The Mystery of the Earth : Mysticism and Hasidism in the Thought of Martin Buber [1 ed.] 9789004181243, 9789004181236

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The Mystery of the Earth

Supplements to The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy Edited by

Leora Batnitzky (Princeton University) Christian Wiese (University of Sussex) Elliot Wolfson (New York University)

VOLUME 10

The Mystery of the Earth Mysticism and Hasidism in the Thought of Martin Buber

by

Israel Koren

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2010

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Koren, Israel. The mystery of the earth : mysticism and Hasidism in the thought of Martin Buber / by Israel Koren. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (Supplements to the Journal of Jewish thought and philosophy ; v. 10) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-18123-6 (hard cover : alk. paper) 1. Buber, Martin, 1878–1965. 2. Mysticism—Judaism. 3. Hasidism. I. Title. II. Series. B3213.B84K67 2010 296.3092—dc22 2009039189

ISSN 1873-9008 ISBN 978 90 40 18123 6 Originally published as ‫ מיסטיקה וחסידות בהגותו של מרטין בובר‬:‫המסתורין של הארץ‬, © University of Haifa Press, Haifa, 2005. Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS

To Beatrice, Raphael and Nitsan

CONTENTS Preface .........................................................................................

xi

Introduction ................................................................................ 1. Buber’s Thought as a Neo-Hasidic Ouevre ....................... 2. Buber’s Thought as a Mystical Oeuvre .............................. 3. On the Problem of Defining the Mystical Phenomenon ...

1 1 8 21

PART I

STUDIES IN MYSTICAL ELEMENTS OF BUBER’S THOUGHT Chapter One Buber’s Early Mysticism 1899–1909: Under the Sign of Ecstasy ................................................................. 1. Introduction ....................................................................... 2. The Unifying Element in Buber’s Work; the Movement from Vortex to Direction ................................................... 3. Definition of the Mystical Phenomenon as a Basis for Characterizing Buber’s Mysticism ..................................... 4. Buber’s Early Mysticism ....................................................

31 31 33 44 52

Chapter Two Buber’s Second Mystical Period, 1909–1914: Under the Sign of Unity ........................................................ 1. Introduction ....................................................................... 2. The Concreteness of Duality and the Encounter with the Abyss in Daniel .................................................................... 3. The Paradigm of Unity in Daniel ...................................... 4. Mysticism and Ethics in Buber and in Stace ....................

73 76 92

Chapter Three The Third Mystical Period: “The Conversion”—The Decision on Behalf of the World .......... 1. Introduction ....................................................................... 2. “The Conversion” (1914) ..................................................

99 99 101

69 69

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3. Buber’s Essays “The Altar” and “Myth in Judaism” (1914) .................................................................................. 4. The Dual Face of Inner Experience ................................. Chapter Four Between Daniel and I and Thou: A Phenomenological Comparison between Descriptions of Unity .................................................................................. 1. Introduction ....................................................................... 2. Daniel—The Neglected Book ............................................. 3. Images of Duality and Unity in Daniel and Their Development in I and Thou ................................................ 4. Between Daniel and I and Thou .......................................... Chapter Five Buber’s Mysticism during the Dialogical Period: Unity, Ecstasy and Inclusiveness ................................ 1. Introduction ....................................................................... 2. Moderate Unification in the Dialogical Situation ............ 3. Dialogical Relationship as a Transformative Process of Moderate Ecstasy ............................................................... 4. Mysticism and Dialogue in the Essay “God and the Soul” ................................................................................... 5. The Inclusion of Reality in the Eternal Thou .................. 6. The Language of Paradox in Buber ................................. 7. Sensory Reality as an Illuminated Vision .........................

105 112

127 127 133 135 143 147 147 150 158 168 171 174 179

PART II

THE INTERNALIZATION OF HASIDIC PRINCIPLES IN BUBER’S THOUGHT Chapter Six Hasidism In Buber’s Thought: Introduction ...... 1. Introduction ....................................................................... 2. The Place of Hasidism in Buber’s Worldview .................. 3. The Relationship among the Cosmic Worlds in Buber’s Interpretation of Hasidism ................................................

187 187 194 207

Chapter Seven Realistic and Activistic Mysticism and the Mystery of the Earth .............................................................. 1. Buber as a Disciple of the Baal Shem Tov ...................... 2. Divine Vitality and the Revelation of the Shekhinah .........

221 221 227

contents 3. The Doctrine of Sparks ..................................................... 4. The Mystery of the Earth and Life with the Secret ........ Chapter Eight Hasidic Typologies of Devekut and the I-Thou Relations .................................................................................. 1. Devekut and the I-Thou Relation ....................................... 2. Typologies of Devekut in Hasidism ..................................... 3. Buber’s Typology of Devekut as Equating Devekut and Tikkun .................................................................................. 4. The Inner Relation between Devekut and World-Mending ... 5. The Application of the Term “I And Thou” to States of Devekut ................................................................................. Chapter Nine Buber’s Dialogic Interpretation of the Doctrine of Tzimtzum .............................................................. 1. Introduction ....................................................................... 2. The Doctrine of Tzimtzum and the I-Thou Relationship—The Framework for the Discussion ........... 3. First Move: The Hermeneutic Move—Dialogical Interpretation of the Doctrine of Tzimtzum ...................... 4. Second Move: God’s Embodiment in Personality ............ 5. Third Move: The Application of the Doctrine of Tzimtzum and Emanation in the Interpersonal Realm ........ 6. The Fourth Move: Man Imposes Distance upon the Things Existing .................................................................. 7. The Fifth Move: Tzimtzum on Man’s Part is a Redemptive Activity ............................................................................... 8. The Sixth Move: Buber’s Understanding of Revelation and the Ethical Act ............................................................ Chapter Ten I and Thou as Love Mysticism ............................ 1. Introduction ....................................................................... 2. Love as an Epistemological Force ..................................... 3. The Relation between the Dialogic Principle and Love 4. The Emotional and Ontological Dimensions of Love ....... 5. The Whispering of the Secret in Love ............................. 6. Between the Earthly Woman and the “Eternal Thou” .... 7. Eros and Dialogical Relationship ...................................... 8. Between Dialogical Eros and Dialogical Love ..................

ix 234 241 247 247 250 258 263 270 275 275 277 280 287 293 302 304 310 315 315 318 320 322 327 330 334 336

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Chapter Eleven The Debate over Buber’s Interpretation of Hasidism ................................................................................. 1. Introduction ....................................................................... 2. The Garment that Buber Wove from Hasidic Sources ...... 3. The Polemic Concerning the Attitude towards the Material World in Hasidism .............................................. Afterword .................................................................................... Bibliography ................................................................................ Index of Names .......................................................................... Index of Subjects ........................................................................ Index of Buber’s Writings ..........................................................

339 339 341 349 363 369 387 390 395

PREFACE I first became acquainted with Martin Buber’s thought in 1989, in what was at the time a branch of Haifa University at the Oranim Academic College of Education, where I participated in a class dealing with Buber’s thought. In retrospect, it seems to me that, in addition to the deep impression made upon me by Buber’s dialogic ideal, his Jewish humanism, and his mythic approach, which views “all things as utterances of God and all events as manifestations of the absolute” (“Myth in Judaism,” 105), his strongest impact on me was in terms of the soul, of the “face to face” encounter with what can be transmitted of the author’s spirit through the written and spoken word. This occurred at a time during which I was seeking my own path in Judaism and in matters of the spirit, so that the encounter with Buber’s thought seemed to embody the particular aspect of Judaism alongside its universal aspect, and the spiritual dimension in Judaism together with its intellectual dimension. A renewed encounter with Buber’s thought occurred several years later, during the course of my M.A. studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I only began to read the extensive research literature on Buber at a yet later stage, which coincided with a certain personal unease regarding the manner in which his thought was analyzed. This disquiet focused particularly upon matters concerning the spiritual and mystical elements of his thought. Already at that point I tended to see Buber’s thought as an additional layer in the history of Jewish mysticism. Gershom Scholem’s claim that Buber’s self-proclaimed abandonment of mysticism was one of his greatest illusions, as opposed to the opposite claim of most Buber scholars that Buber’s dialogical thought took shape against the background of the rejection of mysticism within his own thought, illustrated to me the extent to which the point of view of the observer—scholar is decisive. My own view tends toward that of Scholem; the first half of this book in particular is intended to elaborate and to provide a phenomenological basis for what Scholem stated in a few pithy phrases. As for the Jewish aspect of Buber’s writings: I see his thought as a detailed working out of a process leading from the teachings of the Kabbalah, focused particularly upon the upper worlds; via Hasidic teaching, that seeks to connect earth and heaven; to his own thought,

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that seeks the realization of the life of the spirit through man’s labor in this world—particularly in the human and social spheres, with which the second part of the book deals in particular. This process is expressed by Buber in his rejection of the earlier, Kabbalistic stage, in emphasizing certain aspects of Hasidic principles, and in his internalizing them in his own thought in a unique way. The present book is thus intended to present the reader with an analysis of this other aspect of Buber’s writings, which might perhaps be encapsulated in the saying of the Zohar (III. 128a): “The world only exists by virtue of the [Divine] mysteries.” The mystery of the earth and the mystery of dialogue are the other side of Buber’s writings. But in addition to presenting this “other side” of Buber’s thought, I see this book as an opportunity to present a different reading of Buber’s writings; one that, in my view, is of value, not only for the study of his thought and his writings, but is also of concrete spiritual value. It seems to me that an unbiased look at the condition of the Jewish people living in Israel today indicates the urgent need for a renewal of Jewish spirituality that is simultaneously universal, and of a spiritual life directed towards activity within concrete reality. Since I completed the writing of this book, I have been occupying myself more with the mystery of heaven and with the mainly Kabbalistic sources of inspiration related to it. While feeling indebted to Buber for his profundity in the sphere of the earthly mystery, I also felt the limits of his all-inclusive assumptions regarding the mystery of heaven and its relation with the mystery of the earth. I think that the dichotomy Buber created between the two, reflected in his attitude towards the theosophic Kabbalah (the Sefirot doctrine) in particular and towards what he called Gnosis in general, resulted from a misunderstanding of these phenomena and their relations, however complex, with the mystery of the earth. I believe that Buber felt that he had to reject the one (the mystery of heaven) in order to establish the other (that of the earth), and indeed he did so in an uncompromising manner. Although Kabbalists and Hasidic masters were well aware of the existing tension between the two mysteries, they did not create this dichotomy. We have to learn to listen to them in the same manner which Buber was asking to listen to traditional source. I believe the results of the conjunction of the two mysteries—the one exposed by Buber, and the one that has to be revealed anew—are unpredictable. This book is in good measure based upon several articles that I published in various journals in recent years. My articles, “Martin Buber:

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from Ecstasy to Mysticism of Life” and “Between Buber’s Daniel and I and Thou: A New Examination,” (details in bibliography) served as the basic framework for the first four chapters of the first part of the book, that dealing with mysticism. To these one should add “Martin Buber and Rudolph Steiner: Distance or Relationship?” in which I noted the attempts of both these modern thinkers to establish different kinds of experience within reality against the background of their critique of the one-sided rationalism of their day. My articles, “The Internalization of Hasidic Dogma in the Thought of Martin Buber in Light of the Controversy of his Interpretation to Hasidism,” and “Martin Buber’s Dialogical Interpretation of the Doctrine of Tzimtzum,” constitute the basis for the bulk of the second half of the book, that dealing with Hasidism. The paper on tzimtzum (divine contraction—Chapter 9), has been preserved with only minor changes, albeit with the addition of two sections (vii and viii) concerning Buber’s understanding of revelation against the background of his interpretation of the Kabbalistic doctrine of tzimtzum. In this book I made further efforts to establish, refine, and clarify the claims and analyses that appear in the above-cited articles. The fifth chapter, in which I discuss the mystical aspects of Buber’s dialogical thought, and the tenth chapter, concerning Buber’s dialogical thought as love mysticism, appear here for the first time. The quotations from Buber were taken from existing English translations, where available: see the bibliography for details. In the case of his seminal work, I and Thou, for which there are two existing English translations, that of Maurice Friedman and that of Walter Kaufmann, I preferred the latter. However, for the sake of consistency I have throughout used the term “Thou,” rather than “You” as preferred by Kaufmann (presumably to avoid what he may have considered an archaism). Where no English translation was available, the translator of this book worked from the Hebrew of my original book, even in those cases where that may have appeared earlier in German. I would like to take this opportunity to thank my family—Beatrice, Raphael, and Nitsan—for their forbearance in allowing me a certain period of absence from our home to complete the process of study and writing. I am also grateful to my friend and teacher of many years, Prof. Ehud Luz, from whom I attempted to learn intellectual honesty. My thanks also go to the hospitality of the Program in Judaic Studies at Yale University, where I stayed as visiting lecturer for a semester in 2003, and under whose aegis I completed the writing of the book.

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Special thanks to Prof. Paula Hyman, and to the former secretary of the program, Ms. Barbara Devlin. My gratitude goes as well to Prof. Menahem Kellner for his kindness and generosity with his time and his willingness to share his good counsel. I also wish to thank the translator of the book, Rabbi Jonathan Chipman, for his intelligent and illuminating comments, the product of his great experience, as well as for teaching me a lesson in patience. Finally, I wish to thank my Haifa friend, the artist Mr. Baruch Elihai, who volunteered the cover illustration of the Hebrew edition from his Judaica collection. Israel Koren Oranim, Kiryat Tiv’on, Ellul 5769/August 2009

INTRODUCTION In this book I have set myself two primary goals. First, to examine the overall role of mysticism in the thought of Martin Buber: the part it played during the early stages of his thought and creativity, known as pre-dialogic; during the later period, known as the dialogical period; and the relationship between these two periods, from the perspective of the role of mysticism within his thought. Second, to examine the manner in which Hasidic and Kabbalistic teachings were internalized within Buber’s thought. In the final analysis, these two goals merge in the presentation of Buber’s thought as a model of Jewish spirituality with distinctly mystical elements that flourished against the background of Hasidic sources, while preserving its independence in relation to them. I will begin by relating briefly to my second goal; thereafter, in Section 2, will devote a more detailed discussion to the issue of mysticism in relation to Buber. 1. Buber’s Thought as a Neo-Hasidic Ouevre No one disputes the fact that Buber was deeply influenced by Hasidism, identified with it on a personal level, dealt extensively with its sources (particularly its tales), saw it as an option for healing the crisis of Western man and culture, and perceived himself as its messenger, bringing its tidings to mankind. He said and wrote these things explicitly in his own words, “in black fire on white fire.”1 However, scholarly research about the incorporation of Hasidic and Kabbalistic teachings within Buber’s thought is as yet incomplete and limited to general lines; according to the predominant view, Buber internalized his own, rather idiosyncratic reading of Hasidism. He especially emphasized

1 For example, his words from 1908: “I bear in me the blood and the spirit of those who created it [the Hasidic legend], and out of my blood and spirit it has become new” (Buber, The Legend of the Baal-Shem, 10). Already then Buber saw the Hasidic legend as a dialogical document: “The legend is the myth of I and Thou, of the caller and the called, the finite which enters into the infinite and the infinite which has need of the finite” (ibid., 13).

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the principle of God’s immanence in the world and the concept of redemption in Hasidism which, according to Buber, meant the realization of the Divine within the world through man’s activity (viz. the idea of avodah be-gashmiut, “service through corporeality,” in general, and the “raising up of sparks” in particular). On the other hand, many studies have been devoted to the question of the degree of accuracy with which Buber treated Hasidic sources. This discussion occurred against the background of the polemic of Gershom Scholem and his students with Buber as to the manner in which the latter presented the essence and message of Hasidism. In a certain sense, these scholars expected Buber to be like themselves— that is, to measure up to the accepted standards of textual analysis and research of academic Judaic studies. Yet, with all due respect to the importance of the scholarly question of the relationship between the Hasidic sources and Buber’s manner of interpreting them, this approach ignores the manner in which Buber’s work took shape against the background of Hasidic and Kabbalistic sources, both in terms of the exegetical or hermeneutical aspect, and in terms of the task his work sought to accomplish against the background of its time.2 With regard to the philosophical examination of Buber’s thought, Buber’s contribution to the development of Western thought has been examined vis-à-vis the points of contact between his thought and contemporary philosophic thought, while less attention has been paid to the question as to whether Buber properly understood Kant, Dilthey or Nietzsche; alternatively, his interpretation of them has been accepted with excessive scholarly tolerance.3 Yet when turning to Hasidism and

2 In order to clarify this question, which in practice deals with the manifestations of Jewish spirituality and the varying aspects that it periodically assumes, scholarship is prone to emphasize the gap between the (Hasidic) source and the (Buberian) interpretation (in his essays on Hasidism). However, my goal here is, as said, different. See on this in greater detail below, Chapter 6.1. 3 See, for example, Paul Mendes-Flohr’s comments about the notebook used by Buber both for his lecture on Jacob Boehme in 1901 before members of the “New Community” and as a draft of his dissertation: “What is of interest, however, is not Buber’s scholarship per se, but rather the thorough compatibility of his presentation of the thought of Nicholas of Cusa and Jacob Boehme with the Weltanschauung of the Neue Gemeinschaft. This would suggest that Buber regarded his dissertation as an exercise in ‘ideological’ hermeneutics, that he sought to read the sources through the prism of the Neue Gemeinschaft” (Mendes-Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue, 61). [The Neue Gemeinschaft (“New Community”) was a circle of friends created in 1900 in Berlin at the initiative of the brothers Heinrich and Julius Hart, of which

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Kabbalah, the primary question asked by scholars has been, as mentioned, whether Buber represented Hasidism correctly—a question that overshadowed examination of his work as a complex of thought that took shape against the background of and from within Hasidic sources. This is analogous to a situation in which scholars of Hasidism and Kabbalah would focus almost exclusively on the degree of accuracy with which Hasidim and their rebbes utilized earlier Kabbalistic sources, rather than studying the teaching of Hasidim against the background of the influences which it absorbed and the new contents placed within them; we thus see how different the attitude of scholars is to Buber’s essays on Hasidism. Though in light of the development of criticism in general this question on the part of researchers would seem to be justified, it nevertheless, as I have argued, leaves a certain vacuum in understanding the incorporation of Hasidic and Kabbalistic teachings in his thought, and hence fails to give Hasidism its proper place within his thought.4 In the second part of this book, we shall show how Buber’s thought derived from his contact with Hasidic and Kabbalistic sources, responding to them and lending them a new coloration and at certain points even a new direction; his thought will thus be presented as a further stage in the historical development and elaboration of Jewish spirituality. Buber Is Not a Philosopher Buber’s contact with contemporary philosophical sources and his later attempt to ground his thought in philosophical or philosophicalanthropological terms are an important feature of his thought, which cannot be understood exclusively in terms of its spiritual-Hasidic sources. Nevertheless, Buber’s thought was ultimately intended, not only to describe a given reality, but specifically to “create” a reality that would redeem the existing one. To assert that the core of his thought is philosophical and that the influence upon it of Jewish Buber was a member. The “New Community” opposed the philosophical, rationalistic worldview and called to seek the life of unity beyond the cognitive rational I. See on this Mendes-Flohr, “Editor’s Introduction,” xvi; idem, From Mysticism to Dialogue, 54–57; Kohn, Buber—sein Werk und seine Zeit, 23, 29.] 4 On Buber’s own words concerning the influence of Hasidism on him, see below, Chapter 6.2.

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sources is secondary is inconsistent with Buber’s later (1945) distinction between two different concepts of truth: the concept of truth related to science and philosophy, whose source is Greek, and which “involves the knowledge and recognition of the nature of that which exists,”5 and, by contrast, the biblical concept of truth, which has a completely different meaning. It refers to “that which one does and brings into existence. To return to the biblical concept of truth means to learn: the truth is above you and there is one truth for all, but it does not enter your world except when you realize it” (Buber, “Crisis and Truth,” 80–81). Those familiar with Buber’s thought know which of these two types of truth he tends to favor. The spiritual source upon which his work draws is essentially religious, and the motivation underlying his thought involves the renewal of a spirituality connecting heaven and earth—returning us to Hasidism’s influence upon him. Even if his presentation of Judaism as a religion that is essentially dialogic is Buber’s own innovation, and even if his dialogical thought is shaped by existentialist philosophy, the idea of dialogue is Buber’s articulation and development of a tendency that he encountered within Hasidism (and later also within the Bible), emphasizing God’s presence within the world and His engagement with man, and which combines the two aspects.6 Unlike Barzilai, who claimed, based upon Buber’s own words, that his dialogical thought was an independent creation that merely derived inspiration from traditional sources or imposed itself upon 5 Buber, “Crisis and Truth,” 80. The split between religious truth and philosophical truth appears—albeit in a different form—also in Dupré. In his opinion, religious truth places at the focus of its attention the principle of revelation, while philosophical truth places the epistemological question at the center (Dupré, Religious Mystery, 19–29). It would seem that in Buber the principle of revelation precedes the epistemological principle, which serves it. 6 “The question of the possibility and reality of a dialogical relationship between man and God had already accosted me in my youth. This dialogue implies a free partnership of man in a conversation between heaven and earth whose speech in address and answer is the happening itself, the happening from above and the happening from below. In particular, since the Hasidic tradition had grown for me into the supporting ground of my own thinking, hence since about 1905, that had become an innermost question for me” (Buber, “The Dialogical Principle,” 213). And also: “This very teaching of man’s being bound with the world in the sight of God . . . was the one element through which Hasidism so overpoweringly entered into my life. I early had a premonition, indeed, no matter how I resisted it, that I was inescapably destined to love the world” (“Spinoza,” 99). Cf. his essay, “Love of God and Love of Neighbor.”

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them (Ha-Adam ha-Dialogi, 12), I wish to claim that the relationship between Buber’s thought and its traditional sources—namely, those of Hasidism—is far more complex, and itself dialogical in nature. Buber’s dialogical view does not perceive the encounter with these sources merely as a source of inspiration, but as an event and a sign that spoke to him and shaped him in the same way as he acts upon that which he encounters in the world. The power of Hasidism’s influence upon him, its centrality in shaping his world view, and its relation to his dialogical thought were expressed by Buber in the Introduction to his collected essays on Hasidism (in Hebrew), Be-Pardes ha-Hasidut: Someone gave me as a gift . . . a small booklet entitled Tzava’at ha-Ribash (The Testament of the Baal Shem Tov). Upon reading this little book there began the revelation . . . I clearly felt that there was a message here for me, a message for the world. And I felt myself called upon to convey . . . this truth [i.e., of Hasidism]. True, I only knew it slightly, but finally I came to know it within myself. Here there was nobody to help me but the truth itself, which helped me . . . But I do not know any better picture of what I believe, of what Hasidism taught me to believe, than this: that the Divine reality is hidden within things and objects, and that I am not allowed to feel this reality except by way of . . . I-Thou contact with them. (“Introduction,” 5–6).

A person who saw Hasidism only as a source of inspiration for a preexisting world-view would not express himself in such a way. One can see from Buber’s words here that that which he encounters in the world (in this case, Sefer Tzava’at ha-Ribash) is ultimately perceived as self-revelation, and that his sense of call and mission uniquely addressed to himself derived from something that existed within his soul from the very beginning. It therefore seems to me that Buber’s statements about the place of Hasidism in his worldview should be seen in terms of a kind of pendulum motion, at times tending more towards himself and at other times closer to that of Hasidism. While the emphasis on the dialogical principle in his interpretation of Hasidism more strongly bears Buber’s personal mark, it can also flow from within the world of Hasidism itself. One is thus speaking of complex, dialogical interrelations, in which there is not necessarily a priority of first and later. To this, I wish to add Buber’s own testimony that, during the years prior to the writing of I and Thou he limited himself almost exclusively to reading Hasidic literature, so that he did not even find the time to

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read Herman Cohen’s Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism or Franz Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption.7 While it is well-known that Buber did not see himself as a mystic, neither did he see himself as a philosopher, as for him philosophy in principle belongs to the “It world.” A clear distinction must therefore be made between his attempt to provide his spiritual experience with a certain philosophical grounding, in the sense of it being a “necessary evil,” and his being a philosopher per se. Indeed, there were other mystics who rooted their teaching on a philosophical basis, as they had both direct experience in the realm of the spirit, and the ability to formulate their experience in an analytic manner. I do not think that, in the case of Buber, the gap between spiritual experience and its philosophical grounding is limited, as some scholars think, to the gap between experience, in the sense of the “here and now,” and its theoretical-philosophical anchoring, which always belongs to the realm of the past; rather, the dimension to which he directs our attention is one into which ordinary thinking cannot enter in its normal state.8 As I shall demonstrate in this book, the experience of entering into the different dimension to which Buber referred even before the appearance of the dialogical principle in his thought (and whose description was completed in the presentation of the dialogical principle), requires altered states of the soul, states of unification and inclusiveness. Not only are these not characteristic of philosophy, but they are closer to the mystical sphere than they are to the realm of religion in general. Thus, his grounding of experience in the anthropologicalphilosophical realm does not belie the fact that he articulated a spiritual experience that stands beyond the threshold of philosophy. Even

7 Buber, “The Dialogical Principle,” 215. See also Buber’s response to Karl Barth, who thought that a proper outlook regarding the religious character of a heartfelt connection between human beings (“freedom of the heart”) cannot develop outside of the world of Christianity, not even in Buber. To this, Buber replied that it was not at all important to him to place himself against Barth. “Rather, the Protestant world of faith in Barth’s understanding of it stands over against the Hasidic in my understanding of it. And there, among the Hasidim . . . the ‘willingly’ of the freedom of the heart is not, indeed, consequence, but certainly the innermost presupposition, the ground of grounds. One need only hear how it is spoken: ‘Cleverness without heart is nothing at all . . .’ For ‘the true love of God begins with the love of man.’ But I would, I could, show Karl Barth here, in Jerusalem, how the Hasidim dance the freedom of the heart to the fellowman” (ibid., 223–224). 8 “Man’s ‘religious’ situation, existence in the presence, is marked by its essential and indissoluble antinomies” (I and Thou, 143).

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though Buber chose to turn his back upon mysticism (as he defined it), his statement that he is only able to bring a person to the window and to point out to him to a certain reality (“Replies to my Critics,” 693), or his remark that “I offer the philosophical expression of an experience to those who know this experience as their own or are ready to expose themselves to it,” and that he can do no more than that, returns us to the realm of the mystical.9 Some of Buber’s philosophical critics were well aware of the fact that his teaching is the result of spiritual experience that transcends philosophy, but this awareness did not prevent them from engaging in a harsh critique of Buber. One branch of criticism argues on the basis of the obscurity and lack of clarity in Buber’s writings, an argument that may be accepted; another, however, invokes the claim that Buber’s descriptions are inconsistent with common sense—a claim derived from the attempt to measure his thought by purely rational and philosophical tools. For example, in his discussion of Buber’s understanding of revelation, Steven Katz argues that Buber’s stand is problematic, because on the one hand Buber speaks of the revelation of Divine presence to man, in which case the human act derived from revelation “is heteronomous and illegitimate from a dialogic viewpoint,” being imposed upon man; on the other hand, if man is free to act from an autonomous position, than “revelation becomes a purely formal and unreal concept.” Thus, Katz asserts that “a certain paradox emerges in Buber’s argument” (Katz, “Martin Buber’s Epistemology,” 114). Buber relates to this contradiction, that emerges from the combining of his understanding of revelation with his ethical thought, in his essay, Eclipse of God: It would be a fundamental misunderstanding of what I am saying if one assumed that I am upholding so-called moral heteronomy or external moral laws in opposition to so-called moral autonomy or self-imposed

9 “Interrogation,” 29. Underhill thinks that, while it is possible in philosophical idealism to find the most sublime theory concerning the nature of reality that can be conceived by the human intellect, philosophical idealism can nevertheless only provide a map of the heavens and not a ladder by which to ascend to it (Underhill, Mysticism, 13). This is precisely the position of Buber, who held that a philosophical or scientific system can only sketch a map of heaven, but that in order to touch its reality one needs a different path. Philosophical idealism may arouse a person’s interest, but it cannot engage him in the process that will bring him towards the contents which it presents to him. This is also Rav Kook’s view of the relationship between scientific wisdom and sacred wisdom (Orot ha-Qodesh, I [ Jerusalem, 19949 ], 1).

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introduction moral laws. Where the Absolute speaks in the reciprocal relationship, there are no longer such alternatives . . . In theonomy the divine law seeks for your own, and true revelation reveals to you yourself. (Eclipse of God, 98–99)

As against Katz’s statement, this paradox does not result from a close examination of Buber’s words; rather, Buber’s words are themselves deliberately paradoxical, as he sought to describe a sphere of the spirit in which one does not know where man ends and God begins, one perceived as paradoxical from man’s ordinary situation. This paradoxical realm is identified by Buber with “man’s religious situation . . . marked by its essential and indissoluble antinomies” (I and Thou, 73), and not with mysticism.10 One might compare the above argument of Katz—an argument that results from a philosophical manner of reading in non-philosophical thought—to a situation in which a person has a ready-made picture-frame and, upon realizing that the picture does not fit into the frame, finds the picture “guilty.” In the present work I attempt to demonstrate that Buber’s paradoxical descriptions seek to describe in words a reality that cannot be apprehended through discursive thought,11 and that the appropriate way to understand his descriptions is to see them as describing an ecstatic unity that involves a mixture of the divine and the human (Chapter 5). These last words may serve as a transitional link to the discussion of the first goal that I set myself at the beginning of this chapter: the examination of mysticism in Buber’s overall thought. 2. Buber’s Thought as a Mystical Oeuvre For one familiar with Buber’s writings and the numerous studies written about his life, his personality and his thought, a discussion of the overall place of mysticism in Buber may seem totally superfluous, relating to something that has supposedly been refuted. I wish 10 Albeit on the other hand he accepted the spirit of the Buddha’s words that “In the envisaged mystery, even as in lived actuality, neither ‘thus it is’ nor ‘thus it is not’ prevails, neither being nor not being, but rather thus-and-otherwise, being and not being, the indissoluble” (I and Thou, 138). 11 One of the characteristics of mysticism in both James and in Stace relates to the description of a reality that it is difficult to express in discursive language or in normal thought due to its distance from the ordinary, known state of mind. See James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 371; Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, 79, 132.

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to elaborate on this point: the approach adhered to by the majority of Buber scholars divides his work into two distinct major periods: an earlier mystical period and a later dialogical period.12 Most of the studies dealing with Buber focus upon his later, dialogical thought. This is so because Buber’s main contribution to philosophy—both to dialogical philosophy and to philosophical anthropology—belongs to this period, and because his thought from this period is perceived as his main contribution to the culture and spiritual life of the twentieth century: Buber confronts posterity as, above all, a philosopher. The most important book about him bears the title, The Philosophy of Martin Buber.13 . . . Most people would say, if asked to identify him, that he was a Jewish philosopher. Finally, he himself considered I and Thou his most important book, and he saw it as his contribution to philosophy. (Kaufmann, “Buber’s Failures and Triumph,” 8)

Almost all Buber scholars associate Buber’s transition from his earlier mystical period to his later dialogical period with the abandonment of his earlier mysticism. During that period of his work known as

12 It is possible, according to some scholars, to identify secondary periods within the two primary periods of Buber’s work. On the division of Buber’s creativity into three periods—mystic, existentialist (and mystic), and dialogic—see Friedman, Buber, The Life of Dialogue, 27; idem, Buber’s Life and Work, 89; Wolfson, “The Problem of Unity,” 423. According to this threefold division, Buber’s book Daniel (1913) as well as his essay “With a Monist” (1914) belong to a transitional period, during which a certain change took place in Buber’s relationship to mysticism. Mendes-Flohr suggests a different approach. He includes Daniel as well as Buber’s essay, “The Altar” (1914), within the overall discussion of the experience of mystical union (Erlebnis Mysticism) in Buber (Mendes-Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue, 64–68). This approach is also taken by S. H. Bergman, who places “With a Monist” within the framework of Buber’s youthful view of mysticism (Bergman, “Buber and Mysticism,” 297, and Gershom Scholem, who sees Daniel as a book that reveals Buber’s mystical stance during his early period (Scholem, “Buber’s Conception of Judaism,” 149). Barzilai has properly noted the problematics involved in the breaking up of the unity of a life into periods, and therefore presents the development of Buber’s thought in terms of three circles—the circle of experience, the circle of encounter, and the circle of reality—so that both the first and second, and the second and the third, interpenetrate one another (Barzilai, Homo Dialogicus, 31). The circle of experience (which he identifies with the romantic approach and with ecstatic mysticism) concludes, in his opinion, with the First World War. Thus, Barzilai does not acknowledge two mystical periods or circles in Buber’s early thought, but finds two circles in the later, dialogical Buber: that of encounter and that of reality, or of dialogical philosophy and philosophical anthropology (ibid., 16). 13 He refers here to the collection of essays in Buber’s honor in the Great Philosophers series: The Philosophy of Martin Buber.

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the dialogical, and in practice even years earlier, Buber had reservations about certain moods and tendencies of the soul and approaches towards which he had himself been drawn at an early period in his life. He also took exception to certain concepts that he saw as reflecting these moods, including those that were given expression in some of his earlier writings.14 According to this stance—that reflects, as mentioned, not only the opinion of Buber scholars, but also Buber’s own view of the development of his thought—mysticism and dialogue are incompatible. Buber’s abandonment of mysticism was therefore understood by his critics as a decision in favor of the world, of society, and of man. It was that which facilitated the emergence of his dialogical thought, which Buber saw as the core of his thought and from which his position as one of the important thinkers of the 20th century derived. Buber’s abandonment of mysticism was understood by them as justification for engaging in only limited study of his earlier writings in which, as he himself said, he had not yet entered “into an independent relationship with being” (Pointing the Way Foreword, xv). These writings were understood by scholarship as being timely and relevant in only a limited sense, as a useful means for understanding Buber’s later, mature thought, but without any cultural value compared with his later thought. At most, they held, these might be helpful in illuminating the transformation and development which occurred in his spiritual biography, or provide a certain literary and aesthetic contribution. In any event, anything worthwhile in them appears in superior form in Buber’s later, dialogical thought.15 This interpretation is particularly striking in the book by David Barzilai, which discusses Buber’s contribution to philosophy. For him, only the later Buber is trustworthy;16

14 See Buber’s “Foreword” (1957) to the collection, Pointing the Way, xv–xvi, in describing his conversion (Buber, “Dialogue” [1932], 123–124), as well as Buber’s comment, quoted by Maurice Friedman in his book Buber’s Life and Work, 86. In a quotation brought by Friedman, Buber does not criticize his earlier world view, but simply refers to it as his mystical period. 15 See, for example, the words of Buber’s biographer, Maurice Friedman, in his introduction to Buber’s Daniel. (Friedman, “Translator’s Introduction”), and cf. Barzilai, Homo Dialogicus, 32. 16 Barzilai, ibid., 32. Cf. Simon, “Scholem and Buber, “250: “In my eyes, it is increasingly only the later Buber who is trustworthy.” It would be excessively harsh regarding the evaluation of a thinker were we to say that his earlier work is more mature than his later work. Indeed, I also think that Buber’s later work is more mature than his earlier work, but not on philosophical grounds. One nevertheless needs to take exception to Simon’s statement, since Buber’s book Daniel (1913) and his essays,

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hence, he discusses the development of Buber’s philosophy from the end to the beginning—that is, he seeks hints of dialogical-philosophical thought in Buber’s earlier writing, while he sees Buber’s early mysticism—not to mention its later stage—as of no importance for the overall understanding of his thought and its value. Examination of Buber’s writings and of the studies devoted to understanding the mystical component within his overall thought led me to the conclusion that Buber research has not dealt with this subject in a suitable or comprehensive manner. It should be noted that, in accordance with the compartmentalization that exists in Judaic studies, most Buber scholars are scholars of the modern period—that is, those who engage in research in the field of philosophy rather than that of mysticism. It is thus only natural that they would examine Buber according to philosophical criteria, due to their own distance from the phenomenon of mysticism. This fact led to simplistic generalizations in their discernment of mysticism in Buber, viz. the issue of mystical unity in his earlier thought, and the identification of mystical characteristics in his later thought. These generalizations led to a situation in which Buber scholars focused primarily upon semantic changes in his thought that supposedly represented his moving away from mysticism, and failed to notice a significant phenomenological proximity between descriptions from the mystical period and those from the dialogical period (see below, Chapter 4). It is not surprising, therefore, that Gershom Scholem, a scholar of Kabbalah and mysticism, discerned that both Buber’s earlier and later thought was decidedly mystical. The alleged dichotomy between mysticism and dialogue derived from the sweeping assumption that mysticism, unlike dialogue, harms the human image (his I), that it is by its very nature alien to the world, and is therefore an anti-social phenomenon. This sweeping generalization prevented both a proper examination of the role of mysticism in Buber’s later thought, and a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between his earlier and his later thought. It would have been appropriate to this end to utilize the study of mysticism, which developed greatly during the twentieth century, but such work was not undertaken with regard to anything related to the mystical aspect of Buber’s thought in general. It follows from this that

“With a Monist” (1914) and “The Altar” (1914), are extremely powerful and significant spiritual testimonies.

