Meeting G-d Half-Way: Martin Buber’s Existential Hasidism in I - TopicsExpress

Meeting G-d Half-Way: Martin Buber’s Existential Hasidism in I and Thou: Gilad Y. Mittelman Martin Buber’s ecumenical contribution to modern philosophy and spirituality is unprecedented in content, importance, and scope. Though his subject matter is universal, it is also intellectually challenging, unique in language, and synchronously direct and esoteric. His contemporaries helped him craft a psychological discipline which was largely existential, though finely woven into the Jewish (Hasidic) as well as classic Enlightenment milieus that had framed his experiential thinking. His notional dialogic structure, for example, transcends time, but reality is only applicable in the present- in the I-World encounters that make up a continuing, but terminable (life) dialogical existence- as well as our relations to the World and G-d. That means that the Torah for one is still alive, but only for those who exist in the present and relive it for themselves, in their relational context. His timeless book entitled I and Thou proposes that “man’s world is manifold, and his attitudes are manifold.” There is no one answer to life’s mysteries, and everyone has a twofold nature: dialogical encounters with both men and objects (I-It), and those with an Eternal G-d (I-Thou), who is beyond cognition, yet central to our very being. While in life there are unknowns in relations both to men and nature, the Eternal Thou supersedes and makes possible both realms, mortal and perpetual. In this sense, all I-It relations stem from and are immersed in the Thou. They cannot exist without Him, the Eternal Thou that can never become an It, as every ordinary “You” does. First off, Buber is as interested in the linguistic aspect of life as he is delineating his dialogic thinking, and we notice this in the special attention he pays to explaining his meticulous nomenclature, and in this- the German text cannot be adequately translated and still maintain his original interpretation. Decoded into English, Ich-Du becomes I-Thou- but in his native German, Du is not only an impersonal ‘you,’ distinct from the formal dich or the more informal sie, but connotes a private relationship, dialogue, or encounter that the existing I has with the Eternal You. In fact, Buber believed that encounters with G-d are direct, and if an intermediary is needed, the encounter ceases to be direct. On the dialogical “situation,” Buber thought that dogma is inflexible (living by a code) and cannot describe Judaism in isolation. The primary importance is not religion as such, but the encounter of G-d with men, and their personal relationship (faith of the heart). To Buber, religious conviction is a cult ritual; faith is interpersonal (relational). E. Dorrf and L. Newman note that “In Martin Buber’s shift of thought to personalism, the interhuman experience becomes the paradigm not merely for duty but for the whole of religious life,” referring to his doctrine of piety... This is a “Self-G-d paradigm,” not a “self-G-d-Israel” one. Buber adores Hasidism, yet was not interested in liturgy, but rather in individual belief in the Almighty, in the sense of what lies in one’s heart (emuna or faith). He is unconcerned with theology, but does care to know why a Jew remains Jewish, and conjectures that the Bible can play a dominant role in a secular person’s life as well. In German circles, many Jewish academics were acculturated in theology (immense influence from Kant, Leibnitz), almost becoming faithful Christians (dogmatically) - as Franz Rosensweig (Star of Redemption: The New Thought) had almost apostatized, and the Austrian Ferdinand Ebner actually had. The maskilim had a theological void if they lacked Christian doctrine, and thus, Buber had an even harder task of retaining his Jewishness, by not dealing with Talmud or Yeshiva facilely, but rather with more rational erudition, leading him to seek a self-defined spirituality more than ordered religion. For Buber, Judaism used to be religion, now it was a private faith; he was not halakhic, but he was religious. Buber did not reject the Talmud altogether, but had a modernized understanding of its contents (less traditional). He wanted to be an enlightened Jew (maskil), but was fascinated with Hasidism (shown in his book Tales of Rabbi Nachman). His work Faith of Judaism (1929) spoke casually. He mused that unity (yihud) with G-d comes to fruition through a dialogue. This personal- dialogical relationship gave a new construal to the biblical figures (i.e. Abraham, Moses); personal as opposed to collective revelation or redemption. Buber’s phrase “The way of the Jewish faith that I must speak” connotes a core linguistic affinity, and an emphasis on personalization (of truths). Each Hasid seeks, or needs unification (yihud) with the Thou, defined by Buber as a “duality of good and evil.” He wrote: “It is the dialogical situation in which the human being stands that finds its sublime or childlike expression.” Dialogue is not limited to speech, but faith entails introspective dialectic and philology- judged individually. Buber was neither Aristotelian nor Maimonidean, perhaps more Cartesian or Kantian. Buber behaves and thinks like a Hasid, but not a halakhic one. He suggested that one must find his own authenticity since G-d is always “turning” to us; dialogue should give birth to a new identity, helping one grow through self-discovery. To him, t’shuva is a way of recreating oneself. Only through an exchange in the present can anything really exist. As Buber said, "Whoever says You does not have something, he has nothing. But he stands in relation…The World as experience belongs to the basic word I-It. The basic word I-You establishes the world or relation." Relational encounter is threefold: Life with nature (below language), life with men (with language), life with spiritual beings (creating language) - while the Eternal You is in is every sphere, and every transitory situational experience (I-It encounter) for that matter. Any person or object “Immediately becomes a He or She, an It, and no longer remains my You,” except for G-d. Buber writes that “Experience is remoteness from You,” since G-d is inaccessible to us, and yet is an inseparable part of our manifold ontology. Man cannot experience You, but can know You, and has a direct dialogue with You. I-You situational encounters are spoken with one’s whole being, both the I-It and I-Thou. As Buber states, “All actual life is encounter.” I-It encounters are those of reciprocity, as G-d is the One dictating them. Buber remarked “The individual It can become a You by entering into the event of revelation…But whoever abhors the [N]ame and fancies that he is godless, when he addresses with his whole devoted being the You of his life that cannot be restricted by any other, he addresses G-d.” Buber’s virtuousness toward other people translates as an all-inclusive love for the Thou (with the ‘whole devoted being’). Walter Kaufmann notes that Buber was not formulaic, but was “one who tried to meet each person, each situation, and each subject in its own way.” I and Thou refers to the present as sacred. As Buber held: “The only G-d worth keeping is a G-d that cannot be kept…The only G-d worth talking about is a G-d that cannot be talked about” and that “G-d is no object of discourse, knowledge, or even experience,” alluding to the temporality of men. In other words, He is unfathomable. Alternatively stated, “He cannot be spoken of, but He can be spoken to; He cannot be seen, but He can be listened to.” The only relationship we can have with G-d is in the present, in the here and now. To Buber, G-d is eternal (ehyeh asher ehyeh), and wrote that the Tetragrammaton translates as “He is present” (Er Ist Da). He is here, there, and everywhere, just as the Beatles’ song was titled. To experience or to use “you” is to deny G-d, but encountering “You,” the I encounters Him (the Thou). We meet G-d in our socialization with others, and we interact with G-d by being, but notably in our use of language. We can know men, since they are on our level, but we cannot really know G-d, we can only speak to Him. On the idea that the Thou can be evoked in the here and now (like the Hasidic notion of hitbodedut attempts), Buber believed that “The Sabbath is every day, several times a day,” artfully shadowing how the Sabbath is a state of mind, not a physicality, and how pious Buber was, though he went about it is a secular way. The book I and Thou perceives “G-d as the eternal You whom men address and by whom they in turn feel…It speaks to those who no longer believe but who wonder whether life without religion is bound to lack some dimension.” I and Thou is not a uniquely Jewish work, but is a psychosomatic essay of Buber, a Hasidic Jew. Buber alleged that through t’shuvah (return to G-d), Hashem can forgive at any time those who repent (or turn to Him, as He is inclined or turning toward us). To reiterate, individuals have direct ties to G-d, with no mediator. Bernard Martin shrewdly refers to the invariable Thou: While man can only live in an interchange of actual and potential dialogical relationships, it is his entry over and over again into the reality of the relationship, Buber suggested, that brings him to that Thou who can never become an It, the Eternal Thou or G-d. T’Shuvah is ‘turning’ to the dialogical approach. Buber wrote, “Man is, as man, redeemable.” The Bible is not limited to the views of traditionalist liberalists or modernist relativists as Dorrf and Newman have branded those theorists, it is rather “the record of the actual meetings between Israel and G-d,” a “Thousand- year- long dialogue between “the ‘I’ of the speaking G-d and the ‘Thou’ of the hearing Israel.” Martin adds to the argument, on the Bible’s value for lay people: "Revelation, Buber insisted, cannot be a system of dogmas. Such a system is not the reflection of the actual presence of G-d in the revelatory encounter but a set of statements formulated about Him in His absence. Nor is revelation a system of laws… Like Rosenzweig, Buber saw the heart of Biblical and later Jewish faith as well in the triad of Creation-Revelation-Redemption. His interpretation of these central Biblical teachings and of the nature of the Bible as a whole, while arguable at various points, has unquestionably made the Bible, for many who formerly had no serious or vital relationship to it, once again a living and the source of a meaningful personal faith." Buber had a secular relationship with the Bible, bolstering his personal faith in helping him to regain “a sense of His living reality.” B. Martin writes of the Eternal Thou, “For He is present in all true dialogical encounters, underlying them, making them possible, gathering them up, [and] fulfilling them.” G-d or the Eternal Thou is met head-on in our existence as humans as well as in our encounters with people and objects (I-It). Man must deal with G-d since He makes all dialogues possible. Buber learned from the Bible that sometimes G-d is an El- mistatter (G-d that hides Himself), and mysterious in this regard, but can be attached to, since everything is a form of the indivisible, invisible, but hearing G-d. Even so, the dual encounter of the human is affiliated to the One G-d in our yihud with Him, through our I-It as well as I-Thou interchanges. In this sense, no man can control G-d’s will, but only his own I-It (men and objects) dialogues, which align men with the divine Thou. Actively engaging within these social strata, we are all involved in a direct exchange of ideas with G-d, even while we cannot really appraise Him at all. Samuel Bergman wrote that “The essence of Judaism could be found in hasidut, personal piety.” He continues, “Man is literally G-d’s partner, His co-worker in the never-ending work of creation, for his action releases the divine in the World and lifts it to ever greater perfection.” Buber wrote “Real life is meeting,” and Bergman adds that “all life is an encounter.” Of the primary words I-It and I-Thou Bergman notes “through the Thou who stands over against him a man becomes an I.” “All real life is dialogue, meeting,” according to Buber. Only one You remains a Thou (G-d), as everything else, even if addressed informally, becomes an It. Bergman notes: “Thus the world is continually filled with the possibility of revelation which, for Buber, is man’s encounter with G-d’s presence rather than information about His essence.” Kaufmann’s translation uses “You” where the German word Du denotes an informal you known better in English as Thou. A formal you in German is simply dich, so Buber had a precise meaning in mind, and this while every person reading must depend on his/her contextual interpretation for their encounter/relation with/to Buber’s text. Norbert Samuelson notes that in a word, “Buber identifies himself…as a phenomenologist.” Why only I-Thou or I-It? This has to do with Buber’s theory of knowledge (epistemology). Thou or You is informal speech (word combinations), since our relation to G-d is equivocal. Buber’s delineation of what man and nature are correlate to “one relational term, encounter.” Logically, one has two moves at their disposal, to make based on the following reflections: is it true to you? Is it true to you, but maybe not to others? Honesty to Buber is determined by reflection (of experience). Word groupings include a term or entity and a function (i.e. 4 +), where the function term is encounter (begegnung). “Encounter is a particular kind of relation and not relation as such,” and relation (beziehung) to G-d is inherently unattainable, unlike our relation to worldly ‘situations.” Human encounters are positive or negative encounters, where love is positive and hate is negative, wielding our emotional fabric. The phenomenologist Jean Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness discusses the I-It in terms of a person who is writing- “conscious of- the object of my consciousness- is what I am writing.” Samuelson clarifies that the “I-It is an objective, cognitive relationship. In contrast, the kind of non-object relationship identified above is what Buber calls the I-Thou relationship… It is a non-objective, non-cognitive relationship… It is consciousness without an object of consciousness.” Man must balance reality with the deific. René Descartes wrote on certain knowledge (or scientific certainties from experience- empiricism), but did not critically examine his language as much as Buber does. For Buber then, the “starting point must be relations,” and every individual’s relation is his existing sphere of reality is his existing place, or more precisely, his temporal share in G-d’s world. Samuelson notes, “There are only I-relational terms. Buber decided that we need assume no more than two such relations, viz., I-relations with an impersonal [I]t and with what he calls an intimate You (Thou)…Each word has a meaning only in relation to the other words that make up its context.” I-Thou (first-second persons) relations are not mentalized ‘situations.’ Immanuel Kant distinguished between moral good and practical good, but for Buber, G-d is good and a human’s reason is subconsciously bad. Samuelson inserts: “I-Thou is both non-cognitive consciousness and moral relation, while I-It is both cognitive consciousness and utensil relation.” I-It encounters and I-Thou relations are the channels through which man experiences reality and relates to G-d, respectively. Thus, every individual in the present exists, and that is their existential reality. Existence requires an I, as Samuelson writes, “All experience is relational,” and every individual’s relations craft their being. Buber wanted to explicate the functionality of I-Thou and I-It relations as the only two encounters that man can have, of which both have G-d at the center. Rémi Brague explains the notion of independent conjecture of G-d, through both everyday conversations as well as religious prayer: “Faith, itself involves the idea of a world: faith is said to become a reality not only in a person’s behavior towards G-d, but in his behavior towards the portion of the World that is allotted to him.” Founders of religions were trying to structure the world by divine truths, and Buber “employs the derogatory term wisserisch for this ‘knowledge,’ because knowledge is an inadequate tool where G-d, the Supreme Thou, is concerned. Knowledge, properly speaking, has to do only with things, with the It,” and every individual lives with this irreconcilable dualism and collective misunderstanding. Gnosis (knowledge) and Marcionism are characterized by Brague as excluding “the relationship I-Thou,” and by Buber as “the true antithesis of the reality of faith” and as “a way of leaving the world.” Buber sees Gnosis as worse than idolatrous Atheism, which “endeavors to escape the call of our human reality.” Paradoxically, Buber is both influenced and rejects what he calls an antithetical Gnosis. He sees Kabbalah as essentially Gnostic, while Hasidism was “an attempt at worldly piety (weltfrömmigkeit) in the strictest sense.” Hasidism is about begetting G-d into the worldly sphere. It is therefore the “very antithesis of Gnosis,” which looks away from the real world, whereas “Hasidism is a life with the World.” Buber characterized this world as a “world of things,” while Gnosis is a lack of “place in the World.” Every human impacts this World, and Gnosis is a way to escape the World. G-d is part of everything- the real world (of encounters), and the I-World (ego), which in its purest is of the I-Thou relation, or simply, “the Thou world.” Buber then, is not interested in the afterworld, but rather in the present (existing) one. This is where a legacy is left, much like the Bible has done (recalling once- present encounters), and where man can effect G-d, in thought and deed, and especially in dialogue. Buber can be seen as a “deconstructionalist,” believing that the Bible itself is not holy, and that it must be perceived and “speak to the individual” to have any telling power. Buber grew up in a time when sedentary Jews had burst onto the academic stage all over Europe, bringing with them a solid religious background and supplanting it with rational thought. The Haskalah, though it posed a threat to the traditional endogamous Jewish community, would bring to light a philosophy that was largely Jewish, but one that could only be received in the language of reason- now a critical science. Buber was able to do just this with his knowledge of secular psychology, and to truly appreciate his input, one must see how his intricate methods help us identify his Jewishness in general philosophical terms. Hasidism was not taught, it was experienced- and it was through Buber’s modern understanding that one could view his own reality. Buber had a broad approach to cognizing G-d; one that accepted that while He is part and parcel of our existence, He is beyond our identification, which is confined to the world of I-It. WORKS CITED Bergman, Samuel H., Jospe, Alfred. Faith and Reason: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought. Washington, DC: B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundations, 1961. Biemann, Asher D. The Martin Buber Reader: Essential Writings. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002. Buber, Martin, Kaufman, Walter. I and Thou. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Inc., 1996. Dorrf, Elliot N., Newman, Louis E. Contempory Jewish Ethics and Morality: A Reader. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1995. Martin, Bernard. Great 20th Century Jewish Philosophers. New York, NY: The MacMillan Company, 1970. Mendes-Flohr, Paul, et al. Martin Buber: A Contemporary Perspective. Jerusalem, Israel: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanity, 2002. Samuelson, Norbert M. An Introduction to Modern Jewish Philosophy. Albany, NY: University of New York Press, 1989.