive term, and so it restricts Judaism; Torah is the more comprehensive word. Halakha, Heschel concluded, has very little to do with theology. Some Orthodox figures think that one has no need for theology, but Heschel’s own depth-theology provides a framework in which mitzvot are central, though not the sum total.90

Mitzva and Presence in Buber’s Thought As with Heschel, Buber’s attitude vis-à-vis the Divine commandments cannot be understood without considering his concept of revelation and his approach to God, both discussed earlier. In I and Thou, revelation is the everlasting presence of a You that cannot become an It. Revelation is the presence of the eternal You. It is not commandments but presence that characterizes revelation in I and Thou, as evident in the following crucial passage: Can one say what is needed? Not by way of a prescription. All the prescriptions that have been excogitated and invented in the ages of the human spirit, all the preparations, exercises, and meditations that have been suggested have nothing to do with the primally simple fact of encounter. All the advantages for knowledge or power that one may 89. 90.

A. I. Kook, Orot (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1993), 114. Dresner, Hasidism and Halacha, 102. — 181 —

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owe to one or another exercise do not approach that of which we are speaking here. All this has its place in the It-world and does not take us one step — does not take the decisive step — out of it. Going forth [das Ausgehen] is unteachable in the sense of prescriptions. It can only be indicated [aufzeichbar] — by drawing a circle that excludes everything else. Then the one thing needful becomes visible: the total acceptance of the present.91

It follows from the quoted passage that prescriptions like the commandments cannot prepare us for what Buber calls the encounter in which the presence of God is “realized.” “Going forth,” which comes to being in contact with the non-I, is not to be exercised or attained by fixed formulas or gestures. Mitzvot belong to the sphere of the It-world. Buber’s description of authentic religiosity is therefore anti-formalist. Yet in real religiosity, prayer and sacrifice could have their place, if they step “before the countenance” (vor das Angesicht), meaning before God.92 Heschel’s attitude vis-à-vis the mitzvot is not anti-formalist but non-formalist. We illustrated this with the story of the book that Levin gave as a remedy against the perilous sin of depression, atsevut. The anecdote is characteristic of the relaxed attitude of Hasidism when it comes to the Divine commandments.93 However, although Heschel was also lenient when it came to strict adherence to the commandments and critical about religious behaviorism, even accusing Orthodoxy of bringing on the current religious crisis,94 he insisted that Judaism is “a leap of action.” He stressed that Christianity did not adopt the idea of commandment and that there was no equivalent for the word mitzva in Western languages.95 For Heschel, mitzvot are necessary in Jewish life. Buber, of course, was not observant and was suspicious about rituals that quickly could become magic formulae or fixed gestures that might prevent one from serving God in all one’s possible ways. 91. 92. 93. 94.

95.

Buber, I and Thou, 125–126; Ich und Du, 71. Buber, I and Thou, 131; Ich und Du, 75. Kaplan and Dresner, Prophetic Witness, 70. At the very beginning of God in Search of Man, Heschel writes about the “eclipse of religion” (3). It is customary to blame science and philosophy for this eclipse, but Heschel thought it would be more honest to blame religion itself for the crisis. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 363. — 182 —

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In his fight against a growing it-world, Buber failed to appreciate the mitzvot that, in line with his thinking, are a mixture of you and it; he put them aside because he apparently considered them as endangering God as You by instead enclosing Him in an it-world. Whereas Buber did everything in order that the Bible would not degenerate into an itworld of dogmas and traditional a prioris, he failed to do the same with the mitzvot. The differences between the two thinkers on the subject of the commandments, therefore, are clear. But is Heschel’s view that far removed from Buber’s view? Here comes a surprising sentence of Heschel’s:96 “What is a mitzvah? A prayer in the form of a deed. And to pray is to sense His presence.”97 Also for Buber, God’s “presence” was the aim of all religious life: one had to realize His presence in all one’s acts. Further, in real prayer, cult and faith would purify themselves in “living relation” (lebendige Beziehung).98 The following two sentences: “There is no reverence for God without reverence for man. Love of man is the way to the love of God” are written not by Buber but by Heschel.99 It follows that both thinkers situated the human relations in the heart of any constructive religiosity. Although they differ on the level of mitzvot, in their concepts of prayer and of the Divine presence, they walk a common path. Furthermore, Heschel too disapproved of an observance that is a mere external compliance with the Law, since the Law itself requires the agreement of the heart with the spirit and not only with the letter of the Law. Therefore, Buber’s protest against mere dictates of the Law is also to be found in Heschel, who writes that the goal is to live beyond these commands and — as he writes in a Buberian mode — “to fulfill the eternal suddenly.”100 Because Buber took seriously the idea that one has to serve God in all his deeds, he refused to serve God in one set of deeds, those called mitzvot. This position attracted the criticism of Rosenzweig, 96. 97.

98. 99. 100.

Heschel, God in Search of Man, 375. Continuing this thought, Heschel writes that prayer does not have to be always on our lips, the most important thing is that it is on our minds and in our hearts. Buber, I and Thou, 167; Ich und Du, 102. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 375. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 307. — 183 —

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who reproached his friend that he was not open enough to this way of serving God101; a mitzva is also a deed through which one serves God. Buber maintained his standpoint. For Heschel, however, Sinai is at stake in every act of man102; and the Law, “stiff with formality,” is “a cry for creativity.”103

Encounter with God and Mitzvot Buber did not place the Law at the heart of Judaism. He translated Torah by teaching, pointing the way, “Weisung,” and not by Law, “Gesetz.” It is not the Law but the Divine presence through the act of unification in the human being itself that occupies the central place in his early works. In Die Legende des Ba’alschem, published in 1908,104 he makes some notable remarks on the Divine. In “hitlahavut,” the ardor of ecstasy, he writes, one reaches the root of all teaching and commandment (zur Wurzel aller Lehre und alles Gebotes)105: one reaches the I of God and arrives at unity and limitlessness (zu Gottes Ich, der einfachen Einheit und Schrankenlosigkeit).106 When this happens, the wings of the commandments and laws fall down and are all destroyed (dann sinken alle Fluegel der Gebote und Gesetze nieder, und alle sind sie vernichtet)107 because the inclination, the evil drive (Trieb) above it, is destroyed. In the same early work,108 Buber records a saying that is significant to his concept of the Law and its relation to hitlahavut as one of the main characteristics of Hasidic life. If one fulfills the entire teaching and all the commandments, he writes, and one does not have this “happy 101.

102. 103. 104.

105. 106. 107. 108.

Ephraim Meir and Raphael Jospe, “Franz Rosenzweig’s Inexpressible Joy,” in Judaism, Topics, Fragments, Faces, Identities. Jubilee Volume in Honor of Rivka Horwitz, eds. Haviva Pedaya and Meir (Beersheba: Ben-Gurion University Press, 2007), 53–68. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 375. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 307. Buber, Die Legende des Baalschem (1908; reprint, Frankfurt o.M.: Rütten & Loening, 1922). Buber, Die Legende, 4. Ibid. Ibid. Buber, Die Legende, 2. — 184 —

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affection and burning” (die Wonne and das Brennen), paradise in the next life is opened for him, but because he did not feel pleasure in this world, he will not experience the pleasure of paradise in his future life. The phrasing is reminiscent of Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:1: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” However, not love but hitlahavut is for Buber the sole criterion of a successful religious life. Buber performs here a teleological suspension of the Law in favor of hitlahavut, of ecstasy that transcends time and space. Die Legende des Ba’alschem discusses avoda, the Divine service, as a second characteristic of Hasidism. Avoda stays in relation with hitlahavut as longing and fulfillment. Hitlahavut flows from avoda in the same way that finding God flows from seeking God.109 Clearly, Buber conceives of the finding of God as the highest goal, whereas avoda as the service of God in space and time is a means. However, he notes that the saint has both in his life.110 God wants to be found as a child desires to be found by his playmates when they play hide-and-seek.111 But even avoda is not first of all a question of commandments in Die Legende des Ba’alschem, but it is rather to say “enough” to the multitude in oneself, just as God says “enough” to the multitude in the world, so that man may find his way back to unity. If one assembles and unites, if one approaches the unity of God, one serves his Lord.112 In Buber’s selective, actualizing, modern, and universal interpretation of Hasidism, it is the multiplicity that takes a person away from his elevated task. Buber is obsessed by unity. In hitlahavut one sees everything as being linked to God. The one who lives in ecstasy sees in the world the Creator of the very beginning (Bildner des Urbeginns) who lives in all the things of the world (den in den Dingen lebt). It is the task of the human being to bring creation back to its source. To bring being to nothingness, to bring yesh (being) to its source, ayyin (nothing, no-thing, no-being), is greater than creating something out of 109. 110. 111. 112.

Buber, Die Legende, 10. Ibid. Buber, Die Legende., 11. Buber, Die Legende, 12. “Wenn er [der Mensch] sich sammelt und vereint, naehert er sich der Einheit Gottes, dient er seinem Herrn. Dies ist Aboda.” — 185 —

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nothing. In the act of creation, God brought the higher into the lower; the human task is to bring the lower into the higher.113 In hitlahavut, time dissipates and the lived moment is eternity.114 Discoursing on hitlahavut as if he is talking about God, Buber, in an allusion to Rashi on Exodus 33:20–23, notes: “The world is not anymore her place: she [hitlahavut] is the place of the world.” It is as if the very act of ecstasy comprises the extraordinary human possibility of giving sense to all that exists, of being in this world and above this world. It is clear that in Die Legende des Ba’alschem, Buber highly values hitlahavut as the ascent to the infinite, to the limitless. The emphasis is not upon Law but upon ecstasy as the eminent way to God, until one reaches the root of all the commandments. It is as if he wanted to say one may throw the ladder away once one reaches the goal. But who has arrived? The contrast between the early Buber and Heschel is great: didn’t Heschel posit God’s ecstasy as God’s concern and His revelation, and not only man’s ecstasy? On the other hand, the early Heschel as a poet also writes the poem “Ikh und Du,” in which there is a complete intermingling of his self and God: the boundaries are blotted out. 115 Kaplan and Dresner point out a “surpassing of Buber’s dialogue between separate entities.”116 This is true on the level of I and Thou, but it is untrue when we compare it with the neoromantic, aestheticizing Buber of the beginning of the twentieth century. Later, in I and Thou, Buber developed a distinctive perspective on God. After having discussed doctrines of immersion (Versenkungslehren) that evoke the big epigrams of identification in the Gospel of John and in the doctrine of Sandilya in the Khandogya Upanishad,117 he exposes his new view on mysticism: “I know not only of one but of two kinds of events in which one is no longer aware of any duality. Mysticism sometimes confounds them, as I, too, did at one time.”118 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118.

Buber, Die Legende, 8–9. Buber, Die Legende, 5. Kaplan and Dresner, Prophetic Witness, 144. Ibid. Buber, I and Thou, 131–133; Ich und Du, 75–76. Buber, I and Thou, 134; Ich und Du, 77 (Ich weiss nicht von einem allein, sondern von zweierlei Geschehnis, darin man keiner Zweiheit mehr gewahr wird. Die Mystik vermengt — 186 —

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In this new perspective of Buber, there are definitely two poles in the event of the encounter with God, although their intermingling is experienced as almost an identity: What the ecstatic calls unification is the rapturous dynamics of the relationship; not the unity that has come into being at this moment in world time, fusing I and You, but the dynamics of the relationship itself which can stand before the two carriers of this relationship, although they confront each other immovably, and cover the eyes of the enraptured.119

Buber explains that in the mystical experience of rapture, a phenomenon severely criticized by Levinas,120 the two members between whom the relationship is established, pale and are forgotten. He recognizes this possibility, although he calls it a marginal one. Greater than this “marginal” mystical experience, he proclaims, is the “central” actuality of an everyday hour on earth, “with a streak of sunshine on a maple twig and an intimation of the eternal You.”121 Now, the ecstatic unification (Einung)122 of God and man is a relationship, an act of the one who is associated (der Verbundene) with other human beings.123 It is worthy of notice that Buber talks about nature that could bring a human being into contact with the Divine. Contact with nature may lead to amazement and to praise of the Creator for Heschel as well. The end of Part II of I and Thou prepares the reader for Part III: the I is not submerged in the world, and the world is not absorbed in the I, but rather the world and the I stay before God’s presence. God’s presence is palpable in the human being and in the world, which happens when

119.

120.

121. 122. 123.

sie zuweilen in ihrer Rede; auch ich habe es einst getan). Buber, I and Thou, 135; Ich und Du, 78–79 (Was der Ekstatiker Einung nennt, das ist die verzueckende Dynamik der Beziehung; nicht eine in diesem Augenblick der Weltzeit entstandene Einheit, die Ich und Du verschmilzt, sondern die Dynamik der Beziehung selbst, die sich vor deren einander unverrueckbar gegenueberstehende Traeger stellen und sie dem Gefuehl des Verzueckten verdecken kann.). Meir, “Criticism of the ‘Myth’ of Unio Mystica in E. Levinas”(Hebrew), in Myth in Judaism, ed. H. Pedayah (Eshel Beer-Sheva, 4) (Beersheba: Ben-Gurion University Press, 1996), 393–405. Buber, I and Thou, 135–136; Ich und Du, 79. Buber, I and Thou, 135; Ich und Du, 78. Buber, I and Thou, 152; Ich und Du, 91. — 187 —

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the dialogical attitude is adopted. In Buber’s theology, God is not in the world, but on the other hand, the world is not entirely separated from God. One has to see the entire world through the perspective of “Du” (all die Welt mit im Du begreifen).124 In this panentheism, there is much room for God’s presence, but almost none for the Law and commandments. In part I, Buber explicitly writes: “Every means is an obstacle” (Alles Mittel ist Hindernis),125 and concerning revelation, in part III he explains: Man receives, and what he receives is not a “content” but a presence, a presence as strength.[…] The meaning we receive can be put to proof in action only by each person in the uniqueness of his being and in the uniqueness of his life. No prescription can lead us to the encounter, and none leads from it. Only the acceptance of the presence is required to come to it or, in a new sense, to go from it.126

Buber does not believe in a revelation in which God names Himself or defines Himself before man: “The word of revelation is: I am there as whoever I am there. That which reveals is that which reveals. That which has being is there, nothing more.”127 He summarizes: “The eternal source of strength flows, the eternal touch is waiting, the eternal voice sounds, nothing more.”128 Putting the meaning of revelation to the proof in action (Bewaehrung) is “not prescribed, not inscribed on a table that could be put up over everybody’s head.”129 Presence is the keyword for Buber in this stage, and it does not imply anarchism, because being present involves an attitude in which one relates to the other, including on the moral level. The orientation to the other, however, is not conditioned by any Law in the halakhic sense of the word. 124. 125. 126. 127.

128. 129.

Buber, I and Thou, 127; Ich und Du, 72. Buber, I and Thou, 63; Ich und Du, 16. Buber, I and Thou, 158–159; Ich und Du, 96–97. Buber, I and Thou, 160; Ich und Du, 98. “That which has being is there” translates “das Seiende ist da”; before 1957 Buber wrote: “das Seiende ist” — “that which has being is.” Ibid. Buber, I and Thou, 159; Ich und Du, 97. — 188 —

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Only later, under the influence of Rosenzweig, after they had progressed in their work on the Bible and after he had come into confrontation with the lawless and anarchic thirties, did Buber130 stress the importance of the Law, abrogated by Christianity in the overly utopian dream of an already redeemed world. Rabbinic literature did not appeal to Buber, yet in principle, he recognized and appreciated the role of a non-ritualistic, humanizing Law in Judaism, in its classical wording: he did not endorse the mitzvot between man and God, but those between man and man had for him a redeeming character. This last statement has to be nuanced, because in I and Thou one reads that prayer is not in time but time in prayer, just as sacrifice is not in place, but place is in sacrifice.131 The value of prayer and sacrifice as such are thus not denied but radicalized, that is, understood in relation to I-you. The human relationship similarly does not take place in a certain time and space for Buber, but time and space, rather, receive their significance through the human encounter.132 In part III of I and Thou133 prayer and sacrifice are called “servants” (Diener). Buber, in his own words, “cannot despise” the sacrifices, as they are the honest servants of the remote past who thought that God desired the smell of their burnt sacrifices: they knew in a foolish and vigorous way that one can and should give to God. And that is also known to him who offers his little will to God and encounters him in a great will.

Buber finally warns against magic, which “performs its arts in void” without relationship, “while sacrifice and prayer step ‘before the countenance,’ into the perfection of the sacred basic word that signifies reciprocity.”134 Rosenzweig thought that many prayers necessarily have something magic about them, in that they implore God to act. Theurgicmagic acts were not absent in Hasidism, but Buber in his presentation of such incidents purified them from magic. He considered magic to 130.

131. 132. 133. 134.

Buber,”Der Geist Israels und die Welt von heute,” in An der Wende. Reden ueber das Judentum (Cologne and Olten: Jakob Hegner, 1952), 13–16. Buber, I and Thou, 59; Ich und Du, 13. Buber, I and Thou, 59; Ich und Du, 13–14. Buber, I and Thou, 130–131; Ich und Du, 75. Buber, I and Thou, 131; Ich und Du, 75. — 189 —

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be the great enemy of real religiosity. In his own discussion of the sacrifices, Heschel sided against Rabbi Akiva and with Rabbi Ishmael and Maimonides, the latter of whom considered the sacrifices a concession to the people of Israel in order to help them return from their idolatrous ways.135 Buber talks about sacrifices and prayers as one phenomenon; they are problematic in themselves, but they may become humble servants when they are not used as magic, in the service of God.

Rosenzweig and Buber In 1923, Rosenzweig wrote his essay “The Builders” (Die Bauleute), which bore the subtitle “On the Law” (Ueber das Gesetz). He dedicated the essay to Martin Buber, who had just published eight lectures on Judaism under the title Reden ueber das Judentum. In that work, Buber proposed an unbiased approach to Jewish learning. Rosenzweig now suggested a similarly unbiased stance toward the Jewish Law, which would become the “twin problem” of Jewish learning. Just as Buber thought that nothing Jewish could be excluded from learning, not the “outside books” nor the “women’s books,” Rosenzweig wanted nothing Jewish to be excluded from a life with the Law. And just as Buber thought that the matter of learning had to become teaching, Rosenzweig wanted the Law to become an “inner power.” The general Law written in books had to be converted into a personal command to be fulfilled in one’s life. Rosenzweig reproached Buber that he turned his back on the Law that was part of the covenant, which had been made not only with the fathers, “but with us, us, these here today, us all, the living”: Buber perhaps wanted the people to be cognizant of the Law “with reverence,” but he did not want it to have any practical effect on the life of the people. Rosenzweig confronted him, asking: Is that really Jewish law, the law of millennia, studied and lived, analyzed and rhapsodized, the law of everyday and of the day of death, petty and 135.

Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 73–76. On page 83, Heschel reports the discussion between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael on the matter of sacrifices. Rabbi Ishmael understood the phrase “a pleasing odor to the Lord” (Numbers 18:17; 28:6) in a spiritual sense, while Rabbi Akiva took it literally. — 190 —

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yet sublime, sober and yet woven in legend: a law which knows both the fire of the Sabbath candle and that of the martyr’s stake? The law Akiva planted and fenced in, and Aher trampled under, the cradle Spinoza hailed from, the ladder on which the Ba’al Shem ascended, the law that always rises beyond itself, that can never be reached — and yet has always the possibility of becoming Jewish life, of being expressed in Jewish faces? Is the Law you speak of not rather the Law of the Western orthodoxy of the past century?136

Rosenzweig continues to hail the Law and asks if the Torah was not created before the creation of the world and written on a background of shining fire in letters of somber flame: And was not the world created for its sake? And did not Adam’s son Seth found the first House of Study for the teaching of the Torah? And did not the patriarchs keep the Law for half a millennium before Sinai? And — when it was finally given on Sinai — was it not given in all the seventy languages spoken in the world? It has 613 commandments, a number which to begin with mocks all endeavor to count what is countless, but a number which in itself (plus the two commandments heard directly from the lips of the Almighty) represents the numerical value of the word Torah and the sum of the days of the year and the joints in the body of man. Did not these 613 commandments of the Torah include everything that the scrutiny and penetration of later scholars, who “put to shame” our teacher Moses himself, discovered in the crownlets and tips of the letters? And everything that the industrious student could ever hope to discover there, in all future time? The Torah, which God himself learns day after day?137

Through the knowable, one can come to Jewish teaching, making the knowable something from oneself. All this holds also for the Law, Rosenzweig wrote: what is doable cannot be known, but only be done. And just as all that is knowable leads to learning, all that is doable leads to the Law. One had to do what one is existentially able to do, and then the Law becomes an inner force. To Rosenzweig’s surprise and disillusionment, his essay on the 136. 137.

Rosenzweig, “The Builders,” 77. Rosenzweig, “The Builders,” 78-79. — 191 —

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Law did not convince Buber. Rosenzweig did not understand why Buber could not accept his thesis. They corresponded on the topic in a series of letters, and on June 24, 1924, Buber wrote that revelation is not the giving of the Law, which was for him a human affair. He could understand that others think differently: he does not hold such a position, but respects it. Rosenzweig was alarmed by this last statement of Buber: respect exists only in life, where there are separations, not in faith, which binds people together and where all divisions are only temporary. He respected Buber’s choosing a dissimilar way of life but believed that Buber had to share the singular Jewish faith; a different lifestyle should not prevent unity of heart. But, Rosenzweig asked, do we believe differently? Revelation for the one who keeps the Law is not what Buber called Law giving; it is be-yom haze, “on that day,” that is — the theory of experience of the one who keeps the Law. Buber responds in a letter of July 1 that he is ready to replace the word “respect” by the word “acceptation,” but he still does not understand Rosenzweig. To him, not only the giving of the Law but also the commandments themselves are a human affair. On July 4, Rosenzweig answered that when his friend divided between revelation and commandment, he was doing exactly what the “builders” were doing. “By commandment,” he wrote to his Zionist friend, “I mean something like lekh lekha.” Buber answered this letter on the following day, stating that he did not separate revelation and lekh lekha, nor revelation and “ani ha-Shem elohekha.” But there was definitely a differentiation between revelation and “lo yiheye lekha.” Moses could not do other than state the second sentence after he had said the first one. But with each of “ha-chuqim ve-ha-misphatim,” he asked if this command was spoken to him. Sometimes he felt concerned by this, though many times he was not. On July 11 Rosenzweig replied that Buber’s position was exactly that of the builders: they had to do what they personally felt that one must do when being told to fulfill a commandment. This was characteristic for the attitude of the Jew in modern times. Two days later, Buber restated that all this was not clear to him: God was not someone who gave a Law, but man was the one who accepted the Law. The Law was not — 192 —

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universal, as the builders wanted it to be: it remained personal. Buber illustrated this by describing his feeling for the importance of Sabbath as he became older. Moreover, he stated, the parallel that Rosenzweig had drawn between the renewal of study and the renewal of the keeping of the Law was nonexistent; one could not do penance for what one learned, but for deeds. Rosenzweig responded on July 16 that he upheld the universality of the Law on the level of hearing, but not on the level of action or thought. Rosenzweig admitted that there was not, in fact, an analogy between study and action, but there definitively was one between thought and deed. One may do penance for a thought, as he himself had experienced. He agreed with his friend that God was not a Law giver but rather that God commanded. Almost one year later, Rosenzweig renewed his correspondence with Buber on the topic they had discussed. He wrote that revelation was certainly not Law giving, for the content of revelation was revelation. That had been made clear from the word “vayyered”; interpretation started with “va-yeddaber.” The question remained, however, as to whether this interpretation was legitimate. Ultimately, experience testified to its legitimacy. The correspondence between Rosenzweig and Buber discussed above is of crucial importance in order to understand Buber’s position toward the commandments. Rosenzweig did not claim that a Jew “has” to fulfill the Law as the Jews had in premodern times. The living encounter with God implies, rather, that one performs deeds: the modern Jew cannot do otherwise than give an answer to a commandment that moves from the general Law into his personal life. If one lives in a house, furniture will follow. Leaving aside “everything” as well as “nothing” on the level of performance of the mitzvot, Rosenzweig proposed the possibility of doing “something.” Yet his friend chose another option and lifestyle. The intention of hallowing one’s entire life would prevent the exclusive concentration upon a set of laws. Buber could not abide the notion that one “has” God; instead, one must become a dialogical man and a dialogical people who, in the process of recognizing the other, approach God. One needs to hallow the broad spectrum of life and devote oneself in every act to one’s fellow human being; this is the only way to reach God. This — 193 —

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is likewise the position Buber portrays in his book For the Sake of Heaven, where he opposes a concept of redemption realized by magic means and defends the view in which Jews have to serve God in multiple ways. In the process of redemption, this is what leads to the establishment of the Kingdom of God; one person’s way is necessarily different from the path of the other. Each person had to come to new ways of serving God. One was not asked to live the life of Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, but one’s own life,138 and every natural act, once it was hallowed, led to God.139 It was the personal religiosity of Buber, one remote from what is generally thought and done, that also determined his position vis-à-vis the commandments. This existentialist stance necessarily had to be different from that of Heschel, who understood the commandments as a human response to God, to which the Jew is committed. Rethinking the attitudes of Buber and Rosenzweig on the Law, Leora Batnizky claims that Buber’s return to the being of “the between” is an internal affair that “requires memory, not history, relation, not law.” Indeed, in his reflections on the Jewish renewal, Buber was not concerned with life’s outer forms but with its inner reality. His worry was the commemoration or enlivening of the past, she writes, “not from the outside in but from the inside out.” In contrast, Rosenzweig’s “hermeneutical sensibility is conducive to an affirmation of the externals of law because the self, in Rosenzweig’s reading, is constituted by that which is outside of it: the past.”140 In a letter to Maurice Friedman of March 27, 1954, Buber wrote that he could not comprehend the question of ritual independently from one’s personal existence. Therefore, he could not make his position 138. 139.

140.

For Heschel, “we are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (God in Search of Man, 201). See Buber, “Der Weg des Menschen nach der chassidischen Lehre,” in Werke. Dritter Band. Schriften zum Chassidismus (Munich and Heidelberg: Koesel and Lambert Schneider, 1963), especially the chapter on “Der besondere Weg” (The special way), 719–722; see also “Die Erzaehlungen der Chassidim” in Werke III, where Buber records a saying of Rabbi Simcha Bunam of Pžysha: it is not easy for Rabbi Bunam to bring a teaching on Sabbath because everyone needs his own teaching; and by bringing a general teaching for everyone, Rabbi Bunam withdraws the teaching from everyone (632). Leora Batnizky, “Revelation and ‘The New Thinking’  — Rethinking Buber and Rosenzweig on the Law,” in New Perspectives on Martin Buber (Religion in Philosophy and Theology, 22), ed. M. Zank (Tuebingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 159 and 163. — 194 —

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into a general rule: I open my heart to the Law to such an extent that if I feel a commandment being addressed to me, I feel myself bound to do it as far as I am addressed — for instance, I cannot live on Sabbath as on other days. My spiritual and physical attitude is changed, but I have no impulse at all to observe the minutiae of the halakhah about what work is allowed and what not. At certain moments, some of them rather regular, some others just occurring, I am in need of prayer and then I pray, alone of course, and say what I want to say, sometimes without words at all, and sometimes a remembered verse helps me in an extraordinary situation: but there have been days when I felt myself compelled to enter into the prayer of a community, and so I did it. This is my way of life, and one may call it religious anarchy if he likes.141

Buber refused to make his personal position into a rule: he believed that everyone had to place himself in relation with the eternal You, as and when he can. In principle, Buber might have developed a different view on the mitzvot. He could have written that, as with religion itself or with the Bible, there is always the threat that they become an it, but religion, the Bible, and the commandments themselves may also be part of the you-world. In that way, he could have defined the mitzvot as a “form,” Gestalt, in which the itworld and the you-world are intermingled, and he then might have come close to Rosenzweig, whose position distinguished the objective Gesetz from the subjective Gebot. Yet Buber was probably too focused upon the increasing it-world, also and foremost in religion, to be able to adopt such a position. He did not appreciate what can be called strategic rationality. Opposing this to the rationality of the heart, he preferred the inner to the outer, the present to the past. In Buber’s theory, symmetric communication was the only authentic relationship, whereas strategic rationality belonged to the sphere of the inauthentic and the domain of the I-it. He might have given more weight to the strategic rationality of the commandments as I-it, and he could have connected them with the I-you that asks for and controls the I-it. Vittorio Hösle describes the dialectic relationship between 141.

Glatzer and Mendes-Flohr, 576. — 195 —

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strategic rationality — in Buber’s parlance, I-it — and communication.142 He writes that it is a widespread theory that strategic rationality is responsible for the evil in the world, and that people expect a solution for every problem from communication. This leads to the theory that something is good when it is communicated and not hidden, as if strategic rationality beyond pure communication is not needed to minimize evil in the world. According to Hösle, it is our duty to establish institutions that minimize humanity’s problematic natural state and reduce the strategic attitude to economic, political, and scientific concurrency. Institutions are necessary for combating evil, and the evil of the human being’s natural state cannot be vanquished without strategic rationality. This rationality, however, is not enough; confidence — a common normative concern — is needed. Buber’s anti-institutionalism and his fear of the dominance of the world of I-it explain the lack of strategic rationality in his writings. These traits blocked the way for his recognition and appreciation of the mitzvot as I-it phenomenon that could participate in the world of I-you and translate lofty communication into concrete reality. To Hugo Bergman, who expected the teacher to give indications as to the proper direction, Buber answered that one received from the teacher indication of the direction in which to proceed, but not the manner in which one must strive for this direction. He did not provide a book of principles into which one looked for instructions on how to act in a given situation: “That is not for me: the man with the outstretched index finder [=Buber or the ‘moreh,’ i.e., the one pointing the way] has only one thing to show, not many.”143 Buber did believe that demands came from the Divine will. He praised the human being who could “equate the instruction transmitted by the mothers and fathers with the Divine command.” And he added: “One thing only I object to: that a man should hold fast as a command to a command traditionally held divine, without really and truthfully being concerned about God.”144 This last sentence could also have been

142.

143. 144.

Hösle, Praktische Philosophie in der modernen Welt (Beck’sche Reihe, vol. 482) (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1992), 59–86. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 717–718. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 724. — 196 —

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uttered by Heschel, with the caveat that Heschel from the beginning upheld commitment to the mitzvot, whereas Buber accepted the commandments post factum, on condition that they would lead man to the presence of God. Heschel saw the mitzvot and the Law as part of the Torah; though not the entire Torah,145 they were the expression of God’s concern.146 Both thinkers concentrated upon the presence of God, the one defining the commandments as “signposts,”147 the other by relating to every aspect of human life as potentially to be hallowed.

