Our four great Jewish thinkers of the modern
era-The unorthodox return to Orthodoxy without being Orthodox
My Discussion on Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, August 14 and 21.
Discussion delivered on August 14:
Here is the link to the video on Martin Buber:
We now come in our discussions to
thinkers who shaped our contemporary Jewish scene
I am dealing with them in pairs, that have
opposites and a likes in tandem. Buber and Rosenzweig are Jews on the outside
who come into the realm of Jewish thought. Kaplan and Heschel are Jews deeply
immersed in the ancient Judaism who then seek to bring it to Jews who are on
the outside. Jews on the Outside who come in from the cold.
Martin Buber
*I took graduate courses in psychology-
noticed, in counselling texts, numerous reference to Martin Buber and Dialogue.
*As a student in Rabbinical school, it
was popular to go about with pins in which was written the slogan: I-Thou (
Ich-Du). *Buber was active with Zionism,
and often spoke to my father’s youth group in Vienna ( together with Alfred
Adler)
My father , a young member of the first chapter
of Hashomer Hatzair in Vienna with Meir Yaari, founder of Israel’s
Marxist-Zionist party, Mapam.
Notes from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Martin-Buber-German-religious-philosopher/From-mysticism-to-dialogue ( by Akiba
Ernst Simon, one of my teachers and a member of the Frankfurt Lehrhaus
Martin Buber, (born
February 8, 1878, Vienna—died June 13, 1965, Jerusalem), German-Jewish religious philosopher, biblical translator and
interpreter, and master of German prose style. Buber’s philosophy was centred on the encounter, or dialogue, of man with other beings, particularly exemplified
in the relation with other men but ultimately resting on and pointing to the
relation with God. This thought reached its fullest dialogical expression
in Ich
und Du (1923; I and Thou).
From Vienna to Jerusalem
Buber was the son of …assimilated Jews… … brought up
by his grandparents in Lemberg (now Lviv, Ukraine)[my mother’s home] The search
after the lost mother became a strong motive for his dialogical
thinking—his I–Thou philosophy.
Solomon Buber (1827–1906), the Lemberg grandfather, a
wealthy philanthropist, dedicated his life to the critical edition of
Midrashim, Mother also a “ maskil.” Not observant as a young man.
In his university days—he attended the universities
of Vienna, Berlin, Leipzig, and Zürich—Buber studied philosophy and
art. ..The Nietzschean influence was reflected in Buber’s turn to Zionism and its call for a return to roots and a more
wholesome culture.
… He was among the early protagonists of a Hebrew
university in Jerusalem.
In 1916 Buber founded the influential monthly Der Jude (“The
Jew”), which he edited until 1924 and which became the central forum for
practically all German-reading Jewish intellectuals. Zionist-more closely cultural than political- Brit
Shalom.
Buber took up the study of Ḥasidism. In Ḥasidism Buber saw a healing power for the malaise of Judaism and mankind in an age of alienation that had shaken three vital human
relationships: those between man and God, man and man, and man and nature. They
can be restored, he asserted, only by man’s again meeting the other person or
being who stands over against him, on all three levels—the divine, human, and
natural. Buber maintained that early Ḥasidism accomplished this encounter and
that Zionism should follow its example.
[He was significant in opening the world of Hasidism
to modern Jews, as well as Christians. The key criticism is that he “ cleaned
up” the texts, reworded them to fit his theology, rather than present them as
they were intended. He also himself avoided Hasidim. When he was a guest
speaker at my Rabbinical school, one of my teachers asked him if he would like
to attend a Hasidic shtiebel- he was absolutely uninterested]].
*******.
Buber’s manifold activities were inspired by
his philosophy of encounter—of man’s meeting with other
beings.
This basic view underlies Buber’s mature thinking; it
was expressed with great philosophic and poetic power in his famous work Ich und Du (1923; I and Thou).
[FIRST-CLARIFICATION -German, like French and other European
languages has 2 forms for You-formal and informal ( or familial).Formal- Sie, Vous,
Usted- as opposed to informal-Du, tu. Hebrew never had this distinction (
atah); English used to- hence, Thou as opposed to You. It is personal,
intimate, as in Pennsylvania Dutch, not as in the “ Thou” used in later
snob-speak]
Till today, his teachings are a very important part
in what is called the third force in psychology: ‘humanistic psychology”
(in distinction from Freudian and
behavioral): .