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the first basic failure was a methodological one: the examination of mysticism in general must precede the examination of mysticism in Buber’s thought in particular. As I shall attempt to show, such an examination reveals that mysticism is an inseparable element of Buber’s thought as a whole, that it incorporates his concept of revelation, including those states that establish the dialogic relationship (Chapter 5), as well as his basic attitude towards reality as the dwelling place of the unifying secret of the spirit (Chapter 7). I shall attempt to show that “the mystery of dialogue”17 is embodied within the experience of unity in Buber’s Daniel (Chapter 4), a book considered mystical by all of his critics, and that these experiences are rooted in transformative and ecstatic elements of the I, that tend towards unity. Paul Mendes-Flohr undertook the most comprehensive attempt to place mysticism in Buber within a broader mystical context. However, he too did not utilize the comparative study of mysticism, but rather attempted to characterize Buber’s early mysticism against the background of the flowering of mysticism in general at the turn of the 19th century ( fin-de-siècle ). In Chapter Three I shall discuss MendesFlohr’s claims regarding the transition from mysticism to dialogue and Buber’s rejection of the principle of inner experience (Erlebnis) at some length. I. The Prejudice Against Mysticism It is difficult to even understand how such a methodological failure— one that, in setting about to discuss Buber’s mysticism, failed to even take into consideration the scholarship of mysticism—took place. In my opinion, one must apply here a considerable degree of “epistemological (or ideological) suspicion.” The incomplete and inadequate discussion of mysticism in Buber did not only derive, in my opinion, from a personal distance18 from this realm of research, and certainly

In Hebrew, ‫בסוד שיח‬, the title of his book on dialogical thought. The issue of distance from or closeness to the subject of research is important in this context for our purposes. While it seems to me that total identification with one’s subject may interfere, hostile distance can also disturb proper understanding and examination of a phenomenon. I will cite in this context Stace’s words, that “sympathy with mysticism, even on the part of a non-mystical philosopher, may give him some measure of insight into the mystic’s state of mind and therefore some capacity for discussing it . . . If the critic says that a sympathetic attitude ought to be avoided by the philosopher, he would surely not recommend an unsympathetic or hostile atti17 18

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not from apathy towards it. Rather, it derived from an a priori and distinctly non-objective worldview, that preceded the process of research itself, characterized by a prejudice or even antagonism towards mysticism and a widespread perception of it as a negative phenomenon. On this point philosophical scholarship crossed the lines towards active engagement in shaping culture and the spiritual life. But this is not the heart of my criticism thereof; rather, it is that there is no correlation between the cultural-spiritual point of departure and the subject of the research, so that the conclusion reached is in essence a priori to the research and imposes itself upon it,19 in manner such as distorts the manifold faces of mysticism by presenting it through a single paradigm alone. It thereby becomes impossible to recognize its contribution to society and culture or, as in our case, eliminates the very possibility of acknowledging the significance of mysticism in Buber’s thought, where it sought to create a unique psychological state that specifically participates in concrete reality (Chapters 5, 6.3, and 7). This a priori attitude led to the representation of mysticism on the basis of its most extreme expressions20—that is to say, on the basis of those mental states that are most remote from the normal, functional state of the human soul and, from an epistemological viewpoint, based on total subjectivity and emotion.21 As such, it is perceived as opposed to the value of life and as subverting it. This dichotomy between life and mysticism was then imposed upon the supposed opposition between dialogue and mysticism. Subjective, rootless mysticism belongs at best to the scholarly historical archives, whereas responsible and objective philosophy is concrete and relevant, and in dialogue even becomes humanistic and personal. It follows that whatever mystical elements remain in the dialogical Buber is a kind of dross left over after the process of sifting and purification, that remained due to Buber’s inability to free himself from it completely or because of his inability to free

tude which would be equally prejudiced on the other side” (Mysticism and Philosophy, pp. 20–21). 19 On the prejudice regarding mysticism in 19th century Christian scholarship arising from the issue of the relationship between Christianity and Greek culture, see Bouyer, “Mysticism,” 42. 20 On the degree of scholarly justification for characterizing the mystical phenomenon by its most extreme expressions, see below, § 3. 21 For a criticism of the imposition of psychological-subjectivist reductionism on mystical states, that attempt to reduce the transcendent and the unknown to the realm of the known, see Dupré, Light from Light, 18.

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himself from his past (Simon, “Scholem and Buber,” 249). This was also the way to resolve the contradiction that results from the claim that dialogue is anti-mystical by its very nature, and from the identification of certain mystical elements in the later Buber. But one may still ask why these same scholars chose to define mysticism on the basis of its most extreme examples, so as to thereafter reject it completely by relating it to Buber’s dialogical thought. Would it not have been preferable to define it from the outset in terms of its more moderate expressions, such that it might be counterpoised to life in general or dialogical life in particular? One could, for example, follow in the wake of the later Leo Baeck or Samuel Hugo Bergman to define it differently from the outset, rather than to follow the later definitions of Buber. It seems to me that the reason for this is that, even when defining mysticism on the basis of its non-extreme characteristics, it nevertheless remains a phenomenon that threatens the rational and philosophical worldview predominant within the humanities and among the general public. This is so, because mysticism touches upon “holy insecurity,” to use the term used by Buber in his book Daniel to characterize the appropriate attitude of a person towards life and to mark the sphere within which he realizes the divine element in the world. In this context I wish to bring one striking example to illustrate how shaky the ground is with regard to this issue and to what extent it is based upon pure subjectivity; and, on the other hand, I will cite Stace’s words in his book Mysticism and Philosophy (in the chapter “Mysticism, Ethics and Religion”) on the prejudice against mysticism. Ernst Simon, in his evaluation of Buber’s thought in general, marshaled particularly strong language against mysticism, claiming that Buber enjoyed fame at a rather young age “for works which were relatively weak and due to his mystical approach, which he subsequently overcame.”22 Accord-

22 Simon, Kav ha-Tihum, 1. Against this, see what he writes in his essay, “Scholem and Buber,” in which he distinguishes between non-Jewish and Jewish mysticism in terms of the transformation that took place in Buber during the transition to the period of his dialogical work: “Whereas the later Buber, insofar as it is still possible to classify him as a mystic, is a mystic in a uniquely Jewish way. Gershom Scholem was the first one to formulate the characteristics distinguishing between Jewish mysticism and all other kinds of mysticism in a firm and abidingly valid formulation: that in Jewish mysticism one finds ‘an almost exaggerated consciousness of God’s otherness’ to the extent that even in a state of ecstasy ‘The Creator and the created remain distinct from one another’ ” (250).

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ing to Simon, the admiration for Buber’s mysticism was based upon the conventions of salon society of his time, which tended to be rather intellectually lazy23 and therefore did not recognize the change that had taken place in Buber’s thought. Simon found autobiographical testimony for this change in Buber’s introduction to his Lectures on Judaism, in which he noted his “path towards lucidity” (Simon, “Scholem and Buber,” 247). According to Simon, it was only with great effort that Buber succeeded in freeing himself of his enslavement to the trap of public praise: For mysticism, in the sense of a teaching that only acknowledges one substance, is not comparable to dialogical philosophy, in which there are many substances, and two in any case of encounter . . . There follows from this the sharp confrontation: mystical unity between God and man, on the one hand, and the encounter of the two, preserving the independence of its participants, on the other . . . Insofar as mystics are able to extricate themselves from the extreme privacy and withdrawal from practical life that usually characterizes them and to become active in the life of society—this usually happens along the line of the illusion, in which the faith data and theological speculations based upon them are placed in confrontation with reality only in the guise of a fictive image.24

Simon is indeed correct in saying that the height of mysticism—that is, the farthest point from the normal, given state—is that of there being only one substance; however, from this point on his words are simplistic, because he did not clarify, for example, whether we may not learn from the history of mysticism that it is precisely the unitive mystical state that can bring about the greatest love of other human

23 That is to say, Simon was not at all conscious of the fact—and possibly did not want to be—that in the history of mysticism there are some extremely intelligent mystics, such as Meister Eckhardt, Nicholas of Cusa, and Jacob Boehme in Christianity, and Abraham Abulafia and R. Issac Luria in Judaism, and that at least Eckhardt and Abulafia based their worldview, not upon salon conversation, but upon the firm basis of Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed. 24 Simon, Kav ha-Tihum, 1. One might add to this position of Simon, that minimizes the value of Buber’s early work because of the mystic element therein, the words of Greta Schaeder in the introduction to her correspondence with Buber. She refers to Buber’s activity between the years 1918 and 1933 as “Buber’s move towards reality” (Schaeder, “Buber’s Image,” 42–48), implying that, during his mystical period prior to 1918, Buber lived outside of reality. But did Buber in fact during that period really live outside of reality? Was he not active even during those years—in public life, in extensive literary creativity and thought? Was he not active communally in spreading the Hasidic message? Did he not lecture about Judaism out of a powerful sense of mission? Or are we perhaps dealing with a split personality?

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beings, in its effect upon everyday life. The following words of Stace refer to this type of relationship: Perhaps the commonest moral accusation against mysticism is that it functions in practice merely as an escape from the active duties of life into an emotional ecstasy of bliss which is then selfishly enjoyed for its own sake . . . The mystic wallows as in a bath of delicious emotions. This is a mere flight from life and from the urgent work of the world . . . I have put the criticism in its strongest possible terms, perhaps exaggerating it in a way which no one who has any knowledge of the actual history of mysticism would endorse.25

A philosopher must overcome his own particular time, wrote Nietzsche, but most of Buber’s critics are well situated in their time. I therefore think that the same criticism may be applied to them as Bergman applies to Buber in his article “Buber and Mysticism,” in which he states that in his turning against mystical gnosis, Buber is really paying tribute to the Zeitgeist of the nineteenth century (Bergman, “Buber and Mysticism,” 308). I am not outside of my time either, but I belong to a different generation, which expresses a different kind of spirit. Hence my reading of Buber is also different, and it is through this reading that my own critical stance towards the Buber scholars took shape with regard to all that concerns the issue of mysticism and the place of mysticism within his thought. II. The Opinion Which Supports Buber’s Mysticism To complete our picture of the problematic nature of mystical phenomena in Buber’s thought, I shall now discuss the opposite opinion. Unlike the majority of Buber scholars, Gershom Scholem argued that 25 Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, 334. In her book on mysticism Underhill portrayed “the most highly developed branches of the human family . . . a type which refuses to be satisfied with that which other men call experience, and is inclined, in the words of its enemies, to ‘deny the world in order that it may find reality.’ ” (Underhill, Mysticism, 3) For Underhill, mystics do not deny reality but seek to approach reality and those who love it, who seek to find the way out, or back, to find a state in which alone they are likely to satisfy their longings for an absolute truth. Mysticism expresses the attempt to establish a direct and conscious link between the human spirit, entangled in the concreteness of the world, and the only true reality. Hence—thus she thinks—mystics do not suffice with what sensual impressions offer to man. The mystic rejects the assumption that the possibility of knowledge is limited to: a) the impressions of the senses; b) to any kind of intellectual process; c) to the contents of normal consciousness. “The mystics find the basis of their method not in logic but in life: in the existence of a discoverable ‘real’ ” (Underhill, Mysticism, 24).

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Buber was and remained a mystic even during his dialogical period.26 According to Scholem, the change that took place in Buber from his earliest writings, and particularly between the books Daniel and I and Thou, is primarily verbal rather than substantive (Scholem, “Buber’s Conception of Judaism,” 152). He referred to Daniel as the “mystical philosophy of Erlebnis [inner experience]” (ibid., 149; italics in the original). Referring to Buber’s concept of revelation in I and Thou, he writes “This definition by Buber is, as must be stated candidly, a purely mystical definition of revelation. It is among Buber’s most astonishing illusions that he believed to have left the sphere of mysticism with such words, indeed to have rejected it.”27 But while Scholem’s phenomenological sensitivity towards mystical phenomenon, the result of his own life work in the study of Kabbalah, led him quite properly to recognize the powerful mystical elements even in Buber’s dialogical period, his own brief analysis thereof is also lacking, as there is still much that remains unclear in the words “the mystical philosophy of Erlebnis.”28 Even though Buber saw revelation as a real possibility in actual life, and even though he concluded that such revelation challenges the established structure of tradition and of normative behavior, we still cannot necessarily infer that his doctrine of revelation is a mystical one. Moreover, Scholem’s essay on Buber’s understanding of Judaism was written at a period when he criticized Buber a great deal. It therefore seems to me that he was lacking in the ability to listen29 required to understand the impact of Buber’s 26 Scholem, “Buber’s Conception of Judaism,” 151–152. Another paper relating to Buber’s dialogical period as a mystical one is that of Hermans, “Buber on Mysticism.” This paper does not relate to the transformation that took place in Buber or to the different approaches regarding Buber’s attitude toward mysticism, but deals with Buber’s dialogical teaching as a mystical teaching in every sense. Its contribution lies in its posing the question of the connection among mysticism, activity and creativity. By the very fact of this identification there is a certain similarity to the approaches of Scholem (Scholem, ibid., 151–154) and Bergman to Buber’s mysticism. 27 Ibid., 157. See below, Chapter 9.8, for my discussion of Buber’s understanding of revelation and the relationship between it and the ethical act from the viewpoint of the doctrines of zimzum (contraction) and of kelim (vessels). 28 The identification between mysticism and inner experience also appears in Scholem in his attempts to define the mystical phenomenon within the general framework of the religious phenomenon (Scholem, “On the Possibility of Jewish Mysticism,” 72). I shall attempt below to show that the concept of inner experience (Erlebnis) is problematic for examining Buber’s mysticism. 29 One of the few compliments that Buber received in Scholem’s article on Buber’s understanding of Judaism pertained to his ability to listen (Scholem, “Buber’s Conception of Judaism,” 142).

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“conversion”30 upon his perception of mysticism, for which reason he presented Buber’s later withdrawal from mysticism as an illusion. But correct as may be Scholem’s comment on the relationship between Buber’s Daniel and I and Thou, he did not relate to Buber’s mysticism during the first decade of the twentieth century as such, but only to his interest in mysticism during this period, and hence did not note that Buber’s book Daniel (1913) already expresses a transition to a new type of mystical life on the part of Buber. In the Third Chapter of this book, I will present my own view of Buber’s “conversion.” One should also take note of the stance of Avraham Shapira, who identified mysticism in the dialogical Buber, but according to whom “it was not an undivided dialogical soul that pulsed within Buber following that selfsame transformation [his “conversion”] (Shapira, “Dual Structures,” 3–4). According to Shapira, the traces of a mystical Buber had a significant impact upon the dialogical Buber, while the dialogical Buber found himself in constant struggle with the mystical Buber. It would therefore seem that, in his view, had Buber overcome his mystical soul, the pure dialogical teaching would have remained alone. Shapira quite rightly knew Buber’s internal struggle in relationship to mysticism but, as I intend to show (Chapters Five and Seven), Buber’s dialogical thought is thoroughly rooted in mystical patterns. Therefore Buber’s struggle with mysticism is specifically limited to the repeated oscillations in his way of defining it. A close reading of Samuel Hugo Bergman’s writings on Buber’s thought reveals that Bergman was close to the view that there is no real dichotomy between mysticism and dialogue in Buber’s thought, although he does not state this explicitly. In his paper “Buber and Mysticism,” Bergman refers to Buber’s mysticism while quoting Buber’s own words about the Baal Shem Tov’s mysticism: “The Baal Shem was the founder of a realistic and activistic mysticism [emphasis in sourceIK], i.e., a mysticism for which the world is not an illusion which man must eschew in order to attain true being, but that reality between God 30 On the term “conversion” (or: “transformation of the heart”), see below, Chapter 3, n. 1. Buber used the term “conversion” in his essay “Dialogue” (13–14), in which he describes the circumstances of his decision to detach himself from ecstatic moods in favor of total devotion to the given reality in the dimensions of time and space (below, Chapter 3.2). Buber scholars have also identified two further events close to the period of time (i.e., the First World War) during which, according to Buber’s testimony, the “conversion” took place, which were also for Buber on the order of a “conversion” (below, Chapter 3.1).

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and himself in which reciprocity is manifested . . .” (304). Concerning this point, Bergman said that “such a ‘realistic mysticism’ is found today not only in Buber, but also in other writers” (ibid., 305).31 My own stance lies somewhere in the middle between that of the majority of Buber scholars and that of Gershom Scholem. Like Scholem, I believe that Buber never ceased to be a mystic throughout all of his work, and like him I do not refer by this merely to mystical residues that persisted into Buber’s dialogical period and were thereafter integrated within his dialogical teaching, with significant changes of form,32 but of the presence of mystical elements in the very heart of his dialogical thought. As against Scholem’s view, I think that one needs to distinguish among three different stages in Buber’s mysticism, or between two stages with a transitional link between them,33 signifying transformations both with regard to Buber’s relationship to mysticism and to the mystical elements in his writings. Moreover, I argue that Buber’s mysticism became stronger during the period known as dialogical, as to his earlier mysticism there was added a well-developed teaching of revelation34 and, as Buber repeatedly emphasized, during the period of his dialogical creativity elements of mystery and the need to establish contact therewith were also added. I have attempted to listen to these mystical voices within Buber, and I do not think that I have engaged merely in projection or wishful thinking. Bracketing the intellectual effort involved in scholarly writing, the identification of these voices in Buber did not require much effort per se. By contrast, for example, 31 Bergman’s article appeared first in the journal Iyyun 9 (1958), that is, when Buber was eighty years old. Bergman argued that Buber adheres to a realistic mystical worldview! Hans Kohn also denoted Buber’s mysticism in his book Daniel as “activist mysticism,” and correctly referred to Hasidism’s impact upon Buber (Kohn, Buber—Sein Werk und seine Zeit, 133, 135). 32 As thought by Friedman (Buber: The Life of Dialogue, 27) and Horwitz (Buber’s Way, 11). 33 As follows from the first two chapters, I draw a distinction between three mystical periods in Buber’s work: (a) from the beginning of his interest in mysticism (1899) until his book Ecstatic Confessions (1909); (b) the transitional period, that began in 1909 and includes his book Daniel (1913); (c) the period beginning with the essays “With a Monist,” “The Altar,” and “The Jewish Myth” (1914), and that continues into his dialogical thought. These three periods reflect Buber’s quest for a solution to the question of multiplicity and unity in reality, and below I shall tie together the three issues—that of multiplicity and unity, the issue of mysticism, and the dialogical principle. 34 Buber’s mysticism as expressed in his book Daniel was referred to by Scholem as “a kind of atheistic mysticism,” relying upon Fritz Mauthner (Scholem, “Buber’s Conception of Judaism,” 149).

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with writings of theosophic Kabbalah, in which it is difficult to distinguish between accounts of direct mystical experience and those of a theosophic or hermeneutic-speculative nature, written many years ago in a cultural and mental climate totally different from that of our own time, in Buber’s thought it is quite clear that the descriptions, which serve as a platform for his thought, derive from his own experience, as he himself testified. Moreover, his proximity in time to our own era also makes it possible to note relatively easily the degree of direct experience that stands behind them. In general, the central issue uniting all of Buber’s work is that of duality and multiplicity as opposed to the possibility of establishing unity.35 The combination of Buber’s decision on behalf of the world (his “conversion”) with this issue, that unites his work, led to the exchange of one kind of mysticism for another kind, which I have called the mysticism of life and the mystery of the earth. The dialogical principle, which is the manifestation of the mysticism of life in the social realm, expressed in the wish to overcome the alienation between man and his fellows, and with his environment as a whole, is the culmination of this process. The providing of a philosophical and anthropological basis for the dialogical principle is Buber’s best-known contribution to modern philosophical thought, while the application of the dialogical principle to the unitive approach in his earlier writings in general, and in his book Daniel in particular, is his major contribution to mystical thought of the twentieth century. We may therefore say that, in the present work, an attempt is made to further develop and ground the “seed” laid by Samuel Hugo Bergman in his paper, “Buber and Mysticism,” in which he speaks of the realistic and activistic mysticism of Buber in his book Daniel as laying the ground and being expended also on his dialogical thought. Thus, there is in principle no way to avoid confronting the problem of defining and delimiting the mystical phenomenon. The following section will be devoted to the problem of definition, while in Chapter One of the body of the book (§ 3) I will suggest various models for examining Buber’s mysticism.

35 In the opinion of Wolfson in his study, “The Problem of Unity.” See on this below, Chapter 1.2.

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3. On the Problem of Defining the Mystical Phenomenon I stated earlier that any focused discussion of the mystical characteristics of Buber’s thought must take place against the background of mysticism in general. The study of mysticism in the twentieth century deals extensively with the quest for the distinguishing characteristic(s) of mysticism from various viewpoints (e.g., theological, philosophical, phenomenological and epistemological), and by extension also with the relationship between mystical experience per se and the interpretation given to it. For our purposes, it should be noted that the striking tendency among Buber scholars to create a dichotomy between his early mysticism and his dialogical work, while defining the former on the basis of its most extreme categories (unio mystica and acosmism), is inconsistent both with the study of mysticism in theistic religions36 in particular, and with that of mysticism in general. Thus, for example, Scholem, in the field of Jewish mysticism,37 and McGinn, Dupré and Zaehner,38 in that of Christian mysticism, deny the attribution of unio mystica to the mysticism of theistic religions since, in their opinion, the theistic religions do not tend to absolute experience of unity of this type. Objection on phenomenological grounds to the definition of mysticism according to such extreme criteria appears, for example, in Moor, who argues that this tendency leads to a “one-sided picture of mystical experience as something essentially static, non-sensuous, undifferentiated, radically ineffable.”39 As we observed earlier, Buber scholars followed his later, negative characterizations of mysticism—that is, those based upon its most 36 According to the classical theistic outlook (for example, in Philo, Augustine, alGhazali and most of the Schoolmen), God is eternal, has consciousness and knows the world, but is not identical with it. Hence, this view assumes the existence of a distance between God and the soul of the believer. 37 Schweid, “Mysticism and Judaism,” 5–6 n. 2; Ben-Shlomo, “On Pantheism,” 461–481. As against that, Idel distinguished descriptions of unio mystica in Kabbalah and Hasidism (Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 59–73), but he does not claim that unio-mystica is characteristic of Jewish mysticism in general. 38 Zaehner, “Mysticism,” 67. Zaehner’s view on the multiplicity of aspects of the mystical phenomenon derives from a phenomenological examination of the sources and less from his view of the essence of theistic religion. 39 Moor, “Mystical Experience,” 121; and cf. Dupré, “Unio Mystica,” 9. Gershom Scholem likewise objected to the definition of the mystical phenomenon based upon the principle of “pure mysticism,” that brings it closer to paganism (Schweid, “Mysticism and Judaism,” 7).

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extreme expressions. In light of the difficulty involved in defining and delimiting the mystical phenomenon there is a certain methodological logic involved in characterizing it according to its most extreme expressions, those most removed from the ordinary human situation; but the price of such a choice is the ignoring of more subtle shades that may exist in the middle range of the phenomenon, or in a place where it is adjacent to other phenomena or even emerges from them. I think that the mental states involved in the spiritual life are far more varied than the definitions based upon their high points alone. As for the multiplicity of shades found in the mystical spectrum, I would like to refer to Gershom Scholem’s description of the whole range of mysticism, from the realm of devequt, (“clinging to God”), which does not contradict the integrity of the self, to unio mystica, involving complete union with the Divine.40 In this study the mystical scale runs the gamut between the two extremes—of the self and of its negation. One must nevertheless admit that it is not easy to define the mystical phenomenon other than on the basis of its most extreme forms, due to its proximity to phenomena of the a-rational, of religious experience in general, of prophetic revelation,41 and of revelation in general. Stace, in his book Mysticism and Philosophy (Chapter 2) referred to this difficulty in defining the mystical phenomenon as “the problem of the universal core.” By this, he meant that mysticism has been subject to numerous and varied definitions that differ in their characteristics; hence, he sought a number of characteristics that point at the heart of the phenomenon, seeking to clearly distinguish between them and marginal cases.42 Thus, for example, Zaehner observed that in Christianity the word mysticism refers to a “direct apprehension of the Deity” (Zaehner,

40 According to Scholem, unio mystica is rare in Judaism, because of God’s unique stance therein; whereas for Buber, unio mystica is negative, because it harms man’s unique status in the cosmos. The emphasis on the anthropological dimension is characteristic both of Buber’s mysticism and of his philosophy. 41 Many studies have been written on the subject of prophetic revelation in the Bible, particularly during the first half of the twentieth century, which sought to examine the prophetic psychological state in the Bible and to characterize its relationship to ecstasy and mysticism. Opinions regarding this matter are numerous and also opposed to one another. See Uffenheimer, Classical Prophecy, 90; Hines, “The Prophet as a Mystic”; Mowinckel, “Ecstatic Experience”; A. J. Heschel, The Prophets. New York, 1962; Even-Hen, “Mysticism and Prophecy.” 42 On Stace’s manner of characterizing the mystical experience, see below Chapter 1.3.iii.

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“Mysticism,” 67), whereas Maréchal spoke of “the feeling of the immediate presence of a Transcendent Being.”43 On the other hand, there are those who see mysticism as an intensified form of religious experience. All these definitions seem to me excessively general, as they do not present a clear distinction among revelation, prophesy, mysticism, and religious experience. Thus, if I base my own claims on the principle of experience of Divine presence, one must necessarily conclude that Buber was a mystic in the fullest sense of the word precisely in his dialogical period. The issue of the relationship between prophetic experience and mystical experience is also subject to controversy among scholars, for which reason I do not consider it worthwhile to rely upon definitions of this type. In the final analysis, I do not wish to define mysticism in Buber on the basis of definitions that are convenient to me, for then I will be guilty of the very thing for which I criticize others. As a rule, the large number of definitions of mysticism and the polemic surrounding them have led to a situation in which one does not see the forest for the trees. I recently even heard an opinion stating that the definition of mysticism it itself a mystical matter: that is, that the “cloud of smoke” obscuring the phenomenon per se also obscures its definition. Since one cannot avoid defining the mystical phenomenon, I have followed a somewhat different path than others, in that I have chosen three models for defining the mystical phenomenon, as criteria for examining mysticism in Buber: namely, unity, ecstasy, and transformation. I think that the application of these three paradigms to Buber’s thought will allow us to engage in an honest examination of the mystical component within Buber’s thought. To these, I have also added descriptions of illumination and paradoxical-mystical descriptions (Chapter 5.6, 7) that appeared in Buber’s thought, particularly during the period of his dialogical thought. In like fashion, I relate in the second part of the book (Chapter 7.4) to Buber’s perception of the reality in which we live as a portal to contact with the mystery—the very first meaning of the word “mysticism.” Examination of the internalization of both Hasidic and Kabbalistic ideas in Buber’s dialogical thought will further serve to strengthen my conclusions as to the mystical element in Buber’s thought on the more theoretical level as well.

43 Maréchal, Studies, 103. He similarly characterized mysticism as an intuitive understanding of the Divine and of the transcendent (ibid., 111), a definition that is evidently close to the religious experience in general.

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The “Lack of Fit” Between the Glove and the Hand in Examining Buber’s Mysticism The imposition upon Buber’s thought of a definition of mysticism based upon its most extreme definitions has led to a number of obstacles: 1. The first shortcoming may be referred to as the lack of fit between the glove and the hand. As I shall show below (Chapters 1–4), extreme definitions of mysticism do not correspond to the mystical elements (portrayed in Chapters 1 & 2) in Buber’s early thought. One does not find in the early Buber descriptions or expressions of admiration for a mystical state in which the I is nullified or unites with a more encompassing and complete being (unio mystica). Nor do we even find in him a more moderate mystical state in which the I is not negated but in which the multiplicity of reality is negated within an undifferentiated unity.44 Thus, if we impose the more extreme expressions of mysticism upon Buber’s early thought, we must arrive at the conclusion that Buber did not have any mystical period at all. 2. To this, we may add a certain semantic difficulty: from the fact that Buber’s dialogical thought was (almost) lacking in the concepts of unity and inner experience—coupled with the fact that these were understood in terms of their most extreme subjective expressions— whereas in the period of his earlier work he made extensive use of these concepts, one is forced to the conclusion that Buber had a mystical period, which he subsequently abandoned. According to this view, the appearance of the concepts of confrontation, relationship, embracing, and the intermediate realm, at the expense of the concepts of unity and experience, indicate that Buber was distancing himself from mysticism. Further on (in Chapters 3 and 4), I will suggest other explanations for the change of these concepts in Buber. 3. To these one must add yet another stumbling block, both semantic and phenomenological, which does not arise as a result of the definition of the phenomenon by its most extreme examples, but from the lack of examination of the proximity of concepts that

44 I use here Stace’s term, to which I shall return several times in the first part of the book. Cf. Zaehner, “Mysticism,” 70; Underhill, “The Essentials of Mysticism,” 39–42.

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serve in the mystical area to other states that are not necessarily mystical—that is, the characterization of a phenomenon by a concept that is not necessarily characteristic of it alone.45 Many concepts may be described as “homologous”—that is, as bordering upon other areas and other states. One may, for example, make use of the concept of devequt, of cleaving or attachment to God, to indicate religious devotion—and this in fact is its biblical meaning—whereas ecstasy may refer to an expression of enthusiasm and not necessarily to a mystical state. In this context I would like to emphasize that in his book Daniel Buber did not use the term mystical union, but rather unity or oneness. This being so, from whence do we know that he gave expression to a mystical experience? Use of the term unity may be connected to the area of mysticism, but not to it alone. A striving for unity and a unitive worldview find their place as well in the field of philosophy, in monistic worldviews, both theistic and pantheistic.46 One may speak of an intellective unity between man and God as a mystical unity,47 but also as an expression of a state that is not mystical.48 This distinction is known as the difference between similarity and identity, in the sense of unity, and is not only limited to the gap between philosophy and mysticism.49 45 Piekarz is correct in his statement that not every mention of devequt is mystical (Between Ideology and Reality, 154; cf. Idel, “Universalization and Integration,” 28), nor does every mention of bittul min ha-metzi’ut, mean actual negation of reality (Piekarz, ibid., 104–149). 46 Buber himself, in his book Daniel, distinguished between various perceptions of unity. After Reinhold (one of the characters in the book) encountered void and cessation of being, and his firm and confident stand in life collapsed, he refused to accept a monistic- rationalistic explanation of the illusory nature of the void: “There are the God-Knowers. That is the abyss between things and the consciousness, they say; and this abyss is an illusion, for consciousness is a power among powers, and all is one. But what good does it do me that they deny what I have experienced with my being? Shall the truth verify itself to me in a finished agreement, instead of in the totality of my life-experience?” (87) He similarly rejected theistic unity (ibid.). 47 As demonstrated by Gershom Scholem in his article, “Devekut, or Communion with God” 216–217. 48 For example the unity in Maimonides of the intellect, the object of intellection, and the intellectual process is usually explained in a non-mystical manner. 49 An example of the gap between similarity and identity, in the sense of unity, may be seen in Rabbi Judah Ashlag’s concept of devequt—that is, in the area of Kabbalah and not only in that of philosophy. He described devequt as “the equalization of the form,” referring to a state in which a person wishes to follow in God’s good ways

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Similarly, the principle of inner experience (Erlebnis) can find a suitable place in the realm of the school of “philosophy of life,” that opposes the imposition of causal thinking upon all areas of life.50 Preference for the a-rational element above the rational element in the area of religion is not necessarily mystical, but may also derive from a philosophical worldview. We must therefore abstain, not only from defining mysticism on the basis of its most extreme expressions, but also from involving with mysticism concepts that are not used for mysticism alone. By this I refer in particular to the attempt to impose the principle of inner experience, taken from the realm of philosophy of life, upon Buber’s mysticism. The principle of inner experience is also very common in everyday language, and one needs to clarify when it becomes mystical or whether Buber made it mystical and how so. A further expression of this problematic, in terms of the phenomenological but not the semantic aspect, is the attribution of negation of the value of the world to mysticism. Negation of the world as a worldview is not unique to mysticism (Inge, Christian Mysticism, 10–12): it has played a role in Western philosophy since Socrates, through Neo-Platonism and medieval thought (Idel, “Patterns of Redemptive Activity,” 254–263). Negation of the world is not a unitive outlook: it can derive from the view that the world revealed to us through the senses, this world of space and time, is no more than an illusion and an appearance; or it can derive from the view that the material world, including the human body as well as its contact with the environment, hinder the full development of the soul and the concrete realization of its potential. At least the second position enjoys a certain stable and strong position in medieval Jewish philosophy (Holzman, “Seclusion, Knowledge and Attachment,” 131–139).

and therefore seeks to give (i.e., to bestow on others) and not only to receive. (Petihah le-Hokhmat ha-Qabbalah, 10–11). 50 Hodges, Dilthey, Introduction, 133. As I show below (Chapter 3.4), I do not think that Buber’s alienation to Erlebnis was identical to his alienation from mysticism. The line connecting Buber’s alienation to Erlebnis and to mysticism was the factor of their alienation from actual life. Erlebnis, as inner experience, alienates one from life because of its focusing on the personal-psychological dimension, whereas mysticism alienates from life through its seeking a unity beyond this world. While the later Buber completely rejected mysticism as he defined it, he only rejected “Erlebnis” in a partial sense.

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It is superfluous to note in this context that in Buber’s doctoral dissertation, in which he sought to clarify the nature of the relationship between multiplicity and unity among thinkers of the modern period, it was specifically the mystical thinkers who were outstanding for not ignoring the value of specific things and in attributing to them an absolute value (see below, Chapter 1.3).

PART I

STUDIES IN MYSTICAL ELEMENTS OF BUBER’S THOUGHT

CHAPTER ONE

BUBER’S EARLY MYSTICISM 1899–1909: UNDER THE SIGN OF ECSTASY Hitlahavut is the “burning,” the ardour of ecstasy . . . Hitlahavut is embracing God beyond time and space. Avodah is the service of God in time and space. Hitlahavut is the mystic meal. Avodah is the mystical offering. (Buber, The Legend of the Baalshem, 17, 23–24).

1. Introduction In the first four chapters of this book I wish to examine the place of mysticism in Martin Buber’s early thought, generally referred to by scholars as “the mystical period.” I thereby hope to obtain a different view of his “conversion” (discussed in Chapter 3) than that which draws a sharp distinction between the mystical period and the dialogical, supposedly anti-mystical period of his life.1 This will in turn serve as a basis for examining the role of mysticism in Buber’s later thought, known as “the dialogical period” (Chapter 5), and will enable us to better define the relationship between the two periods (Chapters 3 and 4). My interest in undertaking such an examination already implies a certain conclusion, which I hope to establish and to elaborate by means of this book: namely, that Buber’s thought was accompanied by significant mystical elements throughout his philosophical work: elements, that were in certain respects even strengthened during the period known as the dialogical. I therefore wish to challenge the widely-held view that Buber turned from a mystical period to an antimystical, dialogical period, and to suggest a different perspective for understanding the nature of the transition among the different periods

Taking into consideration the conventional division accepted in Buber research, in the body of this book I shall use the accepted terms, the mystical period and the dialogical period, or the early Buber and the later Buber. But for our purposes the dialogical period began in 1923 with the publication of I and Thou. 1

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in his life, and the distinction among them. I think that this manner of presenting matters, coupled with a careful examination of the mystical components in Buber’s thought as a whole, will help to resolve certain difficulties deriving from the manner in which his thought has been presented in relation to its mystical context, both by himself and by his students.2 In order to establish the general framework of this discussion, and before going into details, I will state at this point that I distinguish among three mystical periods in Buber: 1) from his initial interest in mysticism (1899), up to and including his book Ecstatic Confessions (1909); 2) a transitional period, beginning in 1909, including his book Daniel (1913); 3) the period beginning with his essays “The Altar,” “With a Monist” and “Myth in Judaism” (1914), and continuing into his dialogical thought. These three periods reflect Buber’s striving for a solution to the question of multiplicity and unity within reality; further on, I shall connect the two issues, that of mysticism and that of multiplicity and unity. I wish to further define the parameters of our discussion. Our examination of mysticism in Buber will be chronological—that is, based upon the order of development of Buber’s thought. The examination of mystical elements from the opening years of the twentieth century will lead to an examination of mystical elements from the beginning to the middle of the 1910’s (i.e., until the event known as his “conversion”). This will in turn lead to an examination of the relationship between his mysticism during the first two stages and the mystical context of Buber’s dialogical thought. In this manner, I hope to demonstrate how the second mystical stage emerged from the first one, and the third from the two that preceded it. I will then examine what residues of the previous stage or stages remained in those that followed: what was rejected, what remained in altered form, what was 2 In order to exemplify matters in this early stage of our discussion, I will mention one example: in the introduction (1957) to the collection of his essays, Pointing the Way, Buber explicitly states that he did not allow certain of his early essays, that he was no longer able to stand behind because of the mystical element therein, to be translated from the original German. He nevertheless allowed his biographer, Maurice Friedman, to translate his book Daniel into English, with the addition of certain notes—a book that is considered by all Buber scholars as a mystical book. But Buber specifically did not refer to it as a mystical work, and therefore evidently permitted its translation into English. This is one example of the thicket of difficulties that have not been properly studied on the margins of Buber’s thought, and which therefore requires a solution.

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added, and how? I am interested, therefore, not only in tracing the path of his development along a time line, but also to engage in a phenomenological examination of the mystical elements in Buber in each and every stage. Even if it were universally agreed that Buber had a mystical period, it would be valuable to clarify precisely what kind of mysticism this was: did the mysticism of the turn of the 19th century have something unique to it, or was it characterized by nostalgia and a romantic longing for the past? Is Buber’s mysticism connected to Judaism, to the Far East, or did he seek a universal source? I wish to examine how Buber’s interest in psychology and philosophy (Kohn, Buber—Sein Werk und seine Zeit, 22–23) influenced his mystical personality and his manner of interpreting mysticism. I will begin the discussion by presenting an issue that unites all of Buber’s work, which I locate at the turn of the century. In so doing, we shall see that the shaping of that period of Buber’s creativity known as the mystical (i.e., that coinciding with the first decade of the twentieth century) was extremely complex. Part of this complexity lies in the fact that those descriptions referred to as mystical in his earlier writings are not all of a piece, but include several different varieties. If one adds to this the manner in which Buber presented his early mysticism in retrospect, the difficulty becomes even greater. We shall put aside for the moment Buber’s later remarks regarding both his own earlier mysticism and mysticism in general, and examine his thought as expressed in his essays and writings, from earliest to latest. 2. The Unifying Element in Buber’s Work; the Movement from Vortex to Direction All wisdom of the ages has the duality of the world as its subject; its point of departure is to know it, its goal is to overcome it. (Buber, Daniel, 136)

As has been noted by Eliot Wolfson, all of Buber’s work is motivated by one central issue: the relationship between the multiplicity of phenomena in the world and their unity.3 For Buber, this was not merely Wolfson, “The Problem of Unity,” 423. Bergman emphasized Buber’s tendency to bridge over the radical duality in existence: “The making of bridges, the polarity of reality, and the unification of the extremes, the dialogue that man conducts, whether verbally or through his deeds and his actual being, are to this day the main subject of 3

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a philosophical question, but expressed a religious impulse to bridge the multiplicity found in reality by establishing unity. I should like to add two further factors that combine with the establishment of unity, that I will discuss further on at length: (a) unity, always connected in Buber with the realm of the holy, is not realized in a routine way, but by means of special mental-cognitive states.4 These states lead man to the unconditioned realm of freedom; (b) unity is not realized by foregoing the distinct existence of individuals in space and time.5 Wolfson distinguished three kinds of unity in Buber, which he related to the threefold division of the periods of Buber’s work—the mystical, the existentialist (or existential-mystic), and the dialogic. According to Wolfson, the following types of unity exist in Buber: (a) during the mystical period, unity is discovered through the subjective experience of ecstasy, in which man ascends beyond the conditioned world of space and time; (b) during the existentialist period, unity does not exist a priori, but is created by man, through confronting the world with his full capability of realization; (c) during the dialogical period, unity is repeatedly realized in the “intermediate realm,” that is, in the encounter between two entities who nevertheless remain distinct from one another.6

Buber’s philosophy” (Bergman “Buber’s Dialogical Thinking,” 12). In my opinion, one may see in this duality the point of departure for the multiplicity within reality, and to see in Buber’s thought an attempt to bridge over the duality and multiplicity in reality. 4 See Buber’s enthusiastic words about ecstasy in Hasidism in his book, The Legend of the Baalshem: “Repetition, the power which weakens and discolors so much in human life, is powerless before ecstasy, which catches fire again and again from precisely the most regular, most uniform events . . . for the man who is in ecstasy” (18). 5 “The principle of uniqueness—the uniqueness of every man, but also of every thing—is Buber’s first decisive step towards the philosophy of dialogue” (Friedman, Buber’s Life and work, 80). Thereafter, Friedman notes that this principle was not sufficient in itself and that it served as a block in Buber’s way toward dialogue, but he does not explain why. 6 Wolfson, ibid., 423–424. Although I agree with Wolfson’s central claim regarding the issue that unites Buber’s thought, I differ from him in the characterization of the three periods into which he divides Buber’s work, as corresponding to three distinct solutions to the problem of duality and unity. His characterization of Buber’s early ecstasy as subjective is inconsistent with Buber’s description thereof in his Ecstatic Confessions, in which he sees it (i.e., ecstasy) as the best means of resolving the problem of multiplicity and the establishing of a unitive state in a manner that is entirely non-subjective. As against this, he did perceive the visions that accompany the ecstatic experience as such in a subjective way (see on this below). The argument that during the first period unity is found in the subjective experience of ecstasy, as opposed to the second period, during which it is created, is likewise incorrect, as during the first period as well

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This division into three periods within the overall scheme of Buber’s intellectual oeuvre, in light of the different solutions offered by Buber to the problem of multiplicity and unity, serves as a cornerstone for the present study as well. Paul Mendes-Flohr has shown in a detailed way how, already at the beginning of the twentieth century, Buber was cognizant of the problem of multiplicity and unity as the central problem engaging the history of human thought, and the unique place it held in thought of the modern age.7 The title of Buber’s dissertation from the year 1904 is Zur Geschichte des Individuationsproblems Nicholaus von Cusa und Jakob Boehme (“The History of the Problem of Individuation in Nicholas of Cusa and Jacob Boehme”), from which it follows, as Mendes-Flohr notes, that Buber attached great importance to the fact that a new tendency appears among thinkers from the modern period: the attempt to resolve the problem of multiplicity without ignoring it or nullifying it. This tendency, of integrating multiplicity and unity, is characteristic of Buber’s thought throughout his life. This awareness of the centrality of the problem of multiplicity also underlies his book Daniel (1913; see p. 136) which, according to the threefold scheme, belongs to his second period; likewise, it is the driving force behind his attempt to bridge the gap between the I and the Thou during his dialogical period. In a broader context, one might say that the source of the problem of multiplicity and unity lies in individuation; that is, in the uniqueness and distinctiveness of things in the world: that they stand alongside one another in their multiplicity, without any visible inner connection between themselves or between them and man. Multiplicity relates

unity is created by man, who actively enters into his soul, and thereby himself causes it to take place (see below). During the third period, according to Wolfson, Buber reneged on a complete unity among the different parts of reality. However, a total unity of this type does not exist at all in any stage of Buber’s writing. As I shall show below (Chapter 5), Buber’s “intermediate realm,” that distinguishes between the I and the Thou, is crossed by him repeatedly, and one may understand the contradiction between this crossing (the mixture between the I and the Thou) and the preservation of a realm that distinguishes between the participants in an encounter, only by means of the mystical paradox (or by attributing contradiction or inconsistency to Buber’s words). The phenomenological gap between the first period and the third period lies in the fact that, during the first period Buber sought to actualize unity on the ground of the soul, while in the third period he sought to realize it in the Thou. That which was turned inwards in the first period was turned outwards in the third (and already in the second period). 7 See his book, From Mysticism to Dialogue, 62–72, and Buber’s introduction to his book Ecstatic Confessions.