Two Types of Faith In 1950, Buber published a book with the title Two Types of Faith.148 This book is important for our description of Buber’s attitude toward faith since it opposes two models of faith. One of them is typically Jewish: it is characterized as a “Pharisaic faith,” based upon Talmud and Midrash. The other mode is called the “Paulinian faith,” with Gnostic features and a teleological view in which God hardens the hearts of the people of Israel, who stick to the Law, and saves the world through His grace by the intermediary of Jesus. The Paulinian faith works through the recitation of creeds, and the pharisaic faith with the teaching of the Torah. The contrast between “I-you” and “I-it” which we encountered in I and Thou is also apparent in this book on the Jewish and Christian faiths. As expected, Buber first of all characterizes Israel’s faith as a relational reality. The Paulinian faith, born in the Hellenistic milieu, perceives or recognizes something as true: in “pistis,” it makes individual converts to a new community. The Pharisaic faith as “emuna” is based upon the trust of somebody, and is evident in the community of Israel.149 Buber clarifies that Torah is not the Paulinian “nomos,” Law-Gesetz. Yet Paul misread the Jewish Bible: he thought that the entire “nomos” cannot be fulfilled, and therefore only leads to sin. In Buber’s view, Torah is “teaching,” not law, just as “moré” is not 145. 146. 147. 148. 149.

Heschel, God in Search of Man, 326. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 281. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 326. Buber, Werke I, 651–782. Buber, Werke I, 656, and 674–675. — 197 —

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“lawgiver” but “teacher.” In Jewish tradition, God’s word enters in all the dimensions of human life.150 Although Buber defined Torah as “teaching,” he could not but conclude that in the Pharisaic faith, one had to listen to the living voice of the Divine Teacher (sein Herz der lebendigen Stimme des goettlichen Lehrers zu oeffnen)151 and to act for the sake of Heaven, li-shma, not in order to be remunerated. The Pharisaic faith required that one act. Buber thus evaluated commandments positively, when opposing the Jewish faith to Paul’s Hellenistic thought. In doing so, he sympathized with the attitude of Jesus, who stressed the interiority, the orientation of the heart, without really contesting the Pharisaic point of view.152 With Jesus, Buber went, so to speak, to the root of the Torah, to the teaching, the Divine living word. Throughout the book Two Types of Faith, which contrasts two styles of belief, Buber defines the Jewish community of faith as essentially linked to the Torah’s teaching, in which acts and not status are essential. With Jesus, whom he considers to be “his older brother” from youth on,153 and with Hasidism, to which he sporadically refers in order to elucidate his point of view,154 he points to the necessity of an inner orientation to God that accompanies each and every act in human life. The differences between the two types of faith will remain, Buber concludes, until we depart the banishment of the religions and enter into the Kingdom of God.155 There will be one unifying bond, aguda ahat, as the prayer of the High Holy Days intones, but meanwhile, Judaism and Christianity, each with its own characteristics, remain distinctive ways of life. Perhaps Christians could learn from the renaissance of the Jewish community and Jews could learn from the Christian rebirth of 150. 151. 152.

153.

154. 155.

Buber, Werke I, 690–692. Buber, Werke I, 697. Buber, Werke I, 696, 699–700. In “Heimliche Frage,” Buber claims that Judaism knows interiority but wants that the inner truth (innere Wharheit) become realized in life (Lebenswirklichkeit). If not, the truth does not remain. See “Heimliche Frage,” in An der Wende. Reden ueber das Judentum (Cologne and Olten: Jakob Hegner, 1962), 73. Buber, Werke I, 657: “Jesus habe ich von Jugend auf als meinen grossen Bruder empfunden.” Buber, Werke I, 692, 708, 780. Buber, Werke I, 782. — 198 —

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the individual;156 one has much to learn from the other. Although Buber was critical of every religion that was capable of easily hiding God’s face, he positioned pre-Paulinian early Christianity in the spiritual climate of Pharisaic faith, and so shed light on Judaism and early Christianity as complementary aspects of the same fundamental reality. In this book, Buber clarifies his position on the Jewish faith. At the heart of the Jewish faith are human deeds, and through it one cannot escape from this world in a dogmatic way that turns its back to the world. Once again, we meet the anti-Gnostic element in Buber’s oeuvre that now led him to an appreciation of the Law not in its ceremonial dimension, but in its engagement of the whole man.

Freedom and Security The overall impression is that during his lifetime Buber preferred freedom from the I-it above the security of religion that entailed the observance of the commandments. The adventure of the I-you relationship was all-determining. The influence of the famous sociologist Georg Simmel,157 who presented the adventurer as one who breaks up the flow of ordinary life, is palpable. The wanderer, Simmel maintained, had an altered understanding of temporality, differing from normal experience. This risk-taking person, although remaining isolated, led a meaningful life. The stranger was also a social type who interested Simmel for a similar reason; the experiences of the stranger had significance. Buber was impressed by Simmel’s focus on the range of individual experiences that encompasses various social situations, and he adapted these thoughts to his I-you relations and in his own 156.

157.

Ibid. Buber fulminated against Simone Weil, who thought that Judaism absorbed the individual in a problematic collectivism. He denied that Judaism is an egoism of a group and that it remains in the darkness of the nation. Israel, destined to be the “people of God,” cannot make collectivity into an idol. This criticism of Weil is to be found in “Heimliche Frage,” 68, 70, 76. “Die Heimliche Frage” is the third speech in An der Wende, a collection of speeches that were given between 1909 and 1918 that was first published in 1923. Buber studied with Simmel at the University of Berlin. Simmel’s parents converted from Judaism to Lutheranism. Simmel himself left the Protestant church and, significantly, became a dissenter. — 199 —

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autobiographical reports.158 Buber was afraid that religiosity would become fixed and lifeless and that the world order would degrade into the order of the world. He prioritized the adventure and the risk of the I-you. The mitzvot were an overly fixed system, and Buber was attentive to the danger of confining lofty spiritual reality in the straitjacket of religion. He did not trust institutions as much as he trusted the inner life, and he separated the I-you from the I-it, where one knows, compares, and controls. And yet, when criticizing Buber for not having placed a strong enough emphasis on the conjunction of I-you and I-it, how does one bypass his prophetic criticism of the institutions of Israel? Is his stress upon the prophet rather than on the priest and on the hallowing of the whole life not a healthy correction of religious structures that ipso facto tend to eternalize themselves at the expense of dialogical, living reality? “More than inwardness” is the title of one of the chapters in Heschel’s God in Search of Man. Heschel did not equate religion with spiritualism. Spirituality was the aim, but not the way. God asked for the heart, but the human being had to express his answer in deeds. We are reminded of Heschel’s poetic words concerning the mitzvot: “In this world music is played on physical instruments on which the holy is carried out.”159 He continues, criticizing an unmitigated rationalistic interpretation of Judaism: “If man were only mind, worship in thought would be the form in which to commune with God. But man is body and soul, and his goal is so to live that both ‘his heart and his flesh should sing to the living God.’”160 In Buberian parlance, Heschel combined the world of I-you and the world of I-it. Man is a unity, body and soul, and one cannot separate the concrete, physical, from the spiritual. When discussing freedom, Heschel first of all thought about man’s ability to surpass 158.

159. 160.

Jules Simon, “Dilthey, and Simmel: A Reading From/Toward Buber’s Philosophy of History,” in New Perspectives on Martin Buber (Religion in Philosophy and Theology, 22), ed. M. Zank (Tuebingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 144–145. Simon also discusses Dilthey’s possible impact on Buber, who situated the meaning of the individually lived experience within the relations of the given, traditional world. Simon, 142. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 297. Holtz, “Religion,” 34. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 297. — 200 —

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himself, to transcend the self.161 This transcendence became possible due to a person’s identification with God’s concern. The concrete commandments allowed one to transcend oneself, and in this Heschel differs from Buber. Parallel to Buber, Heschel did not think about the commandments as institutional since “the laws of the Torah are not absolutes.”162 For Buber and Heschel, freedom implied responsibility and responsibility meant freedom.

On Means as Hindrance or as Aid to Reach a Goal Heschel’s approach to the mitzvot is complex: the experience of God’s presence is the goal of the commandments. Each and every person is destined to come to this experience in an individual manner, but the mitzvot are the collective means that prepare the way to this experience. Buber in I and Thou fulminated against the view that the relationship with the eternal You is an “experience”; it is, he asserts, rather an event that takes place in between human beings, who relate to each other without the intermediary of Law or mitzvot. In accordance with traditional Jewish thinking, Heschel deemed that the Jew is committed to perform mitzvot. The Jewish faith expresses itself in responding to God by acting according to his Will and performing the commandments. Within this framework, one could attain a spiritual experience. Buber’s own “leap of action,” which is a primary point of his concept of Judaism, is situated on the social level, on the level of the realization of justice, and not on the level of fixed ritual. Buber contrasted those who sought security in blindly obeying the Law with those who risked the insecure adventure or holy insecurity of becoming a whole man by acknowledging the other human being and the eternal You. In 1966, Heschel published a book called The Insecurity of Freedom. This title conveys that Heschel also thought of religiosity as a dynamic, insecure adventure, in which one is free in order not to be a slave,163 “to live spirituality,” and “to rise to a higher 161. 162. 163.

Heschel, God in Search of Man, 409 and 411. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 415. Heschel, “Religion in a Free Society” 15. — 201 —

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level of existence.”164 This freedom, however, presupposed for him engagement with the mitzvot. Heschel and Buber both followed the path of Hermann Cohen, whose faith was directly linked to social action. For Heschel, a Jew who performs mitzvot unites his presence with Divine eternity. Buber reaches this eternity in a different way. He believes that in union with other human beings, in the encounter, one realizes the “world order” (Weltordnung), which is not the world in which one brings order (geordnete Welt). The encounter, rather, implies one’s “presence,” something that you cannot “experience.” The encounters lead “to that You in which the lines of relation, though parallel, intersect.” The world order helps to have “intimations of eternity” (hilft dir […] die Ewigkeit zu ahnen).165 Buber purified religiosity, so to speak, from the it; the price he paid was that he left out the ritual mitzvot, which he had placed in the realm of the it. Yet the religiosity he described was a personal responsibility that was far from lawlessness.166 Living religiosity is an existential answer to God, who daily renews His creation; it is realized in mutual recognition. Buber’s was not an antinomistic thought: his position implied the fulfillment of a quite demanding task. In further contrast with Heschel, every means including that of the mitzvot is problematic. To some extent, the discussion of Buber and Rosenzweig on the mitzvot also marks the difference between Buber and Heschel on this point. Buber refused to see the mitzvot as the means of reaching spirituality, since the spirit only takes place in a holistic encounter, without means. In contrast to Rosenzweig, who stressed that with deeds the intention will also ensue, Heschel thought — as did Shimeon ben Lakish — that intention is crucial in the performance of mitzvot. For Heschel the concrete fulfillment of the mitzvot is important, but without the intention of having God’s presence before one’s eyes in this concrete world, it is a futile enterprise. In Buber’s view, it is not mitzvot as formal acts nor intention as movement of the individual soul that matter: only the living encounter with the other human 164. 165. 166.

Heschel, God in Search of Man, 411. Buber, I and Thou, 84; Ich und Du, 32. Buber, I and Thou, 63: “Every means is an obstacle. Only where all means have disintegrated encounters occur”; Ich und Du, 16: “Alles Mittel ist Hindernis. Nur wo alles Mittel zerfallen ist, geschieht die Begegnung.” — 202 —

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being allows contact with the Divine. Buber’s entire focus was upon the creation of relationships and the formation of a righteous society as the only way of encountering God. However, without forgetting the worlds of difference between Buber and Heschel, did not Heschel also broaden the concept of the mitzva when he — in all seriousness — asked if the atom bomb is kosher, or when he extended ahavat Yisrael, love for Israel, which he learned from his forefather nicknamed the “ohev Yisrael,” the lover of Israel, to the loving relationship with every man? Heschel loved mitzvot, and he was far from sharing Buber’s radical position on the divine commandments, yet neither religious thinker could imagine Jewish existence as mending the world without deeds. On the subject of Hasidism, to which we turn now, dividing and converging lines between Buber and Heschel also become manifest.

— 203 —

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---------------------------------- Chapter V  -----------------------------------

Different Views on Hasidism In this chapter, we compare Buber’s encounter with and re-creation of Hasidism with Heschel’s Hasidism, which cannot be simply labeled “neo-Hasidism.” Both presented Hasidism to the West as a creative force: Buber opposed the living force of Hasidism to the norms of official Rabbinism, while Heschel lived Hasidism; several of his family members were leaders of the Hasidic community in Sadagora. For instance, his ancestors Rabbi Scholem Joseph (1813– 1851) and Rabbi Abraham Jacob (1819–1882) both served as rebbe of Sadagora, a post which his relative Rabbi Shlomo Friedman also filled.1 It is noteworthy that Buber knew the Hasidim of Sadagora well. He visited Sadagora together with his father as a teenager and was deeply impressed by the spirituality which he found there. It is only natural that the two thinkers talked with each other about this Hasidic community. Heschel’s and Buber’s respective interest in Hasidism was great, and each one noted the relevance of the movement for religious consciousness and for the world at large. The two were also interested in the Messianic aspect of Hasidism. This aspect was denied by Scholem in his historical analysis of the movement, which aimed to neutralize the Messianic tendencies that were present, for instance, in the Sabbatean sect. However, Buber wrote his novel-chronicle about Gog and Magog on this theme; and Heschel, who hoped and prayed to be worthy of being a “descendant of the prophets,”2 saw the prophetic and Messianic spirit present in the Hasidic world and in the noble Hasidic people he revered. 1. 2.

See the genealogy of the Friedman dynasty in Kaplan and Dresner, Prophetic Witness. Heschel, “Carl Stern’s Interview,” 400. — 205 —

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Heschel’s Hasidism As noted, Heschel belonged to an important Hasidic family. What interests us here are his complex feelings and ideas about his family and the Hasidic leaders in it. What transpires when a child destined to be one of the future leaders in the Hasidic world decided to leave the traditional family path? Kaplan and Dresner in their biography write that there was much discussion in Heschel’s family concerning his future but that finally, “After much discussion, the Novominsker rebbe released him: you can go, but only you.”3 We do not know what exactly happened: whether part of the family was opposed to Heschel’s way, whether family members saw it as a dangerous precedent that one of the leaders of the Hasidic dynasty gave his permission for a relative to study outside of the community. Neither do we know about a struggle that may have preceded the Novominsker rebbe’s decision. We do not know all that the Novominsker rebbe said and what led Heschel’s uncle to decide what he did. What we know is that Heschel entered a secular institution and that his life aspirations were taken into account. He most certainly considered his secular studies to be related to his Godgiven task. When he once dropped a history book, he picked it up gently and kissed it, as one kisses a sacred book.4 Dresner and Kaplan mention that the family tried to convince the young man to enter a religious institution in Warsaw, but they didn’t succeed.5 We may assume that there were difficult moments and that Heschel frequently asked himself if this was the right way for him. Nonetheless, he wrote in his early Yiddish poems that he still saw himself as a rebbe — although in his own way — and that he considered himself as one who is responsible for bringing salvation to others.6 This profound feeling of prophetic 3. 4. 5.

6.

Kaplan and Dresner, Prophetic Witness, 71. Kaplan and Dresner, Prophetic Witness, 69. Kaplan and Dresner describe the situation as follows: “The elders took action. It is said that the Tchortkover rebbe, Rabbi Israel Friedman, summoned Heschel to Vienna for a meeting. A Hasidic prince should not enter a purely secular institution such as he was planning to attend. They tried to convince him to extend his religious studies in Warsaw, but he would not be persuaded” (Prophetic Witness, 69). Heschel, The Ineffable Name, 119. — 206 —

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commitment returned later on in his political and social activities. We may say that Heschel continued the Hasidic tradition in his personal, inimitable, and particular fashion. During his entire life, he combined his religious ardor with social engagement in the spirit of the prophets.7

The Earth is the Lord’s In 1950, Heschel published his book The Earth Is the Lord’s.8 The volume described the vanished world of Eastern European Jews, the world in which he himself had been raised. The title itself expresses Heschel’s cry, his pain and protest against a world that has expelled God: the earth is the Lord’s! He did not intend to describe the books, institutions, or art of the East European Jews, but rather how these Jews lived their everyday lives and what power of will they possessed that constituted their spiritual happiness: “The key to the source of creativity lies in the will to cling to spirituality, to be close to the inexpressible, and not merely in the ability of expression.”9 This sentence exemplifies the strong will to realize holiness in concrete existence. The Hasidic stories were a channel through which experiences and insights were transmitted, not by means of abstract and complex discussions but by means of narratives that were full of holiness. When Hasidim were gathered together, they told each other how the rebbe opened the door, how he tasted of his food at the table — simple deeds, yet full of wonder. What need was there to discuss faith? How was it possible not to feel the presence of God in the world? How could one fail to see that the whole earth is full of His glory?10 7.

8.

9. 10.

As Heschel himself wrote, he came to be involved in the social and political movements through his study of the prophets of ancient Israel, whose eyes witnessed the desecration of the soul and the cruelty and callousness of man; these figures were for Heschel a paradigm of not being apathic. See Heschel, “The Reasons,” 224. Heschel, The Earth. Susannah Heschel notes that the book is based upon a lecture that Heschel gave in the year 1946 at YIVO, the Institute for Jewish Scientific Research (S. Heschel, “Introduction,” xx). Kaplan adds that the manuscript was already ready in 1948; it was the first book that Heschel published in the United States. Kaplan also discusses the reactions to the book at that time (Kaplan, Spiritual Radical, 102–107). Heschel, The Earth, 9. Heschel, The Earth, 89–90. — 207 —

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The Hasidic stories were therefore resplendent with holiness. In the stories one felt the “wonder” that is central in Hasidic life. It is this lively experience that is the source of Heschel’s focus on “wonder” or “radical amazement,” which he felt from the moment of his birth. He had always known about the wondrous Divine presence.11 The inspirational source of Heschel’s religious philosophy is Hasidic life as he knew it in Eastern Europe. This did not prevent Heschel from being critical of certain situations, but this criticism is one of a world that he valued. He did not strive to solve abstract theological problems, and he never doubted the presence of God. After the Shoah, he is more conscious of the fact that human beings prevented the awareness of God’s presence. Nevertheless, he somewhat optimistically writes that “the perception of the spiritual, the experience of the wonder became common. Frequently, plain men began to feel what scholars had often failed to sense.”12 Heschel was convinced that God fills the earth, and that many had forgotten the spiritual beauty hidden in Hasidic life: In the spiritual confusion of the last hundred years, many of us overlooked the incomparable beauty of our old, poor homes. We compared our fathers and grandfathers, our scholars and rabbis, with Russian or German intellectuals… measured the merits of Berditshev and Ger with the standards of Paris and Heidelberg.13

These sentences testify to Heschel’s critique of his own university education, which did not provide him with answers to the questions that he had posed. They also testify to his admiration of Hasidic life and of the spiritual depth that he described.

The Ba’al Shem Tov and the Kotzker Rebbe Heschel wrote his A Passion for Truth at the end of his life. It was originally written in Yiddish. Just as his German dissertation on the 11. 12. 13.

Heschel, God in Search of Man, 43–45. Heschel, The Earth, 81. Heschel, The Earth, 105. — 208 —

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prophets differs from his book in English, The Prophets, his Yiddish text on the Kotzker rebbe differs from his English one. A Passion for Truth not only studied the world of Hasidism but also reflected the thoughts and feelings of Heschel’s own soul, in which the Ba’al Shem Tov and the Kotzker rebbe were alive. The title mirrors Heschel’s insight that truth, for him, is not a question of intellectual apprehension, as it is for Maimonides or Spinoza, but rather of passion, an element at the other side of the spectrum in which intellect and emotion are at opposite poles. Heschel wrote this book in order to understand himself and explain himself to others. He felt the need to write down the varying motives that had moved him, and so close the circle: he had left his family with their traditional Hasidic ways, and at the end of his life he returned to the experiences and lifestyle in which he had been born and educated. When discussing the Kotzker rebbe, he questioned whether or not he could have foreseen the Holocaust, and in posing this question, he likewise asked it of himself. He also offered an answer. The Kotzker could not anticipate the disaster that befell his people during the Holocaust. He did not deal with the political situation of the Jews or with the phenomenon of anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, he seems to have had a haunting awareness of the terrible danger of human cruelty.14 Heschel describes the Kotzker’s awareness that this world is a world of lies: “Had he been alive in the 1940’s the Holocaust would not have come as a surprise to his soul.”15 The Kotzker had an obsessive preoccupation with lies, and lies were at the origin of the Shoah. For the Holocaust did not take place suddenly. It was in the making for several generations. It had its origin in a lie: that the Jew was responsible for all social ills, for all personal frustrations.16 Heschel was conscious that the world seemed to have decided that to kill the Jews would be the solution for every problem; it remained insensitive and in a lie even after the Holocaust. Like Reb Mendl of 14. 15. 16.

Heschel, A Passion for Truth, 321. Ibid. Ibid. — 209 —

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Kotzk, Heschel’s soul was aflame with the passion for God, which chased away all tranquility. In his 1944 article “The Meaning of This War [World War II],” he writes in a way reminiscent of the Kotzker: Our world seems not unlike a pit of snakes. We did not sink into the pit in 1939, or even in 1933. We had descended into it generations ago, and the snakes have sent their venom into the bloodstream of humanity, gradually paralyzing us, numbing nerve after nerve, dulling our minds, darkening our vision.17

In this article, Heschel described how society now worshipped the will to power and cherished the serpents in the bosom of civilization. From that perspective, he wanted to bring God back and put Him in banks and factories, and in clubs and theaters. The will to compassion had to replace the will to power.18 The Ba’al Shem Tov and the Kotzker rebbe lived in Heschel’s soul: the Ba’al Shem Tov represented love and compassion, but the force that called out to change the world is the prophetic voice of the Kotzker, with whom Heschel profoundly identified. Heschel’s heart was with the Ba’al Shem Tov, and his mind with the Kotzker.19 The title of the final section (Part X) of A Passion for Truth is significant: “The Kotzker Today.”20 The Kotzker taught that one should never leave the truth, and should not think that falseness is inevitable; he enabled man to face wretchedness and to survive. Heschel closes his book with the sentence: “For Truth is alive, dwelling somewhere, never weary. And all of mankind is needed to liberate it.”21 While the Ba’al Shem Tov brought God near to human beings, the Kotzker challenged the view of the Ba’al Shem Tov in his protest against mediocrity. The Kotzker did not rest upon a glorious past but searched uncompromisingly and restlessly for the truth. Kaplan succinctly depicts Heschel’s personality by writing how the two divergent teachers lived in his soul: the optimistic Ba’al Shem Tov and the abrasive, judgmental rebbe of Kotzk. Heschel was 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

Heschel, “The Meaning of This War,” in Moral Grandeur, 210. Heschel, “The Meaning of This War,” in Moral Grandeur, 211. Heschel, “The Meaning of This War,” in Moral Grandeur, xiv. Heschel, “The Meaning of This War,” in Moral Grandeur, 305–323. Heschel, “The Meaning of This War,” in Moral Grandeur, 323. — 210 —

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alert to the pervasiveness of evil and self-deception and awed by God’s concern for humankind.22 The Ba’al Shem Tov and the Kotzker rebbe were present in his personality as two figures who generated creative tension in his soul. Heschel explains why the Kotzker’s insights are important today: “Because in their light many popular and glittering expositions of Judaism are easily unmasked as façade, lacking in substance. To mistake the front for the interior is an affront to Truth.”23 Heschel not only criticized popular understandings of Judaism, he also criticized the institutions and communities in America; every Jew will be able to stand before God, he stated. Heschel asked if the Kotzker rebbe was capable of bringing about a Jewish renaissance, and answered his own question in the negative. The Kotzker’s personality, he wrote, was not that of the leader of a movement. Nevertheless, one still awaits his disciples and people who will make explicit what the Kotzker hinted at. In this way, Heschel considered himself a disciple of the Kotzker rebbe and as one who was able to elucidate the Kotzker’s concerns and attitudes.24 He criticized the Kotzker rebbe, however, in that he isolated himself instead of going outside, like the prophets had. As a pupil of the Kotzker who was critical of him, he did not approve of the seclusion of the Kotzker during the last twenty years of his life, feeling it inappropriate when evil had to be fought against in the streets and everywhere.25 Moshe Idel has suggested that Heschel felt himself close to the Ba’al Shem Tov and identified with him strongly.26 Like the Ba’al Shem Tov, he focused upon prayer and exaltation in prayer. Idel asks if Heschel conceived of himself as the spiritual inheritor of the Ba’al Shem Tov and notes that Heschel’s ancestor, the first Abraham Joshua Heschel, was himself described as a reincarnation of the earlier sage. Heschel was attracted to Medzibuz, where the Ba’al Shem Tov had been active. The Ba’al Shem Tov was a guiding light for him, giving him spiritual wings. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

Kaplan, Spiritual Radical, xi. Heschel, A Passion for Truth, 319. Heschel, A Passion for Truth. 318. Heschel, A Passion for Truth, 263 and 319. Idel, Hasidism, 86. — 211 —

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At the same time, Idel quotes Dresner, who reports a conversation with Heschel in which he relates that he had been considered to be the Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev of his generation. However, in his coping with evil, the latter belonged to an extent to the spiritual direction of the Kotzker. The phenomenological outlook of Rabbi Levi Isaac of Berditchev’s religious experience was quite different from that of the Ba’al Shem Tov. In our view, it is highly possible that Heschel saw himself as a type of reincarnation of the Kotzker, as some form of transmigration. The fact that he had special interest in the Kedushat Levi of his maternal ancestor, Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, and that he had the privilege of putting on the tefillin of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak on the occasion of his bar mitzva,27 confirms our thesis that he identified with this tsaddiq and with the Kotzker rebbe.

Buber’s View on Hasidism as a Movement of Renewal Buber was one of the people who understood that the spiritual forces hidden in Hasidism could lead to a renewal of Jewish life, to a dynamicvibrant Zionism, and to a revitalization of religious life as such. Hillel Zeitlin and Heschel also thought that Hasidic life could bring about a revival of Judaism; in contrast to Buber, who did not himself adopt a Hasidic lifestyle, Heschel and Zeitlin did. Buber first gave a more literary expression to the movement, retelling the stories, but soon he changed his approach and moved closer to the originals. He came to a monumental existential interpretation of this particular way of life that had universal implications. Attentive to what was taking place in his time, Buber was keenly aware that the romantic movement was attempting to flee the narrow frameworks of withering religious institutions and to bring about a living, dynamic religiosity. Romantic thinkers deemed that such a religiosity was present in the myths, stories and sayings of different cultures, foremost in archaic societies. Aligning himself with the romantic mood, Buber did not approach religion from within the limits of reason in a Kantian or Cohenian manner, but 27.

Kaplan and Dresner, Prophetic Witness, 46. — 212 —

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preferred to talk about a religiosity that was relevant to the whole of life. Authentic religiosity that covered all aspects of life would bring a life-renewing connection with the All and beget a whole man. After his initial romantic stage, Buber developed a more existential and dialogical interpretation of Hasidism. In the Hasidic movement, vital religiosity was present. It was Buber’s unique contribution that he brought EastEuropean Hasidism to the West, adapting it to the sensibilities of modern man; even his detractors had to admit that no one else had been able to do what he had done. Many people felt a tremendous attraction to Hasidism after reading Buber’s books.28 It was his belief that the lively kernel of Hasidism can lead to a new religiosity, in which the I is not first of all rational but relational. In his retelling of the Hasidic stories, Buber interpreted. The act of interpretation involves self-understanding29 and entails an act of spiritual appropriation.30 Martina Urban remarks that Buber may have been influenced by the phenomenological turn. Buber followed in the footsteps of Husserl, who had developed phenomenology as alternative for the standard scientific methodology.31 Instead of laying religiosity on the Procrustean bed of science, Buber uncovered the vitality and dynamics intrinsic to living religiosity. Unmistakable further influence comes from Dilthey, who distinguished between Erlebnis, lived experience, and Erfahrung, empirical experience. Buber thought that by retelling (nacherzaehlen), the individual could relive the situation that had been imparted and go beyond the determination of his own life: this became the cornerstone of Buber’s approach to representation.32 Like Gadamer, he thought that to understand a told tale is to comprehend oneself in front of the text.33 The famous Scholem-Buber controversy took place in the sixties.

28.

29.

30. 31. 32. 33.

For a good example of this attraction, see Maurice Friedman’s letter to Buber of March 19, 1950 (Glatzer and Mendes-Flohr, 550). Urban, Aesthetics of Renewal. Martin Buber’s Early Representation of Hasidism as Kulturkritik (Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 21. Urban, Aesthetics, 20. Urban, Aesthetics, 18. Urban, Aesthetics, 17. Urban, Aesthetics, 13. — 213 —

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Expanding upon Scholem’s objections to Buber’s representation of Hasidism, Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer claims that Buber obscured the relationship between mystics, magic, and theurgy. In her eyes, he neglected the Gnostic elements in Hasidism and emphasized the concrete world, whereas Hasidism negated it.34 Yet Buber was not interested in a historical interpretation of Hasidism; he had no scholarly interest in this movement, as he admitted in 1943 to a baffled Scholem. To Steven Kepnes, Buber and Scholem had different goals: Buber wanted a revitalization, whereas Scholem wanted to uncover the past as it was. Shaul Magid rightly observes that Buber’s intuition about Hasidism has more merit than is often acknowledged.35 From a mystic who loses himself in the All, Buber evolved into a related man, who finds God in the engagement in the world and in relationship to his fellow human beings. In his writings on Hasidism and his retelling of the Hasidic stories, he linked a mystic religiosity that became more and more dialogical to a firm faith in the creative forces of the Jewish people.36 He saw the interhuman relations of the Hasidim as 34. 35.

36.