Core concept-self-actualization ( Carl Rogers ,
Abraham Maslow) This is a link to a very good description of his importance in
the field of counselling:
https://ct.counseling.org/2019/05/remembering-martin-buber-and-the-i-thou-in-counseling/
“Philosopher Martin Buber detailed the qualities that
characterize a real “encounter,” or I–Thou meeting, between two people. His
ideas remain as relevant today as when they helped to shape the humanistic
movement in psychology and counseling.”
A summary of his I-Thou:
According to this view, God, the great
Thou, enables human I–Thou relations
between man and other beings. Their measure of mutuality is related to the
levels of being: it is almost nil on the inorganic and botanic levels, rare on
the animal level, but always possible and sometimes actual between human
beings. A true relationship with God, as experienced from the human side, must
be an I–Thou relationship, in which God is truly met and addressed, not merely
thought of and expressed.
Contrast with :I–It relationship, as in
scholarly pursuits in which other beings are reduced to mere objects of thought
or in social relations (e.g., boss
and worker) wherein persons are treated largely as tools or conveniences.
Toward God, any type of I–It relationship should be avoided, be it theoretical by making him an object of dogmas, juridical by turning him into a legislator of fixed rules or prayers, or organizational by confining him to churches, mosques, or synagogues https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Martin_Buber_1963c.jpg
Very much a Rebbe, without Hasidim or Hasidism
An excerpts from his Tales of the Hasidim
·
·
Sample Quotes:
·
Martin Buber Neighbor, Meaning Of Love, Command Martin Buber (2013). “On
Judaism”, p.212, Schocken
·
All
journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
Martin Buber Inspirational, Travel, Freedom Martin Buber (2015). “Hasidism
and Modern Man”, p.47, Princeton University Press
Martin Buber Love, Two, People "Where is God in the
Flood?" by Rabbi Avi Strausberg, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 17,
2017. 
Martin Buber Education, Real, Struggle "Encounter with Martin
Buber". Book by Aubrey Hodes, 1972.
Martin Buber[based on a famous Hasidic saying on why God created atheism] People, World, Have Faith
Martin Buber Virtue, Relation, Humans
Martin Buber Knowledge, Learning, Adventure "Martin Buber: An Intimate
Portrait". Book by Aubrey Hodes, 1971.
https://www.azquotes.com/author/2101-Martin_Buber
This is a great audio-visual explanation of Buber’s I Thou, and you can see how well it transfers to modern humanistic psychology. The sound went dead on this video clip during the recording so click on the link here:
Buber in 10 minutes:by Eric Dodson.Prof Psych University of West Georgia.
**********************************************************************************************
The second of my
“ Pairs” in Jews on the Outside who came in from the Cold
Shabbat August 24
Franz Rosenzweig
First published Fri Feb 27, 2009; substantive revision Mon Jan
28, 2019
Franz Rosenzweig (Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Franz_Rosenzweig.jpg
Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) ranks as one of the most original
Jewish thinkers of the modern period.
. ...“total renewal of thinking” through a novel
synthesis of philosophy and theology he named the “new thinking.”
Rosenzweig’s account of
revelation as a call from the Absolute other helped shape the course of
early 20th-century Jewish and Christian theology. ...a lasting
impact on 20th-century existentialism; ... dialogue
presented the interpersonal relation between “I” and “You” as both constitutive
of selfhood and as yielding redemptive communal consequences. (See Buber)...
... the German translation of the Bible in which he collaborated with
Martin Buber. He founded a center for Jewish adult education in Frankfurt—the
Lehrhaus—
Key points:
From a very assimilated background... a near-conversion to
Christianity, an inspired return to Judaism
the composition of the beginning of his magnum opus on
military postcards sent home from the Balkan front,
the abandonment of a
promising academic career in order to live and teach in the Frankfurt
Jewish community,
and his heroic efforts to continue his thinking, writing, and
communal work after succumbing to the paralysis brought on by ALS.
... the greatest work
of modern Jewish philosophy: The Star of Redemption. The Star
is a system of philosophy that seeks to give a comprehensive and ramified
account of “All” that is, and of the human being’s place within that “All”.
***** His conversion
almost to Christianity and back to Judaism:
July 7, 1913, Rosenzweig
engaged in an all-night discussion with Rosenstock and his (Rosenzweig’s)
cousin Rudolf Ehrenberg ( baptized at age 11) …he later claimed to have spent
the hours after the conversation alone in his room, pistol at hand, “face to
face with the Nothing.” He emerged from the experience determined to convert to
Christianity in order thereby to take up his place in the historical
realization of redemption in the world.
[And then]
******
Franz Rosenzweig
(jewishvirtuallibrary.org)
. Rosenzweig wrote to his own parents: "We are Christians
in all things, we live in a Christian state, go to Christian schools, read
Christian books, our whole culture is based on a Christian foundation." …
Rosenzweig promised to get baptized. … one condition. He was, he said, not a goy,
but a Jew, and wanted to take a closer look at the things from which he would
be separated by this conversion. He asked his relatives for a time of
contemplation and reviewing, a time of a last (or was it the first?) conscious
participation in the "Ten High Holy Days from Rosh HaShanah to Yom Kippur. For him these became
the "ten days of return" to his roots in Judaism…
He expressed his resolve
to reject conversion saying: "We agree …no-one comes to the Father but
through him (Jn 14:6). No one comes to the Father - but it is different when
somebody does not have to come to the Father because he is already with him.
And this is so for the people of Israel …”
[What happened? He walked into a small Orthodox synagogue and
came out converted. Note- not a liberal synagogue with organ, choir, the
service more in German than Hebrew. It must have been incomprehensible for him.
Yet it shook him.
His progress-deepening his Jewish study and exploring Jewish
observance ( not totally Orthodox- example- on Tefillin- “ Not Yet”.]
(Stanford)
In 1914, already under [Herman] Cohen’s influence and
unmoved by the romantic theology of Martin Buber popular at the time,[ his
collaborator] Rosenzweig wrote his first essay in Jewish theology, “Atheistic
Theology.” …only by taking the transcendence and at once the revelation of God
seriously—rather than reducing the divine to an expression of a Jewish life
force—can we grasp the split the human being experiences in history, between
his personal self-realization and the realization of the world. It is the
notion of revelation, Rosenzweig suggests, that allows us to view history along
an absolute redemptive trajectory, established by God’s relation to the human
being in the world. Such a notion of revelation would reappear at the center of
Rosenzweig’s systematic work, The Star of Redemption, a few years later.
[Note-he is writing his thoughts on post-cards that
he sends home form the battlefront of WWI]
His critique of Buber-they became good friends-( from
Simon)
After the religious philosopher Franz
Rosenzweig, Buber’s friend and fellow
translator of the Bible, read Ich und Du, he remarked: “Buber gives more
recognition to the ‘Thou’ than anybody before him, but he wrongs the ‘It’.” …
While Rosenzweig tried to live it as much as possible and became more and more
a practicing Jew, Buber stood his ground as one who embodied his
Judaism in no prescribed, special manner.
**********************************************************
His contribution to world philosophy: The New
Thinking:
The old classical philosophy has come to a dead-end
Abstracting from time. In their quest to grasp what
is universally and essentially true, philosophers abstract from the temporal,
relational context in which human beings experience the world around
them. (Essence vs existence).
Reductive reasoning. The attempt to grasp what
things are essentially inclines
the old thinking to reason out a single ground for all beings, thereby reducing
particular beings to something other than what they are. [reductionist
fallacy]
Thinking from the Absolute standpoint. The quest for the most
comprehensive answer to the “what is” question of the philosophical tradition
leads the old thinking, in its German Idealist manifestation, to aspire to an
“Absolute” standpoint from which the whole of what is—the “All”—can be grasped
in its unity
Rosenzweig proposes a “new thinking” that
pursues knowledge of God, world, and the self in their interrelations, from out of the
individual standpoint of the human being in time.
For the new thinking
suggests that one does not attain truth by stepping out of the river of time,
but rather that truth is that which “unfolds in time.”
[roots of what becomes known as “existentialism.”
Philosophers constantly sought the “ ‘essence’ of an object or person. Nomenon
behind phenomenon. Modern philosophy rejected “essence” ( the metaphysical) but
could address only the physical. In Existentialism, what counted was “
Existence”]
The Freie Jüdische Lehrhaus
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/frankfurt-lehrhaus-a-century-later
(Joshua Krug)
The Freies Jüdische Lehrhaus, or Free Jewish
House of Learning… an educational institution, and a practical model, meant to
speak to Western Jews who were strangers, not “natives,” to Judaism. This
Lehrhaus, or house of learning, a revamped beit midrash tailored to
assimilated Jews, met in community buildings and rented halls. It lacked modern
precedent. The educational experiment riffed on ideas emerging in Weimar
Germany concerning adult education, as it synthesized critical academic study
of Judaism with Talmud Torah (Torah study), toward a revitalized practice
of adult Jewish teaching and learning. Here, Jews ignorant of, and alienated
from, Jewish life and tradition acquired knowledge and understanding of Judaism
and explored Jewish identity, on their own terms.
… in 1920, “a learning that no longer starts
from the Torah and leads into life, but the other way round: from life, from a
world that knows nothing of the Law, or pretends to know nothing, back to the
Torah. That is the sign of the time.
Rosenzweig’s principle of “learning in reverse
order” resulted in counterintuitive hiring practices. Largely assimilated,
Jewish and Jew-ish characters from the German intellectual and cultural scene,
often with limited Jewish knowledge, taught Judaism-related subjects.. [This
was equivalent of the blind leading the blind as a new movement in education].
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/TheStarOfRedemptionEng.svgunity-
[ lecturers:
doctor Richard Koch , the chemist Eduard
Strauss , and the
feminist Bertha
Pappenheim and Siegfried
Kracauer , a popular culture
critic for the Frankfurter
Zeitung . Among those who
would later become famous were SY Agnon ,
who received the Nobel Prize in Literature, andvGershom Scholem , the founder of modern studies on Kabbalah . The expressionist writer Alfons
Paquet , 1000 members in a
community of 30,000-LA Limmud was happy to have 500 in a community of 500,000!
I have to add that the Frankfurt Jewish community alone raised more charity to
help the survivors of the Kishinev pogrom of 1904 than all of Americas Jewish
community.! This included some of the
theoreticians of critical theory, which upended classical Marxist thought to
add multiple factors besides economics that sit on us- ( some were in my
father’s community-Adorno-Horkheimer- . Made famous by Hebert Marcuse, who was
seen as an inspiration for the SDS in my day- except he repudiated the hippies
and yippies. It has since been perverted into the current form of Critical Race
Theory)]
It only lasted a few years, as Rosenzweig succumbed to ALS ( Lou
Gehrig’s Disease). However, it was later reopened under Martin Buber and
replicated throughout Germany- it was reincarnated in US as the Havurah
movement and such mass education programs as Limmud.
It is still an educationally astounding format, even if it means
I would have no business. It forces the leader to confront the core texts of Judaism
and grapple with them.]
Buber Rosenzweig Translation
Translations are revolutionary: William Tyndale-Martin Luther-Moses
Mendelsohn
…the unfamiliar,
authentic quality of the original Biblical text, Rosenzweig and Buber made an
effort to imitate certain characteristics of the original …to reproduce the
cadence of the original Biblical text, and to imitate what they understood to
be its “spoken” quality, by dividing any given section they were translating
into “breath-units.”
Example, from
Deut Haazinu
: כִּשְׂעִירִם עֲלֵי דֶשֶׁא
וְכִרְבִיבִים עֲלֵי עֵשֶׂב.
Robert Alter translation.)
like showers on the green
and like cloudbursts on the grass.[12](
Buber-Rosenzweig
wie
Nebelrieseln übers Gesproß Like foggy droplets on grass sprouts,
wie
Streifschauer übers Gekräut Like patchy showers on lawn.
Courtesy https://www.thetorah.com/article/die-schrift-a-non-territorial-translation-of-the-land
Der Stern der Erlösung The Star of
Redemption
The Magen David as a visual diagram of the key elements of
Jewish Thought-For the first time we have a symbol with content: As the cross
represents individual salvation for the Christian, so the Star now represents redemption
for the world.
We see the intertwined triangles. On one triangle are the three key elements of that which is: God-the Universe-The Human Being. All three are completely disparate elements. How can they interact? That is the second triangle. God relates to the universe through the act of creation; relates to them human being through the revelation of his presence; the Human being relates to the world through the act of redemption.
The Star
of Redemption does not lead us out of this world beyond reality. Rather it
concludes with the stepping out into the world with the task of proving the
truth in the world. "About death …", are the first words of the book.
Rosenzweig starts out with a reality that is experienced very personally.
"Into life …", are his last words. The truth of revelation leads into
the reality of life when it is proved [bewährt]. After completing The Star
of Redemption Rosenzweig felt that he now had to personally face up to
proving the truth and not avoid reality by continuing to write books any
longer. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/franz-rosenzweig
Quotes:
Nothing Jewish is alien to me ( a play on
Roman writer; Love brings to life whatever is dead around us. "Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum
puto", or "I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me.
Nichts Judisches ist mir fremd.)
“All future events are merely a reproduction of the first moment
of Love, giving birth to itself from an inner womb that continuously fertilizes
itself. Love carries in itself its everlasting renewed beginning.”
“There is no act of love toward one’s neighbor that falls into the void. Just
because the act was realized blindly, it must appear somewhere as effect.
Somewhere,”
― The Star of Redemption
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/192604.Franz_Rosenzweig
·
The
knowledge of everything knowable is not yet wisdom
Franz Rosenzweig, Nahum Norbert Glatzer (1955). “On Jewish
Learning”, p.86, Univ of Wisconsin Press
To have
found God is not an end but in itself a beginning.
https://www.azquotes.com/author/43434-Franz_Rosenzweig
·
Philosophy takes it upon
itself to throw off the fear of things earthly, to rob death of its poisonous
sting.
o The Star of Redemption (1921), p. 3.
·
Cognition is autonomous;
it refuses to have any answers foisted
on it from the outside. Yet it suffers without protest having certain questions prescribed
to it from the outside (and it is here that my heresy regarding the unwritten
law of the university originates). Not every question seems to me worth asking.
Scientific curiosity and omnivorous aesthetic appetite mean equally little to
me today, though I was once under the spell of both, particularly the latter.
Now I only inquire when I find myself inquired of. Inquired of,
that is, by men rather than by scholars. There is a man in
each scholar, a man who inquires and stands in need of answers. I am anxious to
answer the scholar qua man but not the representative of a
certain discipline, that insatiable, ever inquisitive phantom which like a
vampire drains whom it possesses of his humanity.
o in Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought (1961/1998),
p. 9
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Franz_Rosenzweig
-Dealing with ALS and Death
Rosenzweig suffered from the muscular degenerative disease Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also
known as Lou Gehrig's disease). Towards the end of his life, he had to write
with the help of his wife, Edith, who would recite letters of the alphabet
until he indicated for her to stop, continuing until she could guess the word
or phrase he intended (or, at other times, Rosenzweig would point to the letter
on the plate of his typewriter). They also developed a communication system
based on him blinking his eyes.
Rosenzweig's final attempt to communicate his thought, via the
laborious typewriter-alphabet method, consisted in the partial sentence:
"And now it comes, the point of all points, which the Lord has truly
revealed to me in my sleep, the point of all points for which there—". The
writing was interrupted by his doctor, with whom he had a short discussion
using the same method. When the doctor left, Rosenzweig did not wish to
continue with the writing, and he died on the night of 10 December 1929,
in Frankfurt,
the sentence left unfinished.[9]
Rosenzweig was buried on 12 December 1929. There was no eulogy;
Buber read Psalm
73 The quote is on his monument.[10]
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/FFM_Franz-Rosenzweig-Gedenktafel.jpg
Monument
to Franz Rosenzweig on the wall to his house:
He was the trail-blazer of the Jewish-Christian
dialogue
Companion of Martin Buber
Master of the translation into German of the
Bible
Founder of the Free Jewish Academy in Frankfurt
AM
Quote: Thus I am always with you( Ps 73:23)
This is an audio-visual rendition of the thought
of Rosenzweig, as described by faculty of the Catholic University of Portugal .As
Catholics, they have a very good understanding of the philosophy of the Jewish
Rosenzweig.
