front cover of Aesthetics of Renewal
Aesthetics of Renewal
Martin Buber's Early Representation of Hasidism as Kulturkritik
Martina Urban
University of Chicago Press, 2008
Martin Buber’s embrace of Hasidism at the start of the twentieth century was instrumental to the revival of this popular form of Jewish mysticism. Hoping to instigate a Jewish cultural and spiritual renaissance, he published a series of anthologies of Hasidic teachings written in German to introduce the tradition to a wide audience. In Aesthetics of Renewal, Martina Urban closely analyzes Buber’s writings and sources to explore his interpretation of Hasidic spirituality as a form of cultural criticism.
 
For Buber, Hasidic legends and teachings were not a static, canonical body of knowledge, but were dynamic and open to continuous reinterpretation. Urban argues that this representation of Hasidism was essential to the Zionist effort to restore a sense of unity across the Jewish diaspora as purely religious traditions weakened—and that Buber’s anthologies in turn played a vital part in the broad movement to use cultural memory as a means to reconstruct a collective identity for Jews. As Urban unravels the rich layers of Buber’s vision of Hasidism in this insightful book, he emerges as one of the preeminent thinkers on the place of religion in modern culture.
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front cover of Communication and Community
Communication and Community
Implications of Martin Buber's Dialogue
Ronald C. Arnett. Foreword by Maurice Friedman
Southern Illinois University Press, 1986

Martin Buber’s work suggests that real life begins with two individ­uals engaged in dialogue, not just taking care of one’s own needs as described in social Darwinism.

Arnett argues that the end of the age of abundance demands that we give up the communica­tive strategies of the past and seek to work together in the midst of limited resources and an uncertain future. Today’s situa­tion calls for an unwavering commitment to Buber’s “narrow ridge” concern for both self and community.

Arnett illustrates the narrow ridge definition of interpersonal communication with rich ex­amples. His vignettes demon­strate effective and ineffective approaches to human communi­ty. An effective approach, he makes clear, incorporates not only openness to others’ points of view but also a willingness to be persuaded.

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front cover of A Land of Two Peoples
A Land of Two Peoples
Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs
Martin Buber
University of Chicago Press, 2005
Theologian, philosopher, and political radical, Martin Buber (1878–1965) was actively committed to a fundamental economic and political reconstruction of society as well as the pursuit of international peace. In his voluminous writings on Arab-Jewish relations in Palestine, Buber united his religious and philosophical teachings with his politics, which he felt were essential to a life of public dialogue and service to God.

Collected in ALand of Two Peoples are the private and open letters, addresses, and essays in which Buber advocated binationalism as a solution to the conflict in the Middle East. A committed Zionist, Buber steadfastly articulated the moral necessity for reconciliation and accommodation between the Arabs and Jews. From the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 to his death in 1965, he campaigned passionately for a "one state solution.

With the Middle East embroiled in religious and ethnic chaos, A Land of Two Peoples remains as relevant today as it was when it was first published more than twenty years ago. This timely reprint, which includes a new preface by Paul Mendes-Flohr, offers context and depth to current affairs and will be welcomed by those interested in Middle Eastern studies and political theory.
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front cover of Martin Buber's Formative Years
Martin Buber's Formative Years
From German Culture to Jewish Renewal, 1897–1909
Gilya Gerda Schmidt
University of Alabama Press, 1995
An illuminating look at an understudied, but critical, period in Buber’s early career.

Martin Buber (1878–1965) has had a tremendous impact on the development of Jewish thought as a highly influential figure in 20th-century philosophy and theology. However, most of his key publications appeared during the last forty years of his life and little is known of the formative period in which he was searching for, and finding, the answers to crucial dilemmas affecting Jews and Germans alike. Now available in paperback, Martin Buber’s Formative Years illuminates this critical period in which the seeds were planted for all of his subsequent work.
 
During the period from 1897 to 1909, Buber's keen sense of the crisis of humanity, his intimate knowledge of German culture and Jewish sources, and his fearlessness in the face of possible ridicule challenged him to behave in a manner so outrageous and so contrary to German-Jewish tradition that he actually achieved a transformation of himself and those close to him. Calling on spiritual giants of great historical periods in German, Christian, and Jewish history—such as Nicolas of Cusa, Jakob Boehme, Israel Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Nachman of Brazlav, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Friedrich Nietzsche—Buber proceeded to subvert the existing order by turning his upside-down world of slave morality right side up once more.
 