Urban, Aesthetics, 1–2. Urban, Aesthetics, 2–3. Heschel also was influenced by Husserl in his interpretation of the prophets. According to Perlman, Heschel, who wanted to elucidate religious consciousness, related to phenomenology for his own use. Indeed, Heschel did not merely describe a phenomenon, he did not “bracket” the world but definitely thought that the contact of man with God was a contact with an existing reality. What was grasped by the senses and the intelligence was therefore only a part of the spiritual reality. Whereas Perlman relates Heschel to Husserl’s second period, in which, under the influence of Kant, he held that notions do not posses real reality, Even-Chen situates Heschel in Husserl’s first period, in which he returned to Plato by uncovering the eternal existence of ideas (Ideenschau, Wesensschau). See Even-Chen, A Voice from the Darkness, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Phenomenology and Mysticism (Hebrew) (TelAviv: Am Oved Publishers, 1999), 14–19. David Novak, in a recent article in which he describes Heschel’s use of phenomenology, states that Heschel’s biblical revelation is an irreducible phenomenon. Heschel differed from Husserl by replacing the transcendental ego with God’s I. See Novak, “Heschel’s Phenomenology of Revelation,” in Abraham Joshua Heschel. Philosophy, Theology and Interreligious Dialogue, eds. S. Krajewski and A. Lipszyc (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2009), 188–195. In our view, both Buber and Heschel moved from a description of consciousness to an ontological description of the spiritual reality. For Buber’s evolution from an ecstatic mystic to a mystic of life, see Israel Koren, “Martin Buber. From Ecstasy to the Mystic of Life” (Hebrew), in Kabbalah. Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts, 5 (2002): 371–410. — 214 —

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mirroring their shared relationship to God.37 As he writes in Der heilige Weg, the real “community” is in essence “the realization of the Divine in the coexistence with people” (die Gemeinschaft als die Verwirklichung des Goettlichen im Zusammenleben der Menschen).38 He did not strive for a relationship with God at the detriment of a relationship with human beings, and argued that a real community is a bond not only between people but also a group of people who have orientation. Nationality alone did not suffice, neither was religion enough. One needed a relationship with men as well as a relationship with God. Buber found in Hasidic life the model for such a society, of which he dreamed, foremost in Zion.39 Retelling the Hasidic stories, he strove to give the people of his time a form of religiosity that loves the world and that hallows every act in daily life in order to reunite the Divine with His Shekhinah, His dwelling presence. Very early in his life, during visits to Sadagora, Buber had perceived the potentiality of Hasidism, in which pious men have intensive relationships with each other and with their leader, the tsaddiq, as well as with their Creator. Buber spent a great deal of his life translating the Hasidic lifestyle into something that appealed to modern Western men, Jews and non-Jews alike.

Memory and Present Buber was intensely interested in Hasidism as a form of Jewish mysticism, and his anthologies played a crucial role in the revival of Jewish mysticism in the twentieth century. According to Martina Urban, his representation of Hasidism in a time of the decline of religious traditions was pivotal to the Zionist effort to give the Jews a sense of unity in their diversity. Buber used cultural memory as a means in order to forge a collective unity for the Jews.40 37.

38.

39. 40.

Yehoshua Amir, “The National Idea in Martin Buber’s Thought,” in Anthology of Contemporary Thought IV, ed. David Hardan, trans. Aryeh Rubinstein (Jerusalem: Publishing Department of the Jewish Agency, 1972), 18–19. Buber, Der heilige Weg. Ein Wort an die Juden und an die Voelker (Frankfurt o.M.: Ruetten and Loening, 1919), 85. Amir, “The National Idea,” 20–21. Urban, Aesthetics. — 215 —

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Scholem, whose aim was to investigate the historical reality of Hasidism, blamed Buber for developing an interpretation of Hasidism without an anchor in historical reality. He harshly criticized Buber for not taking into account the philological-historical approach. Yet, as noted, Buber’s aim was not historical. He aimed, rather, at creating a dialogue with the texts that could give inspiration for today. He wanted to revive the spirit of Hasidism in his day and to read the texts as relevant for contemporary man. To use the terminology of his teacher Dilthey, he was more interested in understanding, “verstehen” than in explaining, “erklaeren.” Although in his later writings on Hasidism he reworked the stories to a lesser extent, did not stray as far from the texts, and remained more faithful to them, he nevertheless was less sensitive to historical-critical issues, somewhat neglecting the historical side of the stories. This was the consequence of his position that the historical method as I-it approach was not able to revive the texts and that one had to develop an I-you relationship with the text rather than an I-it attitude. We agree with Steven Kepnes that, in the end, both Scholem and Buber’s approaches to Hasidism are interpretations, and that Buber, in his approach to the Bible, combining the historical critical methodology with the dialogical methodology, developed a successful approach that lessened the gap between explanation and understanding.41

Volumes II and III of Werke The volumes of Buber’s work on the Bible and on Hasidism (Volumes II and III) are intricately connected to Volume I, which contains his dialogical philosophy. His philosophical concepts and the founding biblical and Hasidic stories on which he wrote are interrelated. Buber was convinced that biblical and Hasidic stories would be able to transform the reader/listener. The texts would have a transforming effect upon the hearer: through the objective power of the story and the subjective creation of an I-you attitude to the text, one would be able to make a turn in one’s life and be transformed into a dialogical 41.

Kepnes, The Text as Thou, 37–40. — 216 —

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being. The texts invite the reader to enter into dialogue with it and to discover himself by confrontation with otherness. It must be noted that Buber saw this otherness as even more prominent in the biblical stories, which he analyzed with the help of specific techniques, that is, through the perspective of an I-it approach. The very use of these techniques, of which the procedure of the leading words was most remarkable, allowed Buber to take into account the normative external character of the Bible. His attitude to the Hasidic stories was different, since he put far greater stress on their actual transforming power than on their detailed historical setting. In his approach to Hasidic anecdotes and tales, Buber evolved from a romantic interpreter into a dialogic one who paid close attention to the stories themselves “as they are.” In this manner, his Hasidic stories also contained an I-it dimension. He never thought of them as mere objects of historical study but rather as stories, toward which it is possible to develop an I-you attitude. His dialogical philosophy as an I-it procedure assists the storytelling as an I-you exercise; the storytelling as an I-you exercise, as “butterfly,” comes out of his philosophy of the I-it procedure, as “chrysalis.” There is an interaction between the two types of writings: (biblical and Hasidic) narrative and conceptual, philosophical thought are intertwined.42

The Self, the Community, the Eternal You, and Attraction In Hasidism, Buber saw a form of life in which the self is not isolated but constituted in relation to others. Judaism is a life in community and, more particularly, Hasidic life is social life. In retelling the Hasidic stories, Buber made clear that the self in an authentic religiosity is relational, in interaction with others. The “spirit,” he writes in I and Thou in a felicitous phrasing, is not in me and not in you but “between” I and You.43 It is this spirit that he conceived of as paradigmatically present in Hasidic life. Moreover, the relationship with the eternal You, 42. 43.

Kepnes, The Text as Thou, 147–148. Buber, I and Thou, 89; Ich und Du, 38. — 217 —

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the always-present You, was only achieved in the meeting with others; only in real human relationships is God glimpsed. It is in this religioushumanistic-dialogical manner that Hasidism is a movement, in Buber’s view, that could inspire modern man. What attracted Buber to Hasidism was the hallowing of everyday life in joy. Instead of institutions that were the result of I-it, he discovered in this movement a living community, an eminent example of dynamic community life that centered around an eternal You, approachable in different social relationships. It was not Buber’s intention to revive Hasidism as had Hillel Zeitlin. He himself was not a Hasid. Neither was he a historian of Hasidism as was Gershom Scholem. He wanted to show the authenticity and actuality of a dialogical life as it became concretized in Hasidism. More than with the past, he was concerned with the living present that may become real in meditation upon an interpreted past. With his existentialist approach to Hasidism he developed a religious anthropology inspired by the Hasidic way of life.44 In this anthropology, dialogue was the final meaning in human existence. In Buber’s personal, selective interpretation of Hasidism, dialogue was the basic characteristic of a movement that led to the renewal of Judaism. God wants the human being. He went into exile with His Shekhinah, the world; He suffers with the fate of the world, until all is united by man.

Religious Philosophy in a Hasidic Garment Although Buber’s philosophy draws from other cultural sources, it has a decidedly Hasidic flavor. Through his retelling of Hasidic stories, he wanted to renew a dialogic form of life. Already in his early experience of Hasidism in Sadagora he perceived that mutual respect and love are the pillars of this community. As a result, we find the dialogic principle of his philosophy also in his presentation of Hasidism. Buber considered it his vocation to make known this particular way of life to the world at large. As does Hasidism, Buber searches for God in this world. God inhabits the world. In the words of Rashi, on the occasion of the 44.

Buber, Der Weg des Menschen. — 218 —

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episode of God’s appearance to Moses on Mount Sinai: hu meqomo shel olam ve-ein ha-olam meqomo, He is the place of the world and the world is not His place. Buber’s religious humanism is not negative toward the world, but rather confirms the world. As is the case in the work of the Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God is not searched for in the margins of life but in the midst of life. He is omnipresent, always there, but man is not always conscious of this elevated fact. Every act may become holy. Hidden Divine sparks that can be redeemed and brought to their source in daily acts are in everything. Man may hallow himself in all that he undertakes. There are no fixed prescribed forms and no set rules; everything may be brought in God. One has only to have the right intention, kavvanah, the right aim.45 As in Hasidism, Buber does not distinguish between holy and profane: one may be holy in eating, in uniting with his wife, in a conversation with her or with his children or grandchildren. Through the hallowing of the everyday, through the penetration of form in matter, God receives ever-new “forms” and man realizes that he is created in God’s image and likeness. In Hasidism as well as in Buber’s religious philosophy speech is crucial; the world is created by God’s word. With the exile of the Shekhinah through the breaking of the vessels that contain the Divine light, numerous new “mouths” came into being that utter new words.46 God continues to speak, His word resounds. Buber quotes Yitschaq Meir, the Gerer rebbe, who commented upon the biblical saying that God “did not add” (Deuteronomy 5:22) to his word.47 This is understood by the Targumim as follows: God did not interrupt His word. Indeed, says the Gerer rebbe, God’s voice speaks today as in the days of old. But as in those days, one needs preparation in order to hear God’s voice, as it is written (Exodus 19:5): “Today, if you listen to my voice.” One hears the Divine word today if one listens, if one does the work of God.48 Man has to be active in avoda: he has to serve God in time and space, in 45.

46. 47. 48.

For more on kavvanah, see Buber, Vom Leben der Chassidim, in Werke III, 33–38. In kavvanah, one orients himself to the aim of redemption that consists of freeing the Shekhina from her shells and in uniting her with her owner. Pamela Vermes, Buber 1878–1965 (Jewish thinkers) (London: Peter Halban, 1988), 15. For more on avoda, see Buber, Vom Leben der Chassidim, in Werke III, 26–32. Vermes, Buber, 15–16. — 219 —

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everything.49 Hitlahavut or ecstasy links man with God outside of time and space, avoda is service of God in time and space. In hitlahavut, one wonders, one has a feeling that one belongs to higher worlds, and one brings the lower to the higher.50 The Divine sparks wait to be redeemed. This task is given to the human being, and so the entire redemption depends upon him. The sparks have to be united with their Divine source; everything waits to be united. Man has to bring God’s glory out of its hidden place. He is thus responsible for God’s presence through his decisions. Like the tsaddiq — the perfect man — every human being has to leave disintegration and come to unity. He will unite his soul and strive for perfection through which “form” comes into being. This is only possible in the relationship with everybody and everything. In this way one works on yichud, the unity of God with His Shekhinah in this world, in order that His Name will become one. The “Zwischenmensch,” the between-man, fulfills this task. The union of the Divine with His Shekhinah is therefore dependent upon man’s acts.

Appreciation of Buber’s Work on Hasidism In spite of all his criticism, Scholem nevertheless recognized that Buber had made a decisive contribution (einen entscheidenen Beitrag) toward making Hasidism known in the West.51 He vehemently criticized Buber’s lack of historical understanding, but wrote first of all that in one way or another we are all his pupils.52 Before Buber’s work, the Hasidic movement was barely known in what is called the “sciences” of religion. In the view of the representatives of the haskalah, Hasidism was only an extreme form of obscurantism. Only with Simon Dubnow, Samuel A. Horodezky, and Yitschaq Leib Perez did a new period with a changed attitude vis-à-vis Hasidism begin. Buber thought that a renewal of Judaism would be impossible 49. 50. 51.

52.

Buber, Vom Leben der Chassidim, in Werke III, 26–32. Buber, Vom Leben der Chassidim, in Werke III, 21–25. Gershom Scholem, “Martin Buber’s Deutung des Chassidismus,” in Judaica I (Frankfurt o.M: Suhrkamp, 1963), 165–167. Scholem, “Martin Buber,” 168. — 220 —

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without Hasidic elements.53 Paul Mendes-Flohr and Ze’ev Gries wrote that Buber made Hasidism respectable by translating it into the discourse of his time and into the neo-romantic and later the expressionistic idiom. With his concept of the hermeneutic as dialogue between past and present, he made Hasidic texts relevant for today. Buber presented the Hasidic myths and legends as popular wisdom from before the Enlightenment.54

The Living Approach of Judaism from the Inside versus the Historicism of the Nineteenth-Century Wissenschaft des Judentums We have noted that Buber adopted the rigorous methods of modern Bible research. However, the nineteenth-century movement of the Science of Judaism limited the scope and profound meaning of the Jewish tradition and obscured its vitality. Buber insisted upon a higher knowledge, upon what is traditionally called “binat ha-lev,” the understanding of the heart that would lead to a “turn” in the human being and to the realization of a just society according to the standards of the prophets. Judaism, in Buber’s eyes, was first of all concerned with the establishment of the Kingdom of God upon earth, which comes into being through the I-you relationship with other human beings. Cognition would be in a function of this task, but science in itself would not be able to make the Divine word heard “today.” Buber, therefore, had to develop a dialogic hermeneutic, in which he could relate to the text as “you” and create the possibility of transformation. Historicism misses the point of the biblical writings in that one wrongly supposes that only the scientific-empirical discloses the final meaning of the texts. Far from being anachronistic, Buber maintained, Judaism can contribute to the creation of a new heaven and a new earth. Of course,

53. 54.

Buber, Die Legende, xi. Sic Mendes-Flohr and Ze’ev Gries, introduction to Martin Buber. The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, trans. Maurice Friedman (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1988), x and xviii. — 221 —

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the adherents of the Science of Judaism were not uniformly under the sway of the positivistic, empiricist notions of the historian’s vocation; some, more influenced by Herder than Ranke, linked history to the Romantic Movement’s interest in detailing and glorifying the past of the different national communities. They frequently had their own agenda: they wanted to strengthen Jewish self-awareness, to dispel the medieval darkness into which they believed Judaism had fallen, to reform Judaism, or to apply to it the methods of modern science in order to make it acceptable to the Nations as a dignified movement. The historical study of Judaism remains important, but other tendencies, both spiritual and meta-historical, gradually became visible in the works of such thinkers as Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Emmanuel Levinas, and of course Heschel and Buber. Their works comprise a critique of the historicism and scientism that often imbued, to a greater or lesser extent, Science of Judaism writing, arguing that treating Judaism as a cultural-historical phenomenon to be grasped through detached objective and empirical analysis precludes focus upon Jewish existence itself and on the subjective response to revelation. These thinkers, and eminently Buber and Heschel, are not opposed to science but to scientism, especially when applied to historiography and religious studies.55 From the turn of the nineteenth century into the twentieth century, it was clear that there had been a switch to a different comprehension of the Jewish tradition. Hermann Cohen shifted the focus from the critical historical approach to a philosophical comprehension of Judaism. He enthusiastically spoke about the eternity of the Jews, which indelibly marked his pupil Franz Rosenzweig.56 Heschel, Buber, Rosenzweig, and 55.

56.

Heschel, for instance, writes: “Reason withers without spirit, without the truth about all of life” and “For all the appreciation of reason and our thankfulness for it, man’s intelligence was never regarded in Jewish tradition as being self-sufficient.” He did not want faith without reason, yet he made it clear that the worship of reason is arrogant and that it finally betrays a lack of intelligence; Heschel, God in Search of Man, 19–20. Rosenzweig, Star: “Not the dead” — indeed not, “but we, we will praise God from this time forth and to eternity.” The conquering But — “But we are eternal” — this our great master [Cohen] proclaimed as the final conclusion of his wisdom, when, for the last time before the many, he spoke of the relationship between his We and his world. The We are eternal; death plunges — 222 —

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Levinas all thought that historicism, by suggesting that one think in terms of a succession of self-enclosed, internally coherent “worldviews” within which any discourse of a particular time must be contextualized, obscured the profound meaning of human experiences.57 Historical science, by delimiting meaning to the role of any claim or idea within a given worldview, was not able to fully understand Jewish religious existence. For Buber, the Jewish texts, including the biblical and Hasidic ones, were less an object of science than narratives that continue to “speak” again to us today. He left the scientific-historicist hermeneutics aside and opted for a dialogical hermeneutics, in which past and present meet for an unexpected future that no eye has seen and no ear has heard. By retelling the Hasidic stories, he hoped to reanimate the spiritual core of Hasidism58; his tales were more an interpretation than an explication.59 Buber did not oppose the philological-critical method, but he considered this technique as far from being the last word. In his view, the Science of Judaism was too arid and sterile. He believed that the exclusivity of scientific objectivity would neglect the subjective commitment required to answer to revelation. While accepting scientific methods in the study of Jewish texts, including biblical criticism, Buber’s chosen focus develops in a different direction. The text had to become alive in the ongoing context of the interpreter. The biblical text is more inspirational than informative. Adherents of the Science of Judaism took pride in undertaking a into the Nought in the face of this triumphal shout of eternity. Life becomes immortal in redemption’s eternal hymn of praise. (253)

57.

58. 59.

For Cohen’s concept of the Jewish people as an eternal people, see also Rosenzweig, “Hermann Cohens Nachlasswerk,” in Kleinere Schriften (Berlin: Schocken Verlag/ Jüdischer Buchverlag, 1937), 297. Rosenzweig himself inherited this view of the Jewish nation from his teacher Cohen, for example, in “Geist und Epochen der jüdischen Geschichte,” in Rosenzweig, Kleinere Schriften, 13–25. Similar to these writers, Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) also thought that the interpretation of texts is not merely a concern of science but the result of a dialogue between subject and the text, resulting in the famous “fusion of horizons” (Horizontverschmelzung). Urban, Aesthetics, 17. Urban, Aesthetics, 25. — 223 —

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meticulous and accurate study of the language and history of Jewish literature. Unlike many of these scholars, however, Buber was not interested in cataloguing or in comparing manuscripts in order to establish a basic text and to provide it with a critical apparatus at the bottom of the page containing each and every important variant of the standard manuscript. Through the study of the ancient texts, he wanted to bring a radical change in modern man. While the Science of Judaism had prestige due to its critical evaluation of the past with the help of the historical-critical method, Buber was concerned with the relevance of the text today. The texts had a deeper meaning than the one revealed by the historical science: this was the kernel of Buber’s critique of the Science of Judaism. He defended the autonomy and dignity of biblical Judaism against Protestant exegesis, however, by stressing its historical character. Buber endeavored to make the words come alive, to bridge the old and the new. His approach was from inside, not from outside. It is useful to compare Martin Buber’s approach to Hasidism with Levinas’s approach to the Talmud. With all their differences, Levinas and Buber shared a common concern. Buber’s purpose was less a historical analysis of Hasidism than the revival of a dialogical way of life and Weltanschauung, which differentiates him considerably from Gershom Scholem.60 Scholem, a late product of the Wissenschaft, sought to study Kabbalah philologically in its historical context, according to the methods of the Wissenschaft. Despite disliking the profoundly learned men who in his view had “liquidated” Judaism (tiefgelehrte Liquidatoren des Judentums),61 and despite judging the movement of 60.

61.

Mutatis mutandis Søren Kierkegaard criticized the attempts of reconstructing the life of the “historical Jesus.” According to the Danish philosopher, one could not “know” anything at all about “Christ”: David N. Myers, Resisting History: Historicism and Its Discontents in German-Jewish Thought (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003), 1. We are not sure at all that Scholem was right. Zunz, for instance, was vividly interested in selihot, the penitential prayers, and in piyyutim, the synagogue poetry. Adelheid Zunz talked about the fact that her husband worked on the selihot from 5:00 a.m. until 7:30 a.m. and that she often found him in tears when he read the selihot. See Hayoun, La science du judaïsme (Die Wissenschaft des Judentums) (Paris: PUF, 1995), 56. Why would one cry if one had developed an uninvolved or neutral attitude toward Judaism? In his memories, Scholem wrote that he planned to write an article about the suicide of Judaism that was being carried out by the so-called Science of Judaism — 224 —

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the Wissenschaft rather harshly, he was himself one of the “heirs of German Jewry”62 and continued to use the movement’s methods when he taught at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, thus redressing the general neglect of the entire mystical tradition in nineteenthcentury Wissenschaft scholarship, with its strong Enlightenment roots. For Scholem, this neglect was connected to the Wissenschaft’s lack of national feeling.63 While he did not envisage a pure archeology of Kabbalah, he aspired, through his work, to a revival of Jewish national culture, especially in Israel, where he had settled in 1923.64 His study of Kabbalah was linked to his firm belief in Zionism. Martin Buber’s aim was different from Scholem’s, and unlike Scholem, he was interested in Hasidism, not in Kabbalah. For Buber, Hasidism represented a renewal of Judaism as an extraordinary religious-cultural phenomenon. The hasidic renewal would be exemplary for the dialogical life of which the Jewish people were pioneers, in Zion but also outside Israel. For Buber, only a dialogical approach to Hasidism could result in the discovery and empathetic study of the

62.

63.

64.

for Walter Benjamin’s Angelus Novus, a journal that was never published. See Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth, trans. H. Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1980), 122; see also Scholem, “The Science of Judaism — Then and Now,” in The Messianic Idea in Judaism. And Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality, ed. Scholem (New York: Schocken, 1971), 306, where he notes that “the liquidation of Judaism as a living organism” was one of the tendencies in the building of the Science of Judaism. Scholem, “The Science,” 313. Scholem loved Aby Warburg’s saying, “Der liebe Gott lebt im Detail” — It is in the minutiae that God can be found. Ibid. Solomon Judah Rapoport, too, stressed the national Jewish aspect in his research. Grätz was also a Jewish cultural nationalist who did not believe in a German-Jewish symbiosis. He opposed a Christianization of Judaism and thought there was a magic link between Jewish teaching, nation, and land. Frankel and the people who worked in his path stressed that the Jewish religion is rooted in the lively Jewish nation. He wrote in Hebrew and in that sense was certainly supportive of Jewish cultural nationalism and opposed the assimilation of the Jews to their environment. For Frankel, Judaism was more than Halakha, more than what was stressed by Samson Rafael Hirsch (1808–1888). Yet the people of the Wissenschaft were not nationalists in the Zionist sense of the word (although Grätz traveled to Palestine). Steinschneider was even an anti-Zionist. See Maurice-Ruben Hayoun, Le judaïsme moderne (Que saisje) (Paris: PUF, 1989), 70–72, 74. For Frankel and contemporaries who were close to his way of thinking, see Rivka Horwitz, Zacharias Frankel and the Beginnings of PositiveHistorical Judaism (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1984) [Hebrew]. See Hayoun, Le judaïsme, 78–81. — 225 —

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deeper layers in this spiritual movement, one that still inspires the Jew of today. Given his goal, it is clear why he did not seek to use a historicist-positivistic approach to Hasidism, even though he was quite familiar with the tools of modern scholarship.65 In his reading of the Talmud, Levinas came methodologically close to Buber’s hermeneutic approach. Just as Buber saw the dialogical element as the essence of Hasidic life and Hasidism itself as the vehicle of a message for mankind, Levinas emphasized the ethical dimension of Talmudic aggadic literature as relevant to contemporary Jewish thought and life. Far from rejecting the past as had frequently been done in the nineteenth century, Levinas revealed the actuality of the ancient Jewish writings.66 Unlike the early Buber, however, he was suspicious of mysticism, which, as an ecstatic rupture, contained, he believed, something violent within it.67 Like both Buber and Rosenzweig, Levinas thought that the ancient Jewish texts directly address the human being of today, describing “Talmudic science” as “the continual unfolding of the ethical order.”68 Not a handbook — manuel — or some “textbook” to be picked up, learned once and then put aside, the Talmud for Levinas contains a voice that speaks to modern man and asks for a response. Just as Buber found a new way of reading the Bible — miqra, to be read aloud — so Levinas rediscovered the challenging voice of the Talmudic Sages, the rational masters who still teach humanity in the most varied circumstances and who most emphatically should never be submitted to exclusively objective research. 65.

66.

67.

68.

In his studies on the Bible, Buber dealt with the work of Bible scholars. See, for example, Buber, Moses (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1952). Emmanuel Levinas analyzes, for example, the hilarious and at the same time serious Talmudic story of the husband with two wives and applies it to the way one interprets texts. The first, a young woman, wants to remove the gray hair of her husband; and the second, an older woman, wants to remove the black hair of that same husband. Consequently, the husband becomes entirely bald. See Levinas, “The Damage of Fire,” in Nine Talmudic Readings, trans. Annette Aronowicz (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990), 194–195. In a parallel manner, the exclusive revolutionary reading of the text as well as the orthodox approach that only stresses the past in a refusal of all renewal, are problematic interpretations of the ancient texts. Levinas, “A Religion for Adults,” in Difficult Freedom, Essays on Judaism, trans. S. Hand (London: The Athlone Press, 1990), 14–15. Levinas, “Ethics and Spirit,” in Difficult Freedom, 6. — 226 —

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Buber, Rosenzweig, and Levinas were all excellent translators.69 Buber and Rosenzweig enabled Hebrew to dwell in and be a guest of the German language. In the manner in which they used the German language, they expressed something deeply un-German. Germanspeaking Jews and German readers alike were intrigued by their dialogical undertaking of translating the Bible and other texts, and the way in which they bring the reader into contact with the original language, the untranslatable Hebrew. Buber and Rosenzweig remained close and faithful to the voice of the text they were translating and were convinced that this voice was essentially concerned with dialogical life. So, for instance, as mentioned before, they did not translate the Hebrew word le-haqriv (e.g., in Lev. 1:2) as “to sacrifice” (opfern), as is usually the case. Taking into account the root qrv, “to come near, to approach,” they translated le-haqriv into “to cause to come near” (darnahen), thereby emphasizing the dialogical aspect of the act. Levinas respected the living voice emerging from the ancient texts in the same way. He not only listened carefully but also spoke in a fitting voice when translating the ancient Hebrew words into French, and succeeded in bringing these texts into contact with modern European philosophy and thought. He interpreted the ancient yet always actual voice as being a voice whose essential demand is for an ethical life. In their love of the Jewish tradition, Buber, Rosenzweig, Heschel, and Levinas all sought more than just cultural awareness: they believed that Judaism had a message for the world. From the moment that the scientific gaze, with its rational explanations, turns Judaism into an object of pure historical investigation, Judaism becomes dry and unlived. It becomes the past, a dead object of scientific research. As the agnostic Moritz Steinschneider once said, the Science of Judaism provided a “decent burial,” “eine 69.

Rosenzweig translated ninety-two hymns and poems of Rabbi Judah Halevi (1075– 1141) and dedicated the work to Buber (Rosenzweig, Jehuda Halevi: Zweiundneunzig Hymnen und Gedichte. Deutsch (Berlin: Lambert Schneider, 1927). In a broader sense, he was a “translator” of ancient Judaism for his perplexed fellow Jews. Rosenzweig struggled against the unholy alternative of assimilation and insularity. His home was a “Zweistromland” between Judaism and German culture (Myers, Resisting History, 16). — 227 —

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anständige Beerdigung”70 for the important but declining phenomenon of Judaism. On the one hand, living Judaism, experienced in daily lives with passion and enthusiasm, was threatened with extinction. Critics or archivists of culture may supplant those who actively create culture. On the other hand, those who protested against historicism have not always been accurate and sometimes have failed to check their sources carefully, or even to refer to them, as in the case of Heschel. At a time when Judaism was frequently “studied” in the solitary room of the erudite, Buber and Heschel, as thinkers who believed in the revitalizing forces of ancient Judaism, took it seriously once more. Buber’s goal was a utopian revival, not simply a reconstruction. The Bible, but also Hasidism, can show us the living force of a particular thought and lifestyle in its relevance for the world at large, he proclaimed. One does not “understand” a relationship with God cognitively. Historical knowledge alone cannot create a just society. Kafka notes that man, having eaten from the tree of knowledge, was prevented from gaining access to the tree of life. As Heschel writes: The tree of knowledge and the tree of life have their roots in the same soil. But, playing with winds and beams, the tree of knowledge often grows brilliant, sapless leaves instead of fruits. Let the leaves wither, but the sap should not dry up.71

For Buber, the past is not a matter of pure knowledge, it is the possibility of living the present while proceeding toward a humanized future. Historicism then is a kind of knowledge in which all that was alive becomes paralyzed and dead. Already Nietzsche protested against science as an archivist activity, without the necessary inventive mind and creativity which was present in his own gaya scienza (froehliche Wissenschaft). For Buber, the historic truth is not the highest truth. The highest truth coincides with the formation of human relationships that lead to the eternal You. The Bible is not a mere book, and Hasidic stories are more than folklore: their great teaching must be heard. The text must 70. 71.

See Scholem, “The Science,” 307. Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, 14. — 228 —

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not be known, but lived. The biblical texts and Hasidic stories must be heard, as they are relevant today. Heschel too thought that the Wissenschaft des Judentums differs from the living Torah. If an idea that was clarified or a concept that one evolved can be turned into prayer, he calls it Torah. If it is an aid to praying with greater kavvanah, he calls it Torah; otherwise, it is Wissenschaft.72 In historicism, one artificially separates past from present. In Heschel’s view, the historical events that happened with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not the past, and everyone can hear God’s voice at Mount Sinai: time is different than the one analyzed by the Wissenschaft. The past is not merely past when one celebrates Sabbath as the end and goal of creation. As Heschel writes in his book on the Sabbath: “Time which is beyond space is beyond the division in past, present, and future.”73 It has been noted above that Martin Buber did not advocate the “objective” study of Hasidism. He wanted, rather, to translate it, as is clear from his beautiful booklet The Way of Man, According to the Teaching of Hasidism,74 and he considered Hasidism a deliverance of the Jewish feeling from the shackles of frozen Orthodoxy. Under the influence of neo-romanticism, Buber appreciated the spiritual strength in Hasidism, which he felt could prompt a new enthusiasm among Jews. He retold the Eastern European Hasidic stories in such a way that, from apparently obscure and primitive anecdotes, they became great legends with a religious power that inspired European culture. In this way, he built a bridge between East and West, but also between Hasidim, assimilated Jews, and Europeans in general. Buber thought that a creative approach to Hasidic tradition would allow him to bring about the longed-for Jewish Renaissance. At first he saw Hasidism as Erlebnismystik, an ecstatic experience, belonging to the individualized psychic sphere, while later he departed from this mystical interpretation, preferring the meeting and developing a dialogical model, 72. 73.

