Editorial Review

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Reviews (30)

About Authentic Meeting
I find the notes of Walter Kaufmann very valuable and gives another way of understanding the Old Testament.If you get an edition of I AND THOU, I highly recommend getting one translated with notes by Walter Kaufmann.The main theme of Buber in this book is that there are two basic relationships with life I-Thou and I-It.When we meet life in I-Thou we enter the sacred and are truly authentic to each other.From this basic relationship comes a kind of Monotheism as well as the ethics of personal conscience and integrity and meeting another person in their fullness, rather than reducing them or life to a thing which can be manipulated or analyzed or even objectively known.I feel that Buber opened the heart and core of the Old Testament to me, beyond what my previously more Christian studies implied was there (making any message there inferior to what the New Testament gives).Before then all I could get was outmoded laws, grisly wars, strange folklore, and proverbial common sense with an occasionally wise statement which was a nugget of gold in the strange medley of books.But once I got what this kind of authentic relating was about, something seemed to unify for me about the Old Testament and the rest made sense.I still find a lot of what I used to find there, but with the key Buber gave, I could see something growing at the very heart of Judaism behind all those books about what it meant to meet each other authentically and to feel I divinity that says I AM.

When I read "I and Thou" the first time...
When I read "I and Thou" the first time......I cried for nearly a week.
Excellent Read Regarding Mystic-Philosophy
I enjoyed this book. This book transforms the relational world we live in; into a workable experience. People live in an I-You or an I-It world. This book offers incredible insight into how we live; and how we are human. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. God    2. Judaism - General    3. Life    4. Philosophy    5. Relationism    6. Religion    7. Religious    8. Christianity    9. Religion / General   

Reviews (7)

A pioneering work
This work has great historical importance. Buber more than any other person conveyed to the general Western even Christian culture something of the feeling and taste of 'Hasidism'. This movement which has its origins with the teachings of Israel Baal- Shem Tov ( 1700- 1760) came at a critical time in the history of the Jewish people and infused in it new spirit and hope. Buber who came from a scholarly Galician background and the discovery of the world of Hasidism opened up to him personally a whole new way of thinking and feeling about Judaism.
Khasiduth as metaphor
Martin Buber was one of the great humanists of the modern era and his extraction and retelling of a small part of the Hasidic corpus is a great poetic and ethical achievement. Readers should keep in mind, though, that in this book Buber was using traditional Ashkenazic pietism to represent a more cosmopolitan and higher reality. When he composed this book, there was every reason to believe that the Hasidim who survived the genocide perpetrated by National Socialism would fall prey to Communism or, more slowly, to secular education and one or another form of democracy. Hence sentimentality led Buber to transfigure Khasiduth into something as etherialized as Platonism or his ally Paul Tillich's Protestantism. A Classic that can be appreciated by both Jews and Non-Jews
Buber was one of the great religious thinkers of the 20th century.As for the historical accuracy of the work, I will leave it up to those better versed in such matters than myself to judge.However, it is an absolutely delightful and thought-provoking look at Buber's view of Hasids and their history.Students of mysticism, Judaiasm, or simply those looking for a variety of tales steeped in profound meaning, though often delivered with a light touch, will enjoy this work. It is one I often return to for contemplation and inspiration ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Hasidic parables    2. Hasidim    3. Judaism    4. Judaism - Hasidism    5. Legends    6. Religion    7. Religion - Judaism    8. Folklore    9. Jewish studies    10. Religion / Judaism / General   

Reviews (2)

Profound & Deep
After reading several Carl Rogers books and papers I was led to Martin Buber's works.Martin Buber was one of the most profound thinkers of our times. Not an easy read but a one well worth the time and effort.Illuminating and insight on the subject of good and evil.

A oasis in the dryness of my time
There is a sense that this is one of the most important book in my life.I have re-read it for the last 3 summers and i have found different things that i needed.Buber has a distinct method of communication that pullsfrom you who you are... i hear his subtlety in my ear even now.Buber isbrilliant. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Good & Evil    2. Philosophy    3. Reference    4. Religion - Commentaries / Reference    5. Religion / General    6. Topics in philosophy   

Reviews (4)

From the Existential to the Spiritual
Martin Buber has a way of speaking to my heart. He speaks as a human who has always struggled with the cynicism and skeptical spirituality of our age. Yet he has retained a strong faith in God, and a strong faith in God's real presence in our struggling human everyday life. We may not always feel His presence...but in Buber's words we hear another's testimony that God is with us even when He seems absent. In these short parables, Buber introduces us to other humans...ordinary men...who likewise have struggled to walk with God. Their walk is grounded in the existential. But unlike other ways such as Zen, their walk gradually reveals the real presence of God who has been walking with us since day one. It is as if in our faithful walk God gradually becomes trulu felt as walking beside us...and in our hearts.

