Читать книгу Blessed Peacemakers - Robin Jarrell - Страница 43

8 February 1878—13 June 1965

Inclusive Zionist

By the time he immigrated to Jerusalem in 1938, Vienna native Martin Buber was already recognized as one of Europe’s leading Jewish intellectuals. Raised in an Orthodox family, he spent most of his childhood studying Torah and Midrash. As a young man he studied philosophy before launching his career as a public intellectual. He became a professor at the University of Frankfurt in 1930 and helped cofound the Central Office for Jewish Education, an alternative institute of higher learning, when the Nazis forbade Jews from attending German universities.

Buber’s writings, especially his books on Hasidism, earned him acclaim. But his best known book, I and Thou, became one of the twentieth century’s most influential texts. In it, Buber argued that humans are relational, interdependent creatures rather than radically autonomous, self-sufficient ones. There are, he wrote, two modes of relating to other people: one in which we reduce them to the status of objects to be used, and one in which we recognize them as subjects valuable in their own right and essential to our own development as humans. When we relate in the first way, we transform people into “It”s and stunt their development. When we relate in the second way, we recognize them for the “Thou”s they are and allow them to flourish.

For Buber, the Thou-It distinction wasn’t merely a philosophical abstraction. He saw it as the key to building community based on mutual respect and reciprocity rather than an often violent competition for control. “The most pernicious of all false teachings,” he wrote, is the claim that “history is determined by power alone.” Buber conceded that power is sometimes a necessary response to evil. The rise of European fascism and the horrors into which it led the world were stark reminders of that truth. But genuine community and individual flourishing are ultimately built on dialogue that aims at understanding and cooperation rather than manipulation and control.

Even before relocating to Palestine, Buber was a committed Zionist. But in keeping with his embrace of I-Thou rather than I-It relationships, he opposed all versions of Zionism that were nationalistically exclusivistic. Buber wanted a binational state in which Jews and Arabs recognized one another’s humanity so that they could “develop the land together without one imposing his will on the other.” Far from either group trying to exclude the other, each should see it as their “duty to understand and to honor the claim which is opposed to ours and to endeavor to reconcile both claims.” The “disease of nationalism,” Buber warned, would destroy any real prospect of a homeland for the Jews. Since Buber’s death, the wisdom and humanitarianism of his call for a binational state of Israel has become increasingly apparent.