74.

Heschel, “No Time for Neutrality,” in Moral Grandeur, 114. Heschel, The Sabbath, 96. See Bruce S. Graeber, “Heschel and the Philosophy of Time,” Conservative Judaism 33, 3 (1980): 52. Buber, The Way of Man, According to the Teaching of Hasidism (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1966). — 229 —

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one that is exemplary for the Zionist project. He reinterpreted Hasidism in a social-ethical way, penetrating its very core.75 In his evocative style, he transcended the external form of Hasidism and appealed to those factors that would inspire the Western person.76 His was not a historical approach to Hasidism but a highly creative, interpretive method. In the same fashion as Buber, Hillel Zeitlin wanted to conserve the “precious treasure” (den teuren Schatz) of Hasidism. This treasure could “renew and elevate humanity” (welche die Menschheit erneuren, erheben […] wird). Like Buber, he strove to bring Hasidism back to its well or source (wieder an seine Quelle zurückbringen), so that it might influence and fructify the spirits and souls of all mankind (dann wird er die Geister und Gemüter aller Menschen befruchten). Like Buber, he stressed the importance of Hasidic spirituality to man in general, not just to Jews.77 As befitting a Lithuanian Jew, Levinas thought that Hasidism and Kabbala could be established in the Jewish soul only when this soul was full of Talmudic knowledge.78 While Buber appreciated Samuel Abba Horodezky and his historical research on Hasidism, he departed from his method by emphasizing the inner connections between the historical facts.79 Buber, Heschel, and Levinas each wanted to bring about a renewal of Jewish life, not simply to produce a picture of purely historical facts. They struggled against what David Myers calls “the hegemony of historicism,” which was reducing Judaism to “a mound of minute shards.”80 They saw the importance of Jewish elements for 75.

76. 77.

78. 79.

80.

Eleonore Lappin, Der Jude 1916–1928. Jüdische Moderne zwischen Universalismus und Partikularismus (Schriftenreihe wissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen des Leo Baeck Instituts 62) (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 342–344, 346–348, 351. For the spiritual development of Buber, see Mendes-Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue. Lappin, Der Jude, 356. See Hillel Zeitlin, “Aufgaben der Polnischen Juden,” in Der Jude. Eine Monatsschrift. Erster Jahrgang 1916–1917 (Berlin-Vienna: Jüdischer Verlag, 1917), 89–93. There remains, of course, one big difference between Zeitlin and Buber: The first was steeped in the Orthodox Jewish life of Poland, while the second was far from any Orthodoxy or any other form of institutionalized, organized religion. Levinas, “Ethics and Spirit,” in Levinas, Difficult Freedom, 6. Lappin, Der Jude, 354. Lappin notes that Horodetzky’s presentation of Hasidism reflects his Zionist worldview. Myers, Resisting History, 171. — 230 —

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all mankind. Buber and Levinas distanced themselves from both the learned and the pious approach to Jewish realities. Radically and courageously, they opted for a subjective interpretation of these realities. As interpreters, both of them paid a pretium, a price. It was not their purpose to contribute to the historical understanding of their sources. Some even mention Buber’s “falsification” of the sources, others dismiss Buber’s and Levinas’s “subjectivism” and Hineininterpretierung. Yet their understanding of the sources comes from within. They also paid great attention to their public who now, through their works, had access to an ever-fresh source for reshaping their lives. In this way both men made highly creative contributions to modern culture.

Psychology, Psychotherapy and Hasidism Heschel refused to nail down the religious experience to something purely psychological. He did not think that God is a projection or a need of the human being. It is rather man, in his view, that is a need of God. He affirmed again and again that God was not a symbol;81 this was in reaction to Einstein, to Whitehead, and to Tillich. Buber too criticized a psychology that remains within the perspective of an I-it without any possibility of I-you, of creating a common world (Umfassung). We do not only need psychoanalysis, he claims, we need psychosynthesis. In Buber’s thought, Hasidism is relevant for modern psychology. Just as the Hasidic leader, the tsaddiq, is linked to the Hasid, the therapist may be linked to the patient. The tsaddiq is the perfect man, who helps effectively because he sees the other not in his parts but as a whole, not in the past but in the present. Buber proposes that one heals through meeting.82 He does not strive to abolish the professional attitude of the therapist but points to the possibility of real healing through meeting. Both the I-it and the I-you are necessary; the latter does not replace but complements the 81. 82.

Kaplan, Holiness, 75–89. Buber, A Believing Humanism. My Testament, 1902–1965, trans. M. Friedman (New Jersey and London: Humanities Press International, 1967), 138–143. — 231 —

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former. Therapy comes from meeting, in which the patient may become whole again. In this perspective, man is not a mere individual. There is the “between,” and therefore, one does not only have to relate to the world of a person but to a person in the world. In the same vein, guilt is explained by Buber not as a mere inner neurotic feeling without basis in reality but as existential and real. In his introduction to Hans Trüb’s posthumously published book Heilung aus der Begegnung,83 Buber emphasizes that a soul is never sick alone and that the between-ness, the situation between the soul and another existing being, is involved. He refers to cases in which the psychotherapist begins to suspect that something entirely different is demanded of him. What is required is that he step forth out of the role of professional superiority “into the elementary situation between one who calls and one who is called.” Buber then depicts the situation of meeting by which the therapist may return to “a modified methodic.” In this changed methodic the unexpected, “which contradicts the prevailing theories and demands his [the psychotherapist’s] everrenewed personal involvement,” may take place.84 What Buber describes in this preface is the necessity of meeting, of the between, which gives meaning to the training and practice of the therapist, whose selfhood becomes involved in his treatment of the patient. On April 18, 1957, a dialogue took place between Buber and Carl R. Rogers, moderated by Maurice Friedman. The dialogue, organized by the University of Michigan and taking place before a live audience, showed the similarities between the men, but significant differences also appeared. Rogers, who had become famous for his client-centered therapy, felt close to Buber, who, however, distanced himself from Rogers on a few points. He did not consider the relationship of psychotherapist-client as a fully reciprocal one, given the situation of the person who needed help. Moments of understanding were made possible by the therapist, not by the patient. Moreover, whereas Rogers talked about “acceptance” as a warm regard for the patient and respect 83.

84.

Hans Trüb, Heilung aus der Begegnung. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit der Psychologie C.G. Jungs, eds. Ernst Michel and Arie Sborowitz (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1952). Buber, “Healing through Meeting,” in Buber, Pointing the Way, 93–97. — 232 —

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for his individuality, Buber spoke of “confirmation” of the other, not only in what he is but in what he may become. Rogers agreed, nuancing his position by discussing acceptance of the individual in his potentiality. Thereupon, Buber distinguished between a person and an individual as denoting the uniqueness of a human being, which can be developed in a process that Jung called individuation. One may become more and more an individual, but this was different from becoming more and more a person, who is an individual living in the world in reciprocity with it. One has to help man against himself. Buber allowed the erudite discussion between himself and Rogers to be published as an appendix in Maurice Friedman’s anthology.85 Friedman rightly analyzed part of the discussion between the two figures as circling around the basic question of whether the therapistpatient relationship is based on a one-sided inclusion, as Buber holds, or on full mutuality, as Rogers claims. Buber alleges that the therapist is not reduced to treating his patient as an it, and that the one-sided inclusion of therapy (or education, for that matter) is still an I-you relationship founded on trust and partnership. True healing, he posits, takes place only through meeting.86 On the basis of notes taken at the seven seminars Buber gave at the Washington School of Psychiatry, Friedman describes Buber’s view on the unconscious as an essential part of his anthropology.87 In the unconscious, the realms of body and soul are not dissociated; it is a state out of which the physical and psychical have not yet evolved: they cannot be distinguished from one another. Buber contests that the unconscious is something psychical, as Freud and his followers aver. Neither are dreams the repression of conscious facts. In dreams, one assists in the shaping of memory, and in that sense they are not an object of investigation. Transference is not making the unconscious conscious; it is bringing up something that is the product of relationship. In this way, the therapist confirms a person in his dynamic existence. One does not dwell on the old, one shapes the new. Guilt is not groundless neurotic 85. 86. 87.

Buber, The Knowledge of Man, 156–174. Buber, The Knowledge of Man, 21–23. Buber, The Knowledge of Man, 23–29. — 233 —

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guilt but existential guilt that has its place in the interhuman sphere. Compared with Buber, Heschel has less interest in psychology. Let us note, however, that Heschel’s “depth-theology” is parallel to “depthpsychology.”88 Also in discussing of prayer, Heschel prefers the analysis of what happens between man and text to an analysis of the praying person. Finally, he contests what he calls “pan-psychology” as the reduction of events to subjective psychic processes and to functions of psychic development.89

Hasidism and this World To Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer, who objected to Buber that his vision of Hasidism can be summed up in the words that here “the rift between God and the world is closed,” Buber replied that “it is not closed, but bridged over.”90 The Ba’al Shem Tov had wanted each action to take place oriented “to heaven,” for the sake of God. In the I-form, the Ba’al Shem Tov included the corporeal in the sphere of intention. Body and soul were therefore both necessary for achieving the fulfillment of life. Buber responds to Schatz-Uffenheimer: “Is that not ‘realism’ enough?”91 He reacted in this biting way because in his philosophical writings as well as in his works on the Bible and on Hasidism, as a selfdefined “atypical man” and as religious thinker,92 he is interested in bringing spirit and body together and in conceiving of the entire world as comprised in an authentic religiosity.

Similarities and Divergences Both thinkers felt that the earth is full of God’s glory and that the world is in need of what is present in Hasidic communities; both wrote on the sense of wonder that lives in the Hasidic soul. They thought that 88.

89. 90. 91. 92.

Even-Chen, “The Soul and Education in Abraham Joshua Hechel’s Philosophy” (Hebrew), Hagut — Jewish Educational Thought 2 (2002): 223–233. Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, 221. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 736. Ibid. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 689, 704. — 234 —

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Hasidism, with its intense relationship to God, could give modern man a spiritual injection and infuse him with the sense of living with God. In spite of all the resemblances between them, there are great differences between Buber’s and Heschel’s conceptions of Hasidism. Buber was not interested in halakhic life, while Heschel thought that this was the backbone of Hasidism and that one could not relate to Hasidism without considering it. Heschel brings the Kotzker rebbe and Kierkegaard together, but Buber is extremely critical vis-à-vis Kierkegaard93 because of his theocentrism, which Buber thinks will endanger the necessity of paying attention to social life as condition for religiosity. Heschel and Buber had different interpretations of Hasidism, therefore, but we cannot share Lookstein’s opinion that Heschel, with his Hasidic experience, responded more authentically than Buber to the present religious crisis.94 In our view, each of them responded adequately to the challenge of their time, albeit in different ways. A historical description of Hasidism was less their intention than the existential understanding of this phenomenon. They wanted to tell their contemporaries that they were sons and daughters of a King, and that the greatest sin is to forget that.95 They further believed that every 93.

94.

95.

For a criticism of Buber’s interpretation of Kierkegaard, see Gillian Rose, “Reply from ‘The Single One’: Soeren Kierkegaard to Martin Buber,” in Martin Buber. A Contemporary Perspective, 148–165. Rose maintains that it is Kierkegaard who acknowledges the ethical. She shows the “dark sides of Buber’s ethics” (160). Buber would renounce ethics in dismissing any mediation, because it would be implicated in power and domination (149). He would have made a caricature of Kierkegaard, (161) who refused to imply that love and law are separated. His “knight of faith” inherits the world in its mediation and law (163). The suspension of the ethical is trans-historical but not supra-historical; it returns the Single One to his “stake in the struggle of particular and universal,” a stake which “is simultaneously aesthetic, erotic, ethical and religious” (163). Buber on the contrary opposes any law and has a notion of community that denies the problem of power and its legitimation (164). For an early criticism of Buber’s dissociation from Kierkegaard because of his presumed acosmistic relationship to God, see Wilhelm Michel in a letter to Buber dated November 15, 1936 (Glatzer and Mendes-Flohr, 451). Kaplan notes that in the summer 1956 issue of Judaism, Lookstein judged that Heschel, with his Hasidic experience, responded more authentically than Buber to the current religious crisis. In Lookstein’s view, Heschel had an “orientation to life which enables man to feel the unfailing presence of God”; this was “the only genuinely Jewish variety of Existentialism.” (Spiritual Radical, 172). Buber, Vom Leben der Chassidim. In Werke III, 40. Buber mentions this important truth — 235 —

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act may be hallowed and that by sanctifying all actions, one escapes a life without depth, in Buber’s words: a life of mere “it.” On the personal level, Heschel felt himself to be a Hasidic prince; the loving Ba’al Shem Tov and the critical Kotzker rebbe both lived in him.96 For Buber, Hasidism was a way of life that he had encountered in his youth and whose vitality attracted him, but he was not born into it and had no intention of living a Hasidic life; its inspiration sufficed. Heschel lived Hasidism from within, lamenting a lost world and desiring through the description of Hasidic life to convince his American audience that Polish Hasidism was an extraordinary reality in which God was not dead but extremely alive. With his works on Hasidism, Buber brought the East to the West; he wanted to renew Judaism and interweave an intense social life with a life in the presence of God as a model for the Zionist enterprise. With his own Hasidic viewpoint, Heschel protested against American Reformist decorum and American Orthodox behaviorism. What was crucial in Hasidism for both thinkers was the consciousness of God’s presence that it manifested. Heschel had Hasidism in him: it was part of his family history, he had been destined to be a rebbe, and he had the appropriate attitude, although he went out into the world at large rather than remaining within the Hasidic community. Buber retold Hasidic stories through which he wanted to influence his broader audience. He thought that, as with the biblical stories, hearing could lead to a changed behavior if one answered to the voice heard in the Hasidic stories. While each sought to revive Hasidism for today’s reader, Buber’s primary interpretive approach invites the listener to engage in genuine dialogue with Hasidic tales, whereas Heschel’s primary interpretive approach challenges the

96.

precisely when he talks about shiflut, humility, as one of the characteristics of the Hasidic way. Humility does not imply humiliating yourself but acknowledging your unicity and loving the other because of his own unique value. Humility prevents haughtiness, a trait that brings only limitation. In humility that is without borders, one helps the other and elevates him, and so one brings justice that saves from death. Heschel, in A Passion for Truth, writes: “The greatest sin of man is to forget that he is a prince — that he has royal power” (19). Meir, “Love and Truth in the Jewish Consciousness according to Abraham Joshua Heschel” (Hebrew), Hagut-Jewish Educational Thought 3–4, (2002): 141–150. — 236 —

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reader into real dialogue with the entire Hasidic spiritual tradition.97 Heschel saw Hasidism as linked to mitzvot,98 while Buber recognized different dimensions of the movement. Both thought that Hasidism had universal significance, as it testified that God is present in the world. Buber, who was keenly aware of the problem of institutions, developed an anti-nomistic tendency in his interpretation of Hasidism. Heschel, writing on the Kotzker rebbe, also had an anti-institutional point of view. We closed God in our temples, he protested.99 Quite parallel to this, Buber warned the religious man not to shut himself in institutions of worship but to live “the deep inclusion in the world, before the countenance of God.”100 In contrast with Heschel, he advocated a rather religionless religiosity. Deeply impressed by the living force of Hasidism and in his endeavor to save religiosity, the living relationship with God, from the danger of a closed religion, he wrote: That true prayer lives in religions testifies to their life; as long as it lives in them, they live. Degeneration of religions means the degeneration of prayer in them: the relation power in them is buried more and more by objecthood; they find it ever more difficult to say You with their whole undivided being; and eventually man must leave their false security for the risk of the infinite in order to recover this ability, going from the community over which one sees only the vaulting dome of the temple and no longer the firmament into the ultimate solitude.101

Buber did not think that such a life “before the countenance” is a subjectivism but rather that it was the true “objectivum.” The one who encloses himself in an illusionary “objectivum,” making God into an “it,” flees from the truth.102 Heschel felt that he had to commemorate Polish Hasidism in a kind of Yizkor (memory). That is one of the reasons why he wrote the volume 97.

98. 99. 100. 101. 102.

Thanks to Ken Kramer for drawing our attention to this difference between Heschel and Buber regarding Hasidism. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 289: “The mitzvot are of the essence of God.” Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, 184; see his lecture to the Quakers. Buber, I and Thou, 157; Ich und Du, 95. Buber, I and Thou, 167; Ich und Du, 102–103. Buber, I and Thou, 167; Ich und Du, 103. — 237 —

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The Earth Is the Lord’s at a very early stage of his stay in the United States, in 1950.103 At the same time, he wanted to explore the inner world of the East European Jews in view of a modern understanding of Judaism, just as with his book The Sabbath he wanted to contribute to unveiling its meaning for modern man.104 When Buber wrote on Hasidism, he was less intent on generating a Yizkor; his main concern was to construct a collective memory in order to contribute to the formation of a solid and attractive Jewish identity. Both, of course, were influenced by Koigen, who strove for a synthesis between Judaism and European culture. Heschel held religion responsible for its own defeats. He wrote creatively on the “eclipse of religion,” parallel to the Buberian expression the “eclipse of God,” and wanted to revive religion as “an answer to man’s ultimate questions.”105 This resurrection of vibrant Jewish religiosity would provide modern man with a sense of the Divine presence in which they had to live. In retelling Hasidic stories, Buber, on the other hand, was more interested in reviving religiosity than in restoring religion. Another difference between the two thinkers lies in their alternate approaches to mystical ecstasy. The early Buber characterized Hasidism as ecstasy;106 that is the meaning of hitlahavut, “the burning.” Heschel, with his vision of the prophets, distanced himself from mysticism. Significantly, and perhaps in reaction to Buber, he defined revelation as the “ecstasy of God.”107 Heschel had great Hasidic teachers, but he lived Hasidism in his own free way, developing a religious philosophy that was inspired by Hasidic life. Buber retold Hasidic stories and discovered in them the vital and dialogical forces that could lead to a renewal of Jewish life, foremost in Zion. The next chapter enters into Buber’s view on Zionism, compared with that of Heschel.

103. 104. 105. 106. 107.

Heschel, The Earth. Heschel, The Sabbath. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 3. Buber, Die Legende, 4. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 199. — 238 —

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--------------------------------- Chapter VI  ----------------------------------

Zionisms

Heschel and Buber wrote on Zion and its importance for Judaism and the world. Heschel was a Jew who saw his task in the Diaspora, although he tried to become a professor in Israel. He was greatly impressed by the events of 1967 and felt that the biblical story continued in Israel until today. He developed a lofty, idealistic vision on Jerusalem.1 Buber opted for living in Zion; his view was more concrete and realistic. He was an engaged but critical Zionist who lived and worked in Israel for twenty-seven years. He dreamed about a renewal of Judaism in the land of Israel. In fact, both thinkers could not talk about the earthly Jerusalem without the heavenly Jerusalem, and their views may therefore be characterized as prophetic.

Dialogue and Israel It was Buber’s viewpoint that philosophy and a dialogical life on the social and political level were intimately linked.2 In his “Replies to my critics,” he notes that Zion “is at once a promise and a demand, demand not without promise, but also promise not without demand; it has never become a dogma for me. I believe, despite all, in Zion, yet Zion signifies to me not Divine security but a God-given chance.”3 Buber’s 1.

2.

3.

Bondi writes that Heschel, who visited Israel for the first time in 1957, was impressed by the spirit of sacrifice and of commitment of the Jewish people in Israel. He also points to a change in Heschel’s attitude toward Zion with the Six-Day War. Bondi, Where Art Thou, 246; 272. See Freddy Raphael, “Le Sionisme de M. Buber,” in Martin Buber - Dialogue et voix prophétique — Colloque international Martin Buber 30–31 octobre 1978 (Paris-Strasbourg: Istina, 1980), 63–94. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 704–705. — 239 —

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utopian socialism, spiritual Zionism, and dialogical thought were interwoven. He was influenced by mysticism but also by socialism, as was Gustav Landauer, who translated mystic works of Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–c. 1328) from Latin into German and was Buber’s dear friend and mentor in social and political matters.4 Along with Fourier, SaintSimon, Proudhon, Lasalle, Kropotkin, and Landauer, Buber belonged to the stream of utopian socialism that was opposed to the scientific socialism of Marx. Marx’s socialism led via Lenin and Stalin to Moscow; utopian socialism, however, led to the kibbutzim, “an experiment that did not fail.”5 Buber was critical of Marx’s scientific, deterministic socialism, which led to bureaucracy and centralization, and he defended a utopian, decentralized socialism that constantly searched for new partial realizations. Utopia had to be inscribed in concrete reality, in communities where mutual confirmation and dialogue would be the core focus.6 Buber quoted the saying of Christian theologian Leonhard Ragaz: “Any socialism whose limits are narrower than God and man is too narrow for us.”7 In Buber’s own religious socialism, unity with God and community among the creatures belonged together. Religiosity without socialism was a disembodied spirit, whereas socialism without religiosity was a body emptied of spirit. Socialism had to hear the Divine address as in religiosity; religiosity had to respond as in socialism.8 On the basis of the foregoing, one easily understands why Buber’s conception of a true community was based on the Bible and on Hasidism. He praised the real, organic, living community, the Gemeinschaft, that was eclipsed by the Gesellschaft, the bourgeois society, and he favored a 4.

5. 6.

7.

8.

Buber dedicated his 1919 address “The Holy Way” (Der heilige Weg) to Landauer’s memory. See Buber, “The Holy Way: A Word to the Jews and to the Nations,” in On Judaism ed. Glatzer (New York: Schocken, 1967), 109–148. The article conceives of the interhuman relationship as the site of the actualization of God. Buber writes that the settlement in Palestine had to realize utopian socialism in the sense of Landauer. Buber, Pfade, 227 and 233. For a discussion of Buber’s utopian socialism, see Mendes-Flohr, “The Desert Within and Social Renewal — Martin Buber’s Vision of Utopia,” in New Perspectives on Martin Buber (Religion in Philosophy and Theology, 22), ed. Zank (Tuebingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 219–230. The saying introduces Buber’s brief essay “Three Theses of Religious Socialism,” which appears in Pointing the Way. Buber, “Three Theses of a Religious Socialism” (1928), in Pointing the Way, 112. — 240 —

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genuinely human community in which people were linked to each other in I-you relationships focused around the eternal You.9 The structure of a state was not important to him, although he realistically accepted the State of Israel once it came into being. He did not want Israel to be just another state, however. What he favored was a decentralized, critical socialism with living, interacting communities in which people actively related to each other. In Buber’s view, socialism and ethics were not to be separated; fraternity constituted the kernel of socialism. Hence, Buber’s Zionism was less political or cultural than humanisticreligious. In his view, the realization of the old prophetic ideals in a community of faith would bring a renewal of Jewish life in Israel.

A Life for Zion Buber’s engagement with Zion is to be retraced to a very early stage in his life. From the beginning of the preceding century, as a student, he had already been a Zionist leader. He officially became a Zionist in 1898, one year after the first Zionist Congress in Basel, and supported the kind of Zionism that aimed at the transformation of the Jews in a Jewish renaissance.10 At the Fifth Zionist Congress at Basel in 1901, he pleaded for a Jewish publishing house, a Jewish University and National Library in the land. These requests testify to the fact that cultural issues were of utmost importance for him; he expressed his views in his position as editor of Die Welt, the official Zionist newspaper. He made it clear that Zionism would not only be an instrument against anti-Semitism or a simply political matter. Like Ahad ha-Am, he did not want to only save the body, for the spirit of the Jews had to be saved as well. In the footsteps of A. D. Gordon and identifying with the pioneer farmers of Hapoel Hatsair, he strove to combine work and thought. The 9.

10.

Buber, “The Holy Way: A Word to the Jews and to the Nations,” in Buber, On Judaism, 109–148; Buber, Der heilige Weg. In 1901, Buber published an article with the title “Jewish Renaissance”; “Jüdische Renaissance” in Ost und West 1 (1901): 7–10. It was the only early essay to be included in the 1963 collection of his writings on Judaism Der Jude und sein Judentum: Gesammelte Aufsätze und Reden (Cologne: Joseph Melzer, 1963). For the translation of this article, see The First Buber. Youthful Zionist Writings of Martin Buber, ed. and trans. Gilya G. Schmidt (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1999), 30–34. — 241 —

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aim of Zionism would be nothing less than the rebirth of man. During World War I, Buber had been cured of his militaristic and patriotic point of view by Gustav Landauer. In 1919, he wrote that the nations had recognized the importance of a national home for the Jews, but that Zionism would be dependent upon the attitude of Israel vis-àvis Ishmael.11 The Balfour Declaration, issued in 1917 and promising a national home for the Jews, was therefore not enough for Buber. In 1921, he spoke against the kind of nationalism which, after filling some lack, continues to linger and thereby becomes a disease. He favored a common life with the local indigenous population over “Herrschaftsnationalismus” during the Twelfth Zionist Congress in Karlsbad. For centuries, Jews had suffered from the narrow nationalisms of others, and they had to avoid nationalism that oppresses others themselves. Heroic work would replace military heroism. In Buber’s religious-cultural thought, “teshuva,” a turn of the heart, was the kernel of Zionism. The Jews in Palestine would never have to become a normalized nation, since there was a religious tradition to be upheld.12 Although he was not a member, Buber sympathized with Brit-Shalom, which was founded in 1925 in Jerusalem by Arthur Ruppin; Ruppin, however, left the movement after the riots of 1929. Samuel Hugo Bergman, Hans Kohn, Ernst Simon, Robert Weltsch, and Gershom Scholem belonged to Brit-Shalom. Founded in August 1942, the unpopular political party Ichud, or Union-Party, grew out of this movement. Some Ichud members were Judah L. Magnes, Henrietta Szold, Ernst Simon, Robert Weltsch, Moshe Smilansky, Shmuel Sambursky, and Shlomo Tsemach. Buber strove for coexistence with the Arabs and favored a federation of Jews and Arabs in a binational state.13 He wrote that those who think differently are not necessarily traitors.14 At the heart of his Zionism

11. 12.

13.

14.

Raphael, 85. Joseph Agassi, “The Legacy of Martin Buber for an Israeli Society after Zionism,” in New Perspectives on Martin Buber (Religion in Philosophy and Theology, 22), ed. M. Zank (Tuebingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 241–242. See Joseph Heller, From Brit Shalom to Ichud: Judah Leib Magnes and the Struggle for a Binational State in Palestine (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2003). Mendes-Flohr, Ein Land und zwei Voelker. Zur juedisch-arabischen Frage (Frankfurt o.M: Insel verlag, 1983), 201. — 242 —

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lay the ethical question of the Jewish relation to the Arabs. One had to learn to swim against the stream and not to become a wolf with the other wolves. The worst assimilation would be the nationalist one. In 1929, at the Sixteenth Zionist Congress, held in Basel, Buber again spoke about the Arabs in Palestine. The Jews, who had experienced segregation, could not adopt an analogous attitude vis-à-vis the Arabs. A spirit of fraternity was much more than a motion to be discussed and accepted. For Buber, the nation was not an idol, not to be made absolute. Buber moved to Palestine in March 1938. He had intended to return to Germany, but the events of 9 and 10 November caused him to stay in Jerusalem permanently.15 In an article of 1939 called “The Spirit of Israel and the World of Today,” which he originally delivered in Hebrew as a speech in Jerusalem, Buber wrote that Israel has no protecting angel like the other nations, but has the King of the kings as its sole authority. The “spirit of Israel,” the relationship with the absolute, is therefore incompatible with narrow nationalism. In his exegesis of the Bible during the same period, Buber also highlighted that the idea of the “Kingdom of God” is an ancient one, essential for the Jewish people. Consequently, Zion has to be built on justice. A life of justice is the criterion for authentic Zionism. Politics cannot to be separated from the moral-religious domain or be without a life of dialogue. In Israel, Buber realized his Zionist dream. At the same time, he remained critical toward what happened in the country. He thought that dealing with the Arab population was a Jewish issue. He opposed guerilla actions against the British Mandatory government and favored peace negotiations with the Arab population. The reception given to Buber by those who were in Zion was problematic: for the practical-minded Zionists, he was too utopian; for the religious establishment, he was too socialist; and for the socialists, he was too religious.16 After Buber’s death, BenChorin wrote that Buber’s influence within Israel remained insignificant

15. 16.

Vermes, Buber, 69. Until today, socialist Jews are frequently not religious, whereas the large religious parties are situated on the right side of the political map. — 243 —

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and that “a prophet is not recognized in his own town” (Luke 4:24).17 With his amalgamation of humanism, socialism, and religiosity, Buber linked the success of the Zionist enterprise to the success of establishing a common life in the land: Jews and Palestinians were related to each other in a thought, in which the I becomes an I through a you.18 There would be no choice: the fate of one people would depend upon the fate of the other. Peace would be more than a cessation of war; it would come from a genuine cooperation between Jews and Arabs.19 In a prophetic vein, Buber criticized a religion that strove for a permanent presence of You instead of the alternation of latent presence and actual presence. It was an illusion to imagine the transparency of God in the isolated world of temples and synagogues. God was to be found in the midst of life. In such a world-oriented religiosity, God did not intervene in human history; but it was rather through the inter-human relationship, through a life of justice, that one received a glimpse of higher reality. Taking this world in its complexity seriously, Buber did not link religion to political parties but to solidarity with the fellow human being. He was nonobservant but deeply religious; he thought that the creation of a true community was the first religious task that must be carried out in Palestine. On a larger scale, there must be a confederation of states in the Middle East. One had to vanquish the multiple in order to come to unity,20 and this was the condition of a true belief in the one God. In his religious humanism, Buber linked the Arab question to authentic religiosity; as a man of spirit, he did not separate himself from politics. The spirit as that which lives between people is at the heart of every true community. The future of the Jewish people in the land was dependent upon their relationship with the Arabs. His position concerning the attitude toward the Arab population was the consequence of his dialogical thinking.

17.

18. 19.

20.

