I and ‘I and Thou’

“I and Thou” Martin Buber’s seminal work, is a slim volume.

Parts I and II are devoted to repeated, but differing, attempts to pierce the outer “shell” of the Centre – the Centre being God. God is spoken of using obscurity, opaqueness – in a word, poetry.

Buber is not here being held to account for being obscure. Here, his wish to distil and increase the majesty of God by referring to His “fringes” is recognised and respected; his repeated use of antimony – and the antimonies themselves – when so ruffling the “fringes”, are understood.

In Parts I and II, Buber devotes many words in an attempt, time and time again, to do – well what, exactly?

In the language of Buber, it is posited that what he is trying to do in these two parts, is impossible. One cannot, he claims definitively, know what/who/why God is. But he tries! Again and again! thus, with a nod to science, “proving” that his thesis has been tested.

It turns out, though, that, at the same time, one can say definitively what/who/why God is – and the juxtaposition of this inability and ability to define God is the apogee of Buber’s antimonious approach. Buber hints at his acceptance of the Torah – and the statements to be found there claiming that God is Eternal; He is Creator and He reveals. And he has in any case in Parts I and II made many other assertions that glance off this underlying theory – the theory that one can describe the attributes of God.

In contrast, the author maintains that it may be correct to say that it may be correct to say that God is inscrutable (repeated ad infinitum) and it may be incorrect to say that it may be incorrect to say that God is inscrutable (again, repeated ad infinitum).

What would Buber have said about the foregoing assertions?

Would he have held that the author’s theory was just as obscure, just as obfuscating, as his, Buber’s, own? – that it, the author’s theory, claims what Buber’s theory claims?

To this, the author would say that her theory is but a non-binary “God is this, God is not this”, third approach to understanding God.

Martin Buber, extrapolating from the theories set forth in “I and Thou”, believed in a Spiritual Zionism which would see Mandatory Palestinian Arabs and Jews living in peace together.

By 1938, however, the year Buber made Aliyah, it was clear that Mandatory Palestinian Arab leaders, such as the British-appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, had rejected, if not the concept of Zionism, its reality.

Had the unrelenting pursuit by Hitler’s followers of German and non-German Jews forced Buber, who must have feared for his own life, to accept Herzl’s Political Zionism – if only momentarily?

Is Spiritual Zionism still attainable post the October 7, 2023 atrocities?