By examining the multitude of disparate sources that Buber turned to for inspiration, Gilya Gerda Schmidt elucidates Buber's creative genius and his contribution to turn-of-the-century Jewish renewal. This comprehensive study concludes that Buber was successful in creating the German-Jewish symbiosis that emancipation was to have created for the two peoples but that this synthesis was tragic because it came too late for practical application by Jews in Germany.
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front cover of Martin Buber's Ontology
Martin Buber's Ontology
An Analysis of I and Thou
Robert Wood
Northwestern University Press, 1969
At the turn of the century Martin Buber arrived on the philosophic scene. His path to maturity was one long struggle with the problem of unity—in particular with the problem of the unity of spirit and life—and he saw the problem itself to be rooted in the supposition of the primacy of the subject-object relation, with subjects "over here," objects "over there," and their relation a matter of subjects "taking in" objects or, alternatively, constituting them. But Buber moved into a position which undercuts the subject-object dichotomy and initiates a second "Copernican revolution" in philosophical thought.
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front cover of On Intersubjectivity and Cultural Creativity
On Intersubjectivity and Cultural Creativity
Martin Buber
University of Chicago Press, 1992
One of the foremost religious and social philosophers of the twentieth century, Martin Buber also wrote extensively on sociological subjects, particularly as these affected his philosophical concerns. Collected here, these writings offer essential insights into the human condition as it is expressed in culture and society.

Buber's central focus in his sociological work is the relation between social interaction, or intersubjectivity, and the process of human creativity. Specifically, Buber seeks to define the nature and conditions of creativity, the conditions of authentic intersubjective social relations that nurture creativity in society and culture. He attempts to identify situations favorable to creativity that he believes exist to some extent in all cultures, though their fullest development occurs only rarely.

Buber considers the combination of open dialogue between human and human and a dialogue between man and God to be necessary for the crystallization of the common discourse that is essential for holding a free, just, and open society together.

Important for an understanding of Buber's thought, these writings—touching on education, religion, the state, and charismatic leadership—will be of profound value to students of sociology, philosophy, and religion.
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front cover of The Way of Humanity
The Way of Humanity
According to Chasidic Teaching
Martin Buber
Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2023
Martin Buber (1878–1965) was one of the most influential Jewish
thinkers of the twentieth century. A philosopher, seeker, and nurturer of
dialogue, he responded to the complexities of his times by affirming the
fullness of interpersonal encounter and the spiritual everyday. In 1947,
Buber delivered lectures interpreting six traditional Chasidic stories
to a German-speaking audience, published as The Way of Humanity. In
the first new English translation in over half a century, Rabbi Bernard
H. Mehlman, DHL, and Gabriel E. Padawer, ScD, z"l, bring the work to
contemporary readers in a clear, accessible voice. The teachings within
highlight the subversion and innovation of the early Chasidic masters of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while providing meaningful
spiritual guidance and insight for any seeker today. Scholarly forewords
by Paul Mendes-Flohr, PhD, and Rabbi Joseph A. Skloot, PhD, as well
as an introduction, epilogue, and notes from the translators, place
Buber’s work in historical context. Timeless and enlightening, The Way
of Humanity
guides us to inner meaning and highlights our human
wholeness.
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front cover of Writing Habits
Writing Habits
Historicism, Philosophy, and English Benedictine Convents, 1600–1800
Jaime Goodrich
University of Alabama Press, 2021
The first in-depth examination of the texts produced in English Benedictine convents between 1600 and 1800
 
After Catholicism became illegal in England during the sixteenth century, Englishwomen established more than twenty convents on the Continent that attracted thousands of nuns and served as vital centers of Catholic piety until the French Revolution. Today more than 1,000 manuscripts and books produced by, and for, the Benedictine convents are extant in European archives. Writing Habits: Historicism, Philosophy, and English Benedictine Convents, 1600–1800 provides the first substantive analysis of these works in order to examine how members of one religious order used textual production to address a major dilemma experienced by every English convent on the Continent: How could English nuns cultivate a cloistered identity when the Protestant Reformation had swept away nearly all vestiges of English monasticism?
 
Drawing on an innovative blend of methodologies, Jaime Goodrich contends that the Benedictines instilled a collective sense of spirituality through writings that created multiple overlapping communities, ranging from the earthly society of the convent to the transhistorical network of the Catholic Church. Because God resides at the heart of these communities, Goodrich draws on the works of Martin Buber, a twentieth-century Jewish philosopher who theorized that human community forms a circle, with each member acting as a radius leading toward the common center of God. Buber’s thought, especially his conception of the I-You framework for personal and spiritual relationships, illuminates a fourfold set of affiliations central to Benedictine textual production: between the nuns themselves, between the individual nun and God, between the convent and God, and between the convent and the Catholic public sphere. By evoking these relationships, the major genres of convent writing—administrative texts, spiritual works, history and life writing, and controversial tracts—functioned as tools for creating community and approaching God.

Through this Buberian reading of the cloister, Writing Habits recovers the works of Benedictine nuns and establishes their broader relevance to literary history and critical theory.
 
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