Schalom Ben-Chorin, “Martin Buber in Jerusalem, Zum 100. Geburtstag am 8. Februar 1978,” in Martin Buber 1878/1978, ed. W. Zink (Bonn: Hohwacht, 1978), 98. Buber, I and Thou, 80; Ich und Du, 29. Mendes-Flohr, A Land of Two Peoples: Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 293. For the theme of unity, see Hans Schravesande, “Jichud.” — 244 —

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Buber’s Zionist Book In 1945 Buber published his Hebrew book, Ben am le-artso, which was translated in 1950 into German as Israel und Palaestina and into English in 1952 as Israel and Palestine.21 The title does not refer to two states, as the reader of today might think. In this book, Buber reveals how the Zionist idea is an ancient one, a religious thought enveloped in mythological language. He started his book with the statement that Zion was never merely one of the multiple national ideas.22 In the Bible, man, adam, and earth, adama, are linked, but this is not the same as the Roman deduction of homo from humus. The idea expressed is that of an existential community, a “Existenzgemeinschaft,” a community of solidarity and responsibility of the human being for the land, which flourishes to the degree that the human being develops an ethical and social behavior in concordance with the acceptance of God and His will.23 The land is considered to be a Divine gift and Israel is called upon to make the land of Israel its center and the throne of its King. 24 Buber further referred to Jehuda Halevi’s Kuzari, in which the king of the Kuzaris challenged the rabbi to go to the land, if for the latter the land was of such importance. The rabbi had to agree with the King. In his holistic view of religiosity, Buber wrote that the realization of going to Zion, “the realization of the relation to the Divine in life” (die Bewaehrung des Bekenntisses im Leben), was better than merely talking about the holiness and the blessings of the land.25 He also discusses the book of the Zohar in order to reveal the intimate connection between Israel and the land of Israel. Alluding to his well-known theme of unity, Buber wrote that Israel will have to become “one people in the land” (2 Sam. 7: 23), that is, united, and this will make the reunion of God with his Shekhinah possible. The world cannot be redeemed without the redemption of Israel, which is only possible through the reunion with the land.26 Other testimonies are mentioned in the book in order 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

Buber, Israel und Palaestina; Buber, Israel and Palestine. Buber, Israel und Palaestina, 7. Buber, Israel und Palaestina, 25–26 Buber, Israel und Palaestina, 55. Buber, Israel und Palaestina, 85–86. Buber, Israel und Palaestina, 99. — 245 —

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to show Israel’s love for the land of Israel. Buber refers to the Maharal, for whom the land waits for Israel’s return in order to receive new life substance and to renew holiness.27 Rabbi Nachman of Braslaw’s journey to Israel is described extensively, and it is emphasized that Nachman wanted only those of his teachings that were given after his journey to Israel to be written down.28 Again and again, Buber gave expression to his dream that the renewal of the world started with the land, where Israel must bring unity, in a covenant with the “One.” From the land of Israel, where unison is realized as consequence of acceptance of the unity of God, oneness will come upon mankind. The land that was higher than any other land demands a great deal of humility.29 Israel should remember its great radiance from ancient times and hope that “a new light shines over Zion.”30 Among the later Zionists whom he writes of, Buber first of all discussed Moses Hess’s thought. He mentioned that Herzl praised Hess’s book Rome and Jerusalem as containing all his own endeavors. For Buber, Hess was the first religious socialist of Judaism.31 Further on, he discussed Leo Pinsker’s “Autoemancipation” and Herzl’s political ideas as having developed from an hour of urgency: one had to give an answer to the increasing anti-Semitism. Ahad ha-Am’s thought on Israel as the spiritual center of Judaism and on the Diaspora as the periphery, linked to this center, is debated, as are the ideas of Rav Kook and A. D. Gordon, whom Buber refuses to label a Jewish Tolstoy.32 The book Israel und Palaestina closes with a beautiful letter from Gordon, who wrote that the Jewish people resembles a woman who has for a long time been infertile and now suddenly feels that she is pregnant; she is happy about it, but at the same time, she is afraid that the pain is not “that.” In the Diaspora, the Jewish people did not feel this pain, Gordon writes. And Buber concludes in a messianic vein that Gordon, who realized the Zionist dream, is right: in the Diaspora, the Jewish people did not feel this pain. Gordon’s existence itself, however, testifies to the fact that this pain is the pain of the birth pangs. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

Buber, Israel und Palaestina, 113. Buber, Israel und Palaestina, 130. Buber, Israel und Palaestina, 133–134. Buber, Israel und Palaestina, 138. Buber, Israel und Palaestina, 140 and 150. Buber, Israel und Palaestina, 189. — 246 —

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In the preface to the original Hebrew version of his book, Buber expressed his deep thanks toward two people who had influenced him profoundly while he was writing the volume: he recalls his meeting with Rabbi Kook in Jerusalem in the year 1920 and with A. D. Gordon in Prague in 1927.33 Writing on Zion, Buber did not forget the concrete land of Israel, but the task concomitant to the reception of this Divine gift received his main attention. Obtaining and maintaining a Jewish majority in the land of Israel was not his goal; it was, rather, Israel’s ethical-religious mission and the messianic perspective on the unity of mankind that made the land holy for him.

“Israel. An Echo of Eternity” In 1967, after Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War (June 5–10) and still in the euphoria of its victory over Egypt, Jordan and Syria, along with its control over the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Heschel visited Israel. He came to the country together with a group of American rabbis. Israeli thinkers joined this group for a congress that took place in Beit Berl, the academic college of the Kibbutzim in Kfar Saba. At Beit Berl, Heschel lectured in Hebrew about the importance of Jerusalem and the land of Israel for the Jewish people. The lecture constituted the kernel of his English book on the subject. To the Hebrew version Pinchas Peli added an important foreword that included parts of Heschel’s lecture and that allows us to reconstruct what Heschel said at the college. It appears that Heschel returned to the atmosphere of his poems of the thirties, which we have discussed on various occasions. In his Hebrew speech, he related to the days of distress, in which God’s presence is not felt and during which He hid His face. God’s power itself was under judgment: would He again relinquish His people and, so to speak, pronounce His own death sentence on the day of judgment? Heschel also related to the days of redemption, when God’s might is felt, during which the heavens open up. He interpreted the events of 1967 as part of a continuous biblical narrative: 33.

Buber, Ben am le-artso. Iqare toldotav shel ra’ayon (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1984), 8. — 247 —

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The Bible, we discovered, is not a book sealed and completed; the Bible lives on, always being written, continuously proclaimed. The Bible, we discovered, lives within us, reverberates in our anxiety. Our involvement with it continues. Almost suddenly it dawned upon many of us that biblical history is alive, that chapters of the Bible are being written.34

During the same hour of enthusiasm, Heschel felt that the relationship between God and the people of Israel had been renewed. The people had experienced once more that they were under the wings of the Shekhinah. One heard again “Where are you?” and the people answer: “Here I am.” There are three partners for the State of Israel, Heschel said: father, mother, and God. The builders or halutsim of the land of Israel are the father; Knesset Yisrael, all the generations that kept the dream of the prophets alive are the mother. And God assists them. Aliya or immigration in the land of Israel was not only a need of the people of Israel but also tsorekh gavoa, a need of God. In this way, Heschel added a mystical blend to the immigration of Jews in the land of Israel. In the beginning of his English book on Israel and its land, which was an expansion of the speech he had given in Hebrew, Heschel wrote that he had discovered a new land in Israel, and that “there is great astonishment in the souls. It is as if the prophets had risen from their graves. Their words ring in a new way. Jerusalem is everywhere, she hovers over the whole country.”35 At the same time, Heschel’s astonishment was mixed with anxiety: he asked himself if he was worthy and able to appreciate this marvel.36 In his famous poetic style he continued: “Jerusalem is a witness, an echo of eternity.”37 The city was meant to be by God’s decree,38 and so it was full of vision, her power was in her promise.39 The prophets live in her; they have ceased to be physically present, but their exaltation remained.40 Writing about Jerusalem as about a city in trance, Heschel himself was in ecstatic 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

Heschel, Israel, 49. Heschel, Israel, 5. Ibid. Heschel, Israel, 7. Heschel, Israel, 28. Heschel, Israel, 29. Ibid. — 248 —

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exaltation: the city, he felt, was so much more than what one saw.41 The city of Jerusalem was charismatic,42 Jerusalem’s holiness was in her being a place of meeting, for the present to meet the days to come, for the present never to be immune to intrusions of the past’s moments, for days to commune with ages. Without Jerusalem the spiritual history of the world would be stagnant. With Jerusalem there is a vision and a promise.43

Heschel looked upon Jerusalem through the eyes of the prophets and with their visions and sub specie aeternitatis. He himself dreamed of the city that had been mentioned in the Jewish prayer through the centuries as a place where all could adore God. His was a prophetic vision. Jerusalem for him combined yireh, vision, and shalom, peace.44 His view of the city was an awareness of mystery. And the mystery of Jerusalem was a promise: the promise of peace and God’s presence.45 For Heschel, God had a vision of man, whom He created according to His image, but the resemblance to God’s image had faded rapidly. He observed that God had a vision of restoring the image of man. So He created a city in heaven and called it Jerusalem, hoping and praying that Jerusalem on earth may resemble Jerusalem in heaven. Jerusalem is a recalling, an insisting and a waiting for the answer to God’s hope.46

These are the enthusiastic words of Heschel on what happened in the sixties in the State of Israel.

Jerusalem: The Widow and the Bride In his inimitable poetic style, Heschel conveys his feelings of sadness about what had happened in the Holocaust and he rejoices that now, 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

Heschel, Israel, 30. Ibid. Heschel, Israel, 3. Heschel, Israel, 31. Heschel, Israel, 32. Heschel, Israel, 32–33. — 249 —

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in Jerusalem, one could build on the ruins and mend the souls. He addresses Jerusalem: For centuries we would tear our garments whenever we came into sight of your [Jerusalem’s] ruins. In 1945 our souls were ruins, and our garments were tatters. There was nothing to tear. In Auschwitz and Dachau, in Bergen-Belsen and Treblinka, they prayed at the end of Atonement Day, “Next year in Jerusalem.” The next day they were asphyxiated in gas chambers. Those of us who were not asphyxiated continued to cling to Thee. “Though he slay me, yet I will trust in him” (Job 13:15). We come to you, Jerusalem, to build your ruins, to mend our souls and to seek comfort for God and men. We, a people of orphans, have entered the walls to greet the widow, Jerusalem, and the widow is a bride again. She has taken hold of us, and we find ourselves again at the feet of the prophets. We are the harp, and David is playing.47

Past and Present and Holiness The State of Israel was for Heschel a new opportunity to bring God back into the world. He meditated on the inner hidden light in the land of Israel, where the Shekhinah may be revealed. His book challenged the American Jewish public with ideas about the loftiness of Jerusalem and Israel, about Israel being reborn as an answer to God, the Lord of history.48 In Jerusalem, the past was present. He felt that he was near to Hillel, “who is close by.” In Jerusalem, “all of our history is within reach.”49 In his writings, Heschel stresses the importance of time as against place. In this context, the question is raised, for Heschel, as to whether the land of Israel has holiness in itself. Did it have the special status it had had for Jehuda Halevi? Heschel was certainly influenced by Halevi’s writings and by the mystical tradition that highlighted the holiness of the land. He, however, also recalled the ancient rabbis50 who discerned three aspects of holiness: the holiness of the Divine Name, the holiness of the Sabbath, and the holiness of the people of Israel. The ancient 47. 48. 49. 50.

Heschel, Israel, 17. Heschel, Israel, 118. Heschel, Israel, 7. Yalkut Shimoni parashat va-etchanan, dalet-he. — 250 —

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rabbis did not mention the holiness of the land in se. The holiness of the land was derived from the holiness of the people of Israel. Heschel quotes a variety of sources in order to prove this position.51 The land, he concluded in contrast to Jehuda Halevi, was not holy during the early times of Terah and the Patriarchs. It only became “sanctified” by the people of Israel.52 In the land, the people had to measure themselves according to prophetic standards, and therefore the Bible had remained a moral challenge for them.53 We conclude that Heschel did not have a territorialist view of Eretz Yisrael, but a biblical and prophetic one: a person had to deserve to live in it.

Arab Neighbors In a chapter entitled “Jews, Christians, Arabs,” Heschel devotes some thoughts to “Arabs and Israel.”54 As enthusiastic as he was with Israel of 1967, he did not forget the Arab neighbors. He wrote that in our world light and shadow are mingled: there is no wheat without chaff, no vineyard without weeds, no roses without thorns. There is joy over the rebirth of Israel, but also pain over the suffering and bitterness in the Middle East.55 Heschel cleaves to his original, prophetic dream: Israel reborn is bound to be a blessing to the Arab world, to play a major role in their renaissance. The Arabs and the Israelis must be brought into mutual dependence by the supply of each other’s wants. There is no other way of counteracting the antagonism.56

He dreamed about communications running from Haifa to Beirut and Damascus in the north, to Amman in the east, and to Cairo in the south; about economic cooperation in agricultural and industrial development that could lead to supranational arrangements like the 51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56.

Mekhilta parashat Bo, 12:1; Edyot 8, 6; Mishneh Torah, Terumot 1, 5; Tosafot Zebahim 62a. Heschel, The Sabbath, 81–82. Kaplan, Spiritual Radical, 337. Kaplan writes that Heschel preferred eternal values to ideology. Heschel, Israel, 173–189. Heschel, Israel, 173. Heschel, Israel, 182–183. — 251 —

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ones of the European community. Young Israelis and Arabs could join in mutual discourse of learning; excessive sums previously devoted to security could be diverted to development projects.57 Heschel asked the nations in the Middle East to drop their antagonisms and antipathies, their hatred and fear, and demanded of them that they start to think in terms of one family. “The alternative to peace is disaster. The choice is to live together or to perish together.”58 He wanted the Arabs to acknowledge the right of Israel to exist, adding that Arab intransigence is responsible for the continuation of suffering and terror.59 He ends with the words: The Arabs and the Jews in addition to having a common background and history, early contacts and a prolonged and fertile symbiosis during the Middle Ages, have also another affinity in common: a heritage of suffering and humiliation.

With the revival of Israel and the resurgence of the Arab nations, one faces many problems, according to Heschel, but cooperation is a vital necessity and a blessing for both.60 A few years ago, Ze’ev Harvey in a lecture at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem reminded his audience that Heschel had demanded that Jews and Arabs come to a covenant of brothers (berit ahim). Heschel asked the perennial Jewish question: what is required from us now, what is the Halakha? The Halakha was to make peace with the Arabs and, with this, he followed his prophetic vision of shalom.61 Heschel told the story of Rabbi Ben Zion Uziel, who positioned himself between two fighting camps and proposed to make peace: “Make your peace with us and we shall make peace with you and together we shall enjoy God’s blessings on this holy land.” He addressed the Arabs as “our dear cousins”:

57. 58. 59. 60. 61.

Heschel, Israel, 184–185. Heschel, Israel, 186. Heschel, Israel, 187. Heschel, Israel, 188–189. Sic Harvey in his lecture “Heschel al hayehudim ve-ha’aravim be’erets Yisrael.” We thank Zeev Harvey for this anecdote. — 252 —

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Our common father, Abraham, the father of Isaac and of Ishmael, when he saw that his nephew Lot was causing him trouble […] said to him: “Let there be no quarrel between me and you, and between your shepherds and my shepherds, for we are people like brothers.” We also say to you, this land can sustain all of us and provide for us in plenty. Let us, then, stop fighting each other, for we too, are people like brothers.62

Two Types of Zionists Heschel recognized the importance of time, Buber that of unity. Both men wrote about the land of Israel. In their visions of Eretz Yisrael they differ, but there are also points of contact. For instance, Heschel thought that the past can be present through living memory: in Jerusalem, he felt close to Hillel the Elder. Buber also connected past and present through the formation of memory, a resource that had weakened during time: his intention was to create a collective, living memory that would lead to a revitalization of the people and to renewal in Zion. Both Buber and Heschel referred to Jehuda Halevi and Rabbi Kook, but Heschel appears to be more mystical in his approach to the land: he felt the hidden light in Eretz Yisrael. After the Shoah, in which there was no Divine intervention, he again felt the wings of the Shekhina in Eretz Yisrael. Buber was more occupied with the concrete, painstaking work of the everyday in Zion. More than Heschel, he was affected by the pain of lack of fulfillment. This can perhaps also be explained by the fact that Buber lived in the land, whereas Heschel remained in the United States, where he had his own struggles, for example, his work against the discrimination of the black people. Buber did not connect the return of the people to Divine intervention or to Divine light; rather, he stressed the human tasks that awaited the pioneers. Instead of constructing a history of Divine signs, he put the term “Umkehr,” return, in the dialogical and ethical sense, at the center of his Zionism. Of course, this Umkehr or return to the dialogical kernel in human beings as a return to God had its equivalent in Heschel, in the term “qedusha,” holiness. In Pinchas Peli’s interview of Heschel, conducted in Hebrew and broadcast on Israeli television in 1971, Heschel even spoke 62.

Heschel, Israel, 177–178. — 253 —

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about the holiness of the State of Israel, a concept we search for in vain in Buber’s writings. There is nothing to compare between the exaltation of Heschel in 1967 and the more critical attitude of Buber, who refused an overly ecstatic approach to Jerusalem and the land of Israel. Both thinkers, however, were dreamers; never territorialists but men with vision who wanted there to be an exemplary life in Israel, inspired by the prophets. We assume that, unlike Heschel, Buber, if he was still alive in 1967, would not have written about the continuity of biblical narrative in the land of Israel. He was less concerned with spiritual-mystical aspects and more realistically focused upon the concrete situation in the land. He valorated critique over joy and always took Arab suffering into account. Of course, Heschel was also concerned about the situation of the Arabs. In Heschel’s religious consciousness, the fact that the Jews are in exile meant also that God was in exile, and the return to the land of Israel was also the return of God to the land.63 According to an oral communication of Rivka Horwitz, who studied under Heschel, Heschel could have been a professor in Israel, were it not for the drastic reaction of Gershom Scholem, who closed the doors of the universities before him. Whereas Heschel did not live in the land, though he visited, Buber made aliyah in 1938 and continued to dream in Israel about a dialogical society in which the Arab question would be the Jewish one as well, a standpoint shared by Heschel. Although both Buber and Heschel were convinced that Judaism was intimately connected to a concrete people with a concrete land, Buber did not share Heschel’s more mystical approach to the land. Heschel, in turn, did not share Buber’s great interest in Jesus, a theme to which we turn now.

63.

Heschel, Israel, 25–26. — 254 —

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On Jesus and Christianity Buber had an exceptional lifelong interest in Jesus. His biblical commentaries frequently deal with Christian interpretations of the Bible. He was a source of inspiration for many Christians and also wrote a book about the differences between Judaism and Christianity. Heschel was more interested in Christianity as a religious phenomenon than in the figure of Jesus. He protested against the Christian missionaries among Jews and favored a real dialogue between the two religions, holding that “no religion is an island” and that cooperation is therefore not only desirable but necessary.1 In a letter of August 30, 1938,2 Heschel wrote Buber a “drash” on the verse “I [Jesus] did not come to abolish, but to fulfill” (Mat. 5:17), as an indication that it was the intention of Jesus to cure the world of dissolving, annulling forces, and from the ferment of decay. This letter testifies not only to the close relationship between Heschel and Buber already in those early years, and to Heschel’s acceptance of the truth from wherever it comes, but also to the fact that Heschel knew about Buber’s special interest in Jesus. Nevertheless, with all the proximity between them, there are significant divergences between both thinkers. Heschel greatly appreciated the famous Martin Luther King, Junior, speech “I Have a Dream,” which was given in Selma prior to the protest march to Alabama. Susannah Heschel mentions that “King’s sometimes deliberate shift from Jesus to Moses or one of the biblical prophets is striking in a Christian preacher, from whom we might expect greater 1.

2.

No Religion Is an Island: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Interreligious Dialogue, eds. Harold Kasimow and Byron L. Sherwin (New York: Orbis, 1991). Buber Archive, 290: 20. — 255 —

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stress on the figure of Jesus as the liberator.”3 This shift “lent the Civil Rights movement an ecumenical, and even a philosemitic image in the eyes of major segments of the Jewish community.”4 King identified with Moses, and the Exodus occupied a central place in his theology of liberation. His struggle was interpreted by Heschel as prophetic. Parallel to King, Heschel himself waged a prophetic war against indifference and for liberation. He did not, however, focus upon the figure of Jesus as Buber did.5 Moreover, the figure of the Suffering Servant, so central in Buber’s theology, is absent in Heschel’s thought.6 In his reflections about repentance and atonement, Heschel distinctly opposes the standpoint of Rabbi Akiva, who believed in the atoning power of suffering and of Yom Kippur, even without repentance. He preferred Rabbi Ishmael, for whom suffering does not atone if it is not combined with repentance. Like Rabbi Ishmael, Heschel placed the decision of atonement not in the hands of God but in the hands of man.7 In line with the prophets and the Sages, who accepted the prophetic view, he praised the virtue of repentance: atonement could not be achieved without repentance.8 What Heschel ascribed to the prophets, Buber attributed to the Jewish Jesus, whose atonement is not without repentance but is in line of the prophets; he notes this as a critical reminder to Christianity, which has largely forgotten Jesus’s Jewishness in its Christological reflections. 3.

4. 5.

6.

7. 8.

S. Heschel, “Theological Affinities in the Writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Luther King, Jr.,” Conservative Judaism 50 (1998): 131. S. Heschel, “Heschel and King,” 133. Harold Kasimow transmits to us a rare comment of Heschel about Jesus. At a conference at Princeton Theological Seminary on October 28, 1964, Heschel gave a talk on “The Humanity of Man,” at which he mentions that Christians often ask him his opinion about Jesus and Christianity. He responded: “Who am I to give an opinion about one of the sublime mysteries in history, about the relations between God and men? Am I to judge? It would be vulgar, if not blasphemous, for any mortal to sit in judgment about what is intimate and sacred to other human beings.” Kasimow heard Heschel’s lecture on a tape made for him by one of his students who went to Princeton, and he is quite sure that he captured Heschel’s words accurately. Our thanks to Kasimow for his remark. We note, however, that Heschel’s prophets were people, who identified with God’s suffering. Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 183. Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 180. — 256 —

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Two Types of Faith In his Two Types of Faith, which was first published in Zuerich 1950 with Manesse Verlag, Buber distinguishes between two types of faith: the first one implies that one trusts someone and the second consists of the fact that one considers something as true.9 In the first, a person is situated (findet sich) in a relationship of faith (im Glaubensverhaeltnis); in the latter, the individual is converted (bekehrt er sich) into this relationship.10 Buber characterizes Judaism as a community of faith (Glaubensgemeinschaft), whereas Christianity starts as diaspora and mission.11 In the book, he unapologetically concentrates upon the early beginning of Christianity, which in his view is best understood in the framework of the talmudic and midrashic thoughts of the Pharisees.12 Using the warmest words, he writes that from his youth, he considered Jesus his older brother (Jesus habe ich von Jugend auf als meinen grossen Bruder empfunden).13 He felt that with time, this fraternal relationship became stronger and more pure. In his investigations of early Christianity, Buber refers to a number of New Testament scholars, foremost among them Rudolf Bultmann. His own aim, he contends, is to come to a historical-believing account of Jesus. In order to arrive at an understanding of the historical Jesus, he considers non-Jewish depictions as posterior to Jesus’s time, coming from the Hellenistic faith of the first communities, and not from Jesus himself. The criterion for distinguishing between authentic accounts and later additions and renderings is therefore the Jewishness of the relevant texts. A similar criterion was used by David Flusser in order to come to a description of the historical Jesus. Occasionally, Buber even refers to the late Hasidic experience in order to show the original Jewishness of a New Testament passage. Buber starts his investigation by writing that to believe, from the Jewish point of view, means to realize God’s will (Im Willen Gottes 9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

Buber, Werke I, 653. Buber, Werke I, 654; comp. 779. Buber, Werke I, 655. Compare with what Heschel writes about the Jewish Sages, whose perspective is close to a Paulinian truth (Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 154–155). Buber, Werke I, 657. — 257 —

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gehen).14 He maintains that Jesus’s message is also one of the universal realization of the Kingdom of God, of collective return, and of an individual relationship of faith.15 The ancient faith of Israel, present in Jesus, is therefore one of emuna, trust (Vertrauen), and of teshuva, return (Umkehr).16 The prophets knew about the Kingdom of God and they demanded man’s return to God. In Lam. 5:21, one reads: “Restore us to you and we will return.” Only in the full relationship of emuna may one be actively faithful and receptively trusting (Nur in der vollen Beziehungswirklichkeit kann man, wie treu, so vertrauend sein).17 To be sure, Judaism also has a confession of faith, but that is at a later stage in Judaism.18 Buber distinguishes between the synoptic stories of Jesus and later Hellenistic Christianity. Mark, Matthew, and Luke follow the simple “trust,” emuna, expressed in Exodus 3:31 and Exodus 14:31. For Hellenistic Christianity, faith became the acknowledgment of an event that happened, pistis. In the gospel of John, for instance, one has to decide to believe that Jesus was sent (Joh. 3:18). Such a decision of faith (Entscheidung des Glaubens) is unknown in Israel.19 Already in Mishna Sanhedrin 10, one finds the declaration that some people will not participate in the coming world. This fate is preserved for those who do not believe in the resurrection of the dead, those who deny the Divine origin of the Torah, and the Epicureans, who deny that God is involved in earthly affairs. But this threefold declaration came merely in order to prevent the situation that one will no longer trust God, which is a basic element in Israel’s faith.20 Buber’s analysis of Hebr.11:6 depicts the Paulinian faith as believing in God but not as trusting God.21 This Hellenistic turn of Paul became possible through his interpretation of Gen. 15:6, which he did not read as showing

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

Buber, Werke I, 665. Buber, Werke I, 667. Buber, Werke I, 668. Buber, Werke I, 670. Buber, Werke I, 674. Buber, Werke I, 678. Buber, Werke I, 679–680. Buber, Werke I, 680–686. — 258 —

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Abraham’s trust in God, but as Abraham’s act of pistis. The justification of Abraham through an act of belief came instead of the Divine safeguarding of Abraham that followed upon his trust in God. Paul’s justification thus replaced the original safeguarding (Bewaehrung)22 of Abraham. In a similar way, in his letter to the Galatians (Gal. 3:6), Paul understood Habakuk 2:4 as referring not to the safeguarded (der Bewaehrte) but to the one who was justified (dikaios, which is not the same as tsaddiq).23 Instead of a life of realization of the Torah, Paul opted for a life of pistis. Romans 9:31 charges Israel with pursuing a righteousness that is based on the Law. Israel did not accept pistis, which alone saves, according to Christian doctrine, in which Jesus meant the end of the Law (das Ende des Gesetzes; Rom. 10:4). Although in our eyes, one could also interpret Jesus as the “telos” of the Law, as fulfillment of the Law according to its inner intention, Buber, who wanted to render a characterization of Hellenistic Christian faith, did not consider this possible interpretation of Paul’s dictum. Paul’s saying in itself allows for either one of the two interpretations and also for both together. Instead of reading “telos” as fulfillment, Buber contrasts Paul’s belief in redemption “through faith alone” (Rom. 3:28) to the classical Jewish faith that expresses itself in deeds. In the letter to the Galatians (Gal. 3:10), Paul adds the word “all” to the biblical curse over every one who does not abide by “what is written in the Law” (Deuteronomy 27, 26) and he concludes that one cannot fulfill “the entire Law” (Gal. 5:3). Buber’s comment on Paul’s standpoint is that post-biblical Judaism and the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount contradict this view.24 In a typical move in the crucial seventh chapter of his book, Buber defines the Torah not as “Law” but as instruction, pointing the way, teaching (Weisung, Hinweisung, Unterweisung, Anweisung, Belehrung).25 Just as moré means teacher, Tora is teaching. Buber brings Jesus in proximity to those who protested against the ones who had forgotten interiority; Jesus is close to those Pharisees who prioritized a return to

22. 23. 24. 25.

Buber, Werke I, 681. Buber, Werke I, 685–686. Buber, Werke I, 686–690. Buber, Werke I, 690. — 259 —

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the orientation of the heart.26 In this context, in a huge leap of history, Buber jumps to Hasidism, a movement that also wanted intention, the attitude of the heart of the whole human being.27 Jesus’s polemics against the Pharisees are interpreted by Buber not in a general way as they are by the later Christian community but as an inner polemic.28 Indeed, Jesus himself said that he came not in order to abolish the Law but to fulfill it (Mat. 5:17). Buber writes that one may only teach by doing.29 Jesus wanted orientation of the heart, and Buber endeavors to bring Jewish parallels to such an attitude. The Sermon on the Mount is in his view entirely situated within the Jewish world. Even love of the enemy is so situated, as all persons are children of God. Also in I and Thou, he writes about evil men or enemies that are in your way in order to love more those who are more in need of love.30 According to Buber, Jesus sees love of all human beings as a condition for the realization of the sonhood or brotherhood of mankind. Buber closes this central chapter with a few Hasidic anecdotes that likewise teach love for the enemy. In contrast to the later Christian view that functioned within an eschatological perspective, Hasidism brings this teaching not as something eschatological but in view of a Messianism of continuity (ein Messianismus der Kontinuitaet),31 on which we wrote supra. Paul thought of the Law as bringing death in order that sin might be shown to be sin “beyond measure” (Rom. 7:13). The Jews who did not accept Jesus were hardened (Rom. 11:7). Buber calls this thinking of Paul’s “Gnostic”: the Law was ambiguous and there was a hardening of the heart, so that only Jesus could save.32 In reaction to Paul’s Gnosticism, he maintains that the Jews in the Bible were sometimes stubborn (Ezra 2:4), but they were not depicted as such in a text such as that of Ezekiel, who was a prophet of personal responsibility.33

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

Buber, Werke I, 692. Ibid. Buber, Werke I, 695. “nur vom Tun aus kann man wahrhaft lehren”; Buber, Werke I, 696. Buber, I and Thou, 157; Ich und Du, 95. Buber, Werke I, 708. Buber, Werke I, 712. Buber, Werke I, 715–717. — 260 —

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In Buber’s view, Jesus wanted the Jews to fulfill the Torah li-shma, for its own sake, without self-interest. Jesus preached the interiority of the heart and wanted to give everyone a chance to return. He did not want people to believe in him but in God. Paul, however, made Jesus’s personal resurrection an article of faith: Jesus became a man-God, who died and was resurrected, and the “binitarian God”34 was born. Jesus, on the contrary, affirmed that only God is good. In Buber’s view, it is not exceptional that Jesus is proclaimed to be the “son of God,” whom God created: there is the Divine promise that all are destined to be sons of God. Jesus quickly became the “door” and the “way” (Joh. 10:9; 14:6), the only door and the only way, to the Father. The unbelieving Thomas became the prototype of the Christian: he did not believe until he saw in Jesus’s hands the holes from the nails and until he placed his finger in their mark and in the hole from the lance in Jesus’s side. Only then did he believe. Whereas for the Jews, God remained without a face and anthropomorphisms were seen as the language of man, the Johannean Jesus became the “logos” of God from the beginning: God who becomes visible. The original, Jewish concept of God, in which God reveals and hides Himself, was lost.35 In the final pages of his book on Jesus, Buber’s polemic against Paul’s Gnostic thought becomes sharper: Paul knows almost nothing about the loving God; and through his rendition, God loses his fatherly features; only once does He show His grace to the Jews (Rom.11:29). All God’s grace is concentrated now in Jesus, and Paul’s God becomes a wrathful God.36 Every person is sinful and damned to suffer — a suffering from which only Jesus saves. It is as if the soul that is given by God is not pure and as if the gates of prayer are not always open,37 as if the return, about which Jesus, the prophets, and the Pharisees spoke, was nonexistent.38 For Buber, God is directly accessible, he does not ask for a mediator, and we experience his wrath and goodness

34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

Buber, Werke I, 732; compare 747. Buber, Werke I, 750. Buber, Werke I, 746–752. Buber, Werke I, 777. Buber, Werke I, 771. — 261 —

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simultaneously.39 Buber’s thesis is that emuna is characteristic of Israel’s faith, whereas pistis is of Greek origin. The new community, which is not a nation, forgot the original idea of “holy nation.” Buber concludes that people will remain in the exiles of their religions until there is unification in the Kingdom of God. A renewal could come for Israel through the personally-lived faith that is a well-known concept in Christianity, and in Christianity, renewal would be possible through a renaissance of the nations, of which Israel is the prototypical example. And then, Buber optimistically closes his book, both religions could say to each other things still left unsaid. Kenneth Kramer rightly deems that Buber’s non-Christological narrative of the dialogical Jesus has ecumenical significance and is able to reinvigorate interfaith encounters. He thinks that those engaged in interfaith dialogue can gain greatly if they follow Buber’s idea that what matters in the conversation is less its content than the realization of basic inter-human principles that characterized Jesus’s dialogical attitude, such as turning, responding, and making present. Moreover, Buber’s intensive listening to the voice of Jesus remains for Kramer exemplary.40 Buber understood Jesus from within the Jewish tradition and, consequently, his Jesus was quite different from Christ of the later Christian theology: Jesus had entered into the immediacy of dialogue with God and taught his disciples to turn toward man and God. Without recognizing him as the Messiah come, Buber situated Jesus wholly in the continuous stream of Messianic Jewish faith.