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both to the world of objects in space and to moments in time, that are perceived as constantly changing and as lacking in any particular value. As a universal problem, the issue of multiplicity and unity lies at the basis of monotheistic religion, of philosophy, of science, and of mysticism. The heart of the problem of individuation—that is, its perception on the part of man—is the fundamental duality between man and the world and the alienation between them: the isolation of the subject who confronts the world of space and time, and the rift between himself and that factor that is conjectured to unite the world, be it God the Creator, a Godhead that is in a state of constant becoming, or any other immanent or transcendent factor. This problem of the isolation of the subject already troubled Buber in his youth (at age 14) and threatened to upset his mental balance.8 Buber’s confrontation with this issue at the beginning of the twentieth century occurred against the background of the critique on the part of intellectuals of the spiritual state of Europe. This period among certain intellectual circles, who turned their backs on Western rationalism, is known as the Fin-de-Siècle, and extends approximately from 1890 to 1914. It emerged against the background of disappointment with the Western scientific picture of the world based exclusively upon empirical sense data, and particularly upon the sense of sight and the intellect connected with the senses. According to this view, the world is perceived as a multiplicity rather than as a unity due to an empirical and positivist worldview based upon rationalism (Mendes-Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue, 16–17, 49). The belief that the rule of the intellect and of a mechanistic, deterministic, rational approach to reality led to the degeneration and fall of Western culture was held by many European intellectuals during Buber’s time, and led to a tendency towards Eastern and Western mysticism and a return towards the mythic worldview.9 Examination of Buber’s writings from the first decade of the twentieth century and of the studies that have been written about this period of time reveals a far more complex picture than that of a single, ecstatic-mystical solution to the problem of multiplicity. Notwithstanding that in his introductions to The Tales of Rabbi Nachman (1906) Buber, “What is Man,” 136; Wood, Buber’s Ontology, 5. Friedman, Buber: The Life of Dialogue, 27; Mendes-Flohr, “Orientalism and Mysticism [Hebrew],” 625; idem., “Editor’s Introduction” to Ecstatic Confessions, xiv; Kohn, Bube—Sein Werk und seine Zeit, 59–67. 8 9

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and to The Legend of the Baal Shem (1909) Buber identifies mysticism as the very heart of Judaism,10 and that in his book Ecstatic Confessions he saw ecstasy as the means for establishing Unity, his turn towards the ecstatic-mystical path was only one of several attempts to resolve the problem of multiplicity and unity.11 In practice, he sought help in resolving this problem in every possible manner. The complexity to which I draw attention is likewise related to the fact that during this period (1899–1909) he did not perceive the mystical phenomenon in a uniform way: not every form of mysticism or ecstasy was seen by him as a legitimate solution to the problem of multiplicity and unity, and there were even those cases in which he explicitly opposed it (see below, pp. 53–55). Thus, Buber’s early quest was conducted on several different planes. He sought a solution in the areas of philosophy (Kant), theosophy (Eckhardt and Boehme), philosophy of life (Nietzsche and Dilthey), and in the realm of mysticism (Western, Eastern and Jewish mysticism). As Buber himself stated, he found a certain comfort in Kant with regard to the problem of multiplicity and unity, because Kant taught that time and space are expressions of human consciousness— that is, they do not exist in isolation from the human being, but it is man who bears the multiplicity. It is well-known that Kant’s approach to the thing per se, which is not perceived by man, and regarding the world of phenomena, which is none other than a reflection of man’s cognition, can lead man to great existential isolation. However, during his youth Buber discovered in Kant that which he sought—namely, that the world of space and time is not separated from the world of man. It is man’s consciousness that carries the world of phenomenon, and without him this world does not exist. In this way the problem of the distance between man and the world is resolved, as is the problem of multiplicity, because the bearer of the consciousness is also the one who bears the multiplicity of phenomena. Even if we say that Buber internalized certain Kantian elements in his early mysticism, he

10 Buber The Legend of the Baalshem, 9–13; Scholem, “Buber’s Conception of Judaism,” 378–383. 11 One may enumerate four reasons for Buber’s interest in mysticism: (1) the quest for an answer to the problem of multiplicity; (2) the Zeitgeist of his period; (3) his own tendency towards unusual psychological states, that might be described as mystical; (4) the fact of mysticism being one of the ways to deal with the relativity of the religious phenomenon in his day (this last view is mentioned by Horwitz, Buber’s Way, 12).

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certainly did not see Kant as a mystic, nor did he seek in him a mystical solution to the problem of multiplicity and unity. Another attempt made during Buber’s mystical period towards resolving the problem of multiplicity and unity—this one not mystical but theological-philosophical—was carried out through the thought of Nicholas of Cusa and Jakob Boehme. While these two Christian theologians were also mystics, Buber was interested in the explicitly philosophical context of their thought rather than in its mystical context. Proof of this is the fact that he saw his dissertation (1904), that dealt with the problem of multiplicity and unity in these two thinkers, as part of a more extensive work intended to deal with the problem of individuation from Aristotle via Leibnitz down to other modern philosophers (Mendes-Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue, 58). That is to say, Buber did not give substantive preference to mystical philosophy over other unitive viewpoints. Moreover: Buber presented Nicholas of Cusa as a harbinger of modern philosophy rather than as a forbearer of modern mysticism; the distinction he draws in his dissertation is between early philosophy and later philosophy, rather than between mystical thought and philosophy. The significance of Nicholas of Cusa as a thinker for the modern period lay, for Buber, in the fact that he dealt with the problem of the individual, as opposed to the medieval philosophical tradition that neglected this problem. Moreover, and perhaps particularly significant for Buber, Nicholas’s teaching took into consideration the absolute value of the individual and did not attempt to negate it in face of some unifying principle (ibid., 59). Thus, Buber found in these two thinkers, not only a solution to the question of how it is possible to overcome multiplicity, but also a solution that simultaneously attributes absolute value to the individual in general and to every person in particular, within the framework of a worldview that embraced both multiplicity and unity. In both these thinkers, Buber found a call for realization of human potentialities that was a revelation of the multifaceted nature of the Godhead within the world, as well as creating an overarching unity (ibid., 59–60). The principle of the fullness of individuality and its realization is a cornerstone in Buber’s thought as a whole, as expressed in the psychological-mystical states that he described, constantly requiring a deeper

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and more comprehensive discovery of the human personality through intense inner activity.12 During this period of his life, Buber was also engaged with Eastern mystical doctrines, that likewise dealt extensively with the issue of the relationship between the original unity and the multiplicity of reality. But this latter was a way of seeing multiplicity as an illusion and seeking a solution to the suffering involved in duality through an attitude of alienation towards concrete reality, caught in the net of duality. A no less important influence in relation to the issue of multiplicity and unity and the attempt to resolve this problem was that of Nietzsche. According to Nietzsche’s approach, influenced by Heraclitus, by the Dionysian school, and by Schopenhauer, the world that appears before us as multiple, separate, and static is a reflection of man’s distorted perception and his generally degenerate state. Man’s short-sightedness causes him to see only the fixed earth within a sea of becoming. Were man to perceive reality in a different way, as movement and as becoming, and himself as part of this becoming, then the world would be perceived as it really is, as a single continuous flow, and all dualism and antagonism would cease. This view was adopted by Die Neue Gemeinschaft (“The New Society”), which set as its goal overcoming the spirit of duality that caused the ills of Western culture.13 This approach did not seek a transcendent God that was outside of the universe, but rather one that was naturalistic. The world itself is a unity that includes multiplicity, and man himself is a kind of god who partakes in the movement of the world, both as a creature thereof and a creator within it. Man must therefore take an active part in the movement of the world, which he can only do if he preserves and realizes his individuality. Thus, similar to Buber’s understanding of

12 Thus also in the dialogical period: “How much of a person a man is depends on how strong the I of the basic word I-Thou is in the human duality of his I . . . The word ‘I’ is the shibboleth of humanity. Listen to it!” (Buber, I and Thou, 115). 13 Mendes-Flohr, ibid., 54–57. Mendes-Flohr noted that Buber’s dissertation ought to be seen as an exercise in ideological hermeneutics suitable to the worldview that was widespread in “The New Society.” He likewise notes that Nietzsche’s influence is particularly striking in Buber’s notebook that preceded this dissertation (ibid., 61). It follows from this that the viewpoints of Nicholas of Cusa, of Boehme, and of Nietzsche were united in Buber and became part of his worldview.

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Nicholas of Cusa and of Boehme, there is no call here to negate the I but, on the contrary, to realize it.14 In this light, one can see that Buber already adopted the principle of creativity and that of choice on behalf of realizing unity at the beginning of the twentieth century15—and not only from the stage at which his book Daniel appeared (1913), as people tend to think. Furthermore, Buber did not see Dilthey as a mystic, even if he adopted Dilthey’s principle of Erlebnis (inner experience) within his own mysticism.16 Hence, even if one argues that Buber gave a mystical

14 Mendes-Flohr, ibid., 57. This view of Nietzsche is not mystical nor is it understood by Buber as mystical. It might perhaps be described as dialectical monism, as Walter Kaufman called it. It is immanent, and does not contain any category of revelation of the essence of God’s being. True, Buber at that time did not see Nietzsche as an atheist but as the prophet or harbinger of a godliness or Godhead that is in a state of becoming, but he certainly did not represent him as a mystic. It seems to me that Buber, under the influence of Nietzsche, already in his early period adopted the tendency to base his teaching upon the opposing tension between changing states and upon an active understanding of man as acting within reality and as discovers therein its other, true and hidden face. This is done by means of another form of contact, direct, not by means of the intellect. This attitude is characteristic of all of Buber’s thought, and is expressed in the opposition between activity and passivity, between orientation and realization, between the I-Thou and the I-It, between ordinary moments and special moments. The source of this duality lies in the dichotomy created by Nietzsche between the superman, the creative man who is constantly becoming and developing, the man who is in a state of transition and becoming, the man who is “a bridge and not a goal,” and the other man, who is static, mediocre and degenerate, who darkens the face of the earth. (Thus Spake Zarathustra, in The Philosophy of Nietzsche [New York, 1927], 8. 15 The call to creativity in relation to a world based upon personal initiative is already mentioned in 1901 in Buber’s lecture before “The New Society” preserved in Buber’s own hand, which is mentioned and quoted by Mendes-Flohr (ibid., 58). The call to personal decision and to decisive action within the world was also absorbed by Buber from the book Tzava’at ha-Ribash (The Baal Shem Tov’s Testament). The idea that “Man’s being created in the image of God I grasped as deed, as becoming, as task” (Buber, “My Way to Hasidism,” 51). Although this essay was written in 1918, Buber described therein an authentic experience from the period during which he first encountered Hasidic literature (at age 26), which brought him to see himself as a messenger of this teaching to the world. Likewise in Buber’s 1910 essay, “Judaism and Mankind”: “It is the striving for unity that has made the Jew creative . . . The creative Jews are the conquerors of duality, its positive overcoming . . .” (28–29). And in another article from the same year, “Renewal of Judaism,” he speaks about three interconnected ideas that seek realization: the idea of unity, that of action, and the idea of the future (49). 16 See his words to the Neue Gemeinschaft (“The New Society”) from 1901, quoted by Mendes-Flohr (From Mysticism to Dialogue, 57–58): “In quiet, lonely hours all our endeavors seem meaningless. There appears to be no bridge leading from our being to the great Thou . . . Then suddenly came this Erlebnis [inner experience]—and like a mysterious nuptial festival we were freed from all restraints and we found the inef-

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interpretation to the thought of the above-mentioned thinkers, one must in the same breath admit that he was fully aware of the fact that they were not mystics. The Buber of the first decade of the twentieth century, known as the mystical Buber, is thus a multi-faceted figure. The unifying factor within all his quests is the issue of multiplicity and unity, and the distinction he draws between the complexity of man’s given, negative situation, and the much-sought unity that he creates out of his own soul. However, he took the solution from many different areas. In his Three Addresses on Judaism given in Prague in the years 1909– 1910,17 which devote a central place to the problem of duality and unity and to redemption connected with unity,18 we find a striking contrast to the approach adopts in his earlier books. Here, mysticism is barely mentioned, while ecstasy—which, in his books on R. Nahman (1906) and on the Baal Shem Tov (1909), was seen as the ideal solution to the problem of unity outside of space and time—is not mentioned at all. Nor is there any suggestion in these addresses, either to man in general or to the Jew in particular, that one should seek to bring about these states. We must carefully weigh in what sense we are entitled to call these lectures mystical at all. Gershom Scholem’s statement, that Buber saw in mysticism “a guideline and a constant tendency within Judaism” (Scholem, “Buber’s conception of Judaism,” 145), does not hold true with regard to these lectures, which were not intended to glorify mysticism, but the Jewish idea of unity.19 In light fable meaning of life.” This unifying experience, often described in the mystical realm through metaphors of love and marriage, leads man to the unconditional sphere, that is, to the sphere of freedom. The striving towards realization of the I within this sphere, in which there is an overcoming of the element of separation that exists in reality, is that which unites all of Buber’s thought, even if the solution that he offered to the problem of individuation underwent significant changes. 17 “Judaism and the Jews” (1909), “Judaism and Mankind” (1910), “Renewal of Judaism” (1910), and also in “The Spirit of the Orient and Judaism” (1912). 18 I refer in particular to the articles “Judaism and Mankind” and “Renewal of Judaism.” 19 The gap between the “Introduction” to Ecstatic Confessions and his lectures on Judaism (Lectures on Judaism) is also expressed in his attitude towards the idea of redemption. In his lectures on Judaism, personal redemption and collective redemption are intermingled (Shapira, “Buber’s Concept of Redemption,” 62–63, 69), while the ecstasy described in Ecstatic Confessions involves only personal redemption from the eclipse of light in this world, albeit while allowing for the external world within the “I.” In his lecture, “Judaism and Mankind,” Buber even draws a sharp line of division between the Indian idea of redemption from duality, similar to that derived from the ecstatic state, and the Jewish one (27–28, and see the quotation in full, below, p. 71).

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of the above, we must see the period known as the “mystical,” and particularly the first decade of the twentieth century, as one during which Buber was still seeking his path, and in which his worldview was yet in a formative state, in constant tension among different and even conflicting directions—to use the word-pair used by Buber himself, “vortex and direction.”20 That period of time up until his “conversion,” called his “mystical period,” is characterized by a “vortex” of confusion which over the course of time turned in a definite direction, already present within the initial “vortex.” This being so, one may say that, in principle, Buber’s movement was essentially not from mysticism to dialogue, but from confusion to direction. This does not imply that Buber’s later direction was mystical, but only that his point of departure was quite complex. In order to avoid misunderstanding, I should add that, in presenting thus the first stage in Buber’s thought, I do not intend to diminish its importance nor to argue that his early mysticism was part of a general confusion and hence something that needs to be related to with reservations. My perception of the development of Buber’s work is organic. In a metaphorical sense, the totality of Buber’s thought may be compared to a plant and to the manner of its growth: the natural soil of its growth was, as mentioned, the Fin-de-Siècle, characterized by the critique of rationalism and the scientific worldview and an attempt to shape other ways of contact with reality. The root or the seed, whose initial influence is felt in the plant as a whole, was his confrontation with the gap between the duality and multiplicity in reality, and unity. The stalk corresponds to his striving to realize the life of unity, while the leaves are the multiplicity of solutions that were suggested during this first period. The continued growth of the stalk to become a flower corresponds to his progress towards the one desired solution, that gradually took place, as expressed in his “conversion,” while his dialogical thought is the fruit that emerges at the end. To continue the image, it follows that, if we harvest the dialogical fruit from its connection to the stem and to its roots it will wither, losing its vital element. It was only the vital and transformative elements found in Daniel, expressing his intense striving towards realized unity, that

20 On the structure, “vortex—direction” in Buber, see Shapira, Hope for Our Time, 8–12, and the index there, 262.

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allowed the dialogical fruit to be actualized and not to remain a mere thought.21 Further on (in Chapters 4 and 5), I shall attempt to show that Buber’s I and Thou (1922) could only have been written in wake of his book Daniel (1913),22 a book considered mystical by all the scholars, and that the basic intuition of Daniel is already rooted in the first decade of the twentieth century, in Buber’s introduction to Ecstatic Confessions (1909; see on this Chapter 2). I present the theoretical basis for this metaphor in the first part of this book. In order to do so, I have chosen to follow the flow of the development of Buber’s work from earlier to later, without determining in advance what is essential and what is tangential for understanding the totality of his thought. By so doing, I have been able to identify the breakthrough of a new stage from that which preceded it in an organic manner, one that includes the earlier stages, albeit in changed form. My direction is thus different from that of Barzilai, who sought the roots of Buber’s dialogical thought in his early works, thus moving in practice from later to earlier. While it is true that the dialogical principle already appears in Buber’s early thought, his method determines in advance what is to be seen as the decisive factor in his thought, and whatever does not point to it in the early period is thereby rendered irrelevant.23 Hence Barzilai, unlike Scholem, had to see Buber’s early work as unreliable (Barzilai, Homo Dialogicus, 31). In my opinion, this approach presents difficulty in identifying the vital and trans-rational roots upon which, in the final analysis, the secret of dialogue is composed.

Another organic metaphor for understanding the process of formation of Buber’s work is suggested by Barzilai in his book, Homo Dialogicus. For him, the relationship between Buber’s early and later thought is compared to that between raw, primal matter and fashioned material. But the primal matter in Barzilai is not related to any mystical material, but to identifying the unshaped signs of dialogical thought in Buber’s early thought (ibid., 32). 22 As I shall show below, there is much support for my view on this matter in Buber’s words. 23 “I find that Buber’s thought indeed improved over the years. It follows from this, that the main significance of his early thought lies in that it lay the groundwork for the development of his later, dialogical-anthropological thought. Moreover, I and Thou, which was published in 1923, signifies in my eyes . . . both the focus of his thought in general and the ‘solid core’ of his thinking” (Barzilai, Homo Dialogicus, 32). As I have noted, and as shall become clear in the first part of this book, the hard core of Buber’s thought lies in the establishment of states of unity by means of psychological transformation, and his dialogical thought is the application of these states of unity to the interpersonal and social realms. 21

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chapter one 3. Definition of the Mystical Phenomenon as a Basis for Characterizing Buber’s Mysticism

In the present section, continuing my remarks in the Introduction (Sect. 3), I wish to offer a definition or delimitation of the mystical phenomenon that will underlie our examination of the mystical elements in Buber’s earlier and later thought. Consistent with the position taken in the introduction to the book, one must avoid, on the one hand, definition of the mystical phenomenon on the basis of its most extreme expressions alone (the obliteration of the I in a state of unio mystica and an attitude of alienation to the world) and, on the other hand, a definition that falls within the “gray” area that pertains to other areas of religious experience as well (such as revelation, experience of the Divine presence,24 intensified religious experience, contact with the a-rational,25 and the principle of Erlebnis, “inner experience.”26 I have chosen three paradigms that seemed most appropriate for an examination of mysticism in Buber; namely: the ecstatic, the unitive, and the transformative component within the I, and their interrelations. I think that the combination of these three paradigms will enable me to maintain my distance from the two extremes mentioned above, and thereby to assure, as I noted in my introductory remarks, that my characterization of Buber’s teaching as mystical is not forced. I will elaborate upon these three paradigms following some introductory remarks about mysticism. I. Mysticism and the Hidden The earliest Greek meaning of the word mysticism is “to close.”27 Even though the meaning of the word would appear to be based upon a 24 Maréchal, Studies, 118; McGinn, Foundations of Mysticism, xvii. As I noted in the Introduction, were I to establish the principle of experience of the presence of God as the criterion for determining the existence of mystical elements in Buber’s later thought, this would be considered an intensely mystical period in every sense. Nor would this criterion of the presence of God (like that of revelation) allow for any distinction between mysticism and prophecy. 25 As not every person who advocates an a-rational approach to reality would be defined as a mystic. The argument on behalf of a-rationality may also derive, for example, from a theoretical awareness of the limitations of the human mind. 26 I have certainly refrained from utilizing the argument of William James, that every religious experience is suffused with mystical states. ( James, Variety, 370). 27 Inge brings three different meanings for the term “closed” in the mystical context: (a) the mystic needs to keep his mouth shut with regard to all that pertains to

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negative statement, and even though it has been connected since the time of Pseudo-Dionysus with a negative theology, that suggests a nondifferentiated reality beyond intellectual apprehension (Dupré, Light from Light, 11), the history of mysticism indicates that in many cases it points towards a concrete and positive reality28—one that is substantial, enduring and comprehensible. Mystics were unique in that they did not suffice with knowledge of the world available to their comprehension by means of the senses and the thought processes related thereto, but that they saw the closed and the hidden—whether understood as immanent or as transcendent—as a substantive reality with which it was possible to make contact. They therefore made it their goal to engage in unmediated contact with the true, hidden reality29 revealed in the world, and within the deep meaning of the holy writings, that uncovers the significance and relative nature of the revealed and external dimension. This direct contact with the divine layer of reality was understood by them as deriving from a unique life posture on the part of man, involving an alteration of his psychological-cognitive state, but nevertheless conditional upon Divine grace. (Dupré, ibid., 4–5) This hidden quality of reality is referred to in paradoxical language, or described by means of images taken from this world in a symbolic manner, or else is characterized by such abstract concepts as “being” or “nothingness,” of God or of the spiritual world—but it always a different reality, one that lies beyond the threshold. It is Reality with a Capital “R,” apprehended by those who experience it as a transsubjective reality, to use Stace’s language, or objective, in that of Bouyer (“Mysticism,” 53), that breaks through to man and takes hold of him (spirit possession,30 or enthusiasmos, in the sense of being penetrated with

the esoteric knowledge available to him; (b) esoteric knowledge is closed to whoever’s eyes have not yet been opened; (c) the closing of the eyes to external objects (Inge, Christian Mysticism, 4). According to Bouyer, the earliest meaning of the term “mystic” originated in the Greek mysteries, where it referred to a cultic secret not intended for all (Bouyer, “Mysticism,” 43). 28 “Conceptually, Mysterium denotes merely that which is hidden and esoteric . . . But though what is enunciated in the word is negative, what is meant is something absolutely and intensely positive.” (Otto, The Idea of the Holy, 27). 29 As is argued by Rudolf Otto, “It is one thing merely to believe in a reality beyond the senses and another to have experience of it also” (ibid., 160). It is worth noting that Otto saw mysticism as an extreme case of the numinous: “Mysticism, continues to its extreme point this contrasting of the numinous object (the numen), as the ‘wholly other,’ with ordinary experience” (ibid., 43). That is, for Otto mysticism stands at the extreme of the a-rational experience of the Divine. 30 In Hebrew: ‫איחוז‬. Concerning this term, see Pedaya, “Seized by Speech.”

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God), or towards which he breaks through (ek-stasis in the sense of departure from oneself ) while becoming conscious of its existence. In the history of mysticism this reality is liable to be discovered in the world of nature. It may be a reality that transcends the world of the senses—that is, that touches man from a different dimension—or it may well up from beneath the regular threshold of human consciousness, that is, from the depths of his soul, or derive from man’s contact with sacred texts.31 As the two entities—that of man and that of the reality that is beyond the threshold of cognition and of the senses— come into contact with one another, one can speak of a degree of unification between the two. II. Uffenheimer’s Ecstatic Model In order to examine ecstatic characteristics in early Buber, I will make use here of a model propounded by Uffenheimer, who distinguishes four states of prophetic ecstasy: mass-crazed ecstasy, individual fainting ecstasy, internalized ecstasy, and the ecstasy of the integrated personality.32 Mass-crazed ecstasy found its classical expression in the cult of Dionysus, which involved “total erasure of the personality” (Uffenheimer, “Prophetic Ecstasy,” 55–56). Individual-fainting ecstasy found its classic expression in the Delphic cult, in which there was a loss of regular consciousness and an obliteration of the conscious I, albeit the individual per se is not erased but enters into a state of prophetic trance. Internalized ecstasy leads to a focusing of the personality rather than to its negation and, as Uffenheimer argues, it appears in various forms of mysticism. The essence of such ecstasy lies in its turning the center of consciousness away from the external world and entering into a state of “intellectual and emotional illumination” (ibid., 59). The fourth type of ecstasy is that of the integrated personality, which comes about “in wake of an awakening and concentration of the pow31 See Bouyer’s description of Origen’s view that “no person is able to understand the holy Scriptures without a deep connection with the realities about which they speak.” (Bouyer, “Mysticism,” 50). 32 Uffenheimer, “Prophetic Ecstasy,” 53–62. Uffenheimer elaborated upon the types of prophetic ecstasy in the first section of his posthumously published Hebrew book, Classical Prophecy, 80–224. Uffenheimer’s fourfold system is a development of the distinction, already proposed during the first half of the twentieth century in studies concerning Israelite prophecy, between extreme ecstasy and moderate ecstasy.

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ers of the soul around a particular subject without harming the inner balance of the personality, and its integration within the context of the external world” (ibid., 61–62). The first two kinds of ecstasy are viewed by Uffenheimer as destructive, while he sees the latter two as a source of creativity. The third type of (internalized) ecstasy he attributes, as noted, to the various forms of mysticism. It follows from this that, for him, the terms ecstasy and mysticism are not identical and that, essentially, ecstasy encompasses far more than mysticism, which is only one type thereof. For our purposes, it is important to note that, unlike the view of Buber critics, for Uffenheimer mystical ecstasy is not destructive. He specifically attributes Israelite prophecy to the ecstasy of the integrated individual, in which the I becomes incorporated within the external world, that is, it does not close itself off to it.33 Although, from the methodological viewpoint, I have chosen to use this model in order to examine the ecstatic component in Buber’s thought, I do not see it as a sufficiently encompassing model for examining the mystical elements in Buber. As we have seen, Uffenheimer identified mysticism with internalized ecstasy alone—that is, he did not attribute to mysticism the same multiplicity of aspects that he attributed to prophetic ecstasy in other cultures. From the next section, it will ensue that the first two types of ecstasy mentioned in Uffenheimer’s typology, in which the conscious I is obliterated, were completely rejected by Buber even during the period referred to by researchers as mystical. During the period that he wrote Ecstatic Confessions (1909), he particularly championed internalized apathetic ecstasy, while from the time of Daniel (1913) on one sees in him the tendency to prefer the ecstasy of the integrated personality, in which the powers of the soul are focused upon a particular subject. In the following, I shall make particular use of the distinction between destructive ecstasy, involving the break-down of the integrated personality (types 1–2 in Uffenheimer’s typology), and the ecstasy that leads to shaping and crystallization of the personality (types 3–4).

33

See below, Chapter 2, near footnote 42.

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III. Stace’s Model of Mystical Unity In order to examine the characteristics of mystical unity in Buber, I will utilize Stace’s model (Chapter 2.3.ii). In his attempt to discover the universal core of mysticism, Stace sought to limit it to states of unity, which he divided into two: introverted mysticism, that is, that which turns inward, and extroverted mysticism, which is directed outward, by means of the senses, towards the world of the senses (Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, 62). This type of mysticism is thus identical with that referred to by Zaehner as “nature mysticism” (Zaehner, “Mysticism,” 70). As Buber’s gaze was directed, from the early 1910’s on, to life in the here and now (see Chapters 2 and 3 below), the paradigm of extroverted or nature mysticism is more suitable to an examination of mysticism in Buber’s thought. Stace likewise claimed (ibid., 47–51) that visions, hallucinations, and hearing voices are not subsumed under the definition of mysticism, even though mystics experienced them as well.34 He likewise claimed that states of inspiration or illumination are only marginal aspects of the mystical phenomenon, if they do not lead to unity (81–83). Other scholars agree in this definition of mysticism based upon unitive states rather than on visions, voices, and so on. Even if I do not find their arguments entirely convincing, I will adhere to the paradigms that I have chosen, about which nobody disagrees that they are mystical. We will now note the distinctions made by Stace regarding the matter subject in question which is based, as he says, also upon the studies of his predecessors: The two main types of [mystical] experience, the extrovertive and the introvertive, have been distinguished by different writers under various names. The latter has been called the “inward way” or “the mysticism of introspection,” which is Rudolf Otto’s terminology and corresponds to what Miss Underhill calls “introversion.” The other may be called “the outward way” or the way of extrospection. The essential difference between them is that the extrovertive experience looks outward through Underhill designated the visions and voices as “secondary phenomena of mysticism” (“The Essentials of Mysticism,” 38–39), while Zaehner went further, describing them not only as secondary, but as “subsidiary and parasitic” (Zaehner, 68). Both Stace and Underhill base their distinctions between voices and visions and concrete experience of unity on the suspicions of the mystics themselves towards the visions they have seen. It is worth noting that Buber thought as well that the mystical experience in its purest sense does not involve seeing or hearing, but only a sense of unity in which “the act of contemplating is obliterated in the contemplator” (Buber, “God and the Soul,” 185). 34

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the senses . . . Both culminate in the perception of an ultimate Unity— what Plotinus called the One—with which the perceiver realizes his own union or even identity. But the extrovertive mystic, using his physical senses, perceives the multiplicity of external material objects—the sea, the sky, the houses, the trees—mystically transfigured so that the One, or the Unity, shines through them.35

Thus, according to Stace, extrovertive mysticism involves the following seven characteristics: unifying vision; concrete, sensual apprehension of unity; the feeling that the experience portrays an objective state in terms of reality; the sense of grace; the sense of holiness; and paradoxality (ibid., 79). Extroverted mysticism is, for Stace, essentially spontaneous, in that it does not require a process of preparation since it arises from the situation of life in time and space. I have thus far focused upon two of the three paradigms mentioned: the first, the ecstatic; the second—that of mystical unity—could be seen as a result of the first. Most scholars of mysticism saw the unitive experience as the pinnacle of the mystical phenomenon, and the stage of illumination or the phenomenon of revelation as preceding it or included therein. The combination of the ecstatic paradigm with that of the unitive enables me to state that one is not speaking here of a perception of unity within the philosophical realm, but of a substantive unity and attachment among concrete realities. I therefore preferred the paradigm of unity, used by Stace in his book Mysticism and Philosophy36 as the criterion for mystical experience, in preference to other known paradigms of mystical intuition and contemplation. Since Buber, like his critics, stated of himself from the year 1914 on that he was not a mystic, and since his later teaching gave an important place to the revelation of God in everyday life, I thought it proper to establish the unitive paradigm as a standard for testing Buber’s mysticism, and thereafter to examine thereby whether, and in what sense, it is possible to describe his doctrine of revelation as mystical.37

35 Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, 61. The reader familiar with Buber’s I and Thou can already identify the complete identity between Stace’s distinction and Buber’s depiction in I and Thou (see below, Chapter 5.7) even if the term unity doesn’t appear therein. For is it not the eternal Thou that radiates through all phenomenon, and every meeting in the world is a meeting with it, and the contact with one particular thing in the world is a state in which all of reality is channeled to it? 36 Cf. Underhill, “The Essentials of Mysticism,” 29; Smith, “The Nature and Meaning of Mysticism,” 22–24. 37 In practice, one may see all of Buber’s dialogical thought as a doctrine of revelation, as the “Eternal Thou” is revealed also in relative relations, and not only through

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Our focus upon the paradigm of mystical unity raises the issue of the content of the mystical experience, which in turn returns us ipso facto to the realm of revelation. If we say that the experience of unity is lacking in any normative contents or imperatives, we are excused from discussing its content. If, however, we say that unity encompasses knowledge of another kind—whether this be intellective, figurative, or normative—we will then find ourselves connecting the issue of mystical unity to that of revelation, and will find ourselves dealing with revelation within the mystical state. This state, combining mystical unity with revelation, is described by Dupré as “infused contemplation.” I have preferred the criterion of unity to that of revelation, as this allows me, from the methodological viewpoint, to bypass the complexities of the relationship between mysticism and prophecy, and to present Buber’s depictions of unity as mystical rather than as prophetic, against the background of the paradigms of unity that are dominant within the field of mysticism, rather than against those from the field of prophetic revelation within the Bible. IV. The Transformative Model To the ecstatic model and the unitive model, I wish to add the transformative criterion in experience. This, because in my opinion it is insufficient to simply depict unification as such: a certain change must occur in the human pole involved in this unity, enabling one to determine that one is not speaking merely of a new intellectual apprehension, that could have found its place equally well in the area of philosophy.38 The addition of the transformative dimension allows us to refrain from the sort of questioning that would be brought about, for example, in light of Feuerbach’s words quoted by Buber, that “Man for himself is man (in the usual sense)—man with man—the unity of I and Thou is God.”39 Buber saw Feuerbach’s words as reflecting a

direct contact with God. I have dealt with Buber’s understanding of revelation particularly in Chapter 9.8. 38 In Dilthey, for example, the principle of inner experience (Erlebnis) does not include a change of the human totality within the experiential approach, but the inner experience is another form of apprehension imposed upon history and upon the humanities. See my discussion of the principle of inner experience in Buber below, Chapter 3.4. 39 Quoted by Buber in his essay, “The Dialogical Principle,” 210.

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mystical viewpoint that, according to him, confused or blurred the human and the divine—but for me this is not sufficient. There is a natural proximity of the transformative model to the ecstatic state, in which there likewise occurs a change in the I. True, Ecstatic Confessions focus primarily on the subject of experience, apprehended by them as the most important factor in the overall experience, whereas the transformative model, for me, focuses more on the changes that take place in the state of the I within the experience. I wish to mention in this context the distinction drawn by Stace between the authentic experience of unity itself, and a theory about unity or an interpretation which is given to experience that, for him, is one of the causes of its multiplicity.40 According to Stace, if the examination of a description of mystical experience leads to the conclusion that this is indeed an autobiographical description of a unitive experience, then we are dealing with mystical unity. But Stace admitted that at times this is difficult to determine, as some mystics described their own experience in the third person. But in general—that is to say, from overall familiarity with the mystic being discussed—he thought that one could know whether he was speaking of an authentic mystical experience (ibid., 58). It is my opinion that, by adding the transformative paradigm to the ecstatic and unitive paradigms in order to examine the mystical experience in Buber, I have to a large extent bypassed the complexity involved in the question of the relationship between an authentic experience and the theory or interpretation that accompanies it. The transformative paradigm can serve as an anchor to strengthen the latter two, and it is particularly suitable for examining mysticism within Buber, since Buber, as a modern thinker, dealt with the self and its changing situation more than would have been done by a theistic mystic from the Middle Ages, the focus of whose interest would have been theocentric. As I stated in the Introduction, there is no debate regarding the fact that Buber’s thought is based upon his own experience (Scholem, “Buber’s Conception of Judaism,” 143). Hence, these three paradigms should suffice to identify the mystical elements involved in the various periods of his creativity.

40 Just as Buber, in Ecstatic Confessions, acknowledged the developmental factor in religion, expressed in the kind of interpretation given to mystical experience, so did Stace distinguish between those mystics who are more sophisticated from a philosophical and intellectual viewpoint, and those who are more emotional (Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, 60).

