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In Hebrew. 507 pages. Martin (Mordechai) Buber (Vienna, February 8, 1878 ? Jerusalem, Israel, June 13, 1965) was an Austrian and Israeli Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship. Buber came from a family of observant Jews, but broke with Jewish custom to pursue secular studies in philosophy. He wrote about Zionism and worked with various bodies within the Zionist movement for almost 50 years. In 1923, Buber wrote his famous essay on existence, Ich und Du (translated into English as I and Thou), and in 1925, he began translating the Hebrew Bible into German reflecting the patterns of the Hebrew language. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature ten times, and the Nobel Peace Prize seven times. Buber was born to an Orthodox Jewish family and was a direct descendant of the 16th century rabbi Meir Katzenellenbogen, the Maharam, the Hebrew acronym for ?Mordechai, HaRav (the Rabbi), Meir?, of Padua. Karl Marx is another notable relative. After the divorce of his parents when he was three years old, he was raised by his grandfather in Lemberg (now Lviv in Ukraine). His grandfather, Solomon Buber, was a scholar of Midrash and Rabbinic Literature. At home, Buber spoke Yiddish and German. In 1892, Buber returned to his father's house in Lemberg. Despite Buber's putative connection to the Davidic line as a descendant of Katzenellenbogen, a personal religious crisis led him to break with Jewish religious customs. He began reading Immanuel Kant, Soren Kierkegaard, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The latter two, in particular, inspired him to pursue studies in philosophy. In 1896, Buber began studies in philosophy, art history, German studies, and philology in Vienna. In 1898, he joined the Zionist movement, participating in congresses and organizational work. In 1899, while studying in Zürich, Buber met his future wife, Paula Winkler, a brilliant Catholic writer from a Bavarian peasant family who in 1901 left the Catholic Church and in 1907 converted to Judaism. In 1930, Buber became an honorary professor at the University of Frankfurt am Main, but resigned from his professorship in protest immediately after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. He then founded the Central Office for Jewish Adult Education, which became an increasingly important body as the German government forbade Jews from public education. In 1938, Buber left Germany and settled in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine, receiving a professorship at Hebrew University and lecturing in anthropology and introductory sociology. Buber became the best known Israeli philosopher. Buber's evocative, sometimes poetic, writing style marked the major themes in his work: the retelling of Hasidic and Chinese tales, Biblical commentary, and metaphysical dialogue. A cultural Zionist, Buber was active in the Jewish and educational communities of Germany and Israel. He was also a supporter of a binational solution in Eretz Israel, and, after the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel, of a regional federation of Israel and Arab states. His influence extends across the humanities, particularly in the fields of social psychology, social philosophy, and religious existentialism. Buber's attitude toward Zionism was tied to his desire to promote a vision of "Hebrew humanism", a term coined to distinguish Buber's form of nationalism from that of the official Zionist movement. and to point to how Israel's problem was but a distinct form of the universal human problem. Accordingly, the task of Israel as a distinct nation was inexorably linked to the task of humanity in general. The young Buber disagreed with Theodor Herzl on Zionism. Herzl did not envision Zionism as a movement with religious objectives. In contrast, Buber believed the potential of Zionism was for social and spiritual enrichment. . . . Seller Inventory # 016537
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