Engagement in the Jewish-Christian Dialogue Buber’s interest in the Jewish Jesus was complemented by his engagement in the Jewish-Christian dialogue. In June 1914, shortly before the outbreak of World War I, the people of the “Forte Kreis,” who were striving for a society of peace in Europe, got together. At 39. 40.

Buber, Werke I, 775. See Kenneth P. Kramer, “Rehearing Buber’s Jesus Deepens Jewish-Christian Dialogue,” in Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 44, no. 4 (2009): 1–25. — 262 —

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that meeting, Buber indicated that he thought Jews had better chances of understanding Jesus than Christians. He and Florence Christian Rang, a jurist and theologian, differed, but at the end, in an impressive symbolic gesture, they stood up and embraced each other. During his entire life, Buber was not interested in the Christ of the Church but in Jesus as an eminent dialogical person. In 1926 he founded the journal Die Kreatur (The Creature), which he coedited with the protestant Viktor von Weizsäcker and the Catholic Joseph Wittig. The journal existed until 1930 and aimed, in Buber’s words, to create a genuine dialogue between the different religions that were defined as houses of exile.41 After World War II, Buber resumed his dialogue with German Christians and, as Maurice Friedman remarks, this “was an important part of a whole new phase of his involvement in Jewish-Christian dialogue.”42

I and Thou and the Faith of Judaism Already in I and Thou, Buber is very positive when he writes about Jesus, situating him within the Jewish setting. He writes that in Jesus’s I-saying, the I of the unconditional relation to the Father is present; Jesus is appreciated as being essentially nothing else other than a son. Even when there is detachment, his association with the Father is stronger. This I of Jesus cannot be reduced to the power of the I. On the other hand, the Divine You, who is addressed, is not reducible to what dwells in us. In the relationship, Buber generalizes, “I and Thou remain; […] everyone can say Father and then becomes son; actuality abides.”43 Jesus’s attitude is potentially that of everyone who knows to say “you.” In his Two Types of Faith, Buber writes about Jesus in a similar vein. At the end of his article “The Faith of Judaism,”44 which was originally a lecture delivered as early as 1928, Buber discusses John’s reduction of the triad creation, revelation, and redemption to a dyad, by weaving revelation and redemption into one point in time. Marcion 41. 42. 43. 44.

Friedman, Encounter on the Narrow Ridge, 192–195. Id., 315–332. Buber, I and Thou, 116–117; Ich und Du, 61. Buber, “The Faith of Judaism,” 263–264. — 263 —

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even substituted a monad for the dyad by removing creation from the religious reality. This had dire consequences, Buber notes, since subsequently von Harnack in his Marcionism wanted to remove the Old Testament from the Christian canon. As a result, man would have been cut off from his origin, and the world would lose its history of creation. Buber’s negative tone when writing of Christianity after Jesus contrasts sharply with his admiring attitude toward Jesus himself. The reason is that he considers Christianity largely to be a deviation from the original message of Jesus, whom he saw as a great Jew with an eminent place in the spiritual history of Israel. In 1950, he wrote of Jesus: That Christianity has regarded and does regard him [Jesus] as God and Saviour has always appeared to me a fact of the highest importance which, for his sake and my own, I must endeavour to understand. […] My own fraternally open relationship to him has grown ever stronger and clearer, and today I see him more strongly and clearly than ever before. I am more than ever certain that a great place belongs to him in Israel’s history of faith and that this place cannot be described by any of the usual categories.45

Removing Jesus from a faith in the truth of a proposition (pistis), and replacing him in the longstanding history of Israel’s faith as trust (emunah), Buber threw light on Jesus as a suffering servant or as another “holy Yehudi,” who, however, was drawn out from the concealment of the “quiver” (Isaiah 49:2). Jesus is not deified in Buber’s thought, neither does he ask for faith in Christ. The Messianic figure of Jesus represented a climax in the history of the idea of the suffering servant. Paul altered the conception of God’s Kingdom, but Jesus trusted in the dialogue with God, refusing to consider this world as unredeemable and as the object of God’s wrath. In Buber’s understanding, it was not Jesus but Paul who detached wrath from Divine grace and transformed the Jewish God into a God of anger. For Jesus himself, anger and tenderness belonged together in a basically loving God, who always wants a person’s return. Jesus was the one whom the Jewish community, in its 45.

Buber, Two Types of Faith, 38–39. — 264 —

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renaissance, will recognize. Not, of course, as the deified person who once and for all delivers man from this sinful world, but as the one who stands in the tradition of the suffering servant to whom God is near, and as one of the persons in the history of Judaism who took the redemption of Israel and of the world seriously.

Direct Encounter with God and the Problem of Symbolization Heschel was a thinker and a poet who also discussed the direct encounter with God without intermediation. Acknowledging the epistemological basis of Heschel’s theology is crucial in order to understand his attitude toward Judaism and Christianity. Heschel claims that one does not encounter reality on the level of concepts or through the mediation of logical categories. Conceptualization and symbolization means accommodating reality to the human mind. The living encounter with reality, Heschel proclaims, takes place on a different level, on the immediate, responsive, preconceptual, and presymbolic level.46 Direct contact with reality, also with Divine reality, is therefore distinguished from its translation through conceptualizations. Symbolism does not in itself represent Divine reality. Consequently, every religion should set as its goal the direct contact between God and man. One has to keep alive the meta-symbolic relevance of religious terms. Religions are in permanent danger of giving primacy to concepts and dogmas and giving up the immediacy of insights. Heschel insisted that: “Concepts, words must not become screens; they must be regarded as windows.”47 He criticized, therefore, all religious attempts to “sanctify” concepts, terms, or symbols. This is important for Christians, but it holds true for Jews as well. Drawing the distinction between “screens” and “windows,” Heschel exposes two different types of observation. Observing through a “screen” is not paramount to direct contemplation; it rather absorbs primary data through the categories set by that screen. These categories predetermine what we shall retain and what data we should forego; they 46. 47.

Heschel, God in Search of Man, 115. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 116. — 265 —

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select and arrange the data. Heschel’s remarks are reminiscent of Kantian epistemology, which distinguishes between phenomena and noumena. However, unlike Kant, Heschel believes that direct encounters with reality are possible. While Kant assumes that man cannot achieve direct cognition of reality because of his “limits of reason,” and is therefore restricted to what can be discerned through the human senses, Heschel believes that concepts and symbols may be construed as “windows”; one may open a “window” and gaze directly at the Divine reality. The purpose of Heschel’s theology lays in the understanding of faith, not as that which a person is able to express, but as that which a person cannot express. The insight that no language can adequately convey is the kernel of Heschel’s depth-theology.48 Heschel’s preconceptual and presymbolic approach to religion does not preclude rational understanding of it. Neil Gillman suspects that Heschel was not concerned with subjecting his insights to critical inquiry: “His [Heschel’s] earliest training was in mysticism, and it is the mystical experience that retains his ultimate allegiance. And mystics, as we know full well, are rarely inclined to mistrust their intuitive experiences.”49 However, it is not because Heschel was critical of the powers of reason and about the conceptual tools of discursive philosophy that he is an irrational thinker. In our view, Tanenzapf’s position is more accurate: “Heschel is not an irrationalist; he does not disparage human reason as such, but he does reject traditional rationalism because its main tenets are inconsistent with the biblical vision of reality.”50 One may add that Heschel disapproves of “blind” rationalism but maintains that faith without reason is equally “blind.” In his depth-theology, reason has its limits, but it is a sin to faith if one eliminates reason.51 Reason clarifies faith, but, in faith that grows out of mystery and exaltation,52 there remains more unsaid than said, more ineffable than 48. 49.

50. 51.

52.

Heschel, God in Search of Man, 7. Neil Gillman, “Epistemological Tensions in Heschel’s Thought,” Conservative Judaism 50 (1998): 83. Tanenzapf, “Critics,” 276. Heschel, Who Is Man, 1–2; Heschel, “Reason and Revelation in Saadia’s Philosophy,” Jewish Quarterly Review 34, no. 4 (1944): 408. Heschel, “Exaltation,” in, Moral Grandeur, 228. — 266 —

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expressible. Judaism is for Heschel one of the many “translations” of the direct encounter between God and the human being. Christianity is another translation of the same encounter with the ineffable. Josef Dan claims that mystical phenomenon is an oxymoron, because it expresses that which it claims is inexpressible in human language.53 The mystics, and Heschel among them, resort to human language to convey their mystical experiences. Dan specifies that one of the main characteristics of the mystics is their negative attitude toward the knowledge achieved through the senses or the intellect. Congruent with Dan’s thoughts, Heschel regarded mystic symbolism as one of the means used by the human being in his attempt to “accommodate” Divine reality, revealed through deep and direct religious experience, to categories of the human mind. These symbols may, however, serve in his depth-theology as “windows” that allow for direct contact with Divine reality.

The Voice of God and the Voice of Man It is no coincidence that Heschel was active in interfaith discourse. His concept of depth-theology allowed him to regard different monotheistic religions as partners in the quest for understanding of the Divine will. At the same time, Heschel was committed to the theological “translation,” specific to his own people. Each monotheistic religion enjoys a specific point of view, but there is also a common ground. “We may disagree about the ways of achieving fear and trembling, but the fear and trembling are the same,” he writes.54 Heschel’s choice of the wording “fear and trembling” is telling. He chose these words, which in modern times became famous as the title of one of the major works of Søren Kierkegaard, who describes Abraham’s religious experience in the binding of Isaac. Abraham could only achieve his religious experience of an individual standing before God after he disconnected himself from moral and social values. Kierkegaard believed that only then 53.

54.

Joseph Dan, On Sanctity — Religion, Ethics and Mysticism in Judaism and Other Religions (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1998), 64. Heschel, “No Religion Is an Island,” 240. — 267 —

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could Abraham face the absolute God as an “absolute.”55 By this tactic, Kierkegaard freed the individual from Hegel’s totalizing philosophy, which sees the human being as no more than as small cog in the wheel of the Absolute Spirit. By making use of Kierkegaard’s terminology, Heschel indicates that the individual’s religious experience does not know national or religious borders. The ways of achieving the deep religious experience of fear and trembling may be different, but the experience itself remains the same. One could argue that all religious experiences come to the same end, and that consequently differences may be disregarded as mere human understandings. But Heschel warns us away from such a point of view, because he interprets the pluralistic situation as one that reflects the Divine will: Does not the task of preparing the Kingdom of God require a diversity of talents, a variety of rituals, soul searching as well as opposition? Perhaps it is the will of God that in this eon there should be diversity in our forms of devotion and commitment to Him. In this eon diversity is the will of God.56

Heschel disagrees with those who proclaim that their own faith is the only true one. He notes: “Religion is a means, not an end. It becomes idolatrous when regarded as an end in itself.”57 Jews are committed to Judaism, and Christians to Christianity, but: “Over and above all being stands the Creator and Lord of history, He who transcends all. To equate religion and God is idolatry,”58 he warns. Our human understanding and perception of God is not to be confused with God Himself. The ways may forget that they are only human ways. In a pluralistic perspective, Heschel writes: “One truth comes to expression in many ways of understanding.”59 The Divine voice is heard in different fashions. Concentrating upon the relationship between Jews and Christians, Heschel thinks that communication as well as separation is needed; one needs particularity, but one also has to foster care for the other and to 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1954), 69–74. Heschel, “No Religion Is an Island,” 244. Heschel, “No Religion Is an Island,” 243. Ibid. Heschel, “No Religion Is an Island,” 244. — 268 —

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cooperate.60 One has to avoid bringing Judaism and Christianity back to their “lowest common denominator.”61 In both religions, one hears the voice of God in a particular way. Israel has a special vocation, and the Christian has to comprehend that their God is the God of Israel: A Christian ought to realize that a world without Israel would be a world without the God of Israel. A Jew, on the other hand, ought to acknowledge the eminent role and part of Christianity in God’s design for the redemption of all men.62

With this statement, Heschel comes close to the view of Rosenzweig, who put Judaism as the fire in the center of his “Star” and who linked Christianity as the rays to Judaism, the fire: Judaism had to be conscious of the expansive, missionary movement; Christianity had to acknowledge its dependence upon Judaism. Rosenzweig referred to Jehuda Halevi and to Maimonides in order to justify the exceptional task he gave to Christianity in the process of redemption.63 Heschel did see the importance of Christianity as a religion linked to Judaism. So had Jehuda Halevi. Heschel, however, disagreed with Jehuda Halevi, who in his The Kuzari claimed that the holiness of the people of Israel stems from a quality inherent to the people of Israel’s soul.64 Heschel conceived of the response of the people of Israel to the Divine call as the source of holiness. Holiness was not inherent or an ontological quality in Israel — that would create an unjustified gap between man and man. Jehuda Halevi did emphasize the gulf between Israel and the rest of humanity, but Heschel tended to concentrate upon the unifying factors, alongside the unique role played by the people of Israel. For him, nobody hears the voice of God as it is, but God reveals Himself to each and every individual according to his comprehension. The voice of God split up into seventy voices, so that all could understand.65 Heschel appreciates the value of the different 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

Heschel, “No Religion Is an Island,” 241. Ibid. Heschel, “No Religion Is an Island,” 242. Rosenzweig, Der Stern, 372–373. Judah Halevi, The Kuzari (New York: Schocken Books, 1964), part 1, 27–103. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 261. — 269 —

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religions, but he hastens to add that his standpoint does not imply subjectivism.66 That God spoke to every Jew at Mount Sinai is enlarged here in God’s speech for every human being. God’s voice is split up and He thereby assigns variant roles to different nations and to different religions.

The Voice of Israel In Heschel’s theology, God assigned a unique role to Israel in the course of human history. Israel has the task of becoming a holy nation. God did not reveal Himself, He revealed a teaching to Israel.67 In Heschel’s mind, the very existence of the people of Israel bears testimony: It is our destiny to live for what is more than ourselves. Our very existence is an unparalleled symbol of such aspiration. By being what we are, namely Jews, we mean more to mankind than by any particular service we may render.68

What makes the people of Israel so symbolic? According to Heschel, it is because of the prophetic aspiration to realize a holy life in this world. On this point, Heschel distinguishes between the prophet and the mystic. While the mystic attempts to flee the material, unholy world where his soul is trapped, the prophet aspires to make this world into a Kingdom of God, to purify the unholy and to sanctify it. This prophetic aspiration is the essence of Jewish belief. Heschel further sees the Jewish observation of the precepts of the Law as an expression of the Jewish striving to realize the prophetic vision. The system of mitzvot endows human actions with spiritual meaning. Through them Judaism achieves a holy way of life: “Israel is a spiritual order in which the human and the ultimate, the natural and the holy enter a lasting covenant, in which kinship with God is not an aspiration but a reality of destiny.”69 66. 67. 68. 69.

Ibid. Ibid. Heschel, “To Be a Jew: What Is It,” in Moral Grandeur, 8. Heschel, “To Be a Jew,” 7. — 270 —

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Through the Divine commandments Israel makes holy life a reality. The practical, “legalistic” nature of the precepts is for Heschel the basis of holiness in this world. The people of Israel are a living example of the possibility of achieving a holy life in this world. Therefore, “Our share in holiness we acquire by living in the Jewish community. What we do as individuals is a trivial episode; what we attain as Israel causes us to grow into the infinite.”70 Heschel’s concept of holiness is therefore that of the community. In this again he differs from mystics, who strive to attain personal happiness and holiness. Judaism and the Jewish prophets have sought to bring happiness and holiness to the world as a whole, he declares. In Heschel’s mind, as individuals we are engulfed in the tumultuous waves of the world; as members of a community we can influence the world, and possibly take control of the destructive forces erupting in it. Against any subjectivistic standpoint, Heschel adds that the Divine will, as revealed to the prophets as well as to the wise men of Israel, demands that the people of Israel persist in fulfilling its holy role as an inspiration for all: “For us Jews there can be no fellowship with God without the fellowship with Israel. Abandoning Israel, we desert God.”71 Israel had to be God’s servant, a light to the nations, so that salvation “may reach to the end of the earth (Isaiah 49:6).”72 These are straightforward words uttered in our modern social context, where dissociation from the Jewish community is a real option. In modern life, continued affiliation with the Jewish people may be construed as a matter of personal choice. Heschel wished to clarify that abandonment of the community entails relinquishing God. To be Jewish is not a kind of option. In describing the people of Israel as a tree to which all Jews cling, Heschel wishes to express the bond between all these individuals. The trunk of the tree, Israel, is the source of life. Its leaves are the result of mutual commitment. The people of Israel do not have to acquiesce to the dictates of reality. They should rebel against norms that do not conform with the ideal of a holy world, which they are destined to bring about. As Heschel puts it: 70. 71. 72.

Ibid. Ibid. Heschel, The Prophets, vol. I, 156–158. — 271 —

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There is a war to wage against the vulgar, against that glorification of the absurd, a war that is incessant, universal. Loyal to the presence of the ultimate in the common, we may be able to make it clear that man is more than man, that in doing the finite he may perceive the infinite.73

This is how Heschel transports the age-old struggle waged by the prophets against idolatry to the present day. In modern times, idolatry means the devotion of man to material values of wealth and hedonism, forsaking the latter-day vision. Heschel does not embrace asceticism but demands that man rise above his reality and gaze into the good world toward which he should strive. One of the most frequent quotations in Heschel’s oeuvre is: “Lift up your eyes on high and see, Who created these?” (Isaiah 40:26). Heschel dreamed of following the teaching of the prophet, of lifting his eyes and looking at the Divine presence in the everyday world. The ability to do so is the main message conveyed by the people of Israel in this world: “A sense of contact with the ultimate dawns upon most people when their self-reliance is swept away by violent misery. Judaism is the attempt to instill in us that sense as an everyday awareness.”74 The sense of Divine presence in routine existence makes great demands on one’s life, because every single deed one perfoms is instilled with meaning: “It leads us to regard injustice as a metaphysical calamity, to sense the divine significance of human happiness, to keep slightly above the twilight of the self, enabling us to sense the eternal within the temporal.”75 This perception led Heschel to intense social involvement. His picture marching at the side of Martin Luther King, Jr., is well-known. Heschel was quoted as saying that he felt his legs praying during the march. This is an expression of his belief that an infringement of human rights is an immense spiritual danger to the Divine plan to establish a holy world. Jews and Christians are responsible for the implementation of the Divine plan. This is also the ground for Heschel’s activities at the Vatican Council in the 1960s.

73. 74. 75.

Heschel, “To Be a Jew,” 11. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 422. Ibid. — 272 —

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No Religion is an Island The famous “No Religion Is an Island” address — which became known as one of Heschel’s most important articles — was delivered at Union Theological Seminary on November 10, 1965. Heschel was the first Jewish visiting professor at that Christian institution, and “No Religion Is an Island” was his inaugural lecture as Harry Emerson Fosdick Visiting Professor. It was an expression of the fruitful relationship that Heschel enjoyed with the Union faculty.76 One of Tillich’s works that no doubt caught Heschel’s attention in particular was Faith and the Courage To Be.77 Indeed, it would not have been surprising had Heschel given this title to one of his own works, inasmuch as the phrase comprises the ideas of faith and prophetic commitment that are foundational to Heschel’s worldview. Yet reading Heschel, it becomes clear that the unique meaning he gives to faith makes his approach divergent from that of Tillich. Tillich and Heschel worked at a time when doubt challenged the foundations of faith. They sought to point the way to a faith that could contend with the loss of faith not by eliminating doubt but rather by focusing upon faith that grows in the human spirit, despite doubt. Heschel and Tillich shared certain ideas, but their spiritual struggles were nonetheless very dissimilar. In his book, Tillich presents the courage to be as a courage that contends with existential anxiety. Heschel’s concern is not as much the anxiety but rather the loneliness of man that is overcome in the fight against the eclipse of God caused by the eclipse of man.78 Tillich spoke about the ground of being, and Heschel ironically asked if there is something above the ground,79 criticizing Tillich’s overly-psychological and excessively symbolic approach to God. Tillich defined faith as “a 76. 77.

78.

79.

Kaplan, Spiritual Radical, 281. Paul Tillich, The Courage To Be (New Haven: Yale University, 2000) (first published 1952). In Who Is Man, Heschel writes: “Man in his anxiety is a messenger who forgot the message” (119). In contrast to Tillich, Heschel did not see anxiety as a point of departure; it is rather a negative feeling caused by the forgetting of God. Heschel, A Passion for Truth, 159. He wrote that those who have taught that God is the ground of being have been acclaimed, but those who have insisted that God is above the ground of being have found very few ears for their message. — 273 —

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state of being ultimately concerned,” whereas Heschel claimed that in prophetic religion man is not confronted with his own ultimate concern but with God’s concern. In his article, Heschel proposes cooperation between Christians and Jews. Heschel, who was well-acquainted with Tillich’s theology, quotes Tillich in his “No Religion Is an Island,” as stating that interfaith discourses “have created a community of conversation which has changed both sides of the dialogue.”80 Heschel agreed that interfaith dialogue influenced the participants. No religion is an island: the theology that one religion develops, directly or indirectly, affects the other. Theologically, Heschel based this interfaith activity upon the spiritual insight that diversity is the will of God.81 A variety of approaches to serving God reflects the Divine will itself, and interfaith dialogue is what God desires; this dialogue led Heschel to sharpen and clarify certain elements in his own theological view. Sometimes, this resulted from his focusing upon parallel problems of faith in the Christian theology of his interlocutor, while at other times it stemmed from his opposition to concepts and beliefs that his Christian counterparts suggested as solutions to shared problems of faith. Interfaith dialogue could lead to mutual enrichment, but only when the participants maintained their unique identities. Goshen-Gottstein notes that Heschel was a “trail blazer” and that “most of the important voices that have been sounded over forty years are in some way indebted to Heschel.”82 He points to the prophetic character of Heschel’s interreligious activities: Following Heschel, therefore, means much more than engaging in interreligious dialogue on the basis of his ideas. It means developing the “prophetic” sense, in light of which a broader spiritual vision is formed, that encompasses other religions and that is appropriate for the moment.83

Whereas Heschel published his essay with the significant title “No 80. 81. 82.

83.

Heschel, “No Religion Is an Island,” 247. Heschel, “No Religion Is an Island,” 244. Alon Goshen-Gottstein, “No Religion Is an Island: Following the Trail Blazer,” Shofar 26, no. 1 (2007): 73. Goshen-Gottstein, “Following,” 110. — 274 —

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Religion Is an Island,” in 1966, in 1964 Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik published his own essay, not less significantly entitled “Confrontation.”84 Soloveitchik was profoundly aware of the particularity of Judaism. For this “lonely man of faith,” although shared human and social projects with Christians were not precluded, Judaism was so unique that it could not be communicated to the non-Jew. It was ineffable. In contrast to Soloveitchik, Heschel believed in the possibility of interfaith dialogue around the ineffable. He thought that he would be able to influence the Catholic Church in changing its attitude toward the Jews. He wrote about the shared humanity and common social concerns of Christians and Jews. Moreover, Christianity was founded on the Hebrew Bible and Christians and Jews had common “spiritual” concerns. Although Christians had rejected the Jewish people, they had to build a relationship with them because the God of the Bible is connected to the people of Israel. Unlike Soloveitchik, Heschel understood that Christian identity was linked to that of the Jews. It is more than merely common humanitarian concerns that tie Christians and Jews together. Christian identity itself, accepting the God of Israel, is necessarily dependent on the acceptance of a living people of Israel. Soloveitchik thought that Judaism had no reference to Christianity and that Jews did not need a theology of Christianity for their self-understanding. In fact, he holds that the distinctiveness of Judaism makes communication of faith impossible. For Soloveitchik, the Jew remains in this sense a lonely man of faith; for Heschel, on the level of religious cooperation, man is not alone. In an “addendum” on interfaith dialogue that appeared in 1966,85 Soloveitchik stated that the Jews as members of the universal community are opposed to a philosophy of isolationism. There are common moral and cultural tasks, and one can discuss universal religious problems, but Jews are a distinctive faith community with an intimate relationship with God, which “must not be debated with others whose relationship to God has been molded by different historical events and in different terms.” It would be improper to enter into dialogue on theological issues 84. 85.

Joseph Ber Soloveitchik, “Confrontation,” Tradition 6, no. 2 (1964): 5–29. Soloveitchik, Rabbinical Council Record (Feb. 1966): 78–80. — 275 —

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because of the different categories and the incommensurate frames of reference and evaluation. Soloveitchik wanted his fellow Jews to resist debating private individual commitment. He corrected himself in the “addendum,” but did not fundamentally change his attitude. He wanted to protect Judaism from being undermined by general society. Judaism was irreducible to what was intelligible to Christians, he judges, and further held that Jews were not mature enough for dialogue and fall too easily under general Christian categories. Judaism with its halakhic framework was not to be subsumed under Christian classifications. In his lecture at Union Theological Seminary, on the contrary, before a religiously mixed audience Heschel defended in an ecumenical spirit the necessity of fighting nihilism and cynicism as a common concern. Jews and Christians were united by the fear of alienation from God and the task of living in His presence. Jews and Christians knew the human as a disclosure of the Divine. One had to save the radiance of the Hebrew Bible in the minds of human beings. What modestly united Jews and Christians was mutual care and involvement in order to pay attention to God’s pathos. One had to keep the Divine sparks alive in one’s soul and to experience the fact that we are objects of God’s concern in brotherhood. No religion could do this alone. Nevertheless, for Heschel, dialogue is not “a confusion of the many,” it “remains a prerogative of the few.” What is at stake is “the survival of holiness in the history of the Jews.” In Heschel’s view, uniqueness and communication go hand in hand; one had to stand up to the worldwide “ecumenical movement” of nihilism. Jewish and Christians were called upon to see the human as a disclosure of the Divine, in human solidarity. Soloveitchik emphasized the incompatibility and the insurmountable gap between Judaism and Christianity, whereas Heschel appreciated the plurality of religious expression.86 Heschel went to visit the Pope, while Soloveitchik disapproved of that meeting. In a letter written in Hebrew to Jehuda Rosenthal, dated 22 Kislev

86.

For further discussion on Soloveitchik’s and Heschel’s attitudes toward Christianity, see Meir, “David Hartman on the Attitudes of Soloveitchik and Heschel toward Christianity,” in Judaism and Modernity: The Religious Philosophy of David Hartman, ed. J. W. Malino (Jerusalem: Shalom Hartman Institute, 2001), 253–265. — 276 —

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(December 28), 1965,87 Heschel tells about his fruitful contact with Cardinal Bea and his involvement in the reflection upon the text from the Second Vatican Council that is known as “Nostra Aetate.” In all his conversations with Catholic clergy, Heschel opposed the idea that Jews were only “candidates for conversion” (moamadim lehamarat ha-dat). In English he quotes himself as hoping “that the Ecumenical Council would acqnowledge [sic!] the integrity and permanent preciousness of Jews and Judaism.” He wanted the Church to omit its mission to the Jews. Nobody has done that before me, he writes (ba-ze lo qadam li ’ish). He tells about his visit to Pope Paul VI and how he opposed the idea of mission. The Pope told him “I will do what I can, but remember the Council follows a democratic procedure.” He further told the Pope about the hatred of Israel as something that is demonic, that results from the “sitra ahra.” They also discussed the accusation of the deicide. At the end of the private audience, Heschel presented the Pope with a copy of his book The Prophets, and he received a present from the pontiff. And then, we read on the last page of this letter: “Rabbi Soloveitchik sinned against me” (harav Soloveitchik hata negdi). The sentence most probably refers to Soloveitchik’s public reassertion of his opposition to interfaith discussions on the very day of Heschel’s private audience with the Pope, September 14, 1964. Soloveitchik alluded to Heschel’s statement, “As I have repeatedly stated to leading personalities of the Vatican, I am ready to go to Auschwitz any time, if faced with the alternative of conversion or death.” Without mentioning Heschel’s name, Soloveitchik stated: “The situation does not call for hysteria and readiness to incur martyrdom. All it requires is common sense, responsibility, dignity and particularly a moratorium on theological ‘Dialogue’ and pilgrimages to Rome.”88 Like Soloveitchik, Heschel knew that not everything is communicable and that one is never completely intelligible for others. But against the leader of modern Orthodoxy, he maintained that one had to help others in fighting their own prejudices against the Jews, and that one should wage a battle against anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism for the sake of 87.