With the depth and simplicity of a true seer...
...Martin Buber encompasses the whole world in the span of 50 pages.He relates new interpretations of a handful of old myths and stories, making each one reflect the individual's personal journey towards enlightenment.Poignant and marvellously efficient and concise in his style and vocabulary, Buber has created a book which is accessible to small children, but which will resonate with anyone even slightly interested in spirituality.It can be read in an hour, and is a book to which I return again and again for guidance and inspiration.Truly, a miracle of a book.

short and sweet
41 pages of wisdom from the standpoint of Hasidism (from "hasidut":allegiance, piety)--but Hasidism seen through the heart of Martin Buber.

Subjects:  1. Inspirational    2. Inspirational - General    3. Judaism - Hasidism    4. Christianity    5. Judaism   

Reviews (1)

the most important book of my life
I read this book as part of a high school class, and the conversations within our class as a result of it were just amazing.a very deep and spiritual book.buber believes that there are three relationships peoplecan have:relationships between man and things, between man and god, andbetween man and man.to put it simply, to have a relationship with things,you must go to them.to have a relationship with god, god has to come toyou.but in relationships between man and man, we can come to eachother...Read more

Subjects:  1. Education    2. History & Surveys - Modern    3. Human beings    4. Philosophy    5. Religion - Commentaries / Reference    6. Religious    7. Phenomenology & Existentialism    8. Philosophy / Religious    9. Philosophy of religion   

Subjects:  1. Philosophy    2. Philosophy Of Religion    3. Philosophy and religion    4. Psychology of Religion    5. Reference    6. Religion    7. Religion - Commentaries / Reference    8. Philosophy of science   

Subjects:  1. 1878-1965    2. Anecdotes    3. Biography / Autobiography    4. Buber, Martin,    5. Germany    6. Jewish philosophers    7. Judaism - General    8. Personal Memoirs    9. Philosophers    10. Religion    11. Religious    12. 20th century    13. Biography: general    14. Philosophy of religion    15. Religion / Judaism / General   

Reviews (1)

Ian Myles Slater on: Buber's Exodus and Wilderness
"Moses," usually published as "Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant,"is probably the most readable of Martin Buber's longer Biblical studies. It combines a sense of narrative movement with ingenious interpretations (often backed by formidable, if now obsolete, scholarship, almost always tucked away in endnotes), rhapsodies on freedom and the desert, reflections on the experiences described as miracles, and some hard political thought. For those familiar with traditional Jewish biblical interpretation, its influence on Buber's thought, and his willingness to work out implications by suggesting supplements to the biblical narrative, will be apparent. This combination makes "Moses" interesting to read, but difficult to classify. (It may also be a surprise to those who know Buber only from the philosophy of"I and Thou," or the story-telling of "Tales of the Hasidim.")
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Subjects:  1. (Biblical leader)    2. Bible - Study - Old Testament    3. General    4. Moses    5. Philosophy    6. Religion    7. Biblical studies, criticism & exegesis    8. Books of the Old Testament   

Reviews (1)

Fascinating essays about Israel
This is an excellent book.Buber's intelligence and sincerity are on display throughout it.Of course, I disagree with much of what Buber says.I'm a Polytheist, and I do not like Monotheistic religions.And I find some of Buber's advice to Israelis to be puzzling at times.Even after the British White Paper of 1939, he thought a Levantine Jewish state unnnecessary, although he admitted that most Levantine Jews disagreed.Still, one can see in these essays how he's always interested in equal rights, including rights for Jews that are neither more nor less than those of others.
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Subjects:  1. History - General History    2. Middle East - General   

Reviews (2)

'Letters' of the Great Teacherof I- Thou Dialogue
In a comprehensive review of this collection of Buber's Letters, Werner Dannehauser points out one great paradox of the philosopher of Dialogue and 'I- Thou'. He apparently was not the greatest listener in the world. Nonetheless this collection contains not only Buber's letters, but a sample of the letters written to him. Perhaps for Buber himself the most important were those written by his great collaborator in Biblical Translation, Franz Rosenzweig. Buber courageously calls for the most candid and serious criticism of himself, and thanks Rosenzweig for giving it. Rosenzweig and Buber were divided on the question of the vital significance of Halachah for Jewish life and continuity.
Buber's own words still resonate
This gem is worthy of 100 stars. Bubar's early writings, the work with Gustav Landaur and Franz Rosenweig in synthesizing "Ich und Du", as well as his editorial comments to writers of Der Jude. A true Passover Feast of wisdom and compassion, even including his letter to Gandhi. The forward by Paul Mendes-Flohr serves as an excellant background.As vital today as he was at the birth of the State of Israel. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. 1878-1965    2. Biography / Autobiography    3. Buber, Martin,    4. Correspondence    5. General    6. History & Surveys - Modern    7. Jewish scholars    8. Philosophers    9. Philosophy    10. Philosophy Of The 20th Century    11. Religion    12. Zionists    13. 20th century    14. Biography: general    15. Buber, Martin    16. Judaism    17. Modern Western philosophy, c 1600 to the present    18. Theology    19. c 1800 to c 1900   

Reviews (2)

A master on a master
Rabbi Nachman is one of the great leaders of Hasidism. Even today there is a whole group of Hasidism who consider him their ' rebbe' and walk in his way. The great presenter of the Hasidic message as he interpreted it to the Western world , Martin Buber in this work presents an introduction to the life and work of Rabbi Nachman, and presents six of his tales which he translated to German and which have been translated from the German by Maurice Friedman. These tales are truly 'parable-likemystical tales' and compel the reader to seek new interpretations of them. The volume concludes with an essay by Buber on Rabbi Nachman's Journey to the Holy Land. This is an excerpt from the concluding chapter. "Herein the land of Israel, the purification of the imagination takes place.It is not for nothing that the sounds of the word adama soil, and medame imagination , resemble one another: the fullness of the elements comes to the imagination from the earth.But the purification of the imagination by faith can take place no other way than through the consecrated earth and the consecrated earth is here in the land of Israel".

The resurrection of a great culture
What an extraordinary enterprise this is: the reconstruction, largely from oral or late sources, of the celebrated fables or parables told by a once-famous rabbinical teacher and thinker from Eastern Europe, from a culture which, though European and Jewish, is as strange to the average Westerner as any alien civilization.These Jews believed in reincarnation; they developped complex historical schemes of interpretation; they had their own numerology and their own philosophy.Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav was, according to Buber, both the last and the greatest of this line of mystical philosophers.Always a controversial figure - he suffered the violent opposition of a whole opposing Jewish party in his own shtetl, which he seems to have taken with Gandhi-like non-violence - he was above all the author of a number of complex, elaborate and, dare I say, beautiful tales expressing his own view of the nature, origin and destiny of man and God.A later and rather different Jewish genius, the cartoonist Jack Kirby, has unhesitatingly ascribed the success of Jews in all the American arts and media to the influence of the Jewish tradition of storytelling, learned at home at one's mother's knee, and bearing fruit throughout life in a natural aptitude for putting complex ideas and views of life in narrative form.These tales show you where he came from; they are of a complexity that bespeaks an ancient and proud narrative culture, and they are capable of bearing the most profound intellectual meaning.As for their author, Rabbi Nachman himself, they reveal not only deep humanity and a visionary imagination, but also features very unexpected in a Chassidic Jewish teacher - a warm appreciation of human and animal beauty, and a temper to understand and forgive rather than condemn or exclude.However, this book is to be treasured not only, perhaps not even mainly, because of its own literary and intellectual excellence, but because it is the resurrection of the last testimony of a great European tradition, now vanished or changed out of all recognition, but fascinating and worthy of respect in its own right. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. General    2. Hasidic parables    3. Philosophy    4. Religion    5. Judaism    6. Religious & spiritual leaders    7. Jewish Theology   

Editorial Review

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Reviews (1)

A fundamental inquiry
Buber raises fundamental questions about the meaning of Jewishness. His profundity is unquestioned, as his poetic insightfulness. However his casting aside of the Halakhah means that he cuts himself off from what is arguably, both the most traditional and most vibrant form of Judaism in our world.
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Subjects:  1. 20th century    2. Judaism    3. Judaism - General    4. Religion    5. Religion - Judaism    6. Religion / Judaism / General   

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Subjects:  1. Philosophy   

Reviews (5)

This is Not the Best Choice
I was originally drawn to Judaism by Martin Buber's wonderful "Tales of the Hasidim" (which has a good section on the Baal Shem Tov). But Buber disavowed his earlier "Legend of the Baal Shem" because it was too flowery and departed too far from the original material; it is also only a mere snippet from the sources. My book "The Light and Fire of the Baal Shem Tov," which is the only comprehensive book on the founder of Hasidism, is a better choice. I'm sure Buber would agree. (Although it's a big book and may be daunting to a beginner.) -- Yitzhak Buxbaum

A Hasid on the great founder of Hasidism
Buber is the Jewish teacher who more than any other helped bring the attention of the West to Hasidism. The Baal Shem Tov (1700-1760)is the founding teacher of Hasidism. In this work Buber tells twenty stories of the Baal Shem and reveals to us a world of deep faith, of deep connection of the Jew with nature and all creation, of the special hitlahavut or enthusiasm which the Hasid brings in his relation to the Divine. Buber is a Hasid of Hasidism, and he tells the stories of its great founder with the same kind of enthusiasm the movement itself generated throughout the Jewish world.

This book was good for me spiritually....
This book was good for me spiritually: it bored the hell out of me! ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Baal Shem Tov,    2. Ba°al Shem òTov,    3. General    4. Hasidim    5. Hasidism    6. Judaism - Rituals & Practice    7. Legends    8. Religion    9. Religion - Judaism    10. ca. 1700-1760    11. Ba°al Shem Tov    12. Jewish Studies    13. Judaism    14. Mind, Body, Spirit    15. Religion / Judaism / Beliefs, Practices, Rituals   

Reviews (1)

The final work in the presentation of Hasidism to the world
Maurice Friedman Buber's great interpreter and faithful student said that "in this book Buber completed his lifework of recreating and interpreting Hasidism. Here he makes explicit the place of Hasidism among world religions, contrasting it with biblical prophecy, Spinoza, Freud, Sankara, Meister Eckhart, Gnosticism, Christianity, Zionism, and Zen Buddhism."
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Subjects:  1. General    2. Hasidism    3. History    4. Philosophy    5. Religion   

Subjects:  1. Dialectic    2. Philosophy   

Subjects:  1. Community    2. Culture    3. Human beings    4. Philosophy    5. Social Science    6. Sociology    7. Sociology - General    8. History of ideas, intellectual history    9. Social Science / Sociology / General    10. Sociology, Social Studies   

Reviews (2)

Commotion and unity
This is one of those rare anthologies that is worth its price more for the editor's introductory remarks than for the anthologized essays.Don't misunderstand me.Buber does a wonderful job of selecting mystical "ecstatic confessions" from the world's religious traditions.He includes passages from writers such as Rumi, Rabia, Symeon the New Theologian, Hildegard of Bingen, the Beguines, Julian of Norwich, and Catherine of Siena, as well as representative selections from works such as the Mahabharata.For the most part the selections are judicious--although, because the book was published in 1909, twentieth century mystics such as Simone Weil and Thomas Kelley naturally aren't included.Curiously, too, only a tiny snippet from Meister Eckhart makes it into Buber's book. Encounters with the Divine
Martin Buber gives us collected writings of well known and unknown mystics.First published in German in 1909 this wonderful work gives a good introduction for anyone who wants more knowledge and confirmation ofthe existence of the Divine in our finite lives. LK 11:9 "And I tellyou, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the doorwill be opened to you.Other works that have passed the test of times are"The Interior Castle:St.Theresa of Avila", "Dark Night of the Soul:St.John of the Cross", "The Dialogue of Saint Catherine of Siena" and "TheSpiritual Life:Evelyn Underhill. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Christian Mysticism    2. Ecstasy    3. General    4. History & Surveys - Modern    5. Mysticism    6. New Age / Body, Mind & Spirit    7. Religion    8. Religion: general   

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• Unabridged

Subjects:  1. Philosophy/Spiritual