A chance discussion with a friend about Rosenzweig’s conception of law reminded me that the review I wrote for Hashiloach of Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent (Mendes-Flohr 2025) and Martin Buber and Dialogical Thought: Study and Discourse on the Centenary of I and Thou (2025) contained an entire section that I was forced to omit for reasons of space, but whose publication, it seems to me, is not without interest. Without working the material over any further, I am posting here what, from my point of view, constitutes a necessary supplement.
As will be recalled, Buber and Franz Rosenzweig were, until the end of Rosenzweig’s life, close friends not only on the personal level but almost brothers on the intellectual one. Over the years, Rosenzweig developed for himself a conception of Jewish halakha—one that, as we shall see, was far removed from that of Jewish Orthodoxy—which enabled him to draw closer to and embrace certain commandments. This rapprochement received public expression with the publication of an open letter to Buber entitled “The Builders.” The letter sparked a correspondence between the two that has since been discussed extensively, including in the books mentioned here.
What makes this correspondence fascinating is that Buber apparently never gave any final answer as to why law—and, in particular, the commandments of the Torah—once it had degenerated, could not, under new conditions of life, return to becoming divine law, precisely in Buber’s own terms. Thus, for example, in his intellectual biography Mendes-Flohr advances the fascinating thesis that Buber’s answer was given ten years after the correspondence, in his novel Gog and Magog.[1] On the other hand, Admiel Kosman published in the anthology a Hebrew summary of an article he had published on the subject, under the title “‘I Will Be What I Will Be’: The Significance of the Biblical Passage (Exodus 3) for Understanding the Attitude toward Halakha in the Buber–Rosenzweig Discussions.”[2] Kosman’s discussion attempts to move from Buber’s biblical concept of hearing toward his negative attitude to law insofar as it is law, including the law of Jewish tradition.
In reading Kosman, two points deserve emphasis. First, Kosman appears to read Buber’s response in a Straussian fashion,[3] as though Buber possesses an esoteric level whose disclosure to the masses might prove harmful. Yet the character of the dialogue—which was initially a personal one between Buber and Rosenzweig and was only published later—casts doubt, in my view, on this kind of interpretation.
Second, Kosman seems to attribute Buber’s opposition to adopting the commandments to a position ultimately grounded in a universal humanism that excludes particular belonging to the Jewish tradition:
As I understand it, Buber chose to remain in the completely free position of a human being (and not necessarily a Jew) before his God, free of all commands and pre-established instructions—and to listen unconditionally to the word of God spoken to him anew at each and every moment—whereas Rosenzweig, by contrast, felt that the instructions and guidelines of halakha—which affiliate him with the Jewish framework—could assist the seeker of the way in drawing closer to God as a Jew, and in “hearing,” from what was for him a “higher place,” the word of God.[4]
This conclusion of Kosman’s article is fascinating in two important respects. First, because it appears to imply an interesting commitment on Buber’s part to an exclusionary characterization of the Jewish as opposed to the human. The human being is the one who is completely free of all commands and pre-established instructions, whereas the traditional Jew—or at least Rosenzweig—is not. On this point, we shall content ourselves with a quotation from Buber, deliberately a late one:
In this way, through much labor, I tried to proclaim the Hasidic teaching of life to the Western person of today. I was told several times that I ought to free this [Hasidic] teaching, as people put it, from its “parochial [=Jewish] narrowness” and proclaim it as an unrestricted teaching for all humanity. To take such a general path would, for me, have been an entirely arbitrary act. In order to proclaim to the world what I have heard, I have no need to go out into the street; I can remain standing in the doorway of my fathers’ house; even the word spoken here is not spoken in vain.[5]
His wife was even less kind on this subject. Mendes-Flohr’s philological caution on this point was to note that, for Buber, this tension between particularism and universalism characterized his thought as a whole.[6][7]
Yet Kosman’s interpretation, in this particular respect, allows us to understand precisely the thesis with which we began. Is there still room today in Israeli society for someone like Buber? For if he can adopt a distinctly anti-halakhic position—as indeed he did—not from a wholly universal standpoint, but rather, as Buber himself explicitly suggests,[8] from a position involving a deep personal and Jewish connection to the possible meaning of Jewish law, one higher than the meaning Rosenzweig is prepared to assign to it, then he does not fit easily into the sociological straitjacket that characterizes contemporary Israeli politics. In this sense, Buber’s very voice seems almost to refuse to be heard in Israel’s present reality.