88.

See Archive Gnazim, Tel Aviv, archive 200 Gnazim, 91155 alef. Thanks are due to Binjamin Meir for having drawn our attention to this letter. Kaplan, Spiritual Radical, 266. — 277 —

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the Jews. Helping others to get rid of their a prioris was unnecessary for Soloveitchik, but it was a must for Heschel. Soloveitchik argued for barriers between Jews and Christians, spearheading the rejectionist line of the Rabbinical Council of America.89 Heschel, on his part, felt responsibility for the Jewish people, and therefore he could not do otherwise than talk with Christians in order that they might improve their relationships with the Jews.90

Corresponding Jewish and Christian Thoughts Susannah Heschel notes that her father’s writings on Christianity are significantly different in topic from those of most other modern Jewish thinkers. He is unlike Buber, “with his obsequious embrace of Jesus as the best Jew who ever lived.”91 The focus of Buber on the person of Jesus is indeed exceptional and has no parallel in Heschel’s writings. Yet, like Buber, Heschel was attentive to corresponding thoughts in the Jewish and the Christian religions. Heschel writes about the Sages who commented upon the verse “face to face the Lord spoke with you” (Deuteronomy 5:4). Rabbi Joshua ben Levi asked how the Divine face can be on the same level as the human face. Either the higher partner humbles himself, or the lower partner is elevated. Referring to the verse in Exodus 19:20, “The Lord came down upon Mount Sinai,” Rabbi ben Levi understands that God humbled Himself. Heschel remarks that the notion that God humbled himself by descending to earth was an important element in Paulian theology. Paul indeed taught that Jesus bore the Divine likeness but humbled himself by dying on a cross (Phil. 2:6–8). And Heschel surprisingly adds: “Perhaps those Sages who taught that the Divine Glory did not descend, recognized that this concept was an essential article of faith 89. 90.

91.

Kaplan, Spiritual Radical, 260–261. For further aspects of the relationship between Heschel and Soloveitchik, see R. Horwitz, “The Relation of Rabbi Soloveitchik to Religious Experience and Mystery,” in Emuna bizmanim mishtanim, ed. Avi Sagi (Ein Tsurim: Merkaz Yaacov Herzog Center for Jewish Studies, 1996), 45–74. S. Heschel, “The Revival of Theopaschism in Post-World War II Theology,” in Judaism, Topics, Fragments, Faces, Identities. Jubilee Volume in Honor of Rivka Horwitz, eds. H. Pedaya and E. Meir (Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University Press, 2007), 71. — 278 —

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among the Christians.”92 The fact that Heschel, in the presentation of a fundamental Talmudic disputation, juxtaposes the Sages and a Pauline article of faith, testifies to his own historical insight, in which a position of the Sages is paralleled to a Pauline one. It also testifies to his own attitude of openness toward an insight, regardless of its source. He recognizes that at least some of the Sages considered that a Pauline standpoint was also one of their own positions. Moshe Idel rightly remarks that Heschel did not fear to adopt and adapt pertinent visions, even those found in Christianity.93

Heschel’s Contribution to a Christian Renewal Heschel’s involvement and critical stance in the dialogue with Christianity comes to the fore in still another way. In his article “Protestant Renewal: A Jewish View,” he critically remarks that there has been a conscious or unconscious dejudaization of Christianity over the centuries.94 One contrasts the two religions95 as if Judaism teaches a God of wrath and Christianity a God of love, as if Jews have a religion of slavish obedience and Christians one of freedom, as if Judaism is particular and Christianity universal. The Hebrew Bible is frequently considered a mere preparation for the Christian New Testament, and the discontinuity between the past and the present is accentuated. Like Buber, Heschel accuses Marcion of having brought a spiritual alienation from Judaism. Marcion’s doctrine was anathemized, but the influence of Marcionism is much more alive than one generally realizes. Heschel admonishes Christians that they do not separate mystery from history. For him, the future of the Western world depended upon the relationship to the Hebrew Bible and especially to the prophets.96 92. 93. 94. 95.

96.

Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 362. Idel, Heschel, 87–88. Heschel, “Protestant Renewal.” In his God in Search of Man Heschel himself contrasts both religions, writing that salvation is the central concept in Christianity, whereas mitzva is the focus of Jewish consciousness (361). In Who Is Man, Heschel writes that the Bible has not given the world a new concept of God but a new vision of man: “The Bible is not a book about God; it is a book about man” (119). — 279 —

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An additional point in Heschel’s evaluation of the situation of Protestantism in his time is parallel to Buber’s thought on the Bible. Heschel asserted that the Bible is not a book like any other book, just as his mother is not like any other mother. The words of the Bible are not made of paper. Buber would say that the Bible is not an “it,” but a “you,” a living word addressed to human beings, a living word that may be heard by the one who reads the Bible aloud. Heschel protests against the desacralization of the Bible, which is not “a collection of ill-composed records on a mass of paper.”97 Torah is a living word and man may become a Torah. The presence of God that is testified to is much more important than issues of philology and chronology. In response to the Protestant need for reexamination and renewal, Heschel does not see the preservation of the church as a central task, but rather the preservation of humanity. The issue is not the question of the incarnation, it is the elimination of the Divine. Applying his philosophy of religious language, Heschel criticizes dogmas that claim to formulate and embody the Divine reality. He affirms dogmas insofar as they indicate a direction. If they mark an end, they flaunt. If they serve as signposts on the way, if they are allusive rather than conclusive, informative, or descriptive, they are of the utmost relevance. Caustically, he writes that the righteous lives by their faith, not by their creed. This again rejoins Buber’s thought on the tragic Hellenization of Christianity in which pistis, creed, prevails over emuna, trust. Heschel was concerned that Christians become less and less messianic. In the consciousness of the Christians of his days, the promise of redemption was not prominent. He preferred the Galilean disciples of Jesus over the Hellenistic Christians. The first group still had the hope that the Kingdom was at hand in the apocalyptic sense, but for the Hellenistic Christians, who conquered the Roman Empire, the Gospel was important for each individual, apart from the eschatological Kingdom.98 Heschel was afraid that the vision of 97.

98.

Heschel, “Protestant Renewal: A Jewish View”(1963) in Heschel, The Insecurity of Freedom, 172. Heschel, “The God of Israel and Christian Renewal,” in Moral Grandeur, 279–280. — 280 —

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redemption would disappear, and that the Christians were not linked anymore to the original vision of a Jesus who wanted the mending and redemption of the world. In this, he again joined Buber’s position.99 He protested against the Paulinean idea that man is saved by faith alone, an idea which had profound influence upon Christianity, and returned in Kant’s perception of the essence of religion and morality as a quality of the soul or will, regardless of the actions of he who professed allegiance to it.100

Theopaschism In her article “The Revival of Theopaschism in Post-World War II Theology,” Heschel’s daughter Susannah notes that, after the Holocaust, theopaschism as the belief that God suffers has reemerged as a central feature of Christian theology. In this theological thought, God is not impassive and impersonal but is affected by human activity and suffers with human beings. Susannah Heschel analyzes the work of Juergen Moltmann, who frequently quotes Heschel, and of Eberhard Juengel, who likewise discusses the theme of the suffering God. For these two theologians, God was not apathic and impassible but passionate and empathetic, suffering with the suffering of others.101 Heschel’s theology of God’s pathos, a model that influenced Christian thinkers, had its sources in the experience of Israel, as, for instance, in the idea of the Shekhinah that accompanies the people of Israel into exile. Susannah Heschel refers to Arthur Green, who points out that Heschel expanded the kabbalistic understanding of tsorekh gavoah, Divine need, by envisioning a God responsive to public acts of social

99.

100. 101.

Latin America liberation theologies, such as those of Leonordo Boff, Oscar Romero, Gustavo Gutiérrez, Jon Sobrino, and Juan Luis Segundo, and the thoughts of activist theologians who wanted to free their people from poverty, injustice, and oppression were congruent with the Jewish thought of mending the world and the Jewish refusal of considering the world as principally already redeemed. Heschel, “The Spirit of Jewish Prayer,” 139–140. S. Heschel, “The Revival of Theopaschism in Post-World War II Theology,” in Judaism, Topics, Fragments, Faces, Identities. Jubilee Volume in Honor of Rivka Horwitz, eds. H. Pedaya and E. Meir (Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University Press, 2007), 69–86. — 281 —

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justice.102 Heschel also quotes the already-mentioned Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, who thought that it is possible for man to increase the power of God.103 Susannah Heschel wrote about the profound influence of her father’s thought upon Christian theologians who were eager to inherit the idea of a suffering God. This again testifies to Heschel’s commitment of enabling bringing Jews and Christians alike to recognize what is ineffable and linked to the heart of this world. One had to be conscious of God’s presence and to work toward the realization of this presence in everyday life. In this he again found Buber as his partner. Heschel’s suffering God and Buber’s suffering servant were very much involved in matters of the everyday, terrestrial reality.

102. 103.

S. Heschel, “Theopaschism,” 78; Green, “Mystics.” Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 113. — 282 —

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Conclusion

Heschel and Buber were noble souls and giant thinkers who enjoyed great authority in the religious world. Their profundity and creativity in the fields of religious, biblical, and Jewish studies is unquestioned. They wrote in a beautiful prose style, and Heschel added to that his Yiddish poetry. They did not intend to reconstruct the entire history of Israel but instead selected elements in the longstanding tradition that fit their own understanding of what religiosity and the faith of Israel were all about. Buber went so far as to not accept certain passages in the Bible that did not reflect the dialogical pattern that characterized biblical thinking as well as his own philosophy, thoughts that interacted with each other. Heschel was more attentive to the Sages and to diversity in the tradition, from which he did not eliminate one voice in favor of another. He was, for example, open to the quite different thoughts of Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael, and of the Ba’al Shem Tov and the Kotzker rebbe, who both lived on in his personality. Buber was more focused upon the Bible in itself, combining a historical critical approach and his own Total Interpretation, which aimed at the unity in the human being and in society. He preferred the holy Yehudi over the Seer of Lublin as he favored the prophets over the priests and return, teshuva, over magic. Heschel and Buber were both successful translators: Heschel translated central elements of Eastern European Jewry for the American public, while Buber translated the Bible and demonstrated the relevance of Hasidic religiosity for to the West. The two were convinced that Hasidism was a renovating force in Judaism and a source of inspiration for the world. One core underlying idea is present in the writings of each thinker. Heshel’s central focus is the rejection of the denigration of the here and — 283 —

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now. Not only God but God and man were important: one had to mend the world and to establish the Kingdom of God. One need not have contempt for worldly affairs nor abandon the struggle of the human being against evil. In The Prophets, these men with sympathy for the Divine pathos demanded respect and help for the poor and destitute. In his introduction to Heavenly Torah, Heschel continues to reflect upon other crucial parts of Jewish history. He writes that at a crossroad in Jewish history two “fathers of the world” met: Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael.1 In his approach to the Torah, Rabbi Ishmael not only saw the Divine, he perceived the Divine and the human and was haunted by the prosperity of the wicked.2 Rabbi Ishmael’s position was continued by his “reincarnation” in the Kotzker rebbe and in Heschel himself, as the “reincarnation” of the latter. In order to describe the focal point in all of his writings, Heschel repeats words and ideas that express God’s Divine pathos asking for the cooperation of man. Likewise in the writings of Buber, who was a great moral authority and a voice to which many Jews and Christian listened, one constant element reappears in the form of anti-Gnosticist and anti-magic proclamations. Positively formulated, Buber’s main idea is that heaven and earth are linked, that real religiosity has to do with the fullness of a human being’s life, and that the unity of God implies the unification of mankind. Magic as the perception of the masterable mystery had its origin in Egypt, where prescribed formulas and gestures ensured eternal life. Gnosis, the perception of the knowable mystery, had its origin in the Babylonian teaching about the stars that control the destinies of people; the doctrine reached its peak in the Iranian principle of the world-soul imprisoned in the cosmos. Buber was especially concerned about Gnosticism, which misunderstood the meeting, whereas magic offended the meeting.3 His anti-Gnostic attitude, his endeavor to bring God’s presence between men, was present in his description of the prophetic protest against the kings, who forgot the spirit. It was present in Job, who suffered but continued to trust in God. The elevated 1. 2. 3.

Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 32. Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 36–37. Buber, “The Faith of Judaism,” 260–262. — 284 —

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“Suffering Servant” as a principal figure is the one who did not eliminate suffering but while suffering continued to trust in God, who suffered with man. This last idea is on parallel with Heschel’s God of pathos and with his concept of the prophet, who lives not only his personal life but also the life of God.4 Anti-Gnosticism is present in “emuna” as opposed to “pistis.” Jesus did not flee the world, he did not abolish the Torah in this world, but rather highlighted the service of the heart, kavvanah. Centuries later, the holy Yehudi opted for the concrete return of man to God, as against the magic of the Seer of Lublin. And Zionism, in Buber’s eyes, was finally the concrete possibility to live again under the Kingdom of God, an opportunity to bring heaven and earth together in mending the world. With all the differences between them, Heschel and Buber had therefore one major factor in common: they shared the Jewish emphasis upon the here and now and upon the mending of the world in the perspective of the Kingdom of Heaven. Both thought that a person’s greatest sin was to forget that he or she was the son or daughter of a King. They were concerned with man’s everyday life and did not flee in a Gnostic way from earthly reality but granted it considerable attention. They both were critical of a religion that is not connected to human society, urging it, in Buber’s words, to be the “chrysalis,” that must constantly receive “new wings.”5 They perceived a tension between religion and religiosity, a tension that, in Buber’s writings, occasionally becomes a contrast. The figure of the “Suffering Servant” was the culmination of prophetic existence in Buber’s view. He took into account that suffering was inherent in a human existence that is characterized by dialogue. Heschel’s emphasis is different. He taught that the burden of faith did not cause suffering but joy: life had to be cherished, whereas in imitatio Christi the Christian took upon himself the cross and accepted persecution. Of course, Buber did not develop a Christian view of suffering,6 but he felt the inevitability of suffering as result of the 4. 5. 6.

Heschel, The Prophets, vol. I, 26. Buber, I and Thou, 165; Ich und Du, 101. The Christian liturgical formula “Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi,” understood as — 285 —

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responsibility for others more than did Heschel. Jesus, in his perspective, was not the one who took away the sins of mankind once and for all in a magical way, but the one who, in line with the Jewish tradition, repaired the world and felt endless responsibility, which necessarily involves suffering. Heschel was more polemical when writing on suffering in Christianity.7 Their differences on the subject of the Suffering Servant can be explained by their divergent interests. Buber’s discussion on the Suffering Servant is a discourse about all of Israel and about Jesus as a prototypical man; Heschel’s narrative on suffering contrasts a lifeaffirming Judaism with a life-denying Kierkegaard. Heschel and Buber both wanted to change the condition of the suffering man, but Buber more than Heschel attributed an inherent suffering to Israel as God’s servant. Heschel’s prophets are men struggling with and combating evil, more than dialogical men. His prophets identify in their theopaschistic attitude with a suffering God and strive to stop evil. Heschel’s God suffers, and one has to prophetically combat suffering, while Buber’s righteous men and Israel as Suffering Servants suffer but remain in emuna, trust: lu yiqtelinu, lo ayyahel, even if He kills me, I continue to trust in Him. Heschel and Buber related differently to the Bible. Buber was interested in proving the historicity of the patriarchs and of Moses, but more than that, he saw in these biblical figures dialogical men. He hoped that modern man, who had lost the lofty faith, would find his way back to the spokenness of the Bible and that he would open himself to the Divine voice that still addresses human beings. In their translation, he and Rosenzweig were attentive to the unity of the Bible, beyond any document or source. Heschel wrote of another unity, a unity in time. For him, the present was not apart from the past: Abraham still stands before God and present day man is Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses, with the prophetic task of mending the world. Biblical man continues in present-day man. Both Heschel and Buber were not interested in

7.

“Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” is not congruent with Buber’s idea of the Suffering Servant, who “bears” the burden of the others. His insistence upon teshuva, turn, prevents him from adopting the idea that one man dogmatically saves and redeems the entire world by suffering once and for all for all the others. Heschel, A Passion for Truth, 250–251. — 286 —

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the chronological problems of the Bible as such, for the authenticity and sanctity of the Bible depends, rather, upon our reaction to Divine revelation. The historical question was not the first concern, for them, for responsiveness was primordial in their biblical hermeneutics. Both men connected a prophetic religiosity with mending the world, and thus were active in social and political arenas. Buber’s life-long fight against Gnosticism paralleled the idea that one had permanent work to do in this world, that the world not be cut off from God. One must instead hallow everyday life and bring this world in all its complexity and with all of its evil aspects before the One who is near to man and who reveals Himself as the present one, even in the midst of pain and struggle. In his life, Buber overcame a dualism that opposed the concrete, problematic world to an elevated, spiritual one, and so he coped with this concrete world in which the Divine Glory had to be inserted, the mundane hallowed, and the profane sanctified. He quoted Isaac Meir, the Gerer rebbe, as having said that many wanted to reject the world. The Gerer rebbe objected: Is the world yours, that you can reject it?8 Buber held good and evil together in God, not in the manner of Zoroastrianism.9 In his early poems, Heschel reproached God, arguing that He did not intervene and did not care enough about this world. Later, God became to him primarily the caring One. In many humble daily acts, but also in his public protest against the Vietnam War, Heschel lived his prophetic faith in sympathy with Divine care. He sided with Martin Luther King, Jr., in his struggle for equal rights and was active in support of Russian Jews as a result of what he defined as his religious responsibility. In Buber’s religious anthropology, dialogical man brings about God’s 8. 9.

Buber, Werke III, 698. Michael Strausberg writes that in their debates with Jews and Moslems, Zoroastrians pointed out that a deficiency was attributed to God if one blamed Him for the existence of evil. That was what was being done, if one failed to identify an independent principle of evil. According to Strausberg, most Zoroastrians today see their religion not as dualistic but as monotheistic. They do not symmetrically juxtapose Ahura Mazada and his opponent Ahreman or the Foul Spirit, as one does in the “Selected Advices of the Ancient Sages.” Unlike the neo-traditionalists, they reject dualism. See Strausberg, Zarathustra and Zoroastrianism: A Short Introduction, trans. Margret Preisler-Weller (London: Equinox, 2008), 9–10. — 287 —

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presence from below. In Heschel’s depth-theology, that is also the case, yet man is considered from the heights of heaven: because the ultimate worth of man does not lie in his virtue or faith but is rather due to these traits in God, wherever there is a trace of man, God is present.10 On the subject of the Law, Buber and Heschel differed significantly. The Jewish soul was pre-Sinaitic in Buber’s perspective, and Sinaitic in Heschel’s. Buber opposed prophecy and legalism, while Heschel did not set prophecy in opposition to the Law. For Heschel, Torah was more than Law and the translators of the Bible into Greek committed a fatal error when they rendered Torah as nomos — L aw.11 In Buber’s oeuvre, God is not defined as Lawgiver, and Hasidism is valuated over rabbinics. Heschel’s work did not contrast Hasidism and the Law. Both thinkers considered Hasidism with its emphasis upon interiority to be an apex in the history of authentic religiosity that started with the prophets and that continued to convey the spiritual heritage of Judaism.12 They were anti pan-halakhic, and Heschel evidenced more clearly the tension between Halakha and Aggada,13 whereas Buber was convinced that Halakah had oppressed the creative forces in Judaism. He did not focus upon the Aggada as Heschel did, however. Both opposed magic and paid attention to God’s request for the heart. Neither reduced human life to ethics, but both were interested in the whole man and in the totality of life, where one is always in concrete situations with good and bad intermingled. 10. 11. 12.

13.

Heschel, “Religion and Race,” 94. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 325. See Sherwin, “Review of The Earth Is the Lord’s and A Passion for Truth,” Shofar 26, no. 1 (2007): 184. This tension between Halakha and Aggada is also discussed upon by Levinas in a passage referred to previously. See Levinas, Du sacré au saint. Cinq nouvelles lectures talmudiques (collection Critique) (Paris: les éditions de Minuit, 1977), 176–177; Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings, trans. Annette Aronowicz (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990), 194–195. In reference to Baba kama, 60a-b, Levinas criticizes the idea that one forgets the vitality and sticks instead to the colorless laws (this attitude is symbolized by the elder woman who pulls the black hairs off of her husband) or that one forgets traditional behavior, looking only for the relevance of the right behavior (an attitude symbolized by the younger woman who extracts the white hairs of the same husband). According to Isaac the Blacksmith, Halakha and Aggada belong together. — 288 —

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Buber as well as Heschel related to Christianity and its theology. Yet Buber more than Heschel concentrated upon Jesus, whom he situated without hesitation completely within the Jewish tradition. This exceptional, unique position in Jewish thought testifies to Buber’s lively interest in Jesus, not as the founder of Christianity but as the one whose I-saying is “overpowering”: it is the I of “the unconditional relation with which man calls his You ‘Father’ in such a way that he himself becomes nothing but a son.”14 Jesus was for Buber an outstanding example of a person who knew to say Father and to become son.15 Jesus was called a “brother,” and God he could call with warmth “Gotenyu.” Because of his immediate relation to God, Heschel was able to address God in one of his Yiddish poems as “our brother.”16 In typical phrasing and with an eye on the Christian use of the word, Heschel wrote about the potential of man who could become “an incarnation of the Torah.” He hereby brought the Torah into the concreteness of human existence, inserted into a person’s soul and his deeds. The Torah was therefore not Buber’s Weisung, instruction, but embodied in the concreteness of the mitzvot that made man conscious of God’s presence. Buber brought Judaism and Jesus together, and Heschel was active at the Oecumenical Council. Both, then, were teachers and spiritual men for Jews as well as for Christians. Although Buber adopted Rang’s idea that religions are exiles that only God can liberate17 and although he was critical of religions as such, he would not object to Heschel’s idea that no religion is an island. Heschel inspired Christian theologians in their discussion of theopaschism. His God was a God with pathos, who suffers the pain of human beings and is moved by them. Buber’s lively interest in the Eved ha-Shem, the Suffering Servant, is not far removed from this. Buber and Heschel coped with the evil of their times. It is not surprising that 14. 15. 16.

17.

Buber, I and Thou, 116; Ich und Du, 60–61. Buber, I and Thou, 116–117; Ich und Du, 60–61. “Our brother God!

From the last, endless height bend down to us, tenderly and kiss evey creature; kiss us soft and clear.”

— Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God, 64–65. Friedman, Encounter on the Narrow Ridge, 194. — 289 —

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Heschel identified with the tormented Kotzker rebbe as a figure who suffered, without, however, despairing and retreating in seclusion,18 nor that Buber had a profound interest in Job as searching for trust, in spite of evil. Both are post-Holocaust thinkers. Rosenzweig renewed the entire approach to the Law by contrasting the subjective command with that which is doable and registered in the objective Law. Buber too brought a great renewal, but in the field of Jewish study, accentuating the inner power of study which transforms the knowable into something vivid, living, and personal. Heschel taught people to pray, accentuating the wonder of everyday life and orienting their regard for God’s concern. His novum was the deepening of liturgical prayer and broadening it into social action. Both Heschel and Buber highlighted the fact that the aim of prayer is not to take flight from the world, to turn one’s back on everyday life, and to find tranquility in a place that is separated from the world. For Heschel, praying was an experiment of the soul, a kind of daydreaming in which one dreamed about something desired, the fulfillment of which one experiences in one’s fantasy.19 In prayer, one hoped for a new world, and one identified with the Divine vision of the world, with God’s pathos. For Buber, prayer was less a question of liturgy or of an identification with God’s pathos, it was a spiritual force in the service of the interhuman meeting, through which one experienced the Divine Presence. He was more focused upon dialogue than on the commandments and on prayer.20 For both, prayer was not an intellectual exercise or a mere psychological phenomenon, but 18. 19.

20.

Heschel, A Passion for Truth, 263. “Jedermann kennt den Zustand der Seele, den man das Traeumen, das Wachtraeumen nennt. Es is die Hingabe des Gefuehls an eine begehrte Sache, deren Erfuellung in der Vorstellung erlebt wird.” These sentences appear on two typed pages, entitled “Das Gebet. Zu Rosh Haschanah 5702” (Makhon Schocken, Jerusalem). Buber, I and Thou, 116–117; Ich und Du, 60–61. On Heschel’s view on revelation and the commandments, Moshe Idel writes: “Heschel’s theory of revelation differs from what we find in the other major Jewish thinkers of his generation: not dialogical à la Buber, not symbolic à la Scholem, not a philosophical-ethical turn to the Other à la Levinas, but a much more concrete approach focused on the performance of the commandments, especially prayer” (Idel, Heschel, 83).

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abandoning the solipsistic self and turning to God’s Presence. With time, under the influence of Rosenzweig and his work on the Bible, Buber’s view on God changed. Through his dialogical reading of the Bible on the word of God, he was himself changed, and in this manner, he came closer to the standpoint of Heschel and his concept of the direct contact between man and God. However, Buber remained critical toward the possible temptation of magic that threatened any form of prayer. This aspect is nonexistent in Heschel, who saw man as God’s need and was focused upon the prophets, who were far removed from any form of magic. Heschel was not concerned with the possible temptation of magic. He was critical about magic, but considered Hasidic life full of wonders. Writing on prayer, he could therefore allow himself to disregard the problem of magic. He was foremost anxious that man might forget God and distort his religious task, which implied social action. Similarly to Buber, who developed a dialogical hermeneutics in which the text was a “you,” Heschel in his writing on prayer applied a dialogical hermeneutics which he learned from Kulbak. Heschel and Buber were aware that biblical language and more broadly religious language was not purely descriptive, objective, and defining. Religious language is not a logical language but a suggestive one, through which deeper layers of reality are uncovered. Heschel paid special attention to the peculiarity of religious language, contrasting it to the scientific one. What was experienced could not be adequately expressed in conventional, ordinary language with its definitive, preconceived and fixed meanings. In a sense, Heschel is the Wittgenstein of religious language. Like Wittgenstein, he opposed the understanding of religious language as pure picture language and pointed to the specificity and the unique character of the religious “language game.” Buber and Heschel were thinkers who knew how to bring biblical language and the Hasidic treasure to the people of their days. They opposed a mere historicist approach to the texts and brought the texts into the living context of the present. Heschel identified with the prophets. In the case of Buber, there is an identification with the biblical heroes, or more accurately, anti-heroes, as dialogical beings. His research on the Bible was not meant to be objective; it was colored by his dialogical thinking. There was a kind of living dialogue going — 291 —

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on between Buber’s philosophy and the Bible. Buber did not force his thought upon the Bible, in which he deemed dialogue was central. His biblical commentaries discussed the encounter between the Divine biblical address and the responding human being. On the subject of the interpretation of the prophets, who were a central subject in their writings, Buber and Heschel differed significantly. Heschel understood these figures as disturbing, critical people, who proclaimed God’s pathos and spoke not for the idea of justice but for the God of justice and for His concern for justice,21 whereas Buber saw them as examples of moral people who were in contact with their “innate you” (das eingeborene Du),22 and with God through their dialogue with other human beings and the defense of a righteous society. They diverged on the subject of the prophets, then, but not on the subject of the continuity of revelation. Arthur Green observed that Buber and Heschel both looked for examples of the holy and charismatic figures that they strove to become and of which their time was in need. Buber looked to Hasidic Eastern Europe and Heschel to the distant past of ancient Israel. Green suggests that the prophets played a similar role for Heschel to that served by the Hasidic masters for Buber. He nuances his position by noting that at the core of the prophetic phenomenon, there are echoes of religious figures, who Heschel knew from the Hasidic setting.23 In our view, Buber and Heschel related to the prophets as well as to the Hasidic masters as examples of authentic religiosity. Hasidism for both thinkers was not only a historical phenomenon to be studied objectively but a way of life that was inspirational for the religious consciousness of present-day man. Heschel and Buber dreamed about a religiosity that would transform humanity and bring God into everyday life. They related to Hasidic stories as a kind of midrashic material, through which man found orientation in his life. They saw Hasidism as a primary source of Judaism and strove for an enlightened

21. 22. 23.

Heschel, The Prophet, vol. I, 219. Buber, I and Thou, 78; Ich und Du, 28. Green, “Abraham Joshua Heschel: Recasting Hasidism for Moderns,” Modern Judaism 29, no. 3 (2009): 70–71. — 292 —

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form of Hasidism beyond the narrow bounds of the current Hasidic communities.24 With their writings, they contributed immensely to its influence upon modern religiosity. They found in Hasidism an energetic, quasi-spontaneous, anti-institutional movement that centered upon living human existence before God, and even manifested some a-nomistic and anti-nomistic undertones because of its criticism of a life without intention.25 Heschel lived Hasidism, continuing in a familial line of Hasidic leaders, but gave his own depth-theological reading. Buber interpreted Hasidism dialogically in a way that nonJews and Jews, particularly in Zion, could understand. In line with the Kotzker rebbe, Heschel in his presentation of Hasidism put more emphasis on personal learning and obedience to the Law, while Buber accentuated community life. Buber regarded Hasidism as a renewal, a healthy reaction against a too-Halakhic and too-rabbinic Judaism. In Heschel’s view on Hasidism as a dynamic movement, the Law remained central. Heschel was born in Hasidism, while Buber discovered it, as he discovered the Bible in a later stage of his life. For both, Hasidism contained a huge potential for present day, living religiosity in which the profane was hallowed and the Divine sparks in everyone and everything were freed. An aspect we did not discuss, but that would be worth of further research in both thinkers, is their relationship toward nature, which is rather unusual for Jewish thinkers. Buber was convinced that there could be mutuality between the I and nature.26 A tree or an animal could become “present” for the relating I, a mutuality could come into being. He denied that he developed a mystical attitude toward nature or a kind of panpsychism. He thought that there could be an I-you encounter with nature and that the essence of nature could become revealed to the I who says “you.” Also Heschel had a special relation to nature. In radical amazement, one could lift up his eyes and see what is higher than himself. “Every flower in the summer, every snow flake in 24. 25.

26.

Idel, Heschel, 81–82. Heschel thought that simple reliance on Halakha is insufficient (Dresner, Hasidism and Halacha, 84–123). His view on the mitzvot was much broader than that of the traditional 613 mitzvot. See Heschel, God in Search of Man, 361. Buber, I and Thou, 57–59. — 293 —

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the winter, may arouse in us the sense of wonder that is our response to the sublime.”27 Heschel asked for wonder and made his readers aware of the wonders in daily life. We did not analyse Buber’s and Heschel’s attitude toward nature; their positions vis-à-vis Zion, on the contrary, received our full attention. Heschel’s analysis of the Jewish religious experience focuses on Zion, an earthly reality that is meant to reflect the will of God. He was anxious about a possible repetition of what had happened in the Shoah and enthusiastic about the renewal of Jewish life in the land of Israel, which he saw as a Divine sign. Buber was more realistic and would most probably not have shared Heschel’s ecstatic attitude toward Israel after the Six-Day War. True, they both were genuinely concerned by the suffering of the Arab population in the land, but Buber, living himself in Zion, was more critical. The task of unifying ourselves and striving for unification with others in a common engagement in Zion was urgent, and one did have to avoid perceiving God’s finger in the course of history too readily. In Rosenzweig’s New Thinking, theology and philosophy were brought together. To him, theology may not degrade philosophy to the role of a handmaiden and philosophy is not allowed to make theology into a cleaning woman.28 Rosenzweig combined theology with philosophy. Theology objectively ruptured man’s and history’s totality, while philosophy was supposed to elucidate the subjective experience of this rupture.29 Heschel too was a theologian who thought that theology could teach philosophy something important, namely revelation. Heschel made a Copernican revolution by changing the perspective: man of course could think about God, but he is first of all the object of Divine care, of God’s pathos. Buber did not make this move because he was more fascinated by the interhuman relationship, in which the Shekhinah could dwell. His focus was upon the interhuman relationships that he considered to be the concrete manifestation of authentic religiosity. His anthropology was more philosophical, and in 27. 28.

29.

Heschel, God in Search of Man, 39. Rosenzweig, “‘The New Thinking’: A Few Supplementary Remarks to the Star,” eds. and trans. Alan Udoff and Barbara E. Galli (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1999), 89. Meir, Letters of Love, 3–4. — 294 —

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comparison to Heschel, he was more involved in intellectual history as such. Their dual legacies remain crucial for anyone interested in the search of the meaning of Jewishness. Eliezer Schweid rightly characterized Buber and Heschel along with other thinkers such as Hermann Cohen and Leo Baeck as spiritual leaders who were conscious of their prophetic mission to their people and humanity.30 The essential differences between Buber and Heschel may be explained by their divergent spiritual landscapes and cultural backgrounds. Heschel was a traditional Jew and this explains, for instance, his interest in rabbinic hermeneutics of the Bible. Buber was a liberal Jew and this fact throws light on his reading of the Bible in the context of the ancient cultures of the Near-East. The liberal Jew and the traditional Jew were both engaged in the Jewish-Christian dialogue, but for different reasons. Buber recognized in Jesus the person in whom Judaism and Christianity interpenetrated. Jesus had pure Messianic power, he was a Servant of God who recognized his Messiahship in his soul. In 1927, Buber wrote that the meaning of Jesus for the gentiles was in his eyes the real seriousness of Western history.31 Heschel looked for dialogue with Christians with another aim. For him, Judaism and Christianity had a task to fulfill in mending and redeeming the world. No religion was an island, God’s voice was split up, and religious diversity was God’s will. Heschel and Buber were both dialogical thinkers, but Heschel identified with the prophetical figure as homo sympathetikos, who sympathizes with the Divine pathos, whereas Buber approached the prophet and the human being as such more as homo dialogicus.32 Lastly, differences between them become clear when one considers Heschel’s traditional view on the mitzvot as the way holiness is carried out by the Jew and Buber’s repeated liberalhumanistic statement that only presence toward other human beings offers a glimpse of the Divine You. 30.

31. 32.

Eliezer Schweid, Prophets for Their People and Humanity. Prophecy and Prophets in 20th Century Jewish Thought (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999), 9–20, 161–189, 234–254. Friedman, Encounter on the Narrow Ridge, 315. The term homo dialogicus as Buber’s concept of man in opposition to Kant’s lonely, observing subject was coined by David Barzilai, Homo Dialogicus. Martin Buber’s Contribution to Philosophy (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2000). — 295 —

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Throughout our book, we have highlighted the fact that in Buber’s universal religiosity, dialogue and morality are the key concerns, and demonstrated how he pointed the way by interpreting Judaism as a pioneering dialogical way of life. Heschel felt himself to be a modern prophet whose religious commitment implied social and moral engagement; he showed the relevance of Judaism for the present day, with its concrete commandments and prayer, and combined it with social action. Between Heschel and Buber, there was a permanent dialogue in which the two were engaged. In relating to each other, there grew with time a kind of unio sympatica. Between them there was much common ground, but they also disagreed with each other. Their writings created a multivocal song that sings about the relationship between God and man and between man and man.

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— 310 —

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index

A Abraham Jacob, Rabbi, 205 absenteeism, 87 absolute person, 80, 168 Agag, 146, 154 Agassi, Joseph, 242n12 Aggada, 20-21, 145, 180-181, 288 Ahad ha-Am, 241, 246 aieka, 26, 149 Akiva, Rabbi, 126-128, 153, 174, 180, 190, 190n135, 256, 283, 284 Amir, Yehoyada, ix anomistic, 134, 293 anthropomorphic, anthropomorphism, 76, 77n34, 90, 96n131, 261 anti-behaviorism, 175 anti-institutionalism, 54, 84, 87, 9798, 115, 196, 237, 293 antinomism, 159, 202, 237, 293 apocalyptic, 112-115, 120, 280 non-, 113, 150, 157 Apter Rebbe, 90 Arendt, Hannah, 40, 45 “Atheistic Theology”, 14, 161, 170 Avnon, Dan, 107n17 avoda, 185, 219-220 B Ba’al Shem Tov, 32, 54, 75n25, 78, 167169, 173, 180, 209-212, 234, 236, 283 Babylonia, 179-180, 284 Baeck, Leo, 295

Bahya ibn Paquda, 180, 164n19 Barth, Karl, 74, 96 Batnizky, Leora, 194 Bea (Cardinal), 20, 277 behaviorism, religious, 87, 95, 97, 165, 175, 182, 236 Ben-Chorin, Schalom, 243 Bergman, Samuel Hugo, 196, 242 Berkovits, Eliezer, 77n34 Berlin, 12, 14, 63, 162, 166, 181, 199n157 Between God and Man, 22 Bible, miqra, Scripture, 11-12, 16, 20, 21n61, 37, 52, 53, 65, 69, 81, 84, 9192, 94, 106, 109-111, 118, 121, 124131, 133, 145, 147-157, 162, 183, 189, 195, 197, 216-217, 221, 226, 228, 234, 240, 243, 245, 248, 251, 260, 275-276, 279-280, 287, 291-295 translation of, 21, 82, 94, 103-105, 107, 132, 136, 138, 141-142, 227, 283, 288 unity of, 108, 129, 132, 137-138, 286 biblical, 21, 25-26, 31-32, 38, 42, 65, 77, 94, 103-108, 110-113, 117, 120-128, 133, 136, 138-139, 141-147, 150, 214n35, 216-217, 219, 221, 224, 229, 236, 239, 247-248, 251, 254-255 biblical criticism, 83, 92, 129, 151, 153154, 223, 259, 266, 283, 286-287, 291-292 Bloch, Jochanan, 35, 36 Böhme, Jakob, 33n31

— 311 —

------------------------------------------------------------------------------   index -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bondi, Dror, 26n8, 74n23, 239n1 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 219 Brit-Shalom, 242 Buber, Paula, 19 “Builders, The”, 70, 164, 190 C Christianity, 12, 57, 109, 115, 118n50, 128, 149, 166, 170, 182, 189, 198199, 255-258, 262-269, 275-281, 286, 289, 295 Cohen, Hermann, 43, 70, 85, 86, 120, 154, 202, 222, 295 collectivism, 43-45, 48, 60-62, 198n156 command, commandment, (mitzva/ mitzvot), 11, 12, 25, 49, 52, 55, 65, 74-75, 92, 97-98, 116-117, 145-146, 154-157, 159-166, 174-176, 180-188, 190-203, 270-271, 279, 289-290, 293, 295, 296 creation, 35-38, 56, 57n104, 61, 63, 7273, 82, 87, 95, 108-111, 120, 130, 137, 145, 150, 156, 163, 185-186, 191, 202, 212, 221, 229, 237, 263-264 Creator, 39, 56, 57n104, 63, 72-73, 77, 85, 94, 118, 119, 185, 187, 215, 268 Cusanus, 33n31 D “Das Gebet als Aeusserung und Einfuehlung”, 142 Day of Atonement, 99 Decalogue, 116n41, 117, 127, 128, 147 Der Gesalbte, 104 Der Shem Ham’forash: Mentsh, 22, 41 Derrida, Jacques, 84, 138 Descartes, René, 39 devekut, 174 dialogue, 20, 40, 44-47, 53, 55, 61, 67, 72, 74, 85, 92, 96, 101, 109, 111, 113, 116-117, 127-128, 138, 141, 146, 147-148, 154, 172-173, 186, 216218, 221, 223n57, 236-237, 240, 243, 255, 262-264, 274-279, 285, 290-296

Die Legende des Ba’alschem, 184-186 Die Welt, 241 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 107, 144, 213, 216 Dresner, Samuel H., 15n18, 160, 161, 181, 186, 206, 212 duality, 36, 82, 186 Dubnow, Simon, 220 Duties of the Heart, 180 E Earth Is the Lord’s, The, 79, 207, 238 Ebner, Ferdinand, 81-82 Eclipse of God, 52n93, 85, 179 ecstasy, 123-124, 144, 161-162, 164, 168, 171, 184-186, 220, 238 Einstein, Albert, 92, 231 Elimelekh of Lizansk, 52 emunah, trust, 264 Erlebnismystik, 229 eternal You, 22, 27-28, 36, 47, 53, 71, 74, 80, 86, 92-94, 100, 117, 159, 170, 178-179, 181, 187, 195, 201, 217218, 228, 241 F Faith and the Courage To Be, 273 Finkelstein, Louis, 18, 76n29 Fischer, Franz, 27n11, 36 Fishbane, Michael, 132n93, 133n94 For the Sake of Heaven, 17, 113, 193 Frankfurt, 14n14, 15, 16, 166 Friedman, Maurice, 19, 31, 75n25, 120, 167, 194, 213n28, 232, 233, 263 Friedman, Rachel Leah, 11 Friedman, Rabbi Shlomo, 205 G Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 213, 223n57 Gandhi, Mahatma, 16, 62 German, 17n34, 39, 40, 43, 52n93, 75n25, 81, 90n104, 103, 105-106, 132, 136, 138, 141-142, 225n63, 227, 240, 245, 263 Gesprochenheit, 84, 106, 149

— 312 —

------------------------------------------------------------------------------   index -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gillman, Neil, 266 Ginzberg, Louis, 18 Glatzer, Nahum N., 98, 105, 120 Gnosticism, Gnostic, Gnosis, 26, 38, 56-57, 72-73, 83, 88, 96, 111, 114, 122, 160, 168-169, 197, 199, 214, 260-261, 284-287 Gogarten, Friedrich, 50 Gordis, Robert, 140n113 Gordon, Aaron David, 241, 246-247 Goshen-Gottstein, Alon, 274 Graeber, Bruce S., 229n73 Green, Arthur, 30n19, 76n29, 78, 281, 292 Gries, Ze’ev, 221 H Halakha, 21, 128, 160-163, 180-181, 195, 225n63, 252, 288, 293n25 Hallamish, Moshe, 52n94 Hartman, David, 276n86 Harvey, Ze’ev, 252 Hasidism, Hasidic, 11-12, 20-21, 28, 31n20, 40, 52-53, 58, 67, 81, 87-88, 95, 104, 112, 115, 124, 128, 147, 149, 152, 159-164, 167, 168, 182, 184, 185, 189, 198, 203, 205-240, 257, 260, 283, 288, 291-293 haskalah, Englightenment, 11, 220, 221, 225 Hayoun, Maurice-Ruben, 224n61, 225n63 Heavenly Torah, 19, 20, 149, 150, 190n135, 284 Hebrew, 12, 15, 17, 44, 45, 91, 108, 118, 127, 133, 135, 136, 138-139, 141-142, 225n63, 227, 243, 245, 247-248, 253, 275-276, 279 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 111, 268 Hegelianism, 111, 114 Heilung aus der Begegnung, 232 Heller, Joseph, 242n13 hermeneutics, 94, 104, 106-108, 142, 150, 157, 194, 221, 223, 226, 287, 291, 295

Herzl, Theodor, 246 Heschel, Susannah, ix, 149, 166, 207n8, 255, 278, 281-282 Hess, Moses, 246 hester panim, 69, 83, hineni, 169 Hirsch, Samson Raphael, 134-135, 225n63 historicism, historicist, historicity, 108, 116n44, 151, 221-226, 228-230, 286, 291 historiography, 222 hitlahavut, 184-186, 220, 238 holiness, 21n57, 30, 47, 129, 150, 207208, 245-246, 249, 250-254, 269, 271, 276, 295 Holocaust, Shoah, 41-42, 52, 67, 69, 79, 82, 105, 117-118, 153, 169, 208209, 249, 253, 281, 290, 294 Holtz, Avraham, 125n80 homo dialogicus, 295 homo sympathetikos, 76, 295 Horodezky, Samuel A., 220, 230 Horwitz, Rivka, ix, 34n32, 254 Hösle, Vittorio, 195-196 Husserl, Edmund, 30, 36, 213, 214n35 I I and Thou, 12, 18, 22, 26-28, 32-36, 40, 41, 44n76, 66, 69, 71-74, 80-84, 90-96, 100-101, 118, 135, 151, 152, 165-167, 181, 186, 187, 189, 197, 201, 217, 260, 263 I-it, 25, 32, 33-38, 40, 71-72, 82, 93, 107, 115, 120, 143, 195-197, 199200, 216-218, 231 Idel, Moshe, 31n20, 68n3, 211-212, 279, 290n20 idolatry, 46, 85, 163, 170, 268, 272 “Ikh un Du”, 12, 22, 29-32, 100, 155 Illman, Karl-Johan, 151n158 imitatio Christi, 285 immersion, 172-173, 186 individualism, 33n31, 43-45, 48, 54, 60

— 313 —

------------------------------------------------------------------------------   index -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

interpretation, interpreter, 20, 23, 35, 52n93, 74, 88, 90, 92, 104-119, 125126, 128-133, 140, 144, 145-147, 150-151, 157, 162-163, 174-175, 185, 193, 200, 212-214, 216-218, 223, 227, 229, 231, 235, 255, 258260, 268, 292, 293, 296 Isaiah, 83, 105, 109, 112-114, 116, 139n111, 147, 162, 264, 271 Ishmael, 242, 253 Ishmael, Rabbi, 126-128, 130, 153, 155, 174, 175, 180, 190, 242, 256, 283, 284 Israel, land of, 60, 65, 129, 180, 239, 245-248, 250-251, 254 Israel: An Echo of Eternity, 247 Israel and Palestine, 104n7, 245 I-you, 26, 28, 32-38, 40, 53, 71-73, 81, 82, 100, 107-108, 114, 115, 120, 135, 143, 178, 189, 195-197, 199-200, 216-217, 221, 231, 233, 241, 293 J Jaacob Yitzchaq, see Yehudi, the Jehuda Halevi, 75n25, 86, 227, 245, 250-251, 253, 269 Jerusalem, ix, 15, 20, 56-57, 121, 138, 225, 239, 242, 243, 247-250, 252-254, Jesus, 12, 56n103, 57n104, 109, 112, 114, 116, 153, 175, 197, 198, 224n60, 254, 255-264, 278, 280-281, 285, 286, 289, 295 John (evangelist), 57n104, 110, 186, 258, 263 Joshua ben Levi, Rabbi, 278, 281 Jospe, Raphael, 184n101 Juengel, Eberhard, 281 Jung, Carl Gustav, 33n31, 233 K Kabbalistic, 30n19, 281 Kant, Immanuel, 85, 176, 177-179, 214n35, 266, 281, 295n32 Kantian, 176, 178, 212, 266

Kaplan, Edward K., ix, 12, 18, 23, 75n25, 99, 122, 144, 159, 186, 206, 207n8, 210, 235, 251n53 Kasher, Hannah, 52n94 Kasimow, Harold, 164, 256n5 Kaufmann, Walter, 28n12, 90n104 kavvanah, intention, 87, 159, 164, 165n23, 219, 229, 285 Kepnes, Steven, ix, 106, 107-108, 142, 214, 216 Kierkegaard, Søren, 34n32, 36, 39, 4855, 73, 81, 122, 163, 224n60, 235, 267-268, 286 King, Martin Luther, 43, 255, 272, 287 Kingship of God, 104, 116, 136 Kohn, Hans, 242 Koigen, David, 84-85, 238 Kook, Abraham Yitshaq ha-Cohen, 180, 181n89, 246, 247, 253 Koren, Israel, 214n36 Kotzk, 23, 32, 148, 153, 160, 210 Kotzker rebber, the Kotzker, 32, 39, 5354, 87, 97, 146, 148, 152, 155, 160, 164, 172-174, 209-212, 235-237, 283, 284, 290, 293 Kramer, Kenneth, ix, 28n12, 80n50, 237n97, 262 Kulbak, Moyshe, 144, 291 Kuzari, The, 86, 245, 269 L Landauer, Gustav, 240, 242 language, 38, 81-82, 95, 125-126, 141, 142, 144, 182, 224, 227, 266 biblical, 245, 291 human, 150, 191, 261, 267 logic, 291 religious, 89, 280, 291 Lao-Tzu, 152 Lappin, Eleonore, 230n75, n79 Law, Gesetz, Weisung, 16, 57nn103104, 97-98, 111, 119n55, 134, 145, 147, 152, 159, 163-164, 173-179, 183-186, 188-195, 197, 199, 201,

— 314 —

------------------------------------------------------------------------------   index -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

235n93, 259-260, 270, 288, 290, 293 oral, 98, 148, 157, 191-193 written, 91, 145, 190, 259 leap of action, 39, 98, 163-165, 182, 201 Lehrhaus, 15, 16, 69n4, 72 Leibowitz, Yeshayahu, 178 Leiner, Mordechai Joseph (of Isbica), 52 Leitworte, 107, 136 Levi Yitzchaq of Berditchev, 212 Levin, Yitshaq Meir, 159-160, 182 Levinas, Emmanuel, 34n32, 73, 94, 121-122, 153, 179, 187, 222-224, 226-227, 230-231, 288n13, 290n20 Lieberman, Saul, 20 Lookstein, Joseph H., 235 lulav, 170 M magic, 68, 73, 89, 97, 98, 113, 114, 147, 161, 169, 182, 189-190, 194, 214, 225n63, 283-286, 288, 291 Magid, Shaul, 31n23, 214 Magnes, Judah L., 62n119, 242 Maimonides, 18, 75n25, 76-77, 86, 190, 209, 269 malakh, 134, 136 Man’s Quest for God, 13, 18, 170 Marcel, Gabriel, 35, 153 Marcion, 56, 57n104, 110, 120, 142, 263, 279 Marcionism, 56, 110, 111n27, 264, 279 Marx, 114, 120, 161, 240 mashal, 136, 181 “Meaning of This War [World War II], The”, 62, 64, 79, 210 Medzibuz, 211 Meister Eckhart, 40n60, 240 Mendelssohn, Moses, 43, 75n25, 133, 135, 175 Mendes-Flohr, Paul, 46, 221 Merkle, John C., 59n113, 162n10 Messianism, Messianic, 44, 57n104, 58, 65, 104n6, 112-115, 155, 157, 205, 246-247, 260, 262, 264, 280, 295

meta-religion, 11, 84, 98 midrash, midrashic, 91-92, 126, 128, 130, 133-134, 136, 197, 257, 292 mitzva, mitzvot, see commandment Moltmann, Juergen, 281 Morgenstern, Julian, 16 Moses, 79, 83, 90, 91, 108, 116-117, 120, 123-124, 127-130, 137, 147, 150, 151, 169, 191-192, 219, 255256, 286 Moses, work by Buber, 104, 135 Muilenburg, James, 109 Munich, 166 Myers, David, 230 mysticism, mystical, 31n20, 40, 68n370, 72n13, 75n25, 76, 86, 101, 111, 122-128, 152, 168-171-174, 186187, 215, 225-226, 229, 238, 240, 248, 250, 253-254, 266-267, 293 N name, 30, 32, 67-68, 113, 117, 119n55, 125, 135, 169, 188, 220, 250, narrative, 108, 136, 154, 207, 217, 223, 247, 254 neo-Hasidism, 205 “New Thinking, The”, 81, 294 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 33n31, 41, 64, 68, 78, 79, 228 nirvana, 87 nomos, 119n55, 145, 175, 197, 288 „No Time for Neutrality“, 85 „No Religion Is an Island“, 85, 255, 273-274 Novak, David, 214n35 O objectivist, 34, 179 ohev adam, 42 ohev Yisrael, 42, 203 Olsen, Regine, 48 oraita, 175 Orot, 180 Otto, Rudolf, 74

— 315 —

------------------------------------------------------------------------------   index -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

P panentheism, 80, 188 Pascal, Blaise, 85 Passion for Truth, A, 208-209, 210, 236n95, 273n79 pathos, 77, 152, 156, 285, 289 Divine, 13-14, 60, 75-76, 93, 96, 100101, 122, 154, 155-157, 276, 281, 284, 290, 292-295 Paul (apostle), 56, 57, 98, 111, 112, 114, 173, 174, 185, 197, 198, 258, 259, 260, 261, 264, 278 Perez, Yitschaq Leib, 220 Perlman, Lawrence, 23n67, 59n113, 214n35 Pfisterer, Rudolf, 83n68 Pinsker, Leo, 246 pistis, 197, 258, 259, 262, 264, 280, 285 poetical, 31, 38, 157 prayer, 11, 53, 87-89, 97, 125, 142-144, 159, 166-173, 177, 182-183, 189190, 195, 198, 211, 229, 234, 237, 249, 261, 290-291, 296 presence, 27, 28, 58, 62, 68, 71, 80, 83, 87-88, 90-100, 119, 151, 162, 165166, 178, 181-188, 201-202, 207, 244, 272, 295 Divine, 32-33, 66, 71-75, 77-79, 93, 131, 134-135, 160, 171-176, 197, 208, 215, 220, 236, 238, 247, 249, 276, 280, 282, 284, 288-292 “Problem of Man, The”, 45, 48, 49 prophet, 13-18, 21, 25, 31, 41, 55-60, 65, 75-77, 83-85, 91, 93-96, 98-100, 103-104, 113-116, 120-125, 128129, 131-132, 149, 150, 152-157, 163-164, 169, 200, 205, 207, 209, 221, 238, 244, 248-252, 254, 258, 260-261, 270-274, 279, 283, 285, 286-288, 291-292, 295-296 Prophetic Faith, The, 104, 116, 118, Prophets, The, 13, 31, 59, 74, 123, 131, 172, 209, 277, 284

psychology, 231, 234 psychotherapy, 231 Q “Question to the Single One, The”, 48, 52 R Ragaz, Leonhard, 240 rational, 75n25, 122, 126, 200, 213, 226, 227, 266 rationality, 33 strategic, 34, 195-196 Rava, 180 redemption, 19n46, 36, 37, 42, 56-57, 65, 72-73, 82, 109-114, 118, 120, 194, 220, 245, 247, 259, 263, 265, 269, 280-281 Reden ueber das Judentum, 70, 190 religion, 11, 39, 47, 56n103, 64, 83-85, 89, 96-99, 103, 109, 120, 123, 131132, 153, 159-163, 169-172, 176, 178, 195, 198-200, 212, 215, 220, 225n63, 237-238, 244, 255, 262270, 273-279, 281, 285, 289 religiosity, 39, 44, 47, 49, 53, 54, 6566, 71, 73, 80, 88-89, 97-98, 103, 111, 159-162, 176, 178, 182-183, 189, 194, 200-202, 212-215, 217, 234-235, 237-238, 240, 244-245, 283-285, 287-288, 292-293, 295-296 renaissance, 198, 211, 229, 241, 251, 262, 265 revelation, 14, 20, 21, 33, 36, 53, 56, 57n104, 72, 76, 81-82, 90-93, 98, 100, 108-111, 115, 120-124, 125128, 149, 161, 170, 181, 186, 188, 192-193, 214n35, 222-223, 238, 263, 287, 290n20, 294 continuous, 73, 84, 91, 104, 126127, 130-131, 150-151, 292 revival, 212, 215, 224-225, 228, 252 rimmah, 136 Rogers, Carl R., 19, 232-233 Rose, Gillian, 235n93

— 316 —

------------------------------------------------------------------------------   index -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rosenthal, Jehuda, 276 Rosenzweig, Franz, 14-15, 36, 40, 43, 65, 67-72, 81-83, 90, 94-97, 99, 103, 105, 106, 108, 111, 118, 130-142, 159, 161, 164, 165, 170, 183, 188-195- 202, 222, 226-227, 269, 286, 290, 291, 294 Rotenstreich, Nathan, 59n113, 76, 124n73 Rothschild, Fritz A., 17, 22 Ruppin, Arthur, 242 S Sabbath, 38, 159-160, 191, 193-195, 229, 250 sacrament, 13n7, 28, 166 Sadagora, 11, 205, 215, 218 Sages, 21, 92, 108, 128, 129, 130, 149, 150, 157, 179, 180, 226, 256, 257, 278, 279, 283 Sambursky, Shmuel, 242 Sanders, James A., 74 Sandilya, 186 Saul (king), 104n6, 146, 154, 178 Saviour, 264 Schaeder, Grete, 104 Schatz-Uffenheimer, Rivka, 88, 152, 214, 234 Scheler, Max, 14n12 Scheliha, A. von, 56n103 Schilpp, Paul Arthur, 97n134 Schmitt, Carl, 50 Schocken, Salman, 12, 18 Scholem, Gershom, 68n3, 105, 205, 213, 214, 216, 218, 220, 224, 225, 228, 242, 254, 290 Scholem, Rabbi Joseph, 205 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 33n31 Schweid, Eliezer, 295 Science of Judaism, Wissenschaft des Judentums, 142, 144, 151, 221-227, 229 scientism, 222 Seer of Lublin, 113, 283, 285 Sherwin, Byron L., 58n110, 255n1, 288n12

Shimeon ben Lakish, 180, 202 Shimon the Righteous, 162 shofar, 170 Siegel, Seymour, 29n17 Simmel, Georg, 46, 199 Simon, Ernst, 242 Sinai, 42, 56, 90, 91, 97, 98, 116, 126, 127, 129, 130, 147, 162, 184, 191, 219, 229, 247, 270, 278 Smilansky, Moshe, 242, Smith, Ronald Gregor, 28n15, 90n104 socialism, 60, 240-241, 244 Soloveitchik, Joseph Ber, 181, 275-278 Spengler, Oswald, 50 Spinoza, Baruch, 175, 191, 209 “Spirit of Israel and the World of Today, The”, 243 spiritualism, 73, 176, 200 spirituality, 27, 36, 49, 73, 99, 132, 180, 200, 201, 202, 205, 207, 230 Star of Redemption, The, 68n2, 72, 83, 95 Stern, Carl, 96n132 Strauss, Eduard, 16, 167 Strausberg, Michael, 287n9 subjectivism, subjectivist, 34, 70, 80, 147, 179, 231, 237, 270, 271 suffer, 17, 25, 30, 51, 93, 100, 112-116, 145-146, 154-157, 218, 242, 251252, 254, 256, 261, 264-265, 281282, 284-286, 289, 290, 294 Suffering Servant, 112, 114, 116, 118, 120, 157, 256, 264, 285-286 symbolization, symbol, 13, 18, 68, 98, 99, 121, 162, 170-171, 231, 263, 265-267, 270, 273 Szold, Henrietta, 242 T Talmon, Shemaryahu, 132, 141 Talmud, Talmudic, 21, 75n25, 121, 127, 174, 197, 224, 226, 230, 257, 279, 288 Tanenzapf, Sol, 173n63, 266 Tao, 152

— 317 —

------------------------------------------------------------------------------   index -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Taubes, Jacob, 111-115 Teshima, Jacob, 58 theology, 14, 21, 26, 32, 56-57, 72-77, 89, 93-94, 98-100, 108, 112, 125126, 135, 151n158, 161, 170, 181, 188, 234, 256, 262, 265-267, 270, 274-275, 278, 281, 288-289, 294 theopaschism, theopaschistic, 281, 286, 289 Theunissen, Michael, 35-36 Tillich, Paul, 74, 100, 152, 231, 273274 Total Interpretation, 140, 283 totalitarianism, 25, 40-47, 51-55, 61-62 translation, 21, 28n12, 29, 82, 94, 103, 104, 105, 106, 111n27, 119n55, 122, 132-142, 145, 175, 265, 267, 286 Trüb, Hans, 232 Tsemach, Shlomo, 242 tsaddiq, 31n20, 100, 212, 215, 220, 231, 259 tsorekh gavoa, 248, 281 Two Types of Faith, 98, 159, 174, 197198, 257, 263 U ultimate concern, 74, 154, 274 Ultimately Concerned, 74, 274 Underhill, Eveline, 123 unio mystica, 30, 76, 101, 122, 144 unio sympatica, 14, 76, 101, 296 Urban, Martina, 213, 215 Uziel, Rabbi Ben Zion, 252

V Vermes, Pamela, 219 Von Harnack, Adolf, 56-57, 110, 264 W Way of Man, According to the Teaching of Hasidism, The, 229 Weiss, Meir, 132, 138-140 Weisse, Wolfram, 154n170 Weltsch, Robert, 242 Whitehead, Alfred North, 231 will, 22, 35, 43, 45, 47, 64, 79, 143, 164, 179, 189, 207, 210, 281 Divine, 53, 55, 63, 69, 94, 118, 125, 131, 144, 163, 174, 176-178, 196, 201, 245, 257, 267, 268, 271, 274, 294, 295 Y Yehuda Loeb Alter of Gur, 30n19 Yehudi, the, 113-114, 264, 283, 285 yichud, 220 Yiddish, 12, 18, 22, 29, 41, 78, 172173, 206, 208-209, 283, 289, Yitschaq Meir, Gerer rebbe, 219 Z Zeitlin, Hillel, 30n19, 212, 218, 230 Zionism, 12, 21, 47, 65, 85, 128, 212, 225, 238, 239-243, 253, 285 Zohar, 245 Zoroastrianism, 287 Zwischenmensch, 26, 44, 81, 220

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