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chapter one 4. Buber’s Early Mysticism

This section will deal with Buber’s early descriptions of the mystical phenomenon; my discussion will focus on the manner in which Buber understood mysticism at the beginning of the twentieth century against the background of the role which he wished to give to it. It is customary to speak of the first period in Buber’s work as the mystical period in his life. What do scholars mean when they speak about Buber’s mystical period? It seems to me that they are referring to three main aspects: (a) Buber’s interest in mysticism from all cultures; (b) Buber’s perception of mysticism as an appropriate means for establishing direct and authentic contact with reality; (c) his being subject to psychological states that can be described as mystical. An examination of Buber’s early writings clearly reveals that, during this early period, he was interested in the historical, philosophical, and psychological manifestations of mysticism—an interest that did not derive primarily from academic curiosity, but rather from intense personal, empathetic involvement,41 and from his perception of mysticism in its actual sense as a tool for contemporary human renewal. It is nevertheless worth noting that Buber never defined himself as a mystic. Overall, one may say that Buber’s early characterizations of mysticism are not uniform, and that in practice are far more complex than one might imagine. This lack of unity is expressed in two interrelated spheres: 1. Mysticism is a phenomenon that encompasses several different phenomena from both the semantic and the phenomenological viewpoint. The three semantic concepts that may be associated with the realm of mysticism are unity, ecstasy (ek-stasis) and inner experience (Erlebnis). Nevertheless, the relationship among these is not at all simple and requires examination. I shall suffice here with a general statement that the two concepts of ecstasy and inner experience are seen as means to attain unity (Buber, Ecstatic Confessions, 4), from which it follows that the question of the relationship between

41 In a 1907 letter to the publisher of his book Ecstatic Confessions, quoted by MendesFlohr, Buber writes that his book will include ecstatic testimonies that he had gathered over the course of many years (see Mendes-Flohr’s “Editor’s Introduction,” xiii) and, in a subsequent letter, Buber notes that the book has profound personal significance for him, and that the documents brought therein are of great importance for the human soul (Mendes-Flohr, ibid.).

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ecstasy and inner experience, in particular, requires some explanation: at times Buber mentions ecstasy alone, at times he combines ecstasy and inner experience together, and at still others he mentions inner experience without alluding to it as a mystical or ecstatic phenomenon. We may conclude from this that the relationship between inner experience and mysticism is not at all simple. We shall see below that inner experience plays a role in two different areas, and we will need to clarify the relationship between them, and to determine whether both of them are in fact mystical. All this against the background of what we stated above, that not every discussion by the early Buber concerning unity is necessarily mystical, and that in practice the concept of mystical unity (unio mystica) does not at all appear in the early Buber. 2. Already during his earlier period not every kind of mysticism was legitimate in his eyes. At times he characterizes these by means of two paradigms—one affirming the world and the other negating it—while at other times he characterizes it by means of a single negative paradigm. Already at the beginning of his work Buber related to that form of mysticism that sees concrete reality, including mental reality, in an affirmative way (below, “positive mysticism”) in a positive light, whereas he related with considerable reservations, criticism and negation to that form which perceives the reality of the world and of the psyche in a negative light (below, “negative mysticism”). Buber’s reservations about negative mysticism may be seen in the broader context of the above discussion of multiplicity and unity. On this issue Buber was entirely consistent: every state in which there is a threat to the integrity of the I or to the wholeness of the individuals within the world carries for him a negative connotation, and is seen by him as improper. I have noted that the connection in Buber between the mystical genre as a whole and its diverse forms—namely, ecstasy, inner experience and unification—is a complex one, requiring explanation. Already at the beginning of his work one finds a certain incompatibility between mysticism and the principle of inner experience. In Buber’s draft to his dissertation, written at the beginning of the twentieth century, whose ideas served in his lecture on Jakob Boehme already in 190142—that 42 Mendes-Flohr observed the partial overlap between the early notes to his dissertation and Buber’s article about Jakob Boehme written in 1901. Hence one may assume that these words of Buber were written between 1901 and 1904.

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is, between the years 1901–1904—Buber sketched two psychological states that depart from the habitual and reflect an attempt to attain a kind of unity between the I and the world. First he posed the dichotomy, known throughout his work as a whole, between, on the one hand, the ordinary, static consciousness that perceives the external aspects of the world and classifies the multiplicity of phenomenon without overcoming the duality of multiplicity/unity, and, on the other, a different form of perception, that joins with the hidden, dynamic dimension of reality, in which the duality of multiplicity/unity is overcome and the essence of things is touched.43 He refers to this form of apprehension and contact as inner experience, and he represents this state as such in a positive light. But in that same place where there is the greatest opportunity of apprehending unity there is also an opening to the great danger: He [the one having the inner experience described earlier] is affected by an entangled confusion of dreams, visions, and insanity. The so-called unclarity of the mystic mean precisely this rare amalgamation. Applicable to all mystics44 is what Maeterlinck45 said of the mystic Ruysbroeck46 when he compared the latter’s writings with the convulsive flight of an inebriated, blind, and bloodied eagle over a snow-crested peak.47

43 Thus also in another lecture from 1901, brought by Mendes-Flohr in his book quoted above, n. 16: “In quiet, lonely hours all of our endeavors seem meaningless. There appears to be no bridge leading from our being to the great Thou—the Thou who we felt was reaching out to us through the infinite darkness. Then suddenly came this Erlebnis—and like a mysterious nuptial festival we were freed from all restraints and we found the ineffable meaning of life.” (From Mysticism to Dialogue, 57–58). 44 He ought to have written “common to all mystics of this type,” for we know that Buber did not rule out ecstatic mysticism as a legitimate means of achieving unity during this stage of his life. Had that been the case, he would not have been subject to the influence of mystics during this period of his life, as we have seen above. 45 Maurice Maeterlinck (1895–1949) was a Belgian poet, author and playwright with a strong mystical inclination. His spiritual sensitivity was mixed in a harmonic way with his love of this world, in all its sensuousness and sensuality. Maeterlinck was interested in occultism (the writings of Helena Blavatsky), in the Vedas, in the mysteries of Osiris and Zoroaster, in Greek philosophy and in Kabbalah. He dealt extensively with the questions of life and death, and believed in the survival of the soul and the possibility of establishing contact with the dead. His attitude towards reality was religious, mystical and symbolic. He did not believe in a Creator or in a God who can be defined. God is infinite and omnipotent, and one can only feel him from within. His religiosity had an anarchistic note and was without a fixed form. 46 A Flemish mystic who lived between the years 1293–1381. 47 Mendes-Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue, 62.

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The state described by Buber, that finds colorful expression in Meterlinck’s remarks, may be divided into the contents of revelation and into psychological state, as is customary in the study of mysticism. The content here is a confusing nightmare vision, and the psychological state is a craziness that evidently derives from a rare mixture. We find here a kind of unity (“rare amalgamation”) that is perceived by the early Buber as extremely negative, which he sees as analogous to the flight of a drunk and injured eagle. Buber attributes this state, that he completely rejects, “to all the mystics,” and not only to Ruysbroeck. If so, already during the early period of his work, at the beginning of the twentieth century, long before that stage referred to by Buber scholars as existentialist, Buber in at least one place speaks in a sweeping manner against mysticism, which he describes as a kind of a suicide that does not lead to the much-desired unity. The description of the two states, the experiential and the mystical, as opposed to one another, necessarily leads one to the conclusion that Buber did not designate the primal inner-experiential state as mystical, but that mysticism in fact destroys it. In order to escape from this negative mystical state, the soul must take hold of itself, rediscover its center and, to use the later terminology from his book Daniel, to find “its direction.” It would seem, from the context of things and from the language used by Buber, that the deliverance of the soul does not refer to a stable entry into the mystical realm, but in its being, according to Buber, in the other, experiential realm—albeit there may be a certain relationship between the two realms, as the dangerous mystical state is described as an exaggeration of the primal experiential state, a kind of inner loss of control.48 I do not wish to rely upon this single example, in which the early Buber spoke in a sweeping way against mysticism as opposed to inner experience; however, that inner experience is a concept that spans several different realms in Buber is an established fact, to which I shall return later. The problematic alluded to here needs to be seen in a broader context, through a brief glimpse at that period in his life known as the mystical-existentialist. Buber’s book Daniel (1913), whose key concepts are inner experience and unity, is considered by all of his critics as a mystical book. However, Buber did not call it mystical and did not

48 It is perhaps worth emphasizing again (see above, n. 29) that Otto saw mysticism as an extreme expression of the numinous state, that is to say, mysticism is again identified with the most extreme states.

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relate to it as a mystical book. During the later, dialogical period in his life Buber allowed the book to be translated into English, and even argued that Daniel provided the epistemological basis for I and Thou. If we assume that Buber was consistent in such a basic matter, then the attribution of his concepts of unity and inner experience to his “mysticism” is not at all simple, and requires examination. In my Introduction to the present book, I argue that one must free oneself from what has been written about Buber’s mysticism; I would now add that one also needs to free oneself of what Buber himself said about his own mysticism and about mysticism in general, and to examine in a substantive way the realm to which his contents of unity and inner experience are applied, because these are dynamic and cross boundaries. In light of the complexity that I have noted regarding what has been said about the concepts of unity and inner experience, and even with regard to the general term mysticism, I wish to suggest another point of departure from which to continue our discussion of the early Buber’s mysticism. I stated earlier that I distinguish three mystical periods in Buber’s life, the first of which concluded in 1909. As a basis for examining mysticism in Buber during the first decade of the twentieth century, I would like to pose as central the paradigm of ecstasy, that seems the least problematic among the three. This being the case, we need to say at this point that ecstasy is a means of attaining unity, and that inner experience also serves a certain function in the ecstatic state, so that we shall again need to examine the relationship between mysticism and ecstasy. In the case of Buber’s second mystical period (1909–1914), we shall make use of another point of departure to examine his mysticism (below, Chapter 2). Ecstasy During the First Mystic Period Buber’s first significant discussion of ecstasy appears in the introduction to his book The Tales of Rabbi Nachman (1906), in the section entitled “Jewish mysticism.” In this chapter Buber surveys the history of Kabbalah (i.e., Jewish mystical teaching). Here, as opposed to Buber’s above-mentioned words concerning the mystic Ruysbroeck, Jewish mysticism is presented in a positive light, albeit with certain reservations. It is described as an inborn trait of the Jewish people: it is not to be seen merely as a passing reaction against the rationalism that predominates from time to time, but rather as a fixed immanent reality that periodically breaks out from the boundless dimension of reality to its limited domain (Buber, Tales of Rabbi Nachman, 4). Buber’s res-

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ervations relate to the accretions that he later came to refer to by the term Gnosticism, or what is known among scholars as “theosophic Kabbalah.” He viewed this as an accretion borrowed from other cultures, as essentially a collection of unnecessary words, that find their expression particularly in Sefer ha-Zohar. The authentic element, by contrast, is that of direct experience, which is connected to pure ecstasy and to inner experience. One thus finds intermingled in Jewish mysticism the essential with the peripheral, “the actually experienced, with the superfluous, the borrowed” (Buber, ibid. 5). The necessary, the authentic, is the true experience of ecstasy, “glimpses of silent depths of the soul again and again light up.”49 Let us now put aside the contradiction between the presentation of mysticism in a negative light at the beginning of the twentieth century and its presentation here in a positive light, insofar as it expresses pure ecstatic experience, and turn to examine the two paradigms of ecstasy presented by Buber in his writings on Hasidism. Buber described Hasidism as “Kabbalah become ethos,” and “world piety”—that is, as a doctrine that does not ignore the value of the world, with all of its external and psychological details: Its core [i.e., Hasidism’s] is a highly realistic guidance to ecstasy as to the summit of existence. But ecstasy is not here, as, say, in German mysticism, the soul’s “Entwerden” [i.e., nullification of existence], but its unfolding; it is not the self-restraining and self-renouncing, but the selffulfilling soul which flows into the Absolute. In asceticism the spiritual being, the neshama [soul], shrinks, sleeps, becomes empty and bewildered; only in joy can it awaken and fulfill itself until, free from all lack, it matures to the divine. (Buber, ibid. 10–11).

Ecstasy thus lies at the very heart of mystical teaching, and ecstasy facilitates contact with the absolute, that might be referred to as unity, even though Buber does not use that term here explicitly. There are, however, various kinds of mysticism, in each of which the praxis is different. In one type of mysticism (i.e., that known as quietism), the ecstatic teaching and its realization is achieved by silencing and negating the autonomous psychological self, whereas in a second type there is no negation of the self or the individual psyche, but a transformation This dichotomous distinction, which is a matter of values in Buber, is recognized in the study of mysticism as a distinction between the actual experience (the mystical experience) and the interpretation given it or introduced within the experience ab initio. 49

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of the limited personal realm so as to approach the divine. It is quite clear from Buber’s manner of description which kind of ecstasy he finds preferable. His preference for ecstasy that sees man’s psychological powers in a positive light and that strives to introduce transformation within them, connected with a world-affirming mysticism, is consistent with Buber’s general tendency not to forego any particular thing in the world, neither on the part of the I nor on that of the world. In his comments about R. Isaac Luria (the Ari, leading figure of the 16th century Tzfat school of Kabbalah), Buber notes that: Luria’s special contribution is that he wanted to found this world process on the action of some men. He proclaimed an unconditional conduct of life for those who dedicated themselves to redemption; in ritual immersion baths and in night watches, in ecstatic contemplation and unconditional love for all, they [Luria and his disciples] would purify the souls in a storm and call down the Messianic kingdom. (ibid. 8).

These comments emphasize human activity in the world, and a kind of ecstatic contemplation that does not conflict with the love of human beings. True, this brief description of Luria’s activity raises several unresolved questions bearing directly upon the continuation of our discussion: What is the relationship between human activity devoted to redemption and ecstatic contemplation? (This is precisely the point of tension, as expressed in the writings of R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoyye, between the “descent” of the Zaddik into the world and his ascent to the spiritual worlds). Do the two states—that of transcendent ecstasy and that of service in the world—reinforce one another, and if so, how? What is the relation between ecstatic contemplation and unconditional love of all? At this stage in his life, it would appear that Buber did not bring the two dimensions—above and below, “greatness” and “smallness” (i.e., expanded consciousness and everyday consciousness)—into confrontation with one another, and hence did not identify the difficulty or contradiction between ecstasy and world-piety.50 Moreover: what is meant by ecstatic contemplation in R. Issac Luria? Is ecstasy seen there as a psychological state that establishes unity?

50 This relates to the problem of the relationship between devekut and service through corporeality, an issue that has exercised Judaism since the time of Maimonides, and which enjoys a special place in Hasidism. On Buber’s way of deciding this issue during the period of his “conversion,” see below, Chapter 3.2. On the manner in which devekut and this-worldly service were mixed in his later thought, see below, Chapter 8.

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What is the role played by contemplation and what is its content? On the whole, the presentation of the phenomenon of ecstasy in his book on Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav is not comprehensive, because actualization of the powers of the soul towards the meeting with God is not necessarily ecstasy; therefore, Buber also mentions ecstasy in the context of service of God through joy. The element of joy, or to be more precise that of hitlahavut in an ecstatic context, is greatly emphasized by Buber in his book The Legend of the Baalshem (1907). The section dealing with ecstasy is entitled “Hitlahavut: Ecstasy,” and is essentially an enthusiastic discourse by Buber in praise of ecstasy, combined with numerous Hasidic anecdotes illustrating this idea. While this description is lacking in clear lines of demarcation, it does express an important component in Buber’s thought as a whole, regarding the importance of leaving one’s given state, which is also a departure from routine—albeit heaven and earth, the realms of the concrete and the spiritual, are mixed together indiscriminately. On the one hand, “To the man in ecstasy the habitual is eternally new” (Buber, “The Life of the Hasidim,” 75–76)—that is, there is a new position assumed within everyday reality, in which the routine is apprehended as miraculous. On the other hand, “ ‘Above nature and above time and above thought’—thus is he called who is in ecstasy” (ibid., 77). What is the relation here between ecstasy within time and ecstasy outside of time? That question is not clarified here. In the following section, entitled “Avoda: Service,” Buber discusses service within corporeality (avodah ba-gashmiut), writing that, “Hitlahavut is envelopment in God beyond time and space. Avoda is the service of God in time and space” (ibid., 84). I wish to sharpen this problematic, because Buber here ignores the problem of the relationship among the different levels upon which man lives, which was well known to Hasidim. Buber became deeply aware of this problem during the second decade of the twentieth century, and particularly through the event known as his “conversion.” Buber’s most fully-developed phenomenological discussion of ecstasy appears in the introduction to his book, Ecstatic Confessions. Here he also relates to the etymology of the word “ecstasy” from the Greek, ek-stasis, in the sense of stepping outside of oneself. Is it merely a coincidence that the book is entitled Ecstatic Confessions and not Mystical Confessions? I think not, as during the first decade of the twentieth century ecstasy lay at the very heart of Buber’s positive mysticism that establishes

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unity. Ecstasy is the fundamental mystical experience of unity, and that which takes man into the realm of freedom. As Buber testified, he sought in his book Ecstatic Confessions to exibit . . . the utterances of fervent individuals from various ages and peoples that I have been collecting over many years. Aside from their great significance for the history of mysticism, they appear to be psychologically noteworthy, because they seek to communicate an immediate, wordless [inner–ik] experience (Erlebnis); and they are aesthetically noteworthy, because of the strikingly unusual—truly unique—and wondrous poetic power with which they are expressed . . . [The volume would be concerned] much more with the affirmation of life and a positive spirit than with asceticism and a flight from the world.51

Here ecstasy, as the very heart of the mystical experience, is a universal phenomenon with a single, common core. In practice, we encounter therein all of the characteristics of mysticism, both semantic and phenomenological, enumerated above: on the one hand mysticism, ecstasy, experience and unity;52 on the other hand, a distinction between that ecstasy which is a product of positive mysticism and that which is results from negative mysticism: ecstasy that affirms the world and the person, as against ecstasy which negates the world and the person. Before turning to an examination of Buber’s description of the ecstatic phenomenon in his book Ecstatic Confessions, I would like to expand somewhat the framework of our discussion, and mention that in the introduction to this book Buber described three different psychological states: the one is the given, everyday state, which one constantly needs to overcome, in which man is dominated and does not dominate, created but does not create. The second begins with the words, “But that is the divine meaning of human life,” and will be of great significance for the continuation of our discussion. We find there what is, in my opinion, a passage in which Buber poses that experience which is not harmful to man against the negative state in which mystics such as Ruysbroeck find themselves. This second state is not defined as ecstatic or as mystic, but does mention inner experience.53 We shall discuss this in the second chapter, concerned with Buber’s Quoted in Mendes-Flohr, “Editor’s Introduction” to Ecstatic Confessions, xiii. While in the quotation here unity is not mentioned, it is mentioned often in Buber’s introduction as a state brought about by ecstasy. 53 That is, we again see that there is an inner experience mentioned adjacent to ecstasy, and against it an inner experience unrelated to the ecstatic context and, according to Buber, evidently also not considered in a mystical context. 51 52

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second mystical period, in whose center is his book Daniel. The third state is that known as ecstatic, and represents the peak of the realization of unity and the value of the significance of human life. In light of the increasingly clear distinction between world-affirming ecstasy and world-denying ecstasy, and in light of the fact that the early Buber sought to attain states of unity without obliterating the individual or the particular within it, the following description, in itself very rich, is striking: But there is an experience54 which grows in the soul out of the soul itself, without contact and without restraint, in naked oneness. It comes into being and completes itself beyond the commotion, free of the other, inaccessible to the other. It needs no nourishment, and no poison can touch it. The soul which stands in it stands in itself, has itself, experiences itself—boundlessly. It experiences itself as a unity, no longer because it has surrendered itself wholly to a thing of the world, gathered itself wholly in a thing of the world, but because it has submerged itself entirely in itself, has plunged down to the very ground of itself, is kernel and husk, sun and eye, carouser and drink, at once.55 This most inward of all experiences is what the Greeks call ek-stasis, a stepping out . . . In the experience of ecstasy itself there is as yet nothing that points either inward or outward. Whoever experiences the oneness of I and world knows nothing of I and world. For—as it says in the Upanishads— just as a man embraced by a woman he loves has no consciousness of what is outside or inside, so the mind, embraced by the primal self, has no consciousness of what is outside or inside . . . The human being who trudges along day by day in the functions of bodiliness and unfreedom receives in ecstasy a revelation of freedom . . . One who always feels and knows only particulars about himself suddenly finds himself under the storm cloud of a force, a superabundance, an infinity, in which even

Better, “inner experience” (Erlebnis). That is to say, those things that are in the external world are present in the soul in such a way that they are simultaneously distinct and identical. A description of such a state, in which things are simultaneously distinct and identical, is mentioned by Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, 64–65, and cf. my discussion in Chapter 2.3.II, concerning extrovertive mysticism. Hence, it seems to me that one oughtn’t to accept Friedman’s position (Buber’s Life and Work, 85) that, in the introduction to Ecstatic Confessions, Buber spoke of a complete negation of multiplicity within the unity of the I. Buber’s statement that, in the ecstatic state the soul becomes both the kernel and the shell, the sun and the eye, does not imply a unification of opposites in their roots in the Kabbalistic sense. Had this been the intention, then kernel and shell, sun and eye, would no longer be existing; rather, the sense is that things that are separated are apprehended within the soul with a unifying power, and thus there comes into existence within the soul an inner unity that includes within it the multiplicity of the world. The external world outside of the soul remains in a state of multiplicity. 54 55

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chapter one the most primal security, the barrier between the self and the other, has foundered. (Ecstatic Confessions, 2–4).

The soul that withdraws into itself is closed off to everything in the external world outside of itself, and enters into relationship with itself alone. It becomes a unity within itself, and experiences the unity of the I. The depths of the unified soul are also the primal essence of the world. A deep turning inward brings man to the unified ground of the I and to the unified ground of the world, in which the I and the world are united. This essence, with which the unified I unites, includes within itself all those things that exist in the external world as separate; hence the soul is “kernel and husk, sun and eye, carouser and drink, at once.” It follows from this that the soul unified within itself and within the primary unity is also unified with the entire world; however, this world is not the external world that we know, but the inner world, incorporating the I and the world, that lies at the basis of the external world. The ecstatic experience as described by Buber thus foregoes the known, external world in order to rediscover it within the I. In this state, in which the primary being embraces the mind, the mind is absorbed within it; thus the basic function of the mind, as an organ that distinguishes between the I and the world, is nullified. The barriers fall, and man can no longer distinguish between without and within. He finds himself in an all-inclusive, one-dimensional reality in which he encounters the unconditioned sphere of freedom. The purpose of ecstasy is thus not contact with an empty vacuum, with a reality lacking in content, or with Divine darkness—as expressed, for example, in Pseudo-Dionysus and others—but rather with the ingathered fullness of the world within the I. Buber’s interpretation of ecstasy as unity with fullness may help to clarify what initially appears as a contradiction within his words, namely, between the fact that he sought to bring in his book the experiences of mystics who were noted for their affirmation of life and their positive spirit, and his description of ecstasy as an ideal by which the soul completely frees itself from the fetters of the external world of the senses and apprehends the world within itself. This is so, because during this early period Buber did not forego multiplicity, but sought a way of including it in a unity within the I.56 There is nevertheless a great distance between love of

56 And indeed, the presentation of ecstasy as such would be in complete contradiction to Buber’s attempts during the first decade of the twentieth century to develop a position that sees multiplicity in its unity. Thus the ecstasy described here is dissimilar

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other human beings—that Buber attributed to R. Isaac Luria—whom one encounters in varying situations in one’s external life, and love of the world in general, and the experience of things in their unification within the I. Loving unity with people or things in the external world is a unity with a present and changing reality independent of man, whereas unity with the separate things in the world within the depths of the I is by nature static and is like a unification of shadows. Buber may have been alluding to this when he criticized his own early period of work by saying that he had not yet entered into “an independent relationship with being” (Buber, “Foreword” to Pointing the Way, xv). I wish to take note of a number of other matters that arise from Buber’s description of ecstasy in Ecstatic Confessions, which may perhaps shed light on Buber’s understanding of the mystical phenomenon during the early stage of his work and confirm my statement at the beginning of this chapter—namely, that in a certain sense Buber’s mysticism actually became stronger during the “dialogic” period. It is noteworthy that the Kabbalistic idea of the unity of opposites, according to which opposites are united in their supernal roots in the world of Sefirot, is uprooted and transferred to the unity of opposites achieved in the ground of the soul, in that place where it unites with the primal essence of the world. The ecstatic experience here acquires an explicitly anthropological aspect: that is, the Kantian principle according to which the subject is the axis around which everything moves is central here, and becomes the basic principle in Buber’s later thought as well. A certain difficulty arises from the lack of correspondence between the etymological meaning of the word “ecstasy” as directed outwards, and Buber’s description of the ecstatic state as a turning inwards. Why does Buber refer to the going outward as a turning inward? While Buber wished to say that the barrier posed between the inner and the outer is undermined and that man no longer distinguishes between inner and outer; however, this state is achieved, according to Buber’s description, specifically by turning inwards and not by going outwards. If such is the case, how then did Buber bridge the gap between the meaning of the word ecstasy and the interpretation that he suggested for it?

to introvertive mysticism as described by Stace, in which the one is lacking in all multiplicity (Mysticism and Philosophy, 62). It seems to me that we have here an attempt to fashion a new type of mysticism.

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Here we touch upon two important points relating to Buber’s approach to ecstasy during the first mystical stage of his life. First, Buber gives the ecstatic experience a psychological interpretation. I do not mean to say by this that Buber simply gives a certain reflective depth to the characterization of the ecstatic experience by means of psychological tools, but that he engages in a certain psychological reduction of the mystic’s own recording of his experience. Buber argues, in effect, that from an objective viewpoint the mystic’s experience is “less” than what he claims. The ecstatic has transferred the innermost experience to the outermost realm, because that which he is unable to understand in his inner vision, that which appears to him as utterly alien, he thrusts upon the Wholly Other that is God.57 Thus, in the subjective inner vision of the ecstatic, that which is innermost is understood as the most wholly external, while that which is outermost is identified, due to its extraordinary nature, with God. Like a pilot who has lost the horizon above the ocean, the mystic thinks that the bottom of the ocean is the infinite heaven.58 Secondly, we see that Buber’s analysis anticipated one of the basic issues in the study of mysticism of the twentieth century: namely, the relationship between experience itself and the interpretation given to it. According to Buber, the ecstatic event occurring within the unified ground of the soul is a true event, in the sense that he thought that the soul had changed its state, unified its powers, and united with the unified ground of existence; however, the interpretation given to this ecstatic experience is mistaken. He describes this error as deriving, not

57 “One [i.e., the mystic] does not dare to lay it [the experience of inner unity] upon his own poor I, of which he does not suspect that it carries the world-I; so one hangs it on God” (Ecstatic Confessions, 4). If so, then what Buber entirely rejected later on in his life, i.e., the giving of a psychological interpretation to the religious experience, he himself did in relation to the ecstatic experience (see his comments on Jung: Buber, “Guilt and Guilt Feelings,” 110–132). 58 Buber was aware of giving of such an interpretation to the ecstatic experience, and he wrote about it at a later period in his life: “As far as I understand mysticism, its essential trait is the belief in a (momentous) ‘union’ with the Divine or the absolute . . . If you read attentively the introduction to Ekstatiche Konfessionen, you will see that even then, in my ‘mystical’ period, I did not believe in it, but only in a ‘mystical’ unification of the Self, identifying the depth of the individual self with the Self itself.” (Friedman, Buber’s Life and Work, 86). An examination of Buber’s analysis of the ecstatic phenomenon in Ecstatic Confessions will reveal that Buber was not precise in the above-quoted passage, because in Ecstatic Confessions he gave a psychological interpretation only to the claim of unity with God, but not to the claim that one attains unity of the I with the cosmic I realized within the depths of the Self.

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from the culture within which the person lives—that is, of the attempt of the person undergoing the experience to describe it by means of religious approaches known to him—but rather as flowing from the soul structure of the person having the experience. Placing Buber’s earlier comments about ecstasy and the vision involved therein against the background of the views commonly held in the research of mysticism in recent decades, we shall find that, in everything said by Buber regarding the ecstatic experience per se, Buber identifies with the viewpoint of the school of “Perennialism,”59 according to which the ecstatic experience reflects a direct and unmediated connection with an absolute principle that is identical in all cultures. But in the final analysis, during this period of Buber’s life ecstasy is a-theistic, being perceived wholly as a result of man’s own activity. And since Buber attributed such ecstatic states to himself in retrospect, one may say that his early mysticism was a-theistic.60 Moreover, Buber went beyond subjective interpretation of actual ecstasy and applied his theory of subjective interpretation to mystical visions as well—that is, to the contents of the revelations likely to be added to the ecstatic state—and presumably to prophetic visions as well: And what one thinks, feels and dreams about God then enters into his ecstasies, pours itself out upon them in a shower of images and sounds, and creates around the experience of unity a multiform mystery. (Ecstatic Confessions, 4).

Buber relies here upon the words of Paul, who did not know whether a person who is taken into the third heaven remains within his body or goes outside of it,61 as well as to Rav Hai Gaon’s interpretation of the vision of the Merkavah mystics, according to whom the visions of the Merkavah mystics may have taken place within their own hearts, without any actual ascent of the soul.62 59 “Perennial” means continued, constant and expanding. That is to say, according to this view the basic mystical experience is not conditional upon any circumstances, whether cultural or psychological. 60 “Now from my own unforgettable experience I know well that there is a state in which the bonds of the personal nature of life seem to have fallen away from us and we experience an undivided unity” (Buber, “Dialogue,” 43). 61 “I knew a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up in the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know” (2 Cor 12:2). 62 “Not that they ascend on high, but rather in the chambers of their heart they see and gaze, like a person who sees and gazes with his eyes clearly upon a certain

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Paul clearly meant to say that one may have an objective perception of the heavenly world, but that he did not know the exact state of the body and the soul during the period of the soul’s ascent; nor did Rav Hai Gaon mean to say that the Merkavah mystics saw things from their hearts alone, but that they saw what they did with an inner seeing. But Buber gave both these examples an explicitly subjective interpretation. Visions arise from the imaginative faculty of the Self within the ecstatic experience. By means of this interpretation, Buber unwittingly returns to Maimonides’ theory of prophecy, regarding the power of the imagination, albeit removing the idea of the transcendent flow and denying the imagination its epistemological importance. On the whole, Buber did not grant an important place to the imagination in his early mystical view, just as he did not give it an important role in his later perception of prophecy and in his dialogical approach generally. For him, it would seem that imagination is a barrier against direct experience, of the order of face to face. This being the case, in his attitude towards the imagination and to the intellect, Buber is a nominalist—that is to say, there is no real relation between the thing itself and that which man’s consciousness and imagination impose upon it. The ecstatic experience transcends the boundary placed by Kant before man’s cognition, while the visionary experience does not do so.63 To summarize this section: returning to the distinction drawn by Uffenheimer between destructive ecstasy and non-destructive ecstasy, there is a similarity in principle between the manner of perception of Uffenheimer, who was a disciple of Buber, and Buber’s own perception of mystical ecstasy. Buber advocated an ecstasy that is not destructive, but preserved the integrative element within the personality. We may infer from this that in the early Buber there is a mystical ecstasy that creates unity, that is identical neither with the negation of the I nor with the nullification of the world. This, as opposed to the ecstasy that destroys the integrative structure of the personality, that is wholly rejected by Buber. The fact that the ecstatic does not acknowledge the distinction between outside and inside does not lead thing . . .” (B. M. Levin, ed., Otzar ha-Geonim, vol. 4, book 2: Masekhet Haggigah [ Jerusalem, 1931], 61). 63 The sharp distinction between the mystical state and visions or hearing voices stands out in Stace in his book Mysticism and Philosophy. Even though he admits that the mystical state also elicits the visionary state, he cites the statements of various mystics who related to visions as a transitional state on the path towards the mystical unity, or whose attitude to visions was somewhat skeptical.

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to a loss of his self-identity, but only the loss of his distinct identity—two states between which one needs to draw a clear distinction. We saw earlier that Buber cited an example from the Upanishads, according to which the ecstatic state is similar to a lover’s embrace, in which a person does not know what is within and without, where he “ends” and the beloved “begins.” Nevertheless, he does not lose the sense of self, the sense of being an individual, in this unitive state, but rather becomes part of an additional being without losing himself within it.64 The second ecstatic state, by contrast, is characterized by a merging or mingling together in which the person loses his own inner core, in which he lacks direction, and in which he does not lead but is led by the storm of his emotions and impulses. The titans split this person: that is, the inner unity is torn up and becomes a goalless multiplicity. The I does not become an I-world but rather a Nothing-I.

64 It follows from this that I do not accept Buber’s statement, that the most basic security is the separation between the “I” and the other. The most basic security is the feeling of individual selfhood.

CHAPTER TWO

BUBER’S SECOND MYSTICAL PERIOD, 1909–1914: UNDER THE SIGN OF UNITY But already when we speak about space, we speak, in fact, of more than space. See, as the manifold sleep is set before the simple awakening, as the manifold horizontal is before the simple vertical, so is the manifold Other set before the simple One.1 (Buber Daniel, 53).

1. Introduction I earlier characterized Buber’s path as moving from the vortex of confusion to direction. It seems to me that only thus can one understand the variety of tendencies that struggled within him, particularly during the years 1909 to 1910, and in a wider context until his famous “conversion” in 1914.2 Buber’s book Ecstatic Confessions was published in 1909. If one assumes that the Introduction to that work was written one or two years earlier, we may perhaps bridge the gap mentioned earlier (Chapter 1.2) between the enthusiastic attitude towards ecstasy

1 Emphasis in the source. For purposes of comparison, let us compare these words of Buber concerning space that is more than simply space against Meister Eckhart’s concerning the relativity of space and time: “Nothing hinders the soul’s knowledge of God as much as time and space, for time and space are fragments, whereas God is one. And therefore if the soul is to know God, it must know him above time and outside space; for God is neither this nor that as are those manifested things” (quoted by Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, 196). It seems to me that Buber sought to find in space something that Eckhart tended to seek outside of space. On the reference to simple unity in mysticism, as opposed to the multiplicity within reality, see Underhill, “The Essentials of Mysticism,” 39. On the transcendence of the One, see Maréchal’s comments concerning Neo-Platonic mysticism: “The one, higher that being and thought . . . it is only given to the soul in immediate and solitary presence; all multiplicity hides it, and the soul has already lost it when it bends back on itself to become conscious of its own intuition” (Studies, 111–112). The quotation from Buber indicates that he was far not only from Eckhart, but also from the Neo-Platonic view concerning the transcendence of the One. 2 Buber, “Dialogue,” 13–14; and see my discussion of the description of the “conversion” that occurred in 1914, below, Chapter 3.2.

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of Ecstatic Confessions and that of Buber’s Lectures on Judaism, the first of which was delivered in 1909, in which mysticism is barely mentioned and ecstasy not at all. Thus, by 1909 Buber was already at the beginning of a new stage, to which I have referred as his second mystical stage. The beginnings of this stage emerge from a striking contradiction, which I shall elaborate somewhat. Both Friedman and Mendes-Flohr note that, at the conference of sociologists held in Frankfort-am-Main in 1910, Buber insisted, not only that mysticism is not a social category, but that it mitigates against social engagement; it entails man’s exclusive religious involvement with himself (religious solipsism), that is to say, it is an explicitly psychological category. Even though social forms of religion are at times based upon mysticism, mysticism as such rejects the communal aspect.3 It would appear that this conference was concerned with values, and was not a purely academic-phenomenological one, as it is difficult to understand why Buber would be interested in a purely theoretical discussion of questions related to mysticism, religion and society. It follows that, already in 1910, a certain “conversion” or “change of heart” had taken place in Buber, one that found expression in a certain reservation regarding mysticism, long before his famous “conversion” (1914) and prior to the First World War, which some scholars relate to other events in Buber’s life that they understood as a “conversion.”4 It is only the acknowledgement that Buber was at the threshold of a second and new period in his development that can provide a plausible explanation for the gap between the anti-mystical stance expressed at the above-mentioned conference and his description (in 1906) of R. Isaac Luria as a mystic in whom ecstatic contemplation and love of his fellow man dwelt together side by side. While in The Tales of Rabbi Nachman and in The Legend of the Baal-Shem heaven and earth were still mixed together in colorful fashion, with ecstasy at the very heart of mysticism, mystical experience is now seen as a factor undermining the social element. And indeed, Mendes-Flohr sees Buber’s remarks at this conference as incontrovertible evidence that Buber saw mysticism as negating the social, and thus the dialogical, element. But how is one to understand the gap between Buber’s stance at the above-mentioned Friedman, Buber’s Life and Work, 87; Mendes-Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue, 81. On a process-oriented understanding of Buber’s “conversion”, and the events that led to it, see below, Chapter 3.1–2. 3 4

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conference and his remarks that same year in his second address on Judaism? True, juxtaposed against it [the Jewish idea of redemption] is the Indian idea of redemption, purer and more unconditional; but this idea signifies not a liberation from the soul’s duality, but a liberation from its entanglement in the world. Indian redemption means an awakening; Jewish redemption, a transformation. Indian redemption means a divesting of all appearance; Jewish redemption, a grasping of truth. Indian redemption means negation; Jewish redemption, affirmation. Indian redemption progresses into timelessness; Jewish redemption means the way of mankind. (“Judaism and Mankind,” in On Judaism, 27–28)

And if we think that Buber was not speaking of Jewish mysticism but of the Jewish idea of redemption in general, note the words that immediately follow: And when, in Jewish mysticism, the original character of the God-idea changed, when the dualistic view was carried over into the very concept of God, the Jewish idea of redemption attained the high plane of the Indian: it grew into the idea of the redemption of God, the idea of the reunion of God’s being (which is separated from things) with God’s indwelling, which—wandering, erring about, dispersed—abides with things. It became the idea of God’s redemption through the creature: through every soul’s progress from duality to unity, through every soul’s becoming one within itself, God becomes One within Himself. (ibid., 28; emphasis in original)

In these words, Buber seems to perceive Jewish mysticism in a manner similar to that expressed in his remarks about the Ari (Rabbi Isaac Luria) in 1906, in which it is seen as uniting all reality towards the full redemption. From Buber’s words, it follows that the concept of redemption in Jewish mysticism includes the unity of the Shekhinah, of the objects to which it is connected, and of God, who transcends the reality of the world. It is therefore impossible for Jewish mysticism to be anti-social, that is, to contradict the tendency of the Creation to unite the objects found therein—including human entities—with the Shekhinah and with God. While ecstasy is not mentioned in the Lectures on Judaism—and this may be no accident, because ecstasy focuses on personal experience—nevertheless, Buber did not draw any distinction in his addresses, On Judaism, between personal and anti-social ecstasy and non-ecstatic social mysticism; his critique at the above-mentioned conference was directed at mysticism in general. This contradiction in Buber’s remarks remains a kind of riddle, because he could have

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overcome it had he, at the conference, posed Jewish mysticism in contra-distinction to world mysticism; his words would then have had a certain inner consistency and unity. Buber’s critique of the mystical phenomenon as antisocial anticipated by four years the description of his “conversion,” and by six years the incident of Landauer’s criticism of Buber’s militant position during the First World War.5 As I shall demonstrate in the present chapter, criticism of mysticism already appears in Buber’s book Daniel (1913), and any attempt to attribute it to later events ignores his earlier criticism thereof, even before the outbreak of the First World War. But I do not wish to paint a harmonistic picture and to pretend that through my manner of presenting things everything falls neatly into place. In the first chapter I characterized Buber’s path as moving “from vortex to direction”; this “vortex” holds true also with regard to his attitude towards mysticism. Unless we characterize Buber’s attitude towards mysticism as “a chaotic vortex,” we shall find ourselves needing to deal with a maze of contradictions in what he says. For example, Buber’s autobiographical description of his “conversion” relates to an event that evidently took place in 1914; how then can it be that one who already rejected mysticism in 1910 and gave it a marginal place in his Addresses on Judaism continued to enter into ecstatic frames of mind “bereft of the world”? It seems to me that Avraham Shapira’s insight regarding Buber’s dialogical period—namely, that two souls, a mystical one and a dialogical one, struggled within him6—is particularly true regarding the years 1909 to 1914, even though at that point his dialogical thought had not yet matured. Four more years would be required for Buber to finally decide in favor of the world. His Addresses on Judaism7 and his book Daniel are the foundation; the events of the “conversion” described in his treatise “Dialogue” (below, Chapter 3.2)

5 On this incident, see Mendes-Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue, 93–113. See also below, Chapter 3, in which I attempt to show that it was not his experiential and antisocial mysticism that Buber abandoned in wake of Landauer’s criticism of his support of Germany in the First World War, or in wake of “the epistemological rent” at the end of the war, but rather his militaristic stance. 6 Shapira, “Dual Structures,” 3–4. 7 The social principle is present in Buber’s first address on Judaism, “Judaism and the Jews”: “These people are part of myself. It is not together with them that I am suffering; I am suffering these tribulations. My soul is not by the side of my people; my people is my soul. (“Judaism and the Jews,” 20). The claim that Buber only turned consciously to the social principle in 1916 is thus refuted.