A more interesting interpretation from a philological standpoint, though perhaps one insufficiently developed theologically, is offered by Mendes-Flohr. According to him, Buber’s final answer should be sought not in the footnote Buber added when publishing his exchange with Rosenzweig on this matter in “Gesetz und Offenbarung” (“Revelation and Law”) in 1936/37,[9] but rather in his 1941 novel Gog and Magog. There, according to Mendes-Flohr, Buber recasts his discussion with Rosenzweig as a dialogue between “the Holy Jew of Peshischa” (= Buber, with whom Buber identifies in the introduction to the English edition) and Isaiah (= Rosenzweig), his attendant.
The philological correspondence between the exchange between Buber and Rosenzweig and the discussion that unfolds between these two characters is nothing short of astonishing.[10] The Holy Jew recounts that in his youth he would wait before praying until his enthusiasm stirred him to prayer. But Isaiah answers him as follows:
[Isaiah addresses the Holy Jew:] “[...] Before I part from you, I want to tell you something. At times you wait in prayer for enthusiasm, just as you did in your youth. What you are doing is not good. We do not pray whatever happens to arise in our hearts. We enter into the order of prayer established by our fathers through the generations. We enter into it—that is, not you and I, but the entire praying congregation, of which you and I are only a part. What arises in your heart you may say to your Creator when you awaken at the break of dawn, or when you leave the town to be alone. Prayer has its place and its times, and we must treat them with respect.”
“Do you too rebuke me for this, Isaiah?” cried the “Jew” sadly. “What you say is true, but do you not know that it is only part of the truth? [...a short discourse on the innovations of Hasidism...] In order for the word to become living, it needs us. It does indeed have its appointed times, but the person who lingers and waits does not do so in order to make things easier for himself. He waits until he can enter wholly into the prayer, because for all his solitude he is preparing the revival of the community.
“[Like the Hasidim mentioned above,] when I stand alone before the Blessed Name, I do not mean myself and my God, but the Congregation of Israel and the God of Israel.”
“That is no way,” said R. Isaiah sadly, with a sadness no less than that of the “Jew.” “When you find disciples, Jacob Isaac—and I am certain that you will find many, and great ones—some of them will contradict you in practice. Their deeds will transform your intention into its opposite. [...]”[11]
One might argue that this reading by Mendes-Flohr does not offer us a Buberian “doctrine” of prayer of the sort that could constitute an answer to the questions of Rosenzweig/Isaiah. But, as Buber repeatedly said, he does not offer a doctrine.[12] Nevertheless, I think we can learn from this discussion that Buber’s relationship with Jewish tradition is far more complex than the humanistic-universalist relationship characteristic of assimilated Jews,[13] and that, in any event, the discussion between the two appears to have ended in sadness, but also in deep fellowship.
It is not certain that such fellowship can find an echo in present-day Israel, since it demands, on the one hand, a genuine involvement in the tradition of Israel, and, on the other, genuine respect for the way of life and the faith—a word Buber used with great seriousness in the correspondence in this context—of those with whom one shares one’s life.
Moreover, what emerges from these remarks is that Buber’s opposition to the observance of the commandments originates, as noted, precisely in the higher significance that he attributes to them—at least in his own view—than Rosenzweig does. Buber’s aspiration is toward a commandment that forms part of a whole and living life of commandments. He is unwilling to affirm divine law, even in part, even if, as he grew older, the voice of Shaddai seemed to him to be heard from some of the commandments.[14]
I would cautiously suggest that precisely the significance Buber assigns to the observance of the commandments requires him not to compromise by observing some of them in a committed and living fashion, because, apparently, every such observance presupposes the separation between a living commandment and a “commandment of men learned by rote.” This is almost the very nature of law—a feature Buber seems willing to forgive in human law, but not in law that claims to be divine.
Even in Rosenzweig’s argument, there is an assumption according to which a commandment performed out of an inner, individual necessity will lead to its being able to become real again, so that the word of God may once more be heard from within it. The commandment is therefore not whole from the outset, and it is not to be accepted as a fixed system.
At this point, it seems to me, the distance between Buber’s literary representation in the figure of “the Holy Jew” and Buber the historical personality narrows—and not for nothing did Rosenzweig accuse him of “delaying the End.”[15] “For all his solitude he is preparing the revival of the community.”
In this sense, Buber was and remained a Zionist in the authentic sense: committed to a Jewish society undergoing renewal, for which fallen historical reality is not final. It may be that the absence of spiritual diffusion between the different parts of Israeli society is, in this context, a symptom precisely of the absence of such a vision of the revival of the community. For indeed, if all that exists is what lies before us, then we must harden the tracks as much as possible and reach compromises wherever this cannot be done. But if the community is capable of being more than it is today, who are we to bind it to our own predicament?
Notes
[1] Mendes-Flohr, 2025, pp. 136–141.
[2] Anthology, pp. 206–228.
[3] Ibid., pp. 220–221.
[4] Ibid., p. 228; emphasis in the original.
[5] Buber, Martin. “Der Chassidismus und der abendländische Mensch.” In Band 17 Chassidismus II, edited by Susanne Talabardon, Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2016, pp. 304–314, at 314; originally published in 1956/57.
[6] Mendes-Flohr, 2025, pp. 17–18.
[7] Ibid., pp. 4–5.
[8] “For me, the one question remains, which in the depths of my soul deep calls unto deep.” Mordecai Martin Buber, Correspondence, vol. 2 (1918–1938), translated from the German by Yehoshua Amir and Miriam Ron, Jerusalem, 1990, p. 199. (Kosman’s discussion apparently disregards this line as pathos, Anthology, p. 219.) See also, on another matter, Buber’s biographical disclosure concerning when and how he ceased observing the commandments, pp. 126–127. Buber himself apparently directs Rosenzweig to this episode during the discussion of the status of halakha as the “hidden secret” that he carries with him, one that is at once biographical and one to which Rosenzweig had already been exposed, pp. 151–152 (cf. Anthology, p. 216).
[9] “Offenbarung und Gesetz,” in Almanach des Schocken Verlags auf das Jahr 5697 (1936–37), 1936–37.
[10] Mendes-Flohr, 2025, pp. 140–141.
[11] Martin Buber, Gog and Magog, Jerusalem, 1967, pp. 82–83. It should be noted that, unfortunately, in the 2025 Mendes-Flohr volume the publishers did not trouble to redirect footnotes referring to English translations to the corresponding passages where a Hebrew translation exists—not even in cases where the original itself is in Hebrew, as here.
[12] Martin Buber, For the Sake of Heaven: A Chronicle, trans. Ludwig Lewisohn, New York, 1945, p. xiii.
[13] What Rosenzweig and Buber recognize as the “liberal” tradition in the historical context in which they are writing.
[14] Buber, 1990, p. 179.
[15] Ibid., p. 176; cf. the discussion in Buber, 1967, p. 215.
So, if I understand you/Buber correctly, his view of tradition resembles the idea commonly attributed to Gustav Mahler: tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.
But this seems to require either that tradition is ultimately human in origin, or that humans retain access to its divine source (perhaps Buber sees the I–Thou encounter as such access?). Otherwise, those who believe their law has a fixed divine foundation would have little reason to renew it rather than simply preserve and obey it.