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placed the final seal on it. But, as I shall attempt to show further on,8 Buber’s decision on behalf of the world does not contradict the fact that his thought is imbued with mysticism and that he was indeed a mystical personality. One must be careful in taking Buber’s own views on mysticism at face value because, if I have correctly described his path from vortex to direction, in the case of his definitions of mysticism he remained sunk in the vortex of confusion his entire life.9 It seems to me that the most important source for examining Buber’s mysticism during his second period is the book Daniel. An examination of this book is also significant for the continuation of our discussion, because this book, which is in practice Buber’s first major book, is not only a transitional link from the first decade of the twentieth century to the later period in Buber’s work; rather, on the basis of the parallel drawn in the first chapter between the development of Buber’s thought and the stages of growth of a plant, Daniel is the stem upon which the dialogical fruit or flower subsequently grew. I shall begin my discussion of Daniel by describing the power of the duality depicted therein and the depth of the unity required so as not to bridge this duality in an external or artificial manner. Buber’s presentation of the reality of the world in Daniel is in itself mythical-mystical, without our even addressing the question of the elements of mysticism in the descriptions of unity therein. Further on in this chapter I shall focus upon the mysticism of this book against the background of its descriptions of unity. 2. The Concreteness of Duality and the Encounter with the Abyss in Daniel This is the kingdom of God, Reinold: the kingdom of danger and of risk, of eternal beginning and of eternal becoming, of opened spirit and of deep realization, the kingdom of holy insecurity. (Buber, Daniel, 95).

Particularly in Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 7 of this book. After his book I and Thou, in which he seems to have closed the door on mysticism, he later turned about to give it an honorable place in Hasidism. (see below, pp. 168–170, 223–227). As against that, in parallel, and also later, he continued to characterize it by a single negative paradigm. (“Dialogue” [1932], 24–25; “The Question to the Single One” [1936], 43; Pointing the Way [“Foreword”], xv–xvi). Therefore, in order to engage in productive discussion of the mystical components in Buber’s thought, one cannot avoid freeing oneself from his own definitions. 8 9

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In his book Daniel10 Buber acknowledged, in a wholly unambiguous manner, the basic fact of the polar duality present in the world with all of its details and that divides the human soul. There is nothing new in this, it being a basic fact of philosophy and of existence. The innovation in Daniel lies in his pointing to the depth of the duality within existence, the failure of past attempts to bridge it, and the one true possibility of overcoming it, which might be referred to as the Via Activa (the path of action).11 I refer to the descriptions within Daniel of duality, multiplicity and unity as mythic-mystical, because in mysticism there is generally a departure from the description of God found in the religious tradition as well as from rational description of the concrete world, in a manner that strengthens the extremes of reality and grants them the attribute of being.12 When duality is profoundly experienced, without the intermediacy of the intellect and without any attempt to escape from it, man encounters the abyss of being within the human soul (Daniel, 86).

10 According to Götzinger (Buber und die chassidische Mystik, 20), the book was called Daniel after the prophet Daniel. However, one must ask why this particular prophet was chosen to represent the idea of realization, particularly as this prophet was noted for his figurative visions, that are in no way similar to the descriptions in Buber’s book. 11 As opposed to the characterization of mysticism—inter alia under the influence of James—as being the Via Passiva. On this passive-quietistic tendency within Hasidism, see the studies of Weiss (“Via Passiva”) and of Schatz-Uffenheimer (Hasidism as Mysticism). 12 I would like to mention in this context the being-like and even demonic character R. Nahman of Breslav attributes to this world, as illustrated in his tale, “The Rabbi and the Only Son” (Sippurei Ma’asiot [ Jerusalem: 1991], 122–128), in his homilies, and in his entire biography. For him, all of reality is filled with hidden powers and meanings, and it does not matter whether one is speaking of a fire, the death of his child or the illness of his granddaughter (Green, Tormented Master, 209), of forces that oppose his journeys (Mark, “On States of ‘Smallness’ and ‘Greatness,’ ” 61–65), or of his encounters with Zaddikim (Green, ibid., 112 ff.), and with Maskilim (Piekarz, Hasidut Breslav, 21–55). One might say that, like the descriptions in Daniel, R. Nahman, the “tormented master,” was well aware of the duality in this world, the duality in his own soul and the depths of being. As noted in the first chapter, Buber’s first book was about the tales of R. Nahman, and in the Introduction to that book (p. 3) Buber referred to R. Nahman as the last of the Jewish mystics. However, it is difficult to determine what was the real influence of his figure on Buber. In any event, whether influence was direct or not, there was certainly a connection with a spiritual world, and one cannot accept Simon’s view that Buber’s book Daniel is “a document of non-Jewish mysticism, that blurs the boundaries between God and man through the unification of both” (“Scholem and Buber,” 250).

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The accepted, ordinary way of life, as well as philosophical,13 theological and mystical systems, all fail in their attempt to transcend duality or to repel it, because they do not touch upon its depths. All these are forms of flight from duality without dealing with it in truth. Ecstatic mysticism can distance man from the reality of duality by offering him a journey beyond the world, but once he returns it becomes clear to him that he must confront the selfsame existential situation from which he sought to flee.14 Thus, the way to deal with the chasm created by duality is to descend to it and experience it in its depths, in its full primordial terrors,15 and with full human stature. A person does not need to “descend” to the Merkavah (“the Divine chariot”: a term used for mystical ascent in early Jewish mysticism), but to descend to the abyss, as a nomad and a hero who experiences in itself the existential despair: “For despair, Lukas, is the highest of God’s messengers; it trains us into spirits that can create and decide” (ibid., 133–134). Through the depths of frustration, man becomes strengthened and truly encounters the world, because he lives reality as it is in truth. The danger posed by the depth, the chaotic world that man encounters when he descends to the abyss that stands between things, makes him meet the depth reality. It is in this concrete reality that God—the irrational God of depth and of unity—appears. All reality and every thing are a kind

13 For example, in his critique of a monistic philosophical viewpoint that wishes to see duality as an illusion, since everything is one: “There are the world-knowers. That is the abyss between the things and the consciousness, they say; and this abyss is an illusion, for consciousness is a power among powers, and all is one” (Buber, Daniel, 87). 14 “And there are the knowers of the mysteries. That is the abyss between the world of appearance and the true world, they say; we fly over it with our mystery. And truly they have an airship, a wonderful one built out of sheer mystery; it ascends resoundingly, straight up into the air. It took me with it, and I felt wonderful . . . For when we were again below, they said: Now we are on the other side. . . . And when I looked closely, I noticed that we stood on the same spot as before.” (Buber ibid., 88). 15 In Rudolf Steiner there is also an explicit echo of the primordial immanent forces that are hidden from the given state of man, to his benefit: “Whoever presses forward to the higher mysteries sees things which the illusion of the senses conceal from ordinary human beings . . . They hide from him things which, if he were unprepared, would throw him into utter disarray; the sight of them would be more than he could endure . . . Hitherto he had felt no fear, but now that he knows, fear overcomes him, although the danger has not been increased by his awareness of it.” This reality is hidden from the ordinary state of the mind and of the senses connected to it, but is not hidden from trans-sensual cognition. (Knowledge of the Higher Worlds: How is it Achieved? Revised translation by D. S. Osmond and C. Davy [London, 1969], 74–75).

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of danger, because every creature stands on the threshold of irrational being, that threatens the wholeness of its soul: And this is your nearest danger: descent into the abyss! Realize it! Know its nature, the thousand-named, nameless polarity of all being, between piece and piece of the world, between thing and thing, between image and being, between the world and you, in the very heart of yourself, at all places, with its swinging tensions and its streaming reciprocity. Know the sign of the primal being in it. And know that here is your task: to create unity out of your and all duality, to establish unity in the world . . . fulfilled unity out of tension and stream. (Daniel, 98)

The unity realized by man is not one that is realized once and for all, but rather an infinite challenge, that continues so long as this world continues to exist (ibid., 99). One cannot overcome duality with a onetime action, and there is no formula for overcoming it. Buber’s description here of the perpetually dualistic state of the world and the supreme active function played by man’s activity suggests that in Daniel there is no mystical unity that overcomes duality but, to the contrary: the duality within the world is strengthened to the level of extreme opposition, and the I is likewise strengthened to meet it. From whence does Buber draw such a viewpoint, that would have been more appropriate later on—for example, against the background of the horrors of the World War? I suggested earlier, in a footnote, the possibility that this view derived from R. Nahman of Breslav, who expresses it in his description of the Void (hallal ha-panuy), where it serves as a kind of demand imposed upon the Righteous Man of the generation. In Buber, this demand is one made upon every person, to confront the deep frustration entailed in experiencing the frightening poles of existence and of the soul, and in the attempt to mend the most distant poles of being. 3. The Paradigm of Unity in Daniel The term ecstasy, predominant in Buber’s mysticism during the first decade of the twentieth century, is not absent from his book Daniel, but occupies a marginal place therein. The model of positive/negative duality in its ecstatic-mystical context, which we encountered above, appears in Daniel in the dichotomy between preserving the integrity of the “I” and its destruction:

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It was said of Dionysus . . . that the Titians enticed him by means of a game and tore him in pieces and devoured him. He who surrenders himself to ecstasy with undirected soul experiences this fate. The forces of chaos ravish him; the demonia of the unbecome explodes, dismembers his soul, and swallows it. (Daniel, 55)

That the entry into the realm of the ecstatic-mystical, into the deep realms of being and to the “holy insecurity,” is not a game, has been known to men possessing esoteric knowledge since earliest times. But here (in Daniel ), man is not helped in this endeavor by holy names, but must be armed within his focused-directed soul, that has found its unique direction among the multitude of possibilities within existence. The concept of direction is thus a key one in Daniel.16 Buber counterpoised Dionysus with Orpheus, who went to his ecstatic death with a directed soul. He was not seduced by the divisive powers of chaos but remained focused: hence the wild beasts did not tear him apart but arrayed themselves around him. Orpheus’s melody symbolizes the focused soul, who arrays around himself the forces of chaos (Daniel, ibid.). The connection between the earlier sources, discussed in the first chapter, and that quoted here is clear: Orpheus’ ecstasy is parallel to the ecstasy of Ecstatic Confessions, whereas Dionysus’s lot is identical to that of the mystics who float about like drunk eagles, dripping blood above the snow-covered peaks. What distinguishes between mystics is the principle of the directed-focused soul. It is therefore possible for there to be an ecstasy of unity in which the powers of destruction, the powers of chaos implanted within the very core of creation, do not severe the I to pieces. This ecstatic ascent depends upon the directive powers of the person himself, who must remain focused so as not to be swept off into dangerous and destructive realms. The ecstasy attributed by Buber to Orpheus, who arrayed the wild beasts around himself, is the third among the four forms of ecstasy mentioned by Uffenheimer, in which the center of consciousness is turned away from the external world and enters into a state of “intellectual and emotional illumination.”17 As Uffenheimer has already noted, this state is very different 16 The principle of direction served Buber in his dialogical thought as well: “Behind good and evil as the criteria of the ethical stand direction and absence of direction” (“The Question to the Single One,” 74–75). 17 Uffenheimer, Classical Prophecy, 88.

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from that of erasure of the personality.18 It therefore follows from Daniel that two different dangers confront the man of spirit: the forces of chaos attack him from two directions, that of the spirit and that of matter. As an ecstatic, he must be cautious upon crossing the threshold to which ecstasy brings him, but he must also learn to deal with the primordial forces of creation that find their expression in the depth, in duality and in multiplicity. These too may threaten his identity and cause him to forget his goal. Unlike the case in Buber’s first mystical period, the term ecstasy is marginal in Daniel, whereas terms relating to unity and to inner experience (Erlebnis) are dominant. Hence, one must choose a different point of departure for one’s discussion of mysticism in Buber during this period of time, and further examine the role played therein by ecstasy. In light of our discussion in the previous chapter, according to which the terms unity and inner experience are intertwined or intersect—that is, they are problematic in terms of Buber’s mysticism—we must choose the most suitable between them for examining Buber’s mysticism in this period. I prefer the principle of unity over that of inner experience as a point of departure for our further discussion, because the function of the inner experience is to assist in unity; on this basis, it will be easier to examine mysticism in Daniel on the basis of the result. Finally, we must ask whether the descriptions of unity in Daniel may be read as mystical descriptions. This, in light of the fact that Buber—unlike Buber scholars—did not refer to Daniel as a mystical book, nor did he use the term mystical unity in the book, but rather unity alone. I shall also attempt to show how the rejection of ecstasy in the sense given to it by Buber during his first mystical period is supplanted in Daniel by another kind of attitude towards reality, already present in the first decade, but which now becomes a factor of the highest order. The basic issue remains the same: confrontation with the duality and multiplicity of reality by creating a unity that does not swallow up multiplicity. I shall therefore return to Ecstatic Confessions, and from there turn towards a description of the dominant tendency in Daniel.

For example, in the following description of Sufi mysticism: “I said: Adorn me in Thy Unity and clothe me in Thy Selfhood, and raise me up to Thy Oneness so that when Thy Creation sees me they will say: We have seen Thee, and Thou wilt be that, and I shall not be there at all.” Quoted in A. J. Arberry, Sufism: An Account of the Mystics of Islam (London, 1956), 55. 18

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I. From Ecstatic Confessions to Daniel Since 1900 I had first been under the influence of German mysticism, from Meister Eckhardt to Angelus Silesius, according to which the primal ground (Urgrund ) of being, the nameless, impersonal Godhead, comes to “birth” in the human soul; then I had been under the influence of the later Kabbalah and of Hasidism, according to which man has the power to unite God who is over the world with his Shekhinah dwelling in the world. In this way there arose in me the thought of a realization of God through man; man appeared to me as the being through whose existence the Absolute, resting in its truth, can gain the character of reality. (Buber, “What is Man?,” 184–185)

I noted earlier that, in the Introduction to his book Ecstatic Confessions, Buber described another state of unity, which he explicitly distinguished from his subsequent discussion of the ecstatic-mystical phenomenon. For Buber of that period, the ecstatic state was on a higher level than the other state, which he characterized by the term inner experience rather than as ecstasy. This, because in the non-ecstatic experiential state, man turns to the external world and is still limited by it. At the beginning of his remarks in Ecstatic Confessions, Buber presented a colorful picture of the world of multiplicity in which man finds himself in his normal state, and which he needs to overcome: The commotion of our human life, which lets in everything, all the light and all the music, all the mad pranks of thought and all the variations of pain, the fullness of memory and the fullness of expectation, is closed only to one thing: unity. Every gaze is secretly crowded with a thousand blinking glances that do not want to be its siblings; every pure, beautiful astonishment is confused by a thousand memories; and even the quietist suffering is mixed with the hissing of a thousand questions. This commotion is sumptuous and stingy, it heaps up abundance and refuses encompassment; it builds a vortex of objects and a vortex of feelings, from whirl-wall to whirl-wall, things flying at each other and over each other, and lets us pass through, all the length of this way of ours, without unity . . . I give the bundle a name and say “world” to it, but the name is not a unity that is experienced. I give the bundle a subject and say “I” to it, but the subject is not a unity that is experienced. (Ecstatic Confessions, 1)

Man’s being is flooded with the colorful multiplicity of the world. He attempts to bring order into the world of multiplicity and into his own inner world by means of thought, which classifies the components of the world and orders them in a logical way. But this is only seemingly

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a solution, since thought based upon the senses is not truly suitable for the task of unification. While one may acknowledge the attempt of thought to establish order and unity by means of its classifying power, there is no real compatibility between it and the reality of world-carrying unity, because it only scratches the surface of reality. As against this situation characterized by psychological passivity, man can establish another state, that later in Daniel was preferred by Buber: But that is the divine meaning of human life: that the commotion is, after all, only the outside of an unknown Inward which is the most living thing of all; and that this Inward can withhold the experience of itself from knowledge, which is a daughter of the commotion, but not from the vibrant and self-liberating soul. The soul that has tensed itself utterly to burst through the commotion and escape from it is the soul that receives the grace of unity. Whether the soul meets a loved human being or a wild landscape of heaped-up stones—from this human being, this heap of stones, grace catches fire,19 and the soul no longer experiences some particular around which a thousand other particulars are buzzing, not the pressure of a hand or the look of the rocks; rather it experiences unity, the world: itself. All its powers come into play, all its powers unified and felt as one, and there in the midst of the powers lives and radiates the beloved human being, the contemplated stone: the soul experiences the unity of the I, and in this unity the unity of I and world; no longer a “content,” but what is infinitely more than any content. And yet even this is still not a complete freedom for the soul. It has received not from itself, but from the other, and the other is in the hand of the commotion. Thus any incident of the commotion—a thought that transforms the face of the beloved, a cloud that transforms the face of the rock—can gain power over it and spoil its unity, so that it [the soul–ik] stands once again abandoned and enslaved in the vortex of feelings and objects. And even in the pure moment itself [the moment of unity–ik], it can appear as a tearing, as a gazing-out,20 and instead of the unity there are two worlds, and the abyss, and the most unsteady of bridges over it; or chaos, the swarming of darkness that knows no unity. (Ecstatic Confessions, 1–2)

This quotation describes a transition of the soul from one state (the given state) to another state (to be created), brought about through 19 Grace is one of the characteristics of mystical experience in Stace (see below). The sense of grace continues in Buber into the dialogical period (Buber, I and Thou, 58, 62). The mention of fire is perhaps influenced by Jakob Boehme (Underhill, “The Essentials of Mysticism,” 36). 20 That is, contemplation from a position of distance and without unity. See also Buber’s later words on the distinction between observing, looking on, and awareness knowledge of the heart (Buber, “Dialogue,” 8–10).

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intense inner activity uniting the powers of the soul. In that way its diverse powers are captured in their unity, and through means of this active centering of its powers it encounters a creature of the external world—for example, a beloved person or a natural phenomenon such as a rock. In this unique state, the object with which the soul has connected radiates to the center of its powers, which has been moved outwards, and through this unifying closeness with the thing with which it has come into contact, experiences a certain degree of unification with the entire world, which has in itself been transformed into a unified world. Clearly, one is not speaking here of a loss of self-identity by the individual in its contact with the external world, because had the I been negated there would be no one left to recognize even the stone or beloved person with whom it has come into contact. Nor would the soul have any consciousness of the experience of unity.21 But this state, as described by Buber, entails a hidden pitfall, because the unobstructed contact with beings from the external world is described by him as extremely tenuous, in that the slightest change is liable to transform reality back into a world of separate objects and to return the soul to its jumble of chaotic feelings. Thus, in Ecstatic Confessions, Buber, to use Uffenheimer’s categories, strived for an internal ecstatic state, in which there was a complete separation between the external world of the senses and the quest for the unifying factor in the inner world of the soul.22 In Daniel, by contrast, Buber recognized—as in his descriptions in Ecstatic Confessions—the power of opposition that the world presents to the soul. But this is no longer a reason for him to recommend withdrawing into the soul; now the sphere of freedom from the whirlpool of the world must be found by the soul through its activity in the external world:

21 In principle, the term experience is in total contradiction to unio mystica, in the sense of loss of self, because the one experiencing knows that he is having an experience. 22 Overcoming the obstacles posed by the tumult of the external world by means of inward-turned apathetic ecstasy is mentioned in Stace’s Mysticism and Philosophy, where he quotes the autobiographical description of the mystic Ramakrishna (1836–1886): “For six months I remained in the state from which ordinary men can never return . . . I was not conscious of day or night. Flies would enter my mouth and nostrils just as they do a dead body’s, but I did not feel them.” (p. 52). Stace commented on this that, if we wish to give credence to Ramakrishna’s description, we need to assume that an outside observer reported to him about the flies.

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chapter two A soul meets the shore of the world. Immediately the whirlpool of happenings plunges over it like an endless sandstorm that threatens to destroy it. It [the soul–ik] braces itself to withstand it. And see [addressing the conversation partner in this dialogue–ik], therein is decided of what nature a soul is: how it withstands the whirlpool. The one thinks only of protection. It surrenders itself entirely to the inherited powers, the traditional arts of self-defense which educate its senses to perceive in place of the whirlpool an ordered world conceived within the framework of basic principles of experience. And indeed this is protection. For to the benumbed soul the divine force of the whirlpool is also benumbed. Not so the other. It finds no satisfaction in the protection that the inherited powers accord it. It lets it [the world–ik] stand, to be sure, the auxiliary world in which alone it can live with men; it accepts it and learns its laws. But deep within it grows and endures the readiness to go out to meet the naked whirlpool. Armed with what? With nothing other than with the magic of its own direction, its own, inborn, unique direction, belonging to it and no other. . . . Thus the soul strips off the net of directions, the net of space and of time, of causes and of ends, of subjects and of objects. . . . This is the strength that the soul has found in itself, to which it recalls itself, which it raises out of itself. . . . For the directionless god or demon, who does not need direction, may perhaps be blissful, and it is beautiful to think of him, breathing without direction, circling without direction, a directionless joy;23 but wretched is the undirected man who needs direction and must do without it, the powerless one. Powerful, however, is the directed soul, since it goes forth to meet the whirlpool, enters into the whirlpool. And such is its power that it charms it [i.e. the whirlpool], magically charms it, so that it stands naked in the naked24 and is not destroyed. Rather it rests around the soul, as the sheath around the sword, as the earth around the grain of corn, as the mother around the child. And then the soul knows its mother’s lap. (Daniel, 56–57)

In Daniel, the soul that enters into the whirlpool of multiplicity of the world is the same soul as that which encounters the tumult of the world in Ecstatic Confessions. Just as in Ecstatic Confessions man attempts to put order into multiplicity by means of his nominal power, so in Daniel is the soul able to choose this path of compromise with itself and

23 Divine or angelic entities do not require direction, which refers to the centering of the soul in its earthly activities, but in the world of multiplicity and movement, the soul needs to raise its directive power from within itself. 24 Perhaps the nakedness of the soul is expressed in the fact that it is armed or equipped with its direction and its power alone, after it has stripped off its thought patterns that put it to sleep and its multiplicity of images regarding reality. This term appears in a similar context in the mystic Ruysbroeck. See on this Dupré, Transcendent Selfhood, 93.

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with the world. But in Daniel the soul is no longer advised to free itself from the world by going deep within itself; rather, it must marshal all its strengths and its unique direction, the centering of its own unique channel, in order to confront the divine force of the commotion of the world.25 One way of confronting the world-whirlpool is by surrounding the soul with fixed thought patterns that provide an illusion of security, in a reality which in its depths is not at all secure. But this was the selfsame bourgeois solution so vehemently rejected by Buber at the beginning of the twentieth century, under the influence of Nietzsche and Fin-de-siècle thought. Another option is intense activity of the soul that is far stronger than the ordinary diffuse state of the soul. The soul so penetrates the world that it tames it, just as in the picture of ecstasy portrayed in Daniel Orpheus subdues the wild beasts and arrays them around himself upon his ecstatic death. But for Buber this means taming this world, not the Afterlife. This world awaits being trained by man, and man has the power to make it submit. Such training leads to unification within the soul and between it and the world. In contrast with the ecstatic picture noted in the first chapter, reality that transcends the structure of time and space is to be found, not within the soul nor in the heavens, but it is a category that man must create within the world of multiplicity. The world does not remain indifferent to man’s activity but reacts to it, and the result of this reaction is an intensified world existence leading to intensified meaning: “that heightened meaning stems from moments of heightened existence, heightened humanity, heightened knowledge” (Daniel, 67). This intensification awakens primeval and dangerous forces, but man can overcome them and, through overcoming them, man becomes a creator in actuality, bringing about unifying change therein (ibid., 69) and himself becoming a full and unified person (ibid.). Many ways have been proposed, by a variety of systems of thought in different cultures and schools, to overcome the chaotic whirlpool of multiplicity, all of which are rejected by Daniel/Buber. The only path proposed by him that does not entail a superficial or

25 The problematics involved in entering into the confusion of life is reminiscent of those involved in the descent of the Zaddik (the righteous man in Hasidism) and his entering the realm of space and time, notwithstanding his fear of losing the spiritual qualities that he acquired during the periods of ascent. On the influence of Hasidism on Buber’s position vis-à-vis the corporealization of the divine in the world by man, see Friedman, Buber’s Life and Work, 82.

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illusory solution is the realization of unity within the heart of the duality without negating its extremes. This is opposed to another way— Buber evidently refers here to the doctrines of the Far East—which sought to overcome duality by denouncing it as an illusion: A wrong way, Lukas, was that sublime wisdom which commanded one to strip off the world of duality as the world of appearance,26 “like a snake skin,” and to enter the world of unity, or rather to recognize himself as standing in it,27 as being it. (Daniel, 137)

As against this is the person who acts according to the archetype advised by Buber: He has measured its [the world of duality’s] depths and may no longer deny his measure. Henceforth he will not retreat before the fluctuating, raging, whirling world of division and of contradiction; he will stand steadfast therein, in the midst of it stand steadfast and dare just out of it to derive and create unity. He will not go again into the wilderness where one needs only to annihilate in order to find; he does not want to annihilate but to fulfill, and he would rather renounce salvation than to exclude Satan’s kingdom from it.28 Not behind the world but in the world will his unity be sought, for what he seeks is not overcoming but completion, and he who completes cannot desire to obliterate anything, to weaken anything, to equalize anything.29

This description is a unique testimony to a kind of spirituality that seeks realization within concrete reality. It seems highly doubtful whether he would have brought this path to the world had he not encountered it within Hasidism. But whereas Hasidic sources are often hesitant in their attitude towards the material world, Buber’s position in Daniel is unequivocal. Hence, this book is an expression of the See Buber’s criticism of this type of mystical life in his I and Thou, 125–126, 136. Compare Buber’s critique of this kind of mystical life, which he refers to as “the doctrine of immersion”; ibid., 131–133, 137–139. 28 As I noted earlier, the wish to redeem the most distant poles of reality is similar to Rabbi Nahman’s desire to redeem the enlightened Jews (Maskilim) in Uman, who were taken captive by the Satan at the far, demonic edge of reality. See also Buber’s reference to Rabbi Nahman in his essay, “Redemption,” 217–218. 29 Buber, Daniel, 137–138. It seems to me that by saying “cannot desire . . . to equalize anything”, Buber turns against the mystical intention, known also in Kabbalah, to nullify the oppositions in their root. In this context, see Eckhardt’s words as quoted by Stace: “If you are to experience this noble birth you must depart from all crowds . . . The crowds are the agents of the soul and their activities: memory, understanding and will in all their diversifications. You must leave them all: sense-perceptions, imagination . . . After that you may experience this birth—not otherwise” (Mysticism and Philosophy, 99). 26

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idea of “service through corporeality” (avodah ba-gashmiut) that seeks to touch upon the most contradictory and widely separated poles and to tie them together. This type of spirituality rejects the idea of isolation from the world (Daniel, 138), just as it rejects the cultivation of apathy that levels the polarities within the world. This spirituality creates a unity, not in the Sephirotic world, but within the world of the soul and the world of practice. It turns reality towards unity without negating anything of the world and without forcing the contradictions into a value-equivalence that negates their uniqueness (ibid.). In light of such a sublime aim for the life of the spirit, presented here in a dialogicalpoetic manner, the view of those critics who see Daniel as an immature work pales. If Buber saw this inspiring book merely as a preparatory stage for his later dialogical outlook, this does not mean that the book was immature, either in terms of its style or in terms of its ideas, but rather that it was seen in retrospect as a precursor to the dialogical principle. Such a spiritual attitude towards the world, described by Buber with such great power and in such a colorful way in Daniel, was referred to by Bergman, in order to characterize Buber’s mysticism during the period of Daniel and his essay “With a Monist” (1914), as realistic activistic mysticism.30 II. Applying Stace’s Extrovertive Model to Buber’s Unitive Model Having characterized the line of development from Buber’s first mystical period to the second one, I now wish to test Bergman’s abovementioned comments about Buber’s “realistic mysticism” during this period by posing the question: In what sense may the descriptions of unity in Daniel be described as mystical? As stated earlier, this question touches upon the crucial point of this book. If we delimit mysticism to states of unity within man alone, bereft of cognitive contents and marked by psychological passivity, or with the eradication of the I and liberation from the suffering of the world, then Daniel is not a mystical book, and in effect one cannot at all speak of mysticism in Buber. Hence, one must seek a type of mystical life that turns outwards, towards the external world, and

30 Bergman, “Buber and Mysticism,” 305. On the internalization of this type of mysticism under the influence of Hasidism in Buber’s earlier and later thought, see below, Chapter 7.

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through means of the senses. The original etymological meaning of the term mysticism in the sense of being closed or hidden will then no longer be understood in terms of closing one’s eyes to the world of the senses, but will be turned towards the external reality in the sense of it uncovering another, hitherto concealed layer of reality.31 We shall thus examine the descriptions of unity in Daniel in light of Stace’s abovementioned distinction (Chapter 1.3.iii) between introvertive and extrovertive mysticism. Given that, from the beginning of the second decade of the twentieth century, Buber focused upon life in the “here and now” (see “Spirit and Body,” 140ff.), Stace’s paradigm of extrovertive unitive mysticism is the most appropriate for examining mysticism in Buber’s thought from this period on.32 Equipped with Stace’s remarks and those of his predecessors, we shall now turn from Buber’s overall world-view regarding duality and unity to the descriptions of unity in his thought, and draw a comparison between two descriptions of unity in Buber and two examples quoted by Stace (see table on page 88 below). I have chosen two descriptions of unity from Daniel, one related to contact with a tree (middle column), and the second relating to contact with a stone (left-hand column),33 while from Stace’s book I have chosen an interview that he conducted with a contemporary who is identified in the book by initials only (right-hand column), and an example from the mystic Ramakrishna (further on in the discussion).

31 On Buber’s use during his dialogical period of the terms Geheimnis, Mysterium, Unsichtbar, Verschütten (secret, mystery, invisible, hidden) under the influence of Hasidism, see Chapter 7.4. 32 The seven characteristic of extrovertive mysticism in Stace are as follows: 1. unifying vision (all is one), concrete apprehension of the One; 2. a more concrete apprehension of the One as the inner standard of things, identified with the principle of life, with comprehensive consciousness, or with living presence; 3. a sense that experience portrays an objective situation in concrete terms; 4. a feeling of grace; 5. a sense of holiness; 6. paradoxality; 7. a difficulty in expressing the mystical experience by means of language (Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, 79). According to Stace, extrovertive mysticism is essentially spontaneous, that is, it does not require a process of preparation, but rather emerges suddenly from life situations within space and time. For a comparison of the characteristics of extrovertive and introvertive mysticism, see ibid., 131–132. 33 Further on (Chapter 4), I will return to these descriptions of Buber, when I examine the resemblance between them and the states of relation between the I and the Thou in the dialogical period.

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In the example cited from Stace, individual things are described as bearing intensified existence as in Buber’s descriptions, but in Stace the emphasis is placed on the element of vitality that bursts forth from the innerness of things that coalesce into a unity, while the unity between man and the things within his field of vision are not emphasized.34 In Buber’s descriptions, by contrast, the unity between the subject and one particular external object is emphasized, but that element that unites all the objects in the world, about which we learn from him only in other places, is not mentioned.35 The transformative aspect stands out very strongly in Buber. In the description of unification in the lefthand column the I unites with the stone, and thereafter undergoes an additional transformation as it turns inward, in a manner similar to the introvertive mysticism characteristic of Buber’s first mystical stage. The description of unity with the tree (middle column) indicates the mingling with it, a mystical state referred to by Stace as identity in difference,36 and which I have described as loss of separate identity, as distinct from loss of self-identity. Here, man’s essence extends towards the tree until he feels identity with the limbs of the tree.37

34 While Stace noted that the man of experience failed to note in writing what he was previously told verbally, namely, that he experienced intensified life as an element that also unified him with the external things—but there is certainly a reason for this forgetfulness. 35 “Not over the things, not around the things, not between the things—in each thing, in the experience of each thing, the gate of the One opens to you if you bring with you the magic that unlocks it: the perfection of your direction” (Buber, Daniel, 53). It is worth noting that in I and Thou, specifically, Buber described situations of inclusiveness in which all of reality is united within one thing, be it an object or “the Eternal Thou.” See Chapter 5, in which I argue that the mystical elements were specifically strengthened in Buber’s dialogical thought. 36 Stace, ibid., 72. One may also use Dupré’s term, “infused contemplation” (Transcendent Selfhood, 96). 37 For Stace, this state of identification within difference is paradoxical, as the principle of identity contradicts the principle of difference, whereas in Buber the unity with the tree is not portrayed as paradoxical, but rather as a mutual unifying flow between the man and the tree, such that the man discovers himself in the tree without losing himself. The description is thus not paradoxical, since to the question, who is the I of the man, one may reply, that the I is a being that by its expansive nature reveals itself in the things of the world. This is also the basis for Buber’s view of the I-Thou. The paradoxical element, that is one of the characteristics of mysticism in Stace, is thus lacking in Daniel, but appears in I and Thou. See on this below, Chapter 5.6, and Ch. 7.2.

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Buber: Description of Unity with a Stone

Buber: Description of unity with Tree

Anonymous (according to Stace)

On a gloomy morning I walked upon the highway, saw a piece of mica lying, lifted it up and looked at it for a long time; the day was no longer gloomy, so much light was caught in the stone. And suddenly as I raised my eyes from it, I realized that while I looked I had not been conscious of “object” and “subject”; in my looking the mica and “I” had been one; in my looking I had tasted unity. I looked at it again, the unity did not return. But there it burned in me as though to create. I closed my eyes, I gathered in my strength, I bound myself with my object, I raised the mica into the kingdom of the existing. And there, Lukas, I first felt: I, there first was I. The one who looked had not yet been I; only this man here, this unified man, bore the name like crown. Now I perceived that first unity as the marble statue may perceive the block out of which it was chiseled; it was the undifferentiated, I was the unification. . . . (Daniel, 140–141)

And now seek to draw near to this stone pine itself . . . Rather, with all your directed power, receive the tree, surrender yourself to it. Until you feel its bark as your skin and the springing forth of a branch from the trunk like the striving in your muscles; until your feet cleave and grope like roots and your skull arches itself like a lightheavy crown; until you recognize your children in the soft blue cones; yes, truly until you are transformed. But also in the transformation your direction is with you, and through it you experience the tree so that you attain in it to the unity. . . . and around your direction a being forms itself, the tree, so that you experience its unity, the unity. Already it is transplanted out of the earth of space into the earth of the soul, already it tells its secret to your heart, already you perceive the mystery of the real. Was it not just a tree among trees? But now it has become the tree of eternal life. (Daniel, 54)

The buildings were decrepit and ugly. . . . Suddenly every object in my field of vision took on a curious and intense kind of existence of its own; that is, everything appeared to have an “inside”—to exist as I existed, having inwardness, a kind of individual life, and every object, seen under his aspect, appeared exceedingly beautiful. There was a cat out there, with its head lifted, effortlessly watching a wasp that moved without moving just above its head. Everything was urgent with life. . . . which was the same in the cat, the wasp, the broken bottles, and merely manifested itself differently in these individuals . . . All things seemed to glow with a light that came from within them. . . . I experienced a complete certainty that at that moment I saw things as they really were, and I was filled with grief at the realization of the real situation of human beings, living continuously in the midst of all this without being aware of it. (Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, 71–72)

To return to the ecstatic principle, man’s self-extension to encounter the tree is ecstatic in the sense of going outwards with the goal of unity. But in Daniel unitive ecstasy undergoes a certain change in comparison with that described in Ecstatic Confessions, in that it enters

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into the states of life in space and time. The rent in the given existence in space and time is not bridged above life (i.e., in an ascent of the soul) nor in the I but within life. That unique state which man invokes within life—a state that leads both to soul transformation and to ontological change in the state of the Being of the world—is that which determines whether the tree that is revealed to him is “the tree of knowledge” of the given state of consciousness; or, alternatively, “the tree of eternal life” (Daniel, 54) perceived through a different state and in a different manner.38 The tree of life is not found in another world, but wherever people conjure it up. It follows from this that the transformative element in Daniel is imposed upon the world and not only upon man: through man changing, so too does the world change. Hence, as I quoted in the introduction to this chapter, space is more than merely space. To summarize the comparison with the example from Stace: one clearly recognizes that the testimony quoted by Stace more strongly emphasizes the overall unity of external things, whereas in Buber the emphasis is placed more upon the unity between the I and the thing in the world—that is, the transformative component in the I—that lends an ecstatic quality to the event of unification and not merely that of a new perception and revelation. Stace’s paradigm of unity can only serve as a general framework for the discussion of the mystical nature of the descriptions of unity in Buber, because Buber not only described states of unity, but in so doing intended to create a basis for a very well-defined world-view (see below, Chapter 7.4). As a thinker, Buber was interested in a particular type of unity within the world, and not with every kind of unity. The principle of identity in difference must be maintained, not only in man’s relation to things in the world, but also between things in the world, as well as in the relation of things to God and in man’s connection with God. Hence Buber rejected Feuerbach’s statement that “the Unity of

The manifestation of the tree as a tree of eternal life bears a certain resemblance to Plotinus’ description of the intuition of the man of spirit that turns the depths of this world into a garden of flowers (Underhill, “The Essentials of Mysticism,” 36). In the fifth section of Rabbi Nahman’s story, “The Seven Beggars,” one is evidently speaking of an expansion beyond the category of the Tree of Knowledge, in which is rooted the principle of multiplicity and division, and of the journey to the tree, which is “entirely beyond place, and [embodies] the aspect of ‘the little that holds much,’ yet is still in its [special] place” (Sippurei Ma’asiyot, [op. cit., n. 12], 471), a tree “in whose shade all the creatures shall dwell” (ibid., 467). On the motif of the tree in Rabbi Nahman, see Goren, “The Tree as Symbol,” 72–76. 38

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the I and Thou is God,” because in his opinion, “Here the standpoint of the new [dialogical] way of thinking has gained a firm footing, but in the same instant it is already overstepped in the indefiniteness of a bad mysticism.”39 The negation of the distinct entities, whether between one another or within God, is in Buber’s view “bad mysticism” (as well as being pantheism). Buber would thus have also rejected the above-mentioned words of Ramakrishna, as quoted by Stace. It is told that Ramakrishna’s behavior when he served as a priest at the Temple of the Divine Mother occasionally caused much consternation. Once he fed a cat with food that was meant to serve as an offering to the goddess, and he defended his behavior by saying: The Divine Mother revealed to me that . . . it was she who had become everything . . . that everything was full of consciousness. The image was consciousness, the altar was consciousness . . . I found everything in the room soaked as it were in bliss—the bliss of God . . . That was why I fed the cat with the food that was to be offered to the Divine Mother. I clearly perceived that all this was the Divine Mother—even the cat.40

According to Buber, it is impossible to identify the goddess Kali with created beings in this way, just as in his book I and Thou the “Eternal Thou” cannot be identified with the world of existent things and with the I of man. The separate things of the world must preserve a certain degree of separate standing even when they communicate and even mingle with one another. III. Application of Uffenheimer’s Four-Fold Paradigm on the Descriptions of Unity in Daniel The attachment/unity of man with the stone and with the tree in Daniel meets the criterion of mystical unity according to the categories enumerated by Stace. I have also noted the transformative component in the I, and I finally returned to ecstasy, in the sense of the I stretching out of itself as a means of attaining unity. The idea of ecstasy returns us to Uffenheimer’s distinctions. To use the four-fold typology of Uffenheimer, we are dealing here with the ecstasy of the Buber, “The Dialogical Principle,” 210. In Chapter Five I shall attempt to demonstrate the extent to which the descriptions of man’s unity with God in I and Thou are lacking in clear boundaries in terms of rational cognition. 40 Quoted by Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, 77. 39

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integrative personality, characterized by creativity and contact with the external world (Classical Prophecy, 91). According to Uffenheimer, Israelite prophecy is characterized by this type of ecstasy,41 rather than mysticism: the latter is characterized by ecstasy of the more introverted kind.42 Hence, following Uffenheimer’s typology, one would see Buber’s book Daniel as a prophetic book rather than as a mystical one. The consciousness of mission found in the book further strengthens the view of those who see it as a prophetic book. Regarding this one might say that, even if Buber may be seen as the prophet of the idea of Divine realization in the world through man, as depicted by Friedman,43 there is a profound distance between Buber’s descriptions in Daniel and the biblical descriptions of the prophets’ acts. The Israelite prophets are not depicted in Scripture as uniting with trees, stones, or other people. One may in fact reasonably assume that the Israelite prophets would be extremely cautious about expressing such descriptions of unity with objects in nature—even if they did have such experiences—in light of the nature cults of their day. Even the issue of the prophet’s unity with God is subject to question in the Bible, which focuses primarily on the prophetic-ethical message and the call to faith in the God of Israel, rather than on the prophet’s ecstatic states of mind. Thus, while the characterization of Daniel as a prophetic book is justified in terms of the mission presented therein, it is certainly not so in terms of the descriptions of unity or of psychological states depicted therein. Uffenheimer attributed the striving towards unity per se to introverted ecstasy, which he saw as uniquely characteristic of mysticism, and not to Israelite prophecy. In this sense Daniel is clearly a mystical book. Whereas Uffenheimer attempted to distinguish among four kinds of ecstatic life in order to avoid the confusion that entered modern scholarship under the influence of Platonic heritage, in which “the general concept of ecstasy [is identified] with one of its

41 Uffenheimer recognized the existence of two types of ecstasy in Israelite prophecy: integrative and internalized (“Prophetic Ecstasy,” 62). Integrative ecstasy characterizes the prophets of the First Temple period, while internalized ecstasy appears in the apocalyptic visions, and in between are transitional stages “leading from the activism and social-educational openness of classical prophecy to a gathering inward based on withdrawing from and foregoing of reality, as found in the Apocalypse” (Classical Prophecy, 177). 42 Uffenheimer, ibid., 88–99; idem, “Prophetic Ecstasy,” 60–61. 43 Friedman, Buber’s biographer, entitled the chapter dealing with the period during which he wrote Daniel, by the title “the Prophet of Realization.”

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many manifestations”—i.e., crazed ecstasy (Uffenheimer, ibid., 81)— he himself described mysticism in all its various forms in only one way, thereby perpetuating the confusion that reigns regarding this subject, due to the identification of the general concept with one of its manifestations. It was this characterization that led to his conservative view regarding the gap between mystical ecstasy and prophetic ecstasy: The initiative and goal of this [mystical] type of ecstatic is limited to the realm of the private self, while the aim of the prophetic vision lies in the social and national mission that God imposes upon the prophet. From the one there follows that type of contemplation, meditation, and turning inward whose purpose is to nullify the self within the bosom of the Godhead; from the latter, the mission imposed upon man when he maintains his full personal stature and turns his personality towards environmental and social integration. (Uffenheimer, Classical Prophecy, 90)

The description of the mystic as confined to the narrow bounds of his own inner world, closed to the external world and against any public mission, is a narrowing of mysticism as understood by Stace, according to whom the extrovertive mystic turns towards the world of the senses with great eagerness; thus, the attribution to mystics of spiritual egoism is based upon prejudice. I will now turn to discuss Stace’s view of the relationship between mysticism and ethics. 4. Mysticism and Ethics in Buber and in Stace Stace claimed that, insofar as one is speaking of the history of mysticism, extrovertive mysticism is of less importance than the introvertive kind. This is so, both because it is less common among mystics, and because mystics saw it as merely a preparatory stage to the experience of absolute unity, in which there is no multiplicity at all and consciousness becomes pure—that is, lacking in all content.44 Stace, like the

44 “These facts seem to suggest that the extrovertive experience, although we recognize it as a distinct type, is actually on a lower level than the introvertive type; that is to say, it is an incomplete kind of experience which finds its completion and fulfillment in the introvertive kind of experience. . . . In the introvertive type the multiplicity has been wholly obliterated and therefore must be spaceless and timeless, since space and time are themselves principles of multiplicity. But in the extrovertive experience the multiplicity seems to be, as it were, only half absorbed in the unity.” (Stace, 132) By contrast, mysticism which turns inward is less reliable and more difficult to examine, due to the changing and elusive nature of the inner life (ibid., 59).

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later Buber (“God and the Soul,” 184–186) and the Buber scholars, thought that mysticism in its purest stage is also that state which is most distant from ordinary states of consciousness. It is regarding this matter that—thus it seems to me—the issue of Buber’s mysticism is placed to the test in principle. If we combine together the extrovertive model; Buber’s earlier view that modern thought attributes decisive importance to the problematics of multiplicity in the world, without forcing it in an artificial way; his conviction that Hasidism contains a message of healing to the severe dualism of spirit and matter and between thought and action found in the life of the Western person (Hasidism and Modern Man, 28 ff.); and his words concerning realistic and activistic mysticism in the Baal Shem Tov (below, Chapter 7.1)—we then see that, according to Buber, the extrovertive paradigm, rather than the introvertive paradigm in which all multiplicity is negated, is decisive for spiritual life in the West. Even if Stace’s claim regarding the inferiority of extrovertive mysticism is correct from both a historical and a statistical view-point, we cannot infer from this as to what is more or less important in any absolute sense. Such an argument is similar to the claim that, because the history of philosophy from Socrates until modern times attributes lesser value to multiplicity in the world, modern philosophy, that attributes greater importance to multiplicity, is not philosophy in its purest sense. Mysticism of the extrovertive type is most suited to a world view such as that of Buber, that seeks to integrate man and his activity in the reality of the world, including the world of the senses. As we have seen, according to his definition of mysticism at the conference of sociologists, he would seem to reject such a definition of mysticism. Earlier, in The Tales of Rabbi Nachman (1906), Buber claimed that Hasidism is mysticism turned ethos—that is, one that changed its nature towards a project of responsibility within the realm of life. One may understand his later words, that Hasidism is Kabbalah turned ethos, against the background of the dichotomy he created between gnosis and devekut—that is, to see his dictum as pointing towards the negation of the mystical element within the ethical. By contrast, in his later essay “God and the Soul” (1945), which we shall discuss below at greater length (Chapter 5.4), Buber allowed the mystical principle and the ethical to dwell together: For man cannot love God in truth without loving the world in which He has set His strength and over which His Shekhina rests . . . In Hasidism—and in it alone, so far as I can see, in the history of the

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Unlike Buber, who repeatedly oscillated in his definitions of mysticism, Stace was quite consistent on this issue. For him, pure introverted mysticism is filled with the most sublime ethical element because mystics saw love for one’s fellow as an emotional consequence of the experience of mystical unity. Only one who has experienced such unity can truly love others as part of himself. Thus, for Stace the mystical experience is the source of ethical values, based upon love of the other and not upon duty, as Kant thought.45 Stace sees this view of the mystical source of ethical values as expressed in the history of mysticism in altruistic deeds performed by mystics for their environment. True, Stace admitted, there are those people who turn to mysticism for pleasure alone and without any commitment, but these are, in his view, distorted manifestations of mysticism46—just as one may find distorted and egocentric expressions of sublime ideas in other realms, such as religion. The question I wish to raise in this context is whether the mystic who turns towards the world does not, in practice, move from the realm of introvertive mysticism to that of the extrovertive; whether the experience of absolute mystical unity without any content and distinction of particulars need not transform, in its turning towards the mundane realm, towards an experience of identity based upon separateness, in accordance with the different laws governing reality on each level of existence? Does not the congruence created between the mystic and the source of life express itself in a different, unique way in each sphere of life?47 It is quite possible that the mystic’s memory of absolute unity may provide him with inspiration and strength for loving activity within reality, but the preservation of this experience within the reality of life requires a transition to a different psychological state, of identity in difference. In the final analysis, the fruits of this

45 “It may be taken as a fact that love and compassion are feelings which are part of, or necessary and immediate accompaniments of, mystical experience; and that from this source love can flow into the hearts of men and so come to govern their actions” (Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, 327). 46 Cf. Underhill, “The Essentials of Mysticism,” 41. 47 On this correspondence, deriving from the source of life, see Underhill, ibid.

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unity are to be granted in a specific way and in distinct states, and not in a general way. If I am correct, then extrovertive mysticism is not only a preparatory and preliminary stage along the way towards pure introvertive mysticism, but is also the possible and detailed expression of the pure and content-less unitive experience within the specific states of life. If so, outward-facing moderate mysticism plays a far more important role in the history of mysticism than that which Stace attributed to it. Mysticism is not only a stage on the ladder of ascent, but also a decisive stage on the ladder of descent, because it is that which allows the realization of mystical experience in the realm of the concrete and in normative life. This transition from transcendent mystical life to immanent mystical life is articulated in the following homily of R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoyye, a disciple of the Baal Shem Tov: “And the Levitical priests, the sons of Zaddok” [Ezek 44:15]. “When they go out into the outer courtyard to the people, they shall remove the garments in which they have been serving and leave them in the holy precincts, and they shall put on other garments, lest they sanctify the people with their garments” [ibid., 19]. . . . This may be compared to a minister who thought of a scheme to elevate one of the king’s sons from his lowly status to return him to the house of his father the king. And he needed to remove the dignified clothing which he wore in the king’s house and to wear simpler clothing, so that the king’s son would associate with him . . . Hence, one must remove the holy garments of attachment to God (devekut), and assume lowlier garb, which is compared to the contemptible attribute called “garment,” in the measure and nature of the garb, so that by this means he will have a basis for dealing and connecting with them.48

Further on in this same homily, verses are quoted from the Song of Songs, indicating that one is dealing here with a connection of love between the Zaddik and the people of his flock, and not merely a tactical change of costume on the part of the Zaddik, for it is only by means of a substantial connection of this type that one may bring the people “to the house of my mother and to the room of she that bore 48 Toldot Ya’akov Yosef, (Koritz, 1780; photo ed.: Jerusalem, 1966), Yitro, 53d–54a. The parable of the king’s son who was alienated from his father reappears in various forms in R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoyye and in R. Dov Baer of Mezhirech (see on this Gries, “The Historical Image,” 427–429), where it is usually connected with the principle that “constant pleasure is not pleasure,” requiring distance between God and man. On the difficulty in attributing the originality of this parable to any particular Hasidic figure, or even to the Baal Shem Tov himself, see Gries, ibid.

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me.”49 The Zaddik’s contact with the people involves a change of garment, just as the priests and Levites did when leaving their holy service and turning to the people in the outer courtyard. While these other garments are of a lesser sanctity than the holy garments, that express a spiritual-mystical life beyond the possibility of contact with the masses of human beings, but these lowlier garments are needed to fulfill the Zaddik’s normative task, deriving from the totality of his function as a spiritual figure who needs to live on several different levels and to sustain a relation among them. Nor is the drawing of a sharp distinction between mystical life and life in society consistent with the Hasidic concept of “fellowship“ (divuk haverim)—that is, the unity of the mystical fellowship, understood as part of the unified attachment to God50—nor with the perception of the entire congregation or even of all Israel as a single organism.51 Dibbuk haverim as a social category, expressed in the joining together in Jerusalem of Jesus’ disciples on Pentecost, in the love among the group of the Idra in Sefer ha-Zohar,52 in the circle that took shape around R. Isaac Luria in Safed, in the havurah of R. Nahman of Kosov, and in the Hasidic fellowship that went beyond the realm of the esoteric and became a real socio-religious impulse;53 all these are expressions of communities that build themselves through the mystical dimension and on its behalf. The words of Saul of Tarsus express this idea in 49 “Scarcely had I passed them, when I found him whom my soul loves. I held him, and would not let him go until I had brought him into my mother’s house and into the chamber of her that conceived me” (Cant 3:4). 50 See on this Weiss, “Kalisker’s Concept of Communion,” 155–169. 51 “For the entire world is called one configuration [of the Divine], and the masses of people are the feet of the configuration, and the righteous are the eyes of the congregation” (Toldot Ya’akov Yosef, Vayetze, 81). The righteous being the eyes of the congregation is evidently based upon Cant. Rabbah 1.15, on the verse “You are beautiful, my beloved; your eyes are doves” (ed. S. Donski, Jerusalem, 1980, p. 48, §3); where it is written that “the Sanhedrin are the eyes of the congregation.” Maggid Devarav le-Ya’akov states several times that “the Sages are the eyes of the congregation” (§83, p. 145; §85, p. 148, etc.). On the concept of the unity of the nation as one body and its early sources in Rabbinic literature and in the New Testament, see Baer, “Organization of the Jewish Community,” esp. 11–12. In his paper, Baer quotes the words of Otto Görke, who claimed that the system of organic thought acquired new mystical content in early Christian theology (ibid., 14). On the organic unity of the souls in Israel, see Gries, “From Myth to Ethos,” 136. 52 Liebes, “The Messiah of the Zohar,” 158 and n. 251 there, that relates to the circle of cohorts of R. Shalom Sharabi in Yeshivat Beth-el, and the Document of Communion among the disciples of R. David ibn Zimra, among whom were included the Ari. See also Gries, “From Myth to Ethos,” 122. 53 Gries, ibid., 124–125.; idem, Sefer Sofer ve-Sippur, 22, 98–99.

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unambiguous manner: “For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit. On the other hand, he who prophesies speaks to men for their upbuilding . . . He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church . . . He who prophesies is greater than he who speaks in tongues, unless the latter interprets, so that the church may be edified.”54 It seems to me that Jewish philosophy was less advanced than mysticism in this area, for it was specifically mysticism that created a suitable basis for deep connection among people in a Divine perspective; it was the idea of mystical attachment that led to a far-reaching understanding of love of the neighbor and of the mutual communal responsibility that derives from it. While one should not ignore that mysticism also entails a focus upon the mystic’s own inner life, upon his psychological state and spiritual path, nevertheless, the attitude of the mystic to the community is not to be described, as Gershom Scholem would have it, as a paradox, as that of “the mystical devotee” who is able “to live among ordinary men and yet be alone with God” (Scholem, “Hasidism: The Latest Phase,” 343); nor, as in Ettinger, as split between two obligation, “that of the mystic, who is obligated to constant attachment to the upper worlds . . . and the second—the obligation of the communal leader to be concerned for his community” (Ettinger, “Hasidic Leadership,” 126). Paradox and split—no; but tension55 and difficulty do exist. The tension and difficulty involved in life lived on different levels of experience is present, not only between the inner world of the mystic and his public mission, but is also familiar to those who engage in philosophy, research and teaching. In conclusion, returning again to Buber: for him, ecstatic introvertive mysticism had lost all value, as follows from examination of the second mystical period in his life in this chapter, and as we shall see below in the chapter on his “conversion” (Chapter Four). The question of the relationship between mysticism and normative life continued to concern him during the period of his dialogical work. Further on (Chapter Five),

1 Corinthians 14:2–5. See Gries’ remarks about the combination of “the old mystical ideal of attachment of the individual to his Creator while thrusting off the corporeality of this world” (Gries, “From Myth to Ethos,” 133), and the new ideal, that removes devekut ”from the world of Sefirot to connections of intimate closeness among fellows” (ibid., 132), an integration that involves constant tension. 54 55

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I shall seek to demonstrate that, even though Buber attempted to draw a clear distinction between the mystical and the dialogical principle, that aspect of his thought known as dialogical philosophy is also a dialogical form of mysticism that occurs within the states of life of space and time, since space and time are more than just time and space.

CHAPTER THREE

THE THIRD MYSTICAL PERIOD: “THE CONVERSION”— THE DECISION ON BEHALF OF THE WORLD 1. Introduction Earlier, I described Buber’s path in life and thought during that period commonly referred to by scholars as the mystical as one leading from vortex to direction (Chapter 1.2 and 2.1). Buber’s second mystical period, between 1909 and 1914, may best be described as a transitional one, leading towards Buber’s total decision on behalf of the world. During this period, Buber gradually turned towards the external world as the only place in which man may engage in unifying and redemptive activity. Daniel is the most important statement of this transitional period, although rather surprisingly the description of Buber’s “conversion” or “change of heart,”1 that evidently refers to events occurring in 1914, indicates that even after the writing of Daniel he had not freed himself of the kind of ecstatic experience that seeks spiritual realization outside of the normal state of life in the world. It is clear from the description of his “conversion” that the pursuit and attainment of ecstatic psychological states was a common thing in his life. I thus see Buber’s “conversion” as the final stage in this transitional period, during which he decided uncompromisingly on behalf of the world. Mendes-Flohr and Barzilai mention two other events from the period of the First World War that served Buber as a kind of “conversion.” In Gustav Landauer’s severe criticism of Buber on the issue of the latter’s support of Germany during the war and his support of Jews participating in this war, Mendes-Flohr saw a factor that led to a “conversion” on Buber’s part. This affair was one that Buber tried to conceal, but it brought in its wake a transformation in his Buber, “Dialogue,” 30–32, and see in the next section. The concept “conversion” is used in the study of religious experience to note “an absolute change—at times sudden—that occurs in the individual’s beliefs, his relationships, his loyalties and his longings” (Shapira, Hope for our Time, 83–84; and cf. 79). 1

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attitude towards reality (both internal and external), as expressed in his distancing himself from experiential (Erlebnis) mysticism in favor of involvement in the social realm.2 To this, Barzilai adds the shock felt by Buber in wake of Landauer’s assassination, an event that led him further into the interpersonal realm (Barzilai, Homos Dialogicus, 36–38). He also saw the events of the First World War generally as the source of an “epistemological rent” that occurred in Western Europe leading many people, Buber among them, to “a radical change in their manner of thought in general and their understanding of man and society in particular.”3 I shall return to Mendes-Flohr’s claim in greater detail further on this chapter (§4). For the present, I shall merely state that, in my opinion, one is speaking here of two different decisions on Buber’s part: in his “conversion” of 1914 , before the outbreak of the war, Buber decided finally on behalf of the world, while in wake of the dispute with Landauer Buber needed to decide once again in what way to decide on behalf of the world.4 In this chapter (as well as in Ch. 4, where I compare the descriptions of unity in Daniel and in I and Thou), I shall argue that the identification of Buber’s decision on behalf of the world with his abandonment of experiential mysticism, and the view that it was this decision that facilitated the emergence of the dialogic principle in his writings a number of years later, even though based upon Buber’s own words,5 has no basis in phenomenological terms. I believe that Buber’s “conversion” 2 On this incident see Mendes-Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue, 93–101; idem, “Nationalism and Mysticism,” 71–92; Shapira, Hope for Our Time, 89–94. 3 Barzilai, Homo Dialogicus, 33–34. Buber indeed noted in his essay, “The History of the Dialogical Principle,” that the dialogical principal—which was already mentioned by Jacoby in the 18th century and by Feuerbach in the 19th century, and by Buber himself at the beginning of the 20th century—was renewed during the years following the First World War and in its wake, and was accompanied by a feeling of responsibility for the destiny of the individual man and of humanity in general: “Only sixty years later, at the time of the First World War, does the movement [of thinkers who saw in relationships between human beings the essence of humanity] begin anew. Out of the experience of the Vesuvian hour, a strange longing awakens for thinking to do justice to existence itself ” (“The Dialogical Principle,” 211). 4 One should note that Buber did not become a pacifist as a result of Landauer’s criticism of his support of Germany’s going to war, but supported a stance that at times one needs to use force, the question being when and how much. See Buber, “An Open Letter to Mahatma Gandhi,” pp. 463–465. 5 This refers to Buber’s reservations regarding the principle of inner experience (which I discuss below): a reservation expressed in Buber’s remarks that he had learned “to distinguish between a subjective experience and a subjective-objective event” (Buber, Hilufei Iggerot, II.149.)

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and the appearance of the dialogical principle in his thought at the end of the 1910’s did not displace the mystical principle, but subjugated it to the concrete realm, and that it was this, along with the maturing of the dialogical principle, that brought him into practical, concrete life, leading as it did to its fulfillment in the human and societal sphere. In wake of my discussion of Stace’s distinction between inward-turning mysticism and that which turns outwards towards the world known to the senses, and in light of the descriptions of unity in Daniel (above, Chs. 2.3.II; 2.4), there is no longer any need to automatically identify Buber’s choice on behalf of the world with the abandonment of mysticism; rather, one must examine even his post-1914 thought from the viewpoint of its mystical characteristics as well. Such an examination reveals that we are at the beginning of a third mystical stage in Buber’s work. In this third stage, first of all, the concrete mysticism of his book Daniel became more solidly grounded and, once there was added to it the dialogical principle, it became dialogical mysticism (below, Chs 4 & 5). I will turn first to Buber’s decision on behalf of the world, as he himself described his “conversion,” and then present my own understanding of Buber’s demurral from the experiential (Erlebnis) principle and the identification made by Mendes-Flohr between this demurral and Buber’s abandonment of mysticism. 2. “The Conversion” (1914) In the previous chapter I referred to 1909 as marking the beginning of a new stage in Buber’s thought, a “change of heart” or kind of “conversion” in his attitude towards mysticism. The year 1914 represents the completion of this stage, as described by Buber in his treatise “Dialogue” (1932). I shall cite this autobiographical passage in full: In my earlier years the “religious” was for me the exception. There were hours that were taken out of the course of things. From somewhere or other the firm crust of everyday was pierced. Then the reliable permanence of appearances broke down; the attack which took place burst its law asunder. “Religious experience” was the experience of an otherness which did not fit into the context of life. It could begin with something customary, with consideration of some familiar object, but which then became unexpectedly mysterious and uncanny, finally lighting a way into the lightning-pierced darkness of the mystery itself. But also, without any intermediate stage, time could be torn apart—first the firm world’s structure then the still firmer self-assurance flew apart and you were delivered to fulness. The “religious” lifted you out. Over there

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chapter three now lay the accustomed existence with its affairs, but here illumination and ecstasy and rapture held, without time or sequence. Thus your own being encompassed a life here and a life beyond, and there was no bond but the actual moment of the transition. The illegitimacy of such a division of the temporal life, which is streaming to death and eternity and which only in fulfilling its temporality can be fulfilled in face of these, was brought home to me by an everyday event, an event of judgment, judging with that sentence from closed lips and an unmoved glance such as the ongoing course of things loves to pronounce. What happened was no more than that one forenoon, after a morning of “religious” enthusiasm, I had a visit from an unknown young man, without being there in spirit. I certainly did not fail to let the meeting be friendly. I did not treat him any more remissly than all his contemporaries who were in the habit of seeking me out about this time of day as an oracle that is ready to listen to reason. I conversed attentively and openly with him—only I omitted to guess the questions which he did not put. Later, not long after, I learned from one of his friends—he himself was no longer alive—the essential content of these questions; I learned that he had come to me not casually, but borne by destiny, not for a chat but for a decision. He had come to me, he had come in this hour. What do we expect when we are in despair and yet go to a man? Surely a presence by means of which we are told that nevertheless there is meaning. Since then I have given up the “religious” which is nothing but the exception, extraction, exaltation, ecstasy; or it has given me up. I possess nothing but the everyday out of which I am never taken. The mystery is no longer disclosed, it has escaped or it has made its dwelling here where everything happens as it happens. I know no fulness but each mortal hour’s fulness of claim and responsibility. Though far from being equal to it, yet I know that in the claim I am claimed and may respond in responsibility, and know who speaks and demands a response. I do not know much more. If that is religion then it is just everything, simply all that is lived in its possibility of dialogue. Here is space also for religion’s highest forms. As when you pray you do not thereby remove yourself from this life of yours but in your praying refer your thought to it, even though it may be in order to yield to it; so too in the unprecedented and surprising, when you are called upon from above, required, chosen, empowered, sent, you with this your mortal bit of life are referred to, this moment is not extracted from it, it rests on what has been and beckons to the remainder which has still to be lived, you are not swallowed up in a fulness without obligation, you are willed for the life of communion.6

6 Buber, “Dialogue,” 13–14. Buber referred to the religious experience that preceded his encounter with the young visitor as “ecstasy.” However, he gave it a different

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This autobiographical description is a kind of quintessence and summary of Buber’s world-view from 1914, viewed in retrospect (at a distance of eighteen years). Everything that Buber subsequently wrote and said may be seen as a further explanation, elaboration and refining of this description.7 In order to more clearly understand the radical nature of Buber’s “conversion,” I shall contrast the above description to what was said by the mystic Ruysbroeck: The man who is sent down by God from those heights [i.e., of mystic experience] . . . possesses a rich and generous ground, which is set in the richness of God: and therefore he must always spend himself on those who have need of him . . . And by this he possesses a universal life, for he is ready alike for contemplation and for action and is perfect in both of them.8

One can see from Ruysbroeck’s testimony that the mystical life may be more complex than what Buber was willing to admit, integrating as it does ecstatic experience in the upper world with practical life interpretation: not the experience of the private I of unity with the world essence after having left himself in the ecstatic state, but “taking myself out of the collectivity and going out of myself.” That is, leaving every-day reality, abandoning this world in favor of the world of spiritual experience. 7 Thus, for example, his beautiful words in his essay “Books and Men”: “If I had been asked in my early youth whether I preferred to have dealings only with men or only with books, my answer would certainly have been in favour of books. In later years this has become less and less the case. Not that I have had so much better experiences with men than with books; on the contrary, surely delightful books even now come my way more often than purely delightful men. But the many bad experiences with men have nourished the meadow of my life as the noblest book could not do, and the good experiences have made the earth into a garden for me. On the other hand, no book does more than remove me into a paradise of great spirits, where my innermost heart never forgets I cannot dwell long, nor even wish that I could do so. For (I must say this straight out in order to be understood) my innermost heart loves the world more than it loves the spirit. I have not, indeed, cleaved to life in the world as I might have; in my relations with it I fail it again and again; again and again I remain guilty towards it for falling short of what it expects of me, and this is partly, to be sure, because I am so indebted to the spirit. I am indebted to the spirit as I am to myself, but I do not, strictly speaking, love it, even as I do not, strictly speaking, love myself. I do not in reality love him who has seized me with his heavenly clutch and holds me fast; rather I love her, the ‘world,’ who comes again and again to meet me and extends to me a pair of fingers. Both have gifts to share. The former showers on me his manna of books; the latter extends to me the brown bread on whose crust I break my teeth, a bread of which I can never have enough: men. I knew nothing about books when I came forth from the womb of my mother, and I shall die without books, with another human hand in mine. I do indeed close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human being looking at me” (Buber, “Books and Men,” 3–4). 8 Quoted by Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, 338.

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in the lower world. To judge on the basis of the “Ecstatic Doctor” Ruysbroeck, one might have expected the period of ecstatic quality that preceded the visit to have allowed Buber to encounter the young man with a fresh spirit and in a deeper way, just as the Hasidic Zaddikim were wont to receive their followers during their own period of “descent” into the world. Yet in Buber’s portrayal, the period of sublime ecstasy above time and space seems to have functioned to disturb his ability to return to life; it led to a certain lack of clarity and disturbed his ability to penetrate to the secrets of the world and of man. Buber came to the meeting as if dazzled, and therefore did not meet the demands of the hour. Such blindness is known to us from the description of a man who returned to a dark cave after having been out in the brilliant light of day, as in Plato’s parable of the cave (Republic, VII.515e, 516e; Shorey, 2.125, 129), albeit according to Plato this blindness did not obscure the importance of the ascent, as since the contact with enlightened life outside of the cave allowed the philosopher to later fulfill his obligation to his community (Plato, 519d–520d; Shorey: 139–143). For Buber, by contrast, the upper mystery stands in contradiction to the lower mystery; hence, the mystery of the hour of ecstasy must now be transformed by him into the “mystery of dialogue” and the mystery of the world. From this point on, responsibility for the world and for the fullness of the earthly moment are the only suitable standard by which to judge man’s activity, even if his contact with the world and with other men are like eating dry bread that dulls the teeth. For the tension between the life of ecstatic contemplation and the realization of his capabilities in the world, that is likely to be revealed in the soul of the mystic—as expressed in the relations between the Zaddikim and their disciples9—Buber substituted the tension between realization (by means of the unifying experience) and a sensoryintellectual approach or, later on, the relation between the I-Thou and the I-It. He thereby changed the axis of tension in the life of the man of spirit from vertical to horizontal.10 This is definitely Buber’s own innovation: he exchanged the ratzo vashov movement (an image used in Hasidic thought, taken from Ezek 1:14), the “back and forth” oscilBuber was aware of this tension in Hasidism. See his “Spirit and Body of the Hasidic Movement,” 139–140. 10 On this tendency in Buber’s interpretation and writings on Hasidism, see below, Chapter 6.3. 9

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lation between above and below, for the ratzo vashov of entering and leaving a special state of life within concrete reality. The beauty and uniqueness of his thought lie in the fact that Buber sought to manifest the spiritual sphere only in the reality of the world of action—but in this lies its one-sidedness as well. His later thought has no place at all for vertical (which for him are also egotistical) ascents above the world. His spirituality is located entirely within the world, and this direction, which before his conversion was only one of the tendencies within which he lived, became the exclusive one. To quote Buber’s words in his book The Legend of the Baal Shem (1908), he chose to forego the “mystical feast“ that was beyond time and space in favor of the “mystical sacrifice” within time and space. If in Daniel one still finds—in the figure of Orpheus, who arranges the beasts around himself while playing music, and then enters into an ecstatic death—a certain echo of the legitimacy of an ecstasy that is outside of time and space, and in the description of the I that concentrates within itself, in the sources from 1914 on one no longer finds any descriptions not directed towards the project within the world. 3. Buber’s Essays “The Altar” and “Myth in Judaism” (1914) Buber’s 1914 “conversion,” described in the previous section, was given theoretical expression in two essays published that same year: “The Altar” and “Myth in Judaism.”11 In “The Altar,” the rainbow colors of the world are arranged around Jesus within the world, and from the world directed upwards. This essay is Buber’s interpretation of a triptych by Matthias Grünewald showing the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection. I shall cite this description in some detail, because it is clear that Buber wrote them out of intense emotion, and that the impression left upon him by the panting was in itself a kind of “conversion.”12

11 To these one should add his important essay “With A Monist,” which I discuss below (pp. 129, 147–149, 242, 306, 318, 319). 12 This triptych is found in the museum in the church in the city of Colmar in France. Concerning this painting, which greatly impressed him, Buber said: “That is the altar of the spirit in the West. Only the pilgrim who is summoned by its speech finds genuine access to it” (Buber, “The Altar,” 16).

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The central figures in the painting are Mary, Jesus’ mother, and Mary Magdalene. In “a night of life” the two suffering female figures stand before the crucified Jesus. These are “the twin souls of the world,” but “neither of them is the spirit of the world” (Buber, “The Altar,” 16). Their approach to the event of the crucifixion is different, but they nevertheless stand in mutual relation to one another. Mary the Virgin is wearing white and her eyes are closed, while Mary Magdalene is wearing various shades of red and her eyes are open. Above, in the central tablet, there is a band of angels without color: “Their glory is beyond color, united in the radiant light”;13 but when they approach the world of becoming each one assumes a particular color. Color, says Buber, is the “emanation of the many out of the one” (Buber, ibid., 17). This mystery of the heavenly light lacking in color is the primal first mystery. It is shown to us, but is not given to us. We cannot penetrate behind the multiplicity to find the living unity. If we remove the colours, we do not behold the light but only darkness, be this darkness ever so intoxicating and full of enchantment. He who puts on the white mantle [like Mary] is cut off from life, and he experiences the truth only so long as he shouts his eyes.14 Our world, the world of colours, is the world. (ibid., 17)

Mary Magdalene, by contrast, who wears various shades of red and whose eyes are open, is abandoned to the manifold things of the world, of a world that is conditioned, not free, without any ability to understand the unity of things. “If we do not strive to turn away from the actual and to deny the fullness of our experience, must we be dispersed in things and exiled to the conditioned? Must we for ever stray, then, from being to being and from happening to happening, incapable of grasping their unity?” (ibid., 17–18). The answer is given partly in the right-hand part of the triptych, in the event of the resurrection. Jesus appears there radiant, with an abundance of colors, in a background in which the light and darkness of the world intermingle:

13 As in the description in Daniel (57), the Divine and the demonic do not require direction, as they are exempt from the tensions of the world and from the challenge of unity that is imposed upon man. 14 That is, the white garment worn by the mother of Jesus expresses the desire to be beyond the world, a will that is also expressed in her closed eyes. This white is in essence the absence of color, not that white which is a higher synthesis of all the colors of the rainbow. On white light as expressing a mystical state of life outside of the world, see Buber, “God and the Soul,” 185.

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He [ Jesus] includes all hues of being in his unity of spirit, each tone pure and intensified, all fused in his world-uniting person. The shades are not iridescent; they sparkle in themselves, ranged round a higher self that has received them all, all colours and angels and beings, and bears them upward. That is the miracle of the coming to be of glory,15 the becoming of one out of the many: this is the other mystery. This mystery is ours, it is allotted to us. This all-coloured glory that opens and ascends in all direction, the glory of things, is the spirit of the earth. (ibid., 18)

Such a person perfects himself to greet the I of the world; “out of the strength of his world-embracing, [he] has himself become unified, a united doer.”16 Such a person does not reject anything. He purifies the world of multiplicity, the world of conditionality, the world lacking in freedom, and raises it unified to the heavens. “He loves the world towards the Unconditioned, he bears the world upward to its Self. He, the united one, shapes the world to unity” (ibid., 19). With this, the ecstatic chapter in Buber’s life, in the sense of life outside of time and space is completed. Buber recognized that in the previous period of his life he sometimes had a tendency to wear white with closed eyes. He now foregoes the secret of the Kingdom of Heaven for the secret mystery of the kingdom of earth. “The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, and the earth he gave to the sons of man” (Ps 115:16): from now on, any unity that is outside of time and space without the multiplicity of the world is mere appearance, as it is opposed to the will of God, since man does not encounter God but only himself. It was only a short path from here to the ideas expressed by Buber in his essay, “Spinoza, Sabbatai Zvi and the Baal-Shem” (1927): “This very teaching of man’s being bound with the world in the sight of God . . . was the one element through which Hasidism so overpoweringly entered into my life. I early had a premonition, indeed, no matter how I resisted it, that I was inescapably destined to love the world.”17

15 “Das ist das Wunder der Glorienwerdung,” which one might freely translate “but for this shall he who is praiseworthy be praised” (after Jer 9:23). 16 In German: “ein einig Tuender.” 17 Buber, “Spinoza,” 99. The heart was awake, but Buber knew that he was sleeping in relation to his own awakened heart. Comparison with Maimonides’ interpretation of Song of Songs 5:2 (“I am asleep, but my heart is awake; the voice of my beloved knocks”) can sharpen the direction of the new mysticism. According to Maimonides, God’s will is that man should sleep within this world and be awake in relation to the spiritual world. This was a special gift of the patriarchs, who were able to engage in their everyday labor while simultaneously be devoted to God. It is a kind of split

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As I have noted, this tendency already existed in the early Buber in germinal form, but he refused to acknowledge it. Until 1914 there was a contrapuntal tension within Buber between “without the world” and “with the world.” Here the tendency “with the world” was victorious, in a radical and total manner unprecedented among mystical figures within Jewish culture: “We live in an unredeemed world. But out of each human life that is unarbitrary and bound to the world, a seed of redemption falls into the world, and the harvest is God’s.”18 “Myth in Judaism”—Myth instead of Mysticism Whereas during the first decade of the twentieth century Buber still recognized a mysticism that was not alienated from the world and “saw in mysticism a guiding line and constant tendency in Judaism” (Scholem, “Buber’s Conception of Judaism,” 145), in the period discussed here mysticism ceased to serve this lofty purpose, and was replaced by myth. In other words, that which, according to Buber’s earlier definition during the first decade of the 20th century was included in the broad field of mysticism, was now (in 1914) transformed into myth, as opposed to mysticism. In his essay, “Myth in Judaism,” Buber presented myth as the vital element in religion,19 and Jewish monotheistic

personality, in which man’s spirit is attentive to the Divine while performing labor in this world with his limbs alone (Guide for the Perplexed III.51). But in Buber it is God’s will that man be awake to this world and asleep in relation to the spiritual world that is cut off from this world. The ideal of spiritual labor that extends to the secular world as well is also found in Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz’s Shenei Luhot ha-Berit in his interpretation of a midrashic passage, Lev. Rab. 35.1, on the verse “When I think of my ways I turn my feet to your testimonies” (Ps 119:59). In the Shelah’s interpretation, we learn that “Wherever King David wished to go to engage in his business there he went . . . but he said that the purpose of his business was to sustain synagogues and study houses” (quoted by Gries, Sifrut ha-Hanhagot, 214). But in Buber it would seem that love of the world is not “for the sake of sustaining synagogues,” but that for him the world itself was transformed into synagogues and study houses. 18 Buber, “Spinoza,” 112. In a similar mood, Buber wrote the same year in his essay “With a Monist” that he was not a mystic: “’No, [I am not a mystic] . . . for I still grant to reason a claim that the mystic must deny to it. Beyond this, I lack the mystic’s negation. I can negate convictions but never the slightest actual thing.” (“With a Monist,” 28) 19 “Every living monotheism is filled with the mythical element and remains alive only so long as it is filled with it.” (Buber, “Myth in Judaism,” 99).

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myth as that form of myth that places “the concept of the influence man and his deed have upon God’s destiny.”20 Much has been said about re-mythologization in Buber,21 and not enough attention has been paid to the fact that in this essay Buber simultaneously took a clear stance of de-mystification. Unlike Buber’s introduction to the Tales of Rabbi Nachman in which, as we said, he posited mysticism as the vitalizing element in religion and as the active element in the soul of the Jew, and the introduction to his book about the Baal Shem Tov, in which myth and mysticism dwell alongside one another (Buber, The Legend of the Baal-Shem, 9–13), in his essay, “Myth in Judaism,” Buber drew a clearly worked-out and deliberate distinction between myth and mysticism, with the tendency to reject the mystical and retain the mythic elements. We shall quote his words in full: To clarify our own understanding of the concept “myth” we can do no better than to start with Plato’s interpretation of this term: a narrative of some divine event described as corporeal reality. Consequently, an attempt to describe a divine event as a transcendent or psychic experience should not be called “myth”; a theological statement, whatever its evangelical simplicity and grandeur, or an account of ecstatic visions, however profoundly affecting, is outside the realm of the properly mythical.22

According to Buber’s definition of myth, following Plato, only that which is visible to the senses within this world can enter into the realm of the mythic, which is the vital element in religion. Hence, God’s appearance in concrete reality as described in the Bible (for example, in the Garden of Eden or at the burning Bush) falls under the rubric of myth, whereas the vision of the Shiur Komah (the “Divine body”), for example, is not myth. But what is important for our purposes is that state during the development of religion, described by Buber, in which, “True, YHVH Himself can no longer be perceived, but all His manifestations in nature and in history can be so perceived” (ibid., 105–106). Such a situation

20 Ibid., 106, and compare his similar words concerning mysticism from 1910 (“Judaism and Mankind,” 28). 21 Schwartz, Language, Myth and Art, 216–249; Levy, “Demythologization or Remythologization.” 22 “Myth in Judaism,” 95, and see ibid., 103: “We must designate as myth every tale of a corporeally real event that is perceived and presented as a divine, an absolute event.”

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reflects Buber’s faith: “It is fundamental to Jewish religiosity . . . to view all things as utterances of God and all events as manifestations of the Absolute” (105). From 1914 on, Buber understands Judaism in terms of his new approach towards life. He no longer sees God as outside of the world but only as He (God) enters within it; nor does he perceive him in a sensory way as walking in the garden, but feels His expressions in Nature and in History. He feels the mystery immanent in nature and in History—that is, God as present and speaking in historical events. The element of mystery remains implanted within Buber’s personality, only now it is, as we said earlier, the mystery of the earth (see on this below, Chapter 7). Later on, specifically, in his book I and Thou, Buber once again allotted—in his approach to revelation as well as in dialogic contact with “spiritual beings” (I and Thou, 57)—a place for Divine revelation and for the manifestation of the spirit even if not via the senses. Buber’s distinction between myth and mysticism is in fact artificial,23 because myth, as defined by Buber, is an organic part of the Jewish mystery and of mysticism in general, just as visionary mysticism is an organized part of the Jewish mystery and of mysticism in general. Myth is an inseparable part of mysticism, its immanent component, the “footstool of the Divine” viewed from below to above, and the lower edge of the Sephirotic tree in the glance from above to below. This artificial distinction on Buber’s part is akin to the artificial separation made by Buber in distinguishing between immanent devekut and transcendent gnosis, “that draws the map of the seventh heaven” (“Christ, Hasidism, Gnosis,” 243), as noted by Bergman (“Buber and Mysticism,” 306–308). In light of what we said above, the reason for these separations is clear: anything containing even the slightest trace of Divine worship outside of this world was seen as invalid in his eyes and, as mysticism tends to seek unity beyond this world, Buber needed to create a separation between mysticism and myth (“Spinoza,” 94–95). Only that which is related to activity in this world invigorates religion. Buber no longer has time to engage in those things that are outside of this world (Bergman, “Conversations with Buber,” 144), not even Gnostic knowledge of God. This was the dichotomy created by Buber

23 For another and broader way of defining myth in the mystical context and a comparison between the two approaches, see Koren, “Main Issues,” 180–202.

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between knowledge of God and devotion (devekut; Bergman, “Buber and Mysticism,” 306–308). It is also possible to describe the Buberian “conversion” from a psychological starting point. During his early mystical period, Buber frequently found himself in the psychological realm of mystical moods. In looking “upwards” he did not see any clearly defined figure or image, but only darkness24—albeit he felt and believed that there stands there the hidden figure of “the Great Thou.” In looking “downwards” he saw the earth stretched out before him from afar. Gradually, Buber was extended both “upwards” and “downwards.” Turning “upwards,” God becomes an independent and autonomous figure. This was no longer the image of God as drawn by the people in its creative imagination (Buber, “Judaism and Mankind,” 28), nor of man realizing God in the world through the power of his will,25 nor even of God as He is sensed in man’s emotional experience,26 but rather of God who stands before him as an autonomous presence. Simultaneously, Buber is drawn “downwards,” until that realm becomes the decisive one for him, and he recognizes man’s task and responsibility in the world: man as flesh and blood, rather than as an abstract entity in an experientialpsychological world. The God who has been seen as autonomous may only be found in this world, and not in the upper world. Thus, the mystery of heaven gives way to the mystery of the earthly world, as we have seen in “The Altar,” and the mystical vacates its place for the mythic. From this point, Buber not only abandons the attempt to meet God outside of the world and to establish unity there, but also abandons the psychological realm. Everything that is on the order of experience of God, taking pleasure from the Divine, everything connected with the world of man alone, is now seen as deserving of condemnation. Every realization within man, between man and himself, every emotion, must exist 24 “In quiet, lonely hours all our endeavors seem meaningless. There appears to be no bridge leading from our being to the great Thou (das grosse Du)—the Thou who we felt was reaching out to us through the infinite darkness. Then suddenly came this Erlebnis—and like a mysterious nuptial festival we were freed from all restraints and we found the ineffable meaning of life.” (quotation from Buber, translated in English in Mendes-Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue, 57–58). 25 Buber, “Jewish Religiosity,” 81–84. That is to say, no longer a God who is exclusively dependent on man’s ability of realization (see also Bergman, “Buber and Mysticism,” 303–304). 26 Buber, “Herut,” 153–154. In inner experience, man receives only himself and does not attribute reality to life (Mendes-Flohr, “Nationalism and Mysticism,” 89–92).

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within a wider framework. Feeling is of value only if it is perceived as an expression for something greater.27 So too the redemptive element in reality is transferred to the “intermediate realm” (Buber, Be-Pardes ha-Hasidut, “Introduction,” 6). This new world-view, or better, this new feeling of life, was carried over in full to his dialogical period. 4. The Dual Face of Inner Experience While the Buber critics saw the mysticism of the early Buber as based particularly on the principle of unity, and Buber himself, in his “Conversion,” emphasizes world-transcending ecstasy, in Paul Mendes-Flohr’s studies dealing with Buber’s transition from mysticism to dialogue, he emphasizes inner experience (Erlebnis) as the psychological means by which man realizes unity both in his own soul and in the world and perceives reality as a unity. As that psychological state known as “inner experience” is understood as bringing about a state of unity, MendesFlohr coined the term “Erlebniss mysticism” (From Mysticism to Dialogue, 49–50). In both the Introduction and the First Chapter of this book I have shown that the term “inner experience” in Buber is a problematic one, in that it crosses over various fields of experience.28 27 This idea appears in a unique way in I and Thou, where Buber states that the main thing in love is not the feeling, but feeling is the reaction of the individual to “the metaphysical and metapsychical fact of love. . . . Feeling one ‘has’; love occurs. Feelings dwell in man, but man dwells in his love.” (I and Thou, 66). 28 It was the German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911), under whom Buber studied at the University of Berlin at the end of the 19th century, who presented the notion of experience in the framework of his epistemology. In Dilthey, experience is a basic component in the course of human life, that bears a certain relation to cognition, even though it is not entirely identical to it. In his epistemology, Dilthey sought to characterize the categories of human cognition and the relation between them and the given world. For him, experience was a psychological state that was to be activated in relation to the various areas of life (personal events, human science and history). Experience is a unique way of relationship in which reality exists for us, that is to say, it includes both ourselves and the reality that exists for us. It is a process of our personal lives in which we do not stand as subject opposite an existing object that exists as contents outside of us; that is to say, in experience there is no separation between the apprehension and the apprehended, between the observer or the one contemplating and the object of his contemplation. It is connected more to human activity than to contents of something that is external to it, yet nevertheless it bears a certain relationship to the contents that it has absorbed. Hence it may be categorized as an epistemological tool. Unlike Buber, Dilthey did not at all understand experience in the sense of striving for unity or as a psychological realm in which one is meant to apply some form of activity whose aim is to bring about a change in reality.

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As Mendes-Flohr has noted, for Buber inner experience is not an a-priori state, but one that is to be realized. It is that which enables man to apprehend the world in its unifying motion,29 and enables him to “know” the world in a different way (Mendes-Flohr, ibid., 73). This, as opposed to the given state of consciousness (Erfahrung), by whose means man apprehends the world through his senses and his mind as a multiplicity, knowing it in a relative, external and limited way. But in practice—and rightly so—Buber’s principle of inner experience is understood by Mendes-Flohr in two different ways: (a) Inner experience as a psychological attitude that apprehends the object (or event) that man encounters along his life’s path in a different, more active, more inward and more unified way, compared with the ability of apprehension of regular consciousness. Inner experience thus relates to a reality that it apprehends (Mendes-Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue, 72–74). (b) Inner experience as a personal feeling, as a mood, as an inner strengthening of the soul—that is, as a subjective state of the soul that occurs within man and in man alone. Inner experience does not then relate to external reality, but remains within the private domain of the person—even though it may appear to him that it relates to a concrete reality, in that he is moved by it to take a certain stance in relation to the world, as happened to Buber during the First World War (Mendes-Flohr, ibid., 104–107). As Mendes-Flohr has shown, after the war Buber became aware of the problematic nature of inner experience. But whereas after the war Buber distinguished the dual nature of experience, Mendes-Flohr connected this to subjective feeling alone, which he identified with mysticism. Buber’s Complex Attitude to the Principle of Inner Experience The concept of inner experience is not at all a simple one in Buber, relating as it does simultaneously to an inner and outer event; as such, it is a subjective-objective attitude. However, a subjective-objective attitude towards reality is also valid regarding the state of I-Thou relation. That is, in the dialogic state a person does not apprehend an object, but rather an object that has become a Thou for his I in a unique way.

On the concept of experience in Dilthey, see H. N. Tuttle, Wilhelm Dilthey’s Philosophy of Historical Understanding; A Critical Analysis (Leiden, 1969), 17–21. 29 Mendes-Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue, 62; idem, “Buber’s Conception,” 269–270.

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The Thou as such does not exist outside of the I-Thou relationship, and therefore the I is always intertwined with the Thou. While both “inner experience” and “relationship” are problematic terms from the epistemological viewpoint, for Buber they are less so than the intellect, that only touches things in their external aspect, that abstracts them, and thereby deprives them of their reality (Daniel, 64; I and Thou, 55). By means of inner experience, by contrast, man goes beyond the externality of the object, but he gets there with his own unique subjective state, as is also the case in I-Thou relations. If inner experience relates in a mistaken way to the external world, one should not conclude from this that man has a better means of coming into contact with the external world, because through his intellect he is also liable to misjudge that with which he comes into contact. After Kant, Buber saw no more successful way of approaching reality, the thing in itself, than through this complex mixture of subject-object relations.30 Hence, for Buber inner experience is connected first and foremost with the question of the possibility of arriving at the closest possible contact with the concrete, and not necessarily with mysticism, and it (inner experience) is not even mentioned in the description of his 1914 “Conversion.” A complete phenomenological-epistemological identity between the state of inner experience and the dialogical state may be seen by comparing Buber’s words in his essay “Myth in Judaism” with those of a similar tone in I and Thou. Such a comparison teaches that Buber did not abandon the principle of inner experience in his dialogical period: In times of high tension and intense experience the shackles of this awareness fall off man: he perceives the world’s process as being supracausally meaningful, as the manifestation of a central intent, which cannot, however, be grasped by the mind but only by the wide-awake power of the senses, the ardent vibrations of one’s entire being—as palpable, multifaceted reality. (“Myth in Judaism,” 104) Every actual relationship to another being in the world is exclusive. Its Thou is freed and steps forth to confront us in its uniqueness. It fills the

30 The Author’s Preface to Daniel, with which we will deal further on, illustrates this well: “I pressed my stick against a trunk of an oak tree. Then I felt in twofold fashion my contact with being: here, where I held the stick, and there, where it touched the bark. Appearing to be only where I was, I nonetheless found myself there, too, where I found the tree” (Daniel, 47).

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firmament—not as if there were nothing else, but everything else lives in its light. (I and Thou, 126; emphasis in original)

We shall see below how the central intent of the pre-dialogical period became the sense of the Thou in the dialogic period (I and Thou, 61), and why. But even a simple comparison of these two passages reveals that in both cases one is speaking of entering into a unique state, cut off from the context of the things that surround it, and intensified to the level of an event. The fact of its being perceived through the totality of man’s powers indicates its complete identity to the state of the I in the I-Thou relation. To return to the issue of the relationship between mysticism and inner experience in Buber: it seems that, in Mendes-Flohr’s characterization, Buber’s abandonment of experiential-subjective (Erlebnis) mysticism during the course of the First World War was based exclusively upon the second definition of “inner experience”—namely, as a psychological-subjective component—and not in terms of its understanding as a subjective-objective epistemological relation allowing man intimate contact with reality (Mendes-Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue, 72–75). There is thus created a mixture between the experiential-emotional relation and mysticism, which he also identified with an experiential-emotional relation. I would like to focus matters further: the overlap created by MendesFlohr, in his paper “Buber: Between Nationalism and Mysticism,” between religious, nationalistic feeling and the principle of realization and its apprehension by means of inner experience, together with the connection he posited between inner experience as a subjective feeling and mysticism, which is also in principle subjective,31 led him to the conclusion that Buber’s abandonment of his patriotic religious feelings during the First World War constituted the biographical and ideological basis for his rejection of the principle of the mystical experience (that is, removing himself from the principle of inner experience and from that of unity). Buber’s critique of inner experience is thus directly connected (according to Mendes-Flohr) with his abandonment of mysticism.

31 “Before adopting the philosophy of dialogue . . . Buber’s main interest was in mysticism and in subjective ‘realization’ of the cosmic unity by the individual.” (MendesFlohr, “Nationalism and Mysticism,” 71). See also idem, From Mysticism to Dialogue, 113, and ibid., 72, where he refers to inner experience as “affective”—that is to say, emotional.

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But patriotic feelings, powerful as they may be, are not yet mysticism, but are at most indicative of a religious-Dionysian personality structure and of the influence of German romantic nationalism on Buber.32 As a rule, Buber’s mysticism was of an explicitly universal character, both in light of his involvement in the mysticisms of different religions and in light of his universal understanding of Judaism. Hence nationalistic mysticism, of the type found in more than a few Kabbalistic sources from the past, as well as in contemporary Israel, is not a widespread element in Buber. Similarly, the identification of inner experience with overflowing subjective feelings and with an exaggerated focus upon the I is inconsistent with the principle of inner experience (Erlebniss) found in Daniel, where it is not at all identified with subjective feeling confined to the individual but, to the contrary: inner experience allows man to live in an unconditional and free way and to strive towards a life of realization and unity, because only that person who is inner-directed and realized by means of inner experience is not bound by causality (Daniel, 91), not even by psychological causality. The person who is realized by means of his inner experience “forgets himself in order to practice realization according to his strength” (ibid.)—that is, he transcends his own narrow personal component. In Daniel, “inner experience” serves as an epistemological tool and an instrument for realization allowing a person to change the nature of reality, not only for himself but for reality itself. In the presence of the experience, God is realized within man and in the world, and in Daniel the God of experience is not the God of subjective feeling, but the real God,33 even if He is not yet called “The Eternal Thou.” One may of course argue, in light of Buber’s sobering from the principle of inner experience during the First World War, that he also rejected the concrete reality of experience as it is described in Daniel, and began to see in it a subjective feeling, and this was in fact the nature of his conversion during this period. However, this argument is inconsistent with Buber’s later words concerning his book Daniel

See on this Shapira, “Buber’s View on Nationality.” “And as the painter who singly wills the painting still accomplishes the work as an expression of the spirit and as witness of his daimon, so the soul itself that wills nothing else than genuinely to live from the ground and to establish reality transfigures the lived world in the light of meaning into a holy mirror in which the sign of primal being appears” (Daniel, 94). 32 33

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(see immediately below).34 True, Mendes-Flohr is correct in his assertion that it was only after the war that Buber began to criticize the principle of inner experience (“Nationalism and Mysticism,” 88–92), but this criticism was not directly related to the personal position that he took during the world war, but rather to the general tendency to focus upon oneself and on one’s own personal consciousness; against that tendency that does not go out from the soul to the world (“Replies to my Critics,” 712). Similarly, Buber’s stand during the war did not focus upon the soul, but rather was directed towards the world, as a social-ethical stance. Thus, Buber’s recoiling from his earlier position regarding the war was not a blanket criticism of inner experience, but derived from the awareness that the hero who experiences and realizes himself cannot be militant: that is to say, there is a danger that the realized experience will not carry the seal of truth of the eternal.35 One who acts from within his soul rather than from ready-made traditional principles is subject to the danger that he will not realize the truth, but rather himself alone. The problem of inconsistency with the seal of truth is not one of inner experience alone, or of mysticism, but is a problem of consciousness in general. His critics joining with Buber’s own hesitant position regarding the principle of inner experience was based upon a rationalist stance, very distant from that of Buber. But if Buber’s criticism of inner experience entails a certain covert criticism of his patriotic-militant stand during the war, the context of his criticism of inner experience encompasses, as we have said, far more, and is directed against those who accumulate experiences that turn God into psychological material, as he says in words directed against the world view of his own youth as well (“Replies to my Critics,” 712; and one must remember that the period of the First World War was hardly the period of Buber’s youth!), in which he understood religion in a psychologistic manner and did not base it upon the principle of reality. Moreover, from a broader perspective Buber’s critique of inner experience is only partial and conditional. In the Introduction, dialogical in nature, to his 1923 addresses (On Judaism, 3–20, at 7–8), immediately

Friedman, “Translator’s Preface,” and see also below, Chapter 4.1. The need for correspondence between the personal and the Divine seal as a basis for activity in different life situations is striking in Buber’s later ethical view, but it does not appear in his book Daniel, in which it is sufficient to direct the soul in order to determine its goal. This is a kind of ethical anarchism (Daniel, 57–58). 34 35

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after the publication of I and Thou, Buber rejected inner experience only when it was separated from life—that is, when it reflects a purely subjective personal feeling, a psychological reduction of the absolute. However, he did not rule out experience as an event (Ereignis) relating to the true God, thereby returning in practice, in 1923, to his position in Daniel, albeit expressing a certain reservation whose importance cannot be minimized. One must state that the attitude of the dialogical Buber to the principle of inner experience is complex and multi-faceted, at least as much so as his attitude towards mysticism, given that both phenomena were perceived by him as “threatening” the dialogical principle, specifically against the background of his closeness to them.36 Thus, in “Replies to my Critics,” Buber argued on the one hand that the dialogical principle per se derived from the principle of inner experience, but immediately thereafter stating that the dialogical principal emerged from his critique of the concept of inner experience and from his own radical self correction: “Erlebniss” belongs to the exclusive, individualized psychic sphere; “meeting,” or rather . . . “relationship” transcends this sphere from its origins on. The psychological reduction of being, its psychologizing, had a destructive effect on me in my youth because it removed from me the foundation of human reality, the “to-one-another.” Only much later, in the revolution of my thinking that taught me to fight and to gain ground did I win reality that cannot be lost. (“Replies to My Critics,” 712)

Here, it is true, Buber seems to completely reject inner experience and even relates it in a general and negative way to the dominant tendency—which during his youth was also his own tendency—to limit religious experience to the realm of the soul (Eclipse of God, 21–22). However, Buber’s attitude towards experience is far more complex, as we shall see, not only from his above-mentioned comments in the Introduction to his 1923 collection of addresses on Judaism, in which he limited his criticism of experience, but also from his later words to Friedman, according to which his book Daniel constitutes the cognitive background to I and Thou.37 This is a highly significant statement, as it is inconceivable that a book containing the cognitive background for I and Thou would contradict the dialogical principal. Buber’s view of

36 37

On mysticism as an exaggeration of relationship, see below, Chapter 5.2. Friedman, “Translator’s Preface” (written in 1963).

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this matter is supported by other sources as well. Thus, in his Introduction (1957) to the English translation of his collection of essays known as Pointing the Way, Buber declared that, with the exception of his essay “The Teaching of the Tao,” that expresses in his opinion an intermediary stage in the development of his work, he only included in this collection those essays which he was prepared to stand behind at this point in his life, namely, those essays in which he expresses “independent relation with being” (Pointing the Way, Introduction, xv). It follows from this that we must assume that Daniel represents at least a transitional stage, as does “The Teaching of Tao.” Thus, the principle of inner experience in Daniel cannot be in contradiction to “relation with being,” and hence we must assume that, even according to Buber’s later position, the principle of inner experience in Daniel is not a psychological reduction of the religious experience, and that not only does it not contradict the dialogical principle, but it lies at its very basis. And this is so, even as follows from the beginning of Buber’s remarks in “Replies to my Critics,” that he arrived at the dialogical principle through the principle of inner experience (“Replies to my Critics,” 711). In order to complete our presentation of the problematic of Buber’s attitude towards inner experience, I shall quote here his words in the essay, “The History of the Dialogical Principle”: The basic view of the twofold nature of the human attitude is expressed in the beginning of I and Thou. But I had already prepared the way for this view in the distinction presented in my book Daniel (1913) between an “orienting,” objectifying basic attitude and a “realizing,” making-present one. This is a distinction that coincides in its core with that carried through in I and Thou between the I-It relation and the I-Thou relation, except that the latter is no longer grounded in the sphere of subjectivity but in that between the beings. (“The Dialogical Principle,” 216)

The above discussion is conducted within the context of a presentation of the history of the dialogical principle, and therefore it is inconceivable that that which is common to both books would be limited to the presentation of man’s dual relation to reality in both books. Rather, inner experience must be posed against relationship, just as the objectivization of reality corresponds to the I-It relationship. We have here, therefore, a clear presentation of the problematic involved in Buber’s manner of presentation of things: on the one hand, the inner experience described in Daniel is subjective, but on the other hand, it makes the other present. On the one hand, it does not yet include the

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dimension of communication; on the other hand, it is opposed to the I-It just as is the I-Thou. Similarly, our analysis in the next chapter of the descriptions of unity in Daniel in comparison to the descriptions of the I-Thou relationship clearly exemplifies that Daniel is not subjective in the sense of a limited relation to the self alone or the limitation of experience to its framework. I therefore think that we must follow in wake of the dual aspect of experience as presented by Buber in the Introduction to his essays on Judaism. That is, we must distinguish between its two meanings: that experience that is directed inwards and that which is directed outwards towards the world and that establishes a subjective-objective relation. It follows from this that, from an overall perspective, Buber’s criticism of “inner experience” must be limited to that stage in which it revolves around the I, because it then closes man off to the world, but not when it deviates from his subjective personal life, that is to say, when it relates to the world. Hence, in my opinion, the development of Buber’s attitude towards the principle of inner experience should be seen as follows: (a) In his book Daniel (1913), experience serves as an epistemological tool of the highest order, by whose means man can know the world in an intimate way, unite it, be united with it, and thereby fashion it. (b) During the late 1910’s Buber realized that there is a tendency to identify inner experience with man’s preoccupation with his own self. Such self-involvement is in total contradiction to the life of society and to the essence of religion as “presence.” Rather than being involved with other human beings, man is immersed with what is aroused within himself as a result of what is done to him by others, and rather than dealing with his contact with Divine reality, he deals with his experience of God. Similarly, for Buber inner experience is connected with the relativistic understanding of the religious phenomenon of his day, that was based upon psychologization; in this way, the religious phenomenon was understood from the outset in terms of man’s relationship to himself (The Eclipse of God, 21–22). God is thereby “psychologized” (“Herut,” 153). The epistemological crisis that followed the First World War brought him to unequivocally emphasize the value of relationships between human beings as an expression of the wholeness of the human situation. (c) In his lectures on “Religion as Presence” (1922), Buber presented inner experience as a situation in which man feels his I in an intense way. In such a state, man does not say “I live, but rather: I am living this experience” (“Religion as Presence,” 50).

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This exaggerated self-sensitivity, expressed in an increased awareness of the experience of I, leads man to an exaggerated focus upon his subjective personal life, and is thus opposed to a standing opposite of a being that is not dependent on man. Religion is understood as “disjointedness of moments of the soul“ (ibid., 51), as a result of which the value of the religious phenomenon as an independent reality and as a relationship to a non-contingent reality also suffers. (d) In the 1923 Introduction to his addresses On Judaism, Buber again acknowledged that inner experience contains a potential for concreteness that is not only connected to subjective life: “An ‘experience’ (Erlebnis) is of concern to me only insofar as it is an event or, in other words, insofar as it pertains to the real God” (“Preface to the 1923 Edition,” On Judaism, 7–8). Buber returned to this position in 1963 in “Replies to my Critics,” although there he emphasized more the negative influence of inner experience in that it led to psychological reductionism of the religious phenomenon. In light of the “misuse” of the principle of experience, Buber refrained from making use of it in his book I and Thou, just as he was extremely cautious about basing the relationship on the world of feeling. Instead of the concept of “experience,” Buber made use of the term “confrontation,” or the speaking of the basic word I-Thou (I and Thou, 59). By this, Buber continued the tendency that he had emphasized in his lectures on “Religion as Presence,” not to attribute any powers to the soul which do not serve the potential of creating contact with the world. Because of the “misuse” of inner experience and the tendency to attribute it to the I alone, Buber chose to forego it in I and Thou and invented a new sense, “the Thou-sense” (ibid., 128). The sense of the Thou is that which establishes the I-Thou relationship on the part of man, because it is the psychological power that perceives things differently, fulfilling the same role as inner experience did in Daniel. Inner experience in Daniel and the Thou-sense in I and Thou are that which make God present in the world, and there is thus a substantive closeness between them.38 Whereas in Daniel man is realizing the experience, in I and Thou he is “working out and actualizing the innate Thou in what he encounters” (ibid., 119). But unlike

38 In his later essay, “The History of the Dialogical Principle,” Buber portrayed the realization in Daniel as “making-present one” (ibid., 216). That is to say, he did not posit a dichotomy between the principle of inner experience and that of presence, as he still identified within inner experience the possibility of an event that might be perceived in a subjective-objective manner and not a state of disembodied subjectivity.

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the inner experience, the Thou-sense cannot be something that relates to oneself alone, because by its very nature it relates to a Thou. It follows from this that the Thou-sense may be defined as the inner experience, after removing from it experience as a purely subjective feeling, that is to say, the exaggerated focus upon the I. And indeed, were the principle of experience not included in some way in the I-Thou, then Buber’s statements that Daniel represents the epistemological platform for his later teaching would not be correct. An explicit testimony to the phenomenological extension of inner experience bearing a dual aspect within his later thought may be found in the following retrospective description by Buber in his essay “Dialogue” (1932): When I was eleven years of age, spending the summer on my grandparent’s estate, I used, as often as I could do it unobserved, to steal into the stable and gently stroke the neck of my darling, a broad dapple-grey horse. It was not a casual delight but a great, certainly friendly, but also deeply stirring happening. If I am to explain it now, beginning from the still very fresh memory of my hand, I must say that what I experienced in touch with the animal was the Other, the immense otherness of the Other, which, however, did not remain strange like the otherness of the ox and the ram, but rather let me draw near and touch it. When I stroked the mighty mane, sometimes marvellously smooth-combed, at other times just as astonishingly wild, and felt the life beneath my hand, it was as though the element of vitality itself bordered on my skin, something that was not I, was certainly not akin to me, palpably the other, not just another, really the Other itself; and yet it let me approach, confided itself to me, placed itself elementally in the relation of Thou and Thou with me. The horse, even when I had not begun by pouring oats for him into the manger, very gently raised his massive head, ears flicking, then snorted quietly, as a conspirator gives a signal meant to be recognizable only by his fellow-conspirator; and I was approved. But once—I do not know what came over the child, at any rate it was childlike enough—it struck me about the stroking, what fun it gave me, and suddenly I became conscious of my hand. The game went on as before, but something had changed, it was no longer the same thing. And the next day, after giving him a rich feed, when I stroked my friend’s head he did not raise his head. A few years later, when I thought back to the incident, I no longer supposed that the animal had noticed my defection. But at the time I considered myself judged. (“Dialogue,” 22–23)

In this description the word “happening” (Ereignis) is used to describe the relationship of I-Thou, of subject–object. As we have seen, inner experience was of interest to Buber only “insofar as it was the descrip-

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tion of an event; in other words, insofar as it pertains to the God of reality . . . Intrinsically, what really matters is not ‘experiencing’ of life (Erleben)—the detached subjectivity—but life itself” (“Preface to the 1923 Edition,” On Judaism, 7–8). Indeed, in summarizing this event of dual-aspect communication with the horse, Buber writes: I term it reflexion [Rückbiegung] when a man withdraws from accepting with his essential being another person in his particularity—a particularity which is by no means to be circumscribed by the circle of his own self, and though it substantially touches and moves his soul is in no way immanent in it—and lets the other exist only as his own experience [Erlebnis], only as a “part of myself.” (“Dialogue,” 23–24)

This problem of returning to himself was not solvable in 1916 and, indeed, is not subject to solution at all, but pertains to the duality of human life: to the sublime melancholy of our existence, in which every Thou is destined to become an It, and in which after the establishment of a relationship man is likely to return to himself. It belongs to the circle of “to-and-fro” of life. As Mendes-Flohr has asserted, a certain distancing from experience is noticeable in Buber following the Second World War, but in practice, this was not a comprehensive distancing, but rather a certain setting of limitations by identifying its duality. The shortcoming in experience relates to its tendency to attach itself to its subject; its advantage lies in that it also applies to the pole of the Other (in our case, the horse), in that it takes part in an event, and thus takes part in reality by bearing the dialogical state. Since intellectual cognition alone cannot establish an event, it is only experience directed outward that supports it. For the dialogical Buber, experience is a “two-edged sword.” While the inward-turning experience oughtn’t to be identified with egotism, since withdrawing into oneself is a part of human nature, on the other hand, it is experience that both gives and takes, and it’s place makes all the difference. It seems to me that the Rabbinic aphorism, that only a small distance differentiates between Heaven (“dialogue”) and Hell (“return to the self ”) (Eccles. Rabbah 7.22), is perhaps a fitting image for the problematic involved in the principle of experience in relation to the of dialogic ideal. Returning to the question of the relationship between inner experience and mysticism, Buber’s relative rejection of inner experience is only indirectly connected with his rejection of mysticism. Buber’s criticism of the experiential attitude to religion in his lectures on “Religion as Presence” fit into the framework of his more inclusive criticism of

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relativistic approaches to religion, and less so to that of his critique of mysticism.39 In these lectures his criticism of mysticism is related to the problem of ecstasy and self-negation, and not to that of the subjectivity of religious experience (“Religion as Presence,” 91–99). The rejection of inner experience as excessive consciousness of the world of inner feeling relates to Buber’s conception of man, according to which everything that confines man to himself alone and every relationship which is a relationship to himself alone presents a distorted and one-sided picture of the human ideal (I and Thou, 119–120). Therefore, as I have noted, in I and Thou Buber attributes a secondary status alone to the world of feeling (93–95). For example, in Buber love is not a feeling, but feeling accompanies love: “Feelings one ‘has’; love occurs.”40 Buber’s rejection of mysticism is connected with other principles, as follows from his “conversion” in 1914 and from his expressions against mysticism since then. One might summarize them in two principles: the negation of the Self and the denial of the value of the world. Therefore, his abandonment of inner experience is an attempt to bolster that position which sees man’s relationship to himself as an unwitting existential disease, and his rejection of ecstasy and of mystical unity as an attempt to bolster that position that sees cutting oneself off from the world and the attempt to undermine the image of man as an existential illness, perhaps unwittingly. In his criticism of ecstasy and mystical unity, Buber sought to return to life, so-to-speak, from outside to within, while in his criticism of experience as personal feeling and psychologization of the religious phenomenon Buber sought to return to life from within outwards, to the world. The dialogue is to be found between these two poles. A connection between the rejection of inner experience and that of mysticism may perhaps be found in that place where he identifies the mystical state with man’s sinking within himself without deviating from it—and such a connection indeed exists. During his dialogical period, Buber completely freed himself of a psychological perception of religion, but with regard to mystical unity he actually expanded his earlier psychological position. For him, and as opposed to his earlier

39 The first three lectures deal with criticism of the view of the religious phenomenon as being relative; the criticism of mysticism only appears in the sixth lecture. 40 Buber, I and Thou, 66. On Buber’s understanding of love, see below, Chapter 10.

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position,41 in mystical unity man thinks that he is connected to the Primal Essence, but in truth he is only perceiving his own unified personal essence, which he projects upon the Primal Essence (“Dialogue,” 42–44). Thus, even though it seems to him that he apprehends the Divine, in practice it is only himself that he is apprehending.42 Here, unlike the case in inner experience, one is speaking first and foremost of self-delusion rather than of the desire to take pleasure from subjective modes, albeit such a desire may definitely accompany such an illusion, and only then does his criticism of inner experience join with his criticism of mystical unity. The element connecting between inner experience as a state that does not go beyond the human soul, and mystical unity or ecstatic experience that seeks God, be it within the soul or beyond the world, is rooted in man’s lack of decision on behalf of the world, which is also a lack of responsibility towards the world. Such a connection appears in Buber’s criticism, in his book I and Thou, of the establishment of certain kinds of psychological states which he considered legitimate in the book Daniel. I will deal with this issue in the next chapter. To summarize, it would appear that the term “experiential mysticism” is a problematic one when speaking of Buber, as one is speaking of two distinct fields that intersect one another. We may learn this, not only from analysis of these two concepts, but also from Buber’s biography. As we have seen, he abandoned ecstasy in 1914, and he already criticized that mystical unity which negates the polarities within the world in 1913, whereas he only criticized the principle of inner experience after the Second World War, and even then in somewhat reserved fashion. From his description of communication with the horse, we may infer that the danger seen to dialogue on the part of inner experience

See on this Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, 156, 203. “Now the soul imagines that the world has disappeared from between it and God, but with the world, God Himself has disappeared; only it alone, the soul, is there. What it calls God is only an image within it, what it conducts as dialogue is a monologue with divided roles; the real partner of communion is no longer there. . . . Having become aware of its alienation from God, the West did not seek to give its world-life the direction to God, but to enter into a world-free intercourse with God in mystical and sacramental exaltation.” (Buber, “Spinoza,” 95) Albeit, Buber notes there “the state of the soul accompanying the communion that makes itself independent, the devotion, the intention, the absorption, the ecstasy.” But its source does not lie in inner experience, in an initial will to focus upon the I alone, but rather upon an error which derives from the fact that “the soul wants to have to do with God alone” (ibid., 94). 41 42

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is immediate, as inner experience is tied to the dialogical relationship in the sense of it involving withdrawing to oneself. Hence, it would seem that the point of tension in Buber between inner experience and dialogue is not similar to that between mysticism and dialogue, since mysticism endangers dialogue in terms of two other aspects: the one congruent to experience in the sense that the person who wishes to realize unity within himself is liable not to leave the boundaries of his own self, while the second related to the fact that a person leaves himself too much—that is, as a result of his enthusiasm there occurs an exaggeration of the relationship. I shall address this complex issue in the fifth chapter.

CHAPTER FOUR

BETWEEN DANIEL AND I AND THOU: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL COMPARISON BETWEEN DESCRIPTIONS OF UNITY 1. Introduction In this chapter I wish to refute the dominant view among Buber scholars, that what differentiates Buber’s book Daniel (1913) from I and Thou (1923) or, more broadly, Buber’s earlier thought and his dialogical thought, is his approach to mysticism. It is my claim, that I briefly outlined in the introductory chapter, that the identification of Daniel with mysticism and I and Thou with its rejection is based more upon a semantic examination of the relevant passages in Daniel and I and Thou and less so upon a phenomenological examination thereof.1 The discussion of Buber’s manner of confronting the problem of multiplicity (above, Chapter 1.2) and the phenomenological examination of mystical descriptions in his writing indicated that Buber rejected the possibility of the existence of an absolute unity (unio mystica), and that the field in which his descriptions of unity in Daniel ought to be placed is that of moderate extroverted mysticism (identity in difference). Even though I touched upon this issue in Chapter Two, I wish to expand somewhat upon Buber’s rejection of unio mystica in Daniel, due to its importance for our subsequent discussion. Friedman discusses the contradiction between dialogue and mysticism in his “Preface” to his English translation of this book. Among the reasons which he enumerates for the publication of this book in English translation in 1965, he noted the following:

1 I refer here to the analysis of the descriptions of unity in Buber. As noted in the previous chapter, an exception to this is Paul Mendes-Flohr, who specifically analyzed Buber’s principle of inner experience and its sources. Even though from his analysis as well it follows that there is a contradictory tension between mysticism and dialogue, he does not base Buber’s mysticism upon the principal of unio-mystica. See on this §4 in this chapter.

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chapter four Daniel, better than any other single work, enables us to understand the significance of the transition Buber made from his early mysticism to his later philosophy of dialogue and the sense in which he did and did not retain elements of mystic immediacy and presentness even when he decisively discarded his philosophy of unity through realization for his philosophy of meeting what is over against us. (Friedman, “Translator’s Preface,” ix–x)

It would seem to follow from Friedman’s words that we are meant to understand that, on the one hand, Buber decisively rejected the philosophy of unification and, on the other, he preserved certain principles of immediacy and of mystical presence and rejected others. He does not say what kind of immediacy he preserved, nor what is meant by a mystical presence which Buber guarded and which stands in contradiction to the philosophy of unification. Friedman seems to have attempted to combine the perception of unity in Daniel, which he saw as mystical, with Scholem’s comment that Buber was and remained a mystic. The result is rather vague, specifically on a point on which one would have hoped for the maximum degree of clarity. This is so, because mystical unity that does not preserve or validate the presence of its individual components requires the negation of some or all of its components in the act of unity. The possibilities are the following: (a) that the I is negated within the world or within God; (b) that the autonomous existence of the world together with all its components is negated within itself, within the I, or within God; (c) that God is negated within the I or within the world; (d) that all of the above are obscured in their unity. As I have demonstrated in the previous chapters, Buber never advocated the negation of the I.2 One searches in vain for any essays from that period in Buber’s life known as the mystical, in which he rejects the autonomous standing of the self and strives for its negation, either within the being of God or within nature. Hence, in relating to the I’s integrative state, the early Buberian unity is no different than the dialogical state in which the I preserves its autonomy within the unity of relation. During this mystical period, the I was not swallowed up

2 Note Friedman’s remarks: “It is significant that Buber did not turn to mysticism, as so many modern thinkers since him have done, as the negation of the self and of personality” (Friedman, Buber’s Life and Work, 79). In Tales of Rabbi Nachman (1906), Buber stated that ecstasy in Hasidism does not mean limitation of the self, but rather its fulfillment within the absolute (The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, 11).

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within the world but, on the contrary: it finds within its unity its unique and specific direction within the vortex and multiplicity of the world (Daniel, 52–53, 56–57). In this unitive state, the I is even stronger than in its “normal” state. Whereas in its ordinary, normal state his orientation is defined from the outset, in the state of the directed soul man determines his own orientation (ibid., 57–58). The relation between the soul in its ordinary state and that of the self-directing soul is like that between the slave and the free man. In light of the fact that Buber research is cognizant of the principle of strengthening the I in early Buber, there is a surprising contradiction between the awareness that Buber sought to strengthen the I during his mystical period and ascribing to him a mystical unity that swallows up its components, including the I. Throughout all the periods of Buber’s work, “The word ‘I’ is the true shibboleth of humanity” (I and Thou, 115). In terms of the attitude towards the multiplicity of the world, Buber argued in his essay “With a Monist” (written in 1914, one year after Daniel and in complete agreement with what is written there) that he is not a mystic, because “I still grant to reason a claim that the mystic must deny to it. Beyond this, I lack the mystic’s negation. I can negate convictions but never the slightest actual thing” (“With a Monist,” 28). One who cannot negate the smallest thing can also not negate the world with all of its details. The attitude to the world in “With a Monist” and in Daniel is one of intensification of the existence of things, not of their negation. We have also seen that, in his dissertation, Buber identified with the idea that every individual thing has an absolute value and that realizing the potential of separate things helps the Godhead; the latter strives to be revealed within the things of the world, and is only able to be revealed within the world through realizing the potential of separate things, which is in fact its own realization within the world. Hence, Buber’s early position in relation to the multiplicity of the world was that, on the one hand, things in the world do not exist in strict separation—that is, that there exists in the world a movement toward unity—but that, on the other, they are not mixed together with one another, but are conditional upon one another in a mutual way (Friedman, Buber’s Life and Work, 78). Regarding the danger of blurring of the Divine in mystical experience, Avraham Shapira wrote the following: In [Buber’s early] writings there stands out the tendency towards elevation and celebration of creative individuality, on the one hand, and of longing for submergence (of that same individuality) within “all-encompassing

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chapter four Being,” on the other. The inner unity towards which he strives swallowed within itself the trans-human. It was not for naught that “there was a danger . . . that the Divine and the human would be confused with one another” in such a world-view, to cite the cautious language of S. H. Bergman. (Shapira, Hope for our Time, 79–80)

With regard to the status of the Divine (that is, the trans-human): as far as I know, the danger inherent in mysticism is not that of blurring the Divine. The mystic’s quest to attain the mystical state is based upon the fact that it is precisely in the non-mystical state that the image of God is obscured, even if things do not seem thus in terms of conceptual description of God. True, it is well-known that for Buber the image of God appeared as present reality only during the second half of the twentieth century—but I see no adequate reason to connect this to his early mysticism. The vast majority of mysticisms are not atheistic, and there are numerous mystics, both Jews and Christians, who regularly address their gods as Thou. Rivka Horwitz saw the appearance of the principle of confrontation in those lectures of Buber that preceded his book I and Thou as an expression of Buber’s removing himself from the mystical unity of Daniel and as drawing close to the dialogical principle: Both in the outline of 1918 [of his book I and Thou]3 and in Religion as Presence in 1922, he devised a philosophy of confrontation, which makes a movement away from his earlier inherently mystical striving for unity. Whereas in Daniel he advocated unity between man and tree,4 in the years after 1918 he came to reject mystical solutions, arguing that unity can never be attained and that man is left only with confrontation. (Horwitz, Buber’s Way, 193)

Horwitz’s comments imply that unity with a tree, as described in Daniel, contradicts the principal of confrontation, which is a precondition and preparation for the dialogical principle.5 It follows from this, that according to Horwitz, Buber’s earlier mystical unity upset the separate existence of things (of man and of he who is confronting and facing

See Horwitz, Buber’s Way, 6 See my discussion of this description of unity, below, §3.II. 5 It is worth noting that some scholars of mysticism saw the principle of the presence of God or of the One a central and important characteristic of mystical experience. See in Maréchal, and see also the words of Plotinus quoted in Underhill: “The consciousness of the one comes not by knowledge, but by an actual Presence superior to any knowledge” (“The Essentials of Mysticism,” 40). 3 4

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him). But in Daniel it is stated explicitly that the tree was at first “just a tree among trees” but afterwards became “the tree of eternal life” (Daniel, 54). From a phenomenological viewpoint, the descriptions of unity in Daniel do not at all contradict the idea of presence. One must therefore seek the reason for the appearance of the principle of confrontation elsewhere than in opposition to Buber’s mysticism in Daniel. I think that one should see these concepts of presence or meeting, as well as that of the intermediary area (between the I and the Thou), as strict means of defense used by Buber to assure the separateness of things within their unity. Hence he even substituted the concept of embracing (Umfassung) for his earlier concept of unity. Unio mystica, inner experience which takes pleasure in itself, and contact with God outside of the world and outside of man’s responsibility for the world, are the arch-enemies of these concepts. Therefore, I think that the difference between Daniel and I and Thou is not at all related to the mystical realm. The relationship between the two books is not one of opposition, but rather of change and development, expressed in the emphasis on the dialogical principle and its move toward the center. The main point of divergence between the two books—as between the different periods in Buber’s work—may be limited to the following: that in Daniel the dialogical principle has not yet been sufficiently explicated. Notwithstanding my awareness of the fact that one must relate critically to the manner in which Buber himself analyzes the development of his thought, I would like to reiterate that my claim that what distinguishes these two books is not mysticism receives confirmation from Buber’s later words about his book Daniel, as they were quoted by Maurice Friedman: This is an early book in which there is already expressed the great duality of human life, but only in its cognitive and not yet in its communicative and existential character. This book is obviously a book of transition to a new kind of thinking and must be characterized as such. (Friedman, “Translator’s Preface”)

One might have anticipated that, in light of Buber’s estrangement from his earlier mysticism, he would have defined the gap between these two books in terms of the rejection of the mystical principle in Daniel in favor of the supposedly opposed dialogical principle—yet this is not the case. The continuation of our discussion is intended to confirm Buber’s words, according to which there is no opposition between

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Daniel and I and Thou, but only the addition of a further layer: to the epistemological foundation of his thought established in Daniel, there is added a further, communicative layer, which is the dialogical level. Daniel thus establishes the cognitive structure which underlies I and Thou—but not only that, but also the vital and transformative foundation for the descriptions of unity in I and Thou.6 Both of these books are prophetic in terms of the emphasis they give to creative disquiet, to the Via Activa. It is worth citing, in this context, Agnon’s remarks about I and Thou, as quoted by Kurzweil at a congress held in honor of the hundredth anniversary of Buber’s birth: “He [Agnon] used two Hebrew words—rikuz atzum, enormous concentration or powers of concentration—that is to say that at that moment, which is of course passing, there is nothing else in the world for me but this I-Thou situation.”7 This intense concentration is also a fundamental point in Daniel, that emphasizes the direction of the soul with power and with strength. In everything that has been said thus far, there is no indication that I and Thou is a mystical book, but rather that the mysticism attributed to Daniel does not contradict the principle of presence and of dialogue, even though intense concentration, transience, and focusing upon one thing are among the most striking characteristics of mysticism. In continuing the discussion, we shall draw a comparison between the descriptions of relationship in I and Thou and those of unity in Daniel. Only an explicit proximity between them will be a suitable criteria for characterizing the descriptions of relationship portrayed there (in I and Thou) by the name “mysticism.” I shall deal with other mystical elements in I and Thou, and in Buber’s dialogical thought generally, in the next chapter of this book.

6 On Buber’s use of the term “vital unity” with regard to the dialogical state, see I and Thou: English edition, 135; German original, 102. In the Hebrew translation the phrase ‫ אחדותה החיותית‬is used (67). On the relationship between vital unity in relationship and the state of unio mystica, see below, Chapter 5.2. 7 “Discussion following Walter Kaufmann’s Lecture,” in Kaufmann, “His Failures and His Success,” 21.

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2. Daniel—The Neglected Book Many books and studies have been written about Buber’s thought. The majority relate to what is known as Buber’s dialogical thought (from 1922 onwards) and to Buber’s transition to the dialogical period per se, while only a relatively small number deal with aspects connected with his pre-dialogical writings, particularly his understanding of Judaism, including Hasidism. The focus upon Buber’s later thought relates to the fact that it is generally thought that Buber’s main contribution to philosophy—to both dialogic philosophy and to philosophical anthropology—is to be seen in the dialogical period, and that this is also understood as Buber’s main contribution to culture in general, that is, to the understanding of man’s nature as a dialogical and social being. His earlier writings, in which, in Buber’s own words, he had not yet entered into “an independent relationship with being,”8 were pushed aside and were not translated into either English or Hebrew. These essays are seen by Buber scholarship as relevant to the understanding of his later, mature thought in only a limited way and as lacking in culture value in comparison to his later thought. At most—thus it is thought—they are of value for the light they may shed upon the transformation and development which took place in Buber’s spiritual biography.9 Against the background of this stance, that focuses upon Buber’s later thought, one may understand why one of Buber’s major books, Daniel (1913), has been almost completely neglected. The book was written nine years before Buber wrote the final version of I and Thou and five years before he began to sketch its general features. One may see therein the essence and summary of his pre-dialogical thought.10 Daniel therefore occupies an intermediary stage, as Buber allowed it,

Buber, Pointing the Way, Introduction, xv. As follows from what I wrote earlier, his not entering “into an independent relationship with being” ought not necessarily to be identified with mysticism, but rather with the non-discovery of the dialogical principle during the period when Daniel was written. The identification of lack of an “independent relationship with being” with mysticism is one possibility, but not necessary. Indeed, Buber also ascribed philosophy, which for him is not at all connected with mystical states, with lack of a direct and independent relationship with being. 9 This position is expressed, for example, by Barzilai, Homo Dialogicus. 10 Friedman, “Translator’s Introduction,” 7. On the one hand Friedman presented Daniel as a book that summarizes Buber’s earlier essays, while on the other hand describing it as representing a period of existentialist-mystical transition towards his dialogical work. These two statements are not easily reconciled. 8

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as we have seen, to be translated into English with the addition of an explanation by the translator of its unique status as a book reflecting a certain transitional period.11 Two of the five reasons listed by Friedman as reasons for its publication in English relate to its marginal importance. Second, there are many elements in Daniel that have remained, albeit in a more sober form, in Buber’s later thought . . . Fifth, and most important of all, while some of Daniel seems definitely dated, not only in thought but in spirit and style, much of it is still of genuine value both as literature and as philosophy. Now that Martin Buber’s I-Thou philosophy is too well known for anyone to confuse Buber’s life of dialogue with mystical union, we can safely appreciate what in Daniel may speak to our condition and even use it as a steppingstone to the more mature but, by the same token, more condensed poetical-philosophical classic I and Thou. (Friedman, “Translator’s Preface”).

But while it was recognized that Buber, in the book Daniel, presented man’s double contact with being and that, as mentioned, the book carries an existential tone, and in these respects there is a certain considerable structural and conceptual similarity between it and man’s dual connection with the world in Buber’s dialogical work; nevertheless, this did not have much influence on the interest in Daniel. The opposite is the case: man’s dual contact with reality in I and Thou is understood as a more reliable and updated version, compared with Daniel. Daniel is of purely historical value, as a milestone, located in a period during which Buber’s thought was not yet fully sober and matured. Indeed, one might ask to what extent Buber’s I and Thou is a sober and mature book. Towards the end of his life, Buber commented that he wrote the book “under the spell of an irresistible enthusiasm. And the inspiration of such enthusiasm one may not change any more, not even for the sake of exactness. For one can only estimate what one would gain, but not what would be lost.”12 Kaufmann commented in response that in I and Thou there is a certain in-authenticity that “approximates the 11 On the one hand, Buber allowed Daniel to be translated, while on the other hand, if one is to rely upon the oral testimony quoted by Simon, Buber admitted that he was “essentially no longer interested” in the book (Simon, “Scholem and Buber,” 248–249). Nevertheless, as we shall see below, he added to it in the course of time a dialogical “Preface” in order to create a certain continuity between it and his later dialogical thought. 12 Quoted from Kaufmann’s written lecture, “His Failures and His Victory,” 9. This originally appeared in the volume of the Great Philosophers Series, in Buber’s response to his critics.

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oracular tone of false prophets” (Kaufmann, “His Failures and His Victory,” 8). “By associating [I and Thou] with a kind of ecstasy . . . he [Buber] provided philosophical justification for excessive subjectivity, illusions, and murkiness” (Kaufmann, ibid., 18). In light of Buber’s remarks, it would appear that both of these two central books are completely lacking in maturity. I do not know on what Kaufmann based his words regarding an “inauthentic tone” in Buber, but his comment regarding the “oracle” should, to my mind, be taken seriously. I observed in the introductory chapter to this book that Buber is not a philosopher. The criticism regarding unclear formulations in Buber and the desire to make them clearer are justifiable from both a philosophical and a general viewpoint, but this, on condition that one does not wish to turn his work into something that it is not. Such an attempt will lead to unbalanced criticism of Buber, based upon a gap in expectations. 3. Images of Duality and Unity in Daniel and Their Development in I and Thou I. Dialogical Unity and Non-Dialogical Unity One may distinguish in Daniel three descriptions of unity between the I and those things that are distinct from it in concrete reality: the description of the unity with the tree, the description of the unity with a stone, and the description of the encompassing of the oak tree by a man. The first two were cited above in Chapter Two, where I drew a comparison between them and the description given by Stace in Mysticism and Philosophy to characterize extroverted mysticism. In this section I shall not address the question of the nature of the mysticism within Daniel, as I have already dealt with that issue, but rather with their relationship to the descriptions of relationship in I and Thou. The book opens with a description of an oak tree being encompassed by a man. Even though Buber added this Preface at a later date, when his dialogical thought had already matured, it ought, in my opinion, to be seen as an explicit sign of the continuity between the book Daniel and the beginnings of the dialogical principle:13 13 Simon saw this addition as “a kind of distortion” on the part of Buber, one that “gave the book a forced explanation” (Simon, “Scholem and Buber,” 249). This was so, because for Simon there was an unbridgeable gap between Buber’s early work and

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chapter four I pressed my stick against a trunk of an oak tree. Then I felt in twofold fashion my contact with being: here, where I held the stick, and there, where it touched the bark. Appearing to be only where I was, I nevertheless found myself there, too, where I found the tree. At that time dialogue appeared to me. For the speech of man, wherever it is genuine speech, is like that stick; that means: truly directed address. Here, where I am, where ganglia and organs of speech help me to form and to send forth the word, here I “mean” him to whom I send it, I intend him, this one unexchangeable man. But also there, where he is, something of me is delegated, something that is not at all substantial in nature like that being-here, rather pure vibration and incomprehensible; that remains there, with him, the man meant by me, and takes part in the receiving of my word. I encompass him to whom I turn. (Daniel, 47)

True, this dialogical description is unusual in Daniel. Nevertheless, I think that it confronts us with the simple fact that every other mystical description in Daniel which involves unity and which contradicts the description of encompassment in the opening picture would imply a deep contradiction within the book; a contradiction that even an outlook assuming the organic unity of a book that encompasses such contradictions would find it difficult to resolve.14 Even though we are speaking of a late addition, it is difficult to attribute to Buber, as Simon has done, an act of such sloppy distortion as expressed in the combination of an opening picture that stands in such total contradiction to descriptions appearing within the body of the book. Similarly, the book itself is written as a dialogue, and it is therefore difficult to assume that the descriptions and overall world-view of the book contradict the basic pattern that was chosen for it. The analysis of this dialogical description and its comparison to two further descriptions of unity in Daniel will assist us in understanding the nature of the transition from Daniel to I and Thou. This dialogical description from Daniel unites two important principles for the understanding of Buber’s dialogical thought, which I would like to distinguish in order to trace the development of Buber’s thoughts from Daniel to I and Thou: (a) The I of man can extend beyond itself, because something of him is emanated, “pure vibration and incomprehensible.” Man has a

his later work, as well as between his earlier mysticism and his later thought, even if the latter still had something of a mystical quality. (Simon, ibid., 250). 14 On organic unity in Buber, see Shapira, Hope for Our Time, 196.

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shrunken and limited I, but the possibility exists that this I may extend beyond its regular given boundary. A person’s I is then not confined to the narrow boundaries of his body, but extends above and below and in every direction in which he wishes to turn (Daniel, 50–51). This extension of the I into the world is not physical, but trans-physical, but it does not depart from connection to the concrete world. In such a state it is no longer possible to speak of a subject and object in the empirical or scientific sense of the word, because there exists therein a degree of mixture—albeit this mixture does not obscure the separate existence of those who take part therein. (b) The principle of dialogic relation is a consequence of the principle of extension of the I and of its continuation. In his book I and Thou, Buber does not turn his back on the principle of the extension of the self, as for example in mentioning its unity with the translucent stone (Glimmerstück), a unity which he described in Daniel (Daniel, 140–141). He noted that, when gazing upon the stone, he understood that the I is not something that exists within himself alone (I and Thou, 146–147). That is, Buber recognized the possibility that the I extends towards the object that appears before it, and that this extension encompasses the object by blurring the sharp boundary lines of subject and object, while maintaining their distinct existence. One might further say that the dialogical state in principle indicates the extension of the I beyond its regular given state. If this were not the case, Buber would not be able to say that “man becomes an I through a You”15—that is, the whole and inclusive I, the authentic I, is that which finds itself, not within itself, but within the Thou that is confronting it. Meeting means, first and foremost, man’s extension beyond his given primary boundary. The question which I wish to present here is: does the principle of extension of the I inevitably require the appearance of the dialogical state, or is one speaking of two different stages? That is, is it possible that there might appear only the first stage of extension of the I without the second stage that establishes the dialogical relationship?

15 Buber, I and Thou, 80. If this statement that the I becomes I through or in the Thou is based upon experience, it bypasses the intermediate realm, which is that which seemingly prevents complete unity. I noted above that I see the principle of an intermediate stage between the I and the Thou as a kind of security fence drawn by Buber, more than it is a principle that contradicts the descriptions of unity with which we are dealing here.

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A positive answer to this question will support the distinction that I have posited between two different stages in the establishment of dialogue, that of the extension of the I and that of the establishment of the dialogical relationship—which, indeed, follows from examination of the description of unity with the translucent stone in Daniel and from Buber’s criticism of this unity in I and Thou. The description of unity with the stone in Daniel includes in practice two different states of unification, both of which were criticized by Buber in I and Thou. I will once again quote the passage from Daniel, in full: On a gloomy morning I walked upon the highway, saw a piece of mica lying, lifted it up and looked at it for a long time; the day was no longer gloomy, so much light was caught in the stone. And suddenly as I raised my eyes from it, I realized that while I looked I had not been conscious of “object” and “subject”; in my looking the mica and “I” had been one; in my looking I had tasted unity. I looked at it again, the unity did not return. But there it burned in me as though to create. I closed my eyes, I gathered in my strength, I bound myself with my object, I raised the mica into the kingdom of the existing. And there, Lukas, I first felt: I, there first was I. The one who looked had not yet been I; only this man here, this unified man, bore the name like crown. Now I perceived that first unity as the marble statue may perceive the block out of which it was chiseled; it was the undifferentiated, I was the unification. . . . (Daniel, 140–141)

As mentioned, this passage includes two different states of unity: the one directed towards the external world and the second towards man’s interiority. I will first refer to Buber’s critique of the first stage, that which is directed outwards, which relates to the principle of extension of the I. Even though Buber acknowledged, in I and Thou, the legitimate possibility of extension of the self beyond the boundary dividing between subject and object, in the later book he criticized the state which in Daniel he saw as a legitimate one: There is so much that can never break through the crust of thinghood! O fragment of mica, it was while contemplating you that I first understood that I is not something “in me”—yet I was associated with you only in myself; it was only in me, not between me and you that it happened that time. (I and Thou, 146–147).

Buber’s criticism of the psychological state that allowed unity with the translucent stone does not center upon his critique of mystical unity, upon the possibility of attaining it per se, or the necessity of its attain-

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ment, but rather upon the fact that his relationship to the stone did not raise it from the level of an object to the level of a being. To use Buber’s dialogical language, one would say that the stone remained an It. Buber’s criticism is on his focusing upon himself alone. Even when he understood that he was united with the stone, what interested him was not the communication with the stone per se, but what happened to his I while he was gazing upon it. He focused upon his pleasure from the state involved in unification with it. In this respect, this selfcriticism completely corresponds to his criticism in I and Thou of Eros which is not based upon a true dialogic relationship: Indeed, take the much discussed eroticism of our age and subtract everything that is really egocentric—in other words, every relationship in which one is not at all present to the other, but each uses the other only for self-enjoyment—what would remain?16

Such Eros, like gazing upon a translucent stone, is not really a dialogue but a monologue. In such a state “There a lover stamps around and is in love only with his passion. There one is wearing his differentiated feelings like medal-ribbons. There one is enjoying the adventures of his own fascinating effect.” (“Dialogue,” 29) What seemed a direct criticism of the mysticism in Daniel is in fact a criticism of the person who is closed off within himself: his satisfaction with self-pleasures, whether of the spirit or of matter. This selfcriticism of Buber supports the distinction which I have drawn between the principle of extension of the I and that of the establishment of the dialogical state. There are times when the I is extended, but it does not attain relationship and does not develop into a relationship of responsibility towards the world. Even an extended I may remain within itself, if it is only interested in itself. A psychological state of this type, identical with a concentration upon the experience that leaves man with himself alone, is intolerable for the dialogical Buber, but is also quite rare in Daniel. Thus, the identification of Daniel with spiritual egoism does an injustice both to the book and to its author. I therefore argued at the beginning of this chapter that the difference between Daniel and I and Thou lies only in this: that in Daniel the dialogical principle had not been sufficiently clarified. That is to say: in Daniel

16 Buber, I and Thou, 95. Regarding Buber’s relation to Eros, see below, Chapter 10.7–8.

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Buber was prepared to be satisfied with the realization of the spirit in reality, through the establishment of variant psychological states, even without the explicit establishment of the dialogical state, whereas in I and Thou he was no longer satisfied with this. In any event, the case of his gazing upon the stone and the unity with it not for its own sake is unusual in Daniel. Let us now turn to the second half of the description of unification with the stone in Daniel, namely, the unity of the soul within itself. In Daniel, Buber did not refer to this state as mystical, but in I and Thou he did attribute the establishment of such a unitive state to mysticism, and accepted it with a certain reluctance, that is to say, conditionally.17 Acceptance of these reservations regarding inner unification may serve as a kind of summation for my claim that mysticism in Daniel is not connected to self-nullification, and therefore the criticism of the experience involved in unity with the mica stone is a criticism of the fact that man suffices unto himself: I know not only of one but of two kinds of events in which one is no longer aware of any duality . . . First, the soul may become one. This event concurs not between man and God but in man. All forces are concentrated into the core, everything that would distract them is pulled in, and the being stands alone in itself and jubilates, as Paracelsus put it, in its exaltation. This is a man’s decisive moment. Without this he is not fit for the work of the spirit. With this—it is decided deep down whether this means preparation or sufficient satisfaction. Concentrated into a unity, a human being can proceed to his encounter—wholly successful only now—with mystery and perfection. But he can also savor the bliss of his unity and, without incurring the supreme duty, return into distraction. (I and Thou, 134)

This gathering inward of the I corresponds to Buber’s descriptions in Ecstatic Confessions, as well as to the description of inner unification in Daniel. Buber, who sought with all his might not to emphasize man’s relationship with himself, nevertheless acknowledged that, without inner concentration of the powers of the self, man “is not fit for the work of the spirit” (I and Thou, 134), since only a unified I that is uttered with all of man’s being is fit for the establishment of relationship. Inner unification appears here as both a precondition and preparation for the expansion of the I, just as the expansion of the I is a precondition and preparation for the establishment of the 17

I again discuss this point and the following quotation in Chapter 5.2.

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dialogic state—that is, for encompassing the Thou. In essence, we have here three stages: inner unification, turning outwards of the I, and encounter. Thus, not only stages of unification moved in toto to the I-Thou, but also the transformative element in the I, which is such a vital component in Daniel. Without inner concentration of the forces of the soul, without “tremendous concentration,” as in the words of Agnon mentioned earlier,18 a person will not be prepared for the work of the spirit. However, a person can choose to remain by himself and not to go out towards the encounter, just as he can go out towards the world but be interested only in his own state vis-à-vis the world and not in the world itself. A person can choose not to accept the supreme obligation towards the world, namely, his dialogic commitment. As I have noted, a unification that is rooted in the extension of the I does not require the establishment of dialogue. It seems to me that it is on this point that the dialogical Buber’s critique of inner experience as personal feeling is focused, alongside his critique of the doctrine of inner immersion and unification. Wherever the I remains in its inner world, whether in focusing upon its own personal experience or upon its state in relation to the world, which is also a kind of focusing upon its own experience, it misses the purpose for which it came into this world: namely, to engage in redemptive action within the world, through contact between the I and the Thou (I and Thou, 130, 134–135). Inner or self-immersion is legitimate when it has some sequel, expressed in the establishment of dialogical relationships within the world. Buber’s reservations regarding the description of unity with the stone, in its two different stages, is a critique of spiritual egoism, but such egoism, as we noted, does not suit the book Daniel. The greater part of Daniel does not at all express an egoistic position and does not leave an opening for criticism of this type. To use Friedman’s words, in Daniel Buber is “the prophet of realization,” and realization of the Divine in the world is an act of heroism and not of egoism. II. Man’s Unity with the Tree and the Physician’s Unity with His Patient I wish to return to the description of unity with the tree in Daniel, which has been presented in Buber’s scholars as a form of mystical

18

Above, near the mark for footnote 7 in this chapter.

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unity, and to compare it with the description of dialogue in I and Thou, in order to support my claim that one ought not to bring proof from Buber’s early use of the term unity in order to indicate a mystical unity opposed to the dialogical situation: And now seek to draw near to this stone pine itself . . . Rather, with all your directed power, receive the tree, surrender yourself to it. Until you feel its bark as your skin and the springing forth of a branch from the trunk like the striving in your muscles; until your feet cleave and grope like roots and your skull arches itself like a light-heavy crown; until you recognize your children in the soft blue cones; yes, truly until you are transformed. But also in the transformation your direction is with you, and through it you experience the tree so that you attain in it to the unity. . . . and around your direction a being forms itself, the tree, so that you experience its unity, the unity. Already it is transplanted out of the earth of space into the earth of the soul, already it tells its secret to your heart, already you perceive the mystery of the real. Was it not just a tree among trees? But now it has become the tree of eternal life. (Daniel, 54)

In this description too, the I is I and the tree is a tree, even if the two of them have undergone transformation and even if the man, as it were, flows towards the tree and feels its bark as if it were his own skin. There is no negation of reality or total unification here, but rather expression of a state of “identity in difference.” In terms of the phenomenology of unity, this description is not different from that of man’s contact with a tree in I and Thou, about which Buber noted that it “has to deal with me as I have to deal with it.”19 It would therefore seem that this unitive description from Daniel was transferred in whole to the dialogical period, and it may well be that it is itself dialogic in nature, even if Buber did not call it such in Daniel, since the dialogical principle, as I have argued, had not been fully articulated in Daniel. A description of intimate closeness similar to that of the tree reappears in I and Thou in the encounter between the “genuine psychotherapist” and the patient whom he treats.20 The true therapist is one who:

19 Buber, I and Thou, 58. While Buber wished to emphasize the asymmetry in the mutuality existing in the realm of nature, but notwithstanding this asymmetry does exist between both sides a certain aspect of connection, of “mine” and “his/ its.” That is to say, the relation between the two entities is not expressed in observation alone, but in connectedness. On the I-Thou relation as one of attachment (devekut) and its comparison to the ideal of devekut in Hasidism, see below, Chapter 8. 20 This quotation is from the “Afterword” to I and Thou, which Buber added to it in 1957, in order to clarify his outlook in relation to certain questions and ponderings that had been addressed to him over the course of forty years (I and Thou, 171). Hence,

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grasps with the profound eye of a physician the buried, latent unity of the suffering soul, which can be done only if he enters as a partner into a person-to-person relationship, but never through the observation and investigation of an object . . . The therapist, like the educator, must stand not only at his own pole of the bipolar relationship but also at the other pole, experiencing the effects of his own actions. (I and Thou, 179)

One might say metaphorically, using the language of Daniel, that the true therapist must feel the patient’s skin as if it is his own—that is, that without losing his own inner center, his own directed soul, he must feel his distress as if it is his own distress. The description of unity with the tree in Daniel and the description of dialogical unity with the patient are one and the same, and both of them fit the dialogical description with which Daniel opens, according to which “Appearing to be only where I was, I nonetheless found myself there, too, where I found the tree” (Daniel, 47). 4. Between Daniel and I and Thou In this chapter I have attempted to demonstrate that there is a significant contradiction between the manner in which Buber scholars have characterized the mystical phenomenon in terms of its place in Buber’s thought and the descriptions of unity in Daniel. This contradiction casts a pale over their understanding of the transition from Daniel to his dialogical work, because it sets up an imagined contradiction between Buber’s early mysticism—and mysticism in general—and his dialogical thought. I reached this conclusion because, in comparing the descriptions of “unity” in the two books, it became clear to me that what separates between them is not mysticism. This comparison indicates that, even though Buber made little use in I and Thou of the term “unity,” using in its stead the term “presence,” there is no significant difference between them.21 Moreover, if we define mysticism in terms of the extreme criterion of unio mystica, that is, of negation of all things within a single all-encompassing unity, any discussion of mysticism in Buber, at any stage of his work, is totally irrelevant. Moreover:

these things ought to be seen as an expression of his more mature thought, both from a chronological and an ideological viewpoint. 21 I again wish to note that the principle of presence, specifically, is dominant in the study of Christian mysticism.

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since no one questions that Daniel is a mystical book, and since Buber himself has claimed that there is a significant relationship between the two books—a claim confirmed in this chapter—then only the creation of a direct and on-going relationship between the two books allows us to attain a full and proper understanding of his dialogical thought. We are of course allowed to assume the existence of philosophical-dialogical thought that is not mystical but, on the basis of what has been said here, this is not the case in Buber’s dialogical thought. In the above statements, I certainly am not attempting to argue that Daniel and I and Thou are in any sense identical and thereby deny the authenticity of I and Thou or, alternatively, to detract from the significance of his book Daniel. Rather, what I mean to say is that what divides between them is not mysticism, and that I and Thou relies upon Daniel. The difference between the books and the uniqueness of I and Thou lie in the following: that the dialogical principle is added in an organic way to the principle of unity found in Daniel, and is embedded therein.22 This is done in such a manner that, on the one hand, the dialogical relationship is constructed out of the unity that carries it and, on the other, from the dialogical I that leaves the confines of its own self and extends itself towards the Thou by embracing it (see below, Chapter 5.3). It follows from this that, in I and Thou, we again encounter the ecstatic and transformative characteristics that were found in Daniel, only now they have become an inseparable part of the world of dialogical terms and dialogical states. Buber’s dialogical thought is presented, therefore, as thought pertaining to the alternating states of the I, through “basic words [that] are spoken with one’s being” (I and Thou, 54) and that “by being spoken they establish a mode of existence” (ibid., 53). To borrow Buber’s words about Hasidism, that it is mysticism became ethos, the same might be said regarding the relation between these two books: Daniel is Buber’s mystical book while I and Thou is his mysticism become ethos—without belittling the mystical element therein. In the introduction to this book, I argued that certain mystical elements were added to Buber’s thought specifically during the period of his dialogical thought (with which I will deal in the next chapter).

22 One could also state that from the opposite direction, that is, from later to earlier: that is, that the dialogical principle absorbed to itself the descriptions of unity in Daniel.

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There is, on the other hand, a certain mythical-mystical element that is very much dominant in Daniel and less strongly felt in I and Thou— namely, that of the insecure nature of reality, of it being “the kingdom of danger and of risk” and “the kingdom of holy insecurity” (Daniel, 95). As noted, this element of reality also appears in I and Thou, albeit with a certain conceptual change, but after already being presented in Daniel, in I and Thou it retreats somewhat to the background of the discussion, as part of the framework upon which the dialogical state rests: What has to be given up is not the I but that false drive for self-affirmation which impels man to flee from the unreliable, unsolid, unlasting, unpredictable, dangerous world of relation into the having of things. (I and Thou, 126)

And also: . . . an ordered world is not the world order. There are moments of the secret ground in which world order is beheld as present. Then the tone is heard all of a sudden whose uninterpretable score the ordered world is. These moments are immortal; none are more evanescent. They leave no content that could be preserved, but their force enters into the creation and into man’s knowledge, and the radiation of its force penetrates the ordered world and thaws it again and again. (I and Thou, 82)

Just as in Daniel there appears a figure who heroically realizes the spirit within the dangerous reality, so too in I and Thou, man appears within the unexpected and unorganized reality in a heroic manner: “The deed involves a sacrifice and a risk. . . . the work does not permit me, as a tree or man might, to seek relaxation in the It-world; it is imperious: if I do not serve it properly, it breaks, or it breaks me.” (I and Thou, 60–61)

CHAPTER FIVE

BUBER’S MYSTICISM DURING THE DIALOGICAL PERIOD: UNITY, ECSTASY AND INCLUSIVENESS Creation—happens to us, burns into us, changes us, we tremble and swoon, we submit. Creation—we participate in it, we encounter the creator, offer ourselves to him, helpers and companions. (Buber, I and Thou, 130)

1. Introduction The change that occurred over the years of Buber’s work was not only in his mysticism per se, but also in his way of defining mysticism. As we have seen above (Chapter 1.4), during the first decade of the twentieth century Buber characterized mysticism by means of two paradigms, positive and negative. From the beginning of the second decade, he began to characterize it by means of only one, negative paradigm, albeit removing it from the unique psychological state that he wished to foster. From 1913 on in particular, Buber criticized mysticism quite sharply, no less so than would a rationalist. Thus, in his essay “With a Monist” (1914), he identified it with the negation of things in the world, declaring of himself that he was not a mystic: “for I still grant to reason a claim that the mystic must deny to it. Beyond this, I lack the mystic’s negation. I can negate convictions but never the slightest actual thing.”1 Nevertheless, he continued to stress the importance of the unique a-rational dimension in reality, by whose means and within which man operates with a unifying tendency: “all comprehensibility of the world is only a footstool of its incomprehensibility” (“With a

1 Buber, “With a Monist,” 28. It is therefore quite surprising to note Buber’s later withdrawal, in his essay “God and the Soul” [1945], from his position in “With A Monist,” in which he states that mysticism tends towards abolishing the multiplicity within reality: “What is decisive is . . . not the dissolution of the phenomenal multiplicity, but that of the constructive duality, the duality of experiencing I and experienced object, is the decisive factor, that which is peculiar to mysticism in the exact sense.” (Buber, “God and the Soul,” 185). On this essay see below, §4.

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Monist,” 27). Neither is the essence of man accessible to the realm of knowledge: then self, the hidden lark, soars upward out of the circle [of rational understanding—IK] and warbles. You have dissected and partitioned the I, yet there it soars untouched above your artifices, the untouchable one (ibid. 26) . . . The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through embracing one of its beings . . .2 and it is in this state that man enters into the realm of “the great reality.”3

It was self-evident to Bergman that the non-rational realm depicted in “With a Monist” is mystical, notwithstanding Buber’s determined statements denying that he was a mystic: Buber rejects mysticism if this be understood to mean that the mystic negates the world and believes that he will find beyond it a path to God . . . There is a route to the inwardness of the world which is neither that of reason nor yet of world-negating mysticism . . . “The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings” . . . This is clearly a mystical approach to the world, whether or not we desire to term it that.4

Bergman’s sweeping statement that Buber does not reject mysticism as such, but only world-negating mysticism, is based not only upon a phenomenological analysis of his statements in “With a Monist,” but also upon his later comments (1927) about the Baal Shem Tov, in which he attributed to the Baal Shem Tov a realistic and activistic mysticism which does not negate the world, and which he characterized using his dialogical terminology.5 Indeed, in his essay on the Baal

2 Buber, ibid. On contact with the absolute reality that lies behind the world of phenomena as expressing a mystical state, see Maréchal, Studies, 116. 3 Buber, ibid. On this embrace-encompassing, see below, Ch. 10.2, in which we deal with Buber’s thought regarding love. 4 Bergman, “Buber and Mysticism,” 298–299. Cf. Smith’s words about mysticism, that are consistent both with what Buber says in “With A Monist” and with Bergman’s statements: “Mysticism, therefore, is not to be regarded as a religion in itself, but rather as the most vital element in all true religions, rising up in revolt against cold formality and religious torpor. . . . It is to be described rather as an attitude of mind; an innate tendency of the human soul, which seeks to transcend reason and to attain to a direct experience of God, and which believes that it is possible for the human soul to be united with Ultimate Reality, when ‘God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience’ ” (Smith, “The Nature and Meaning of Mysticism,” 20). 5 Bergman, “Buber and Mysticism,” 304–305; Buber, “The Baal-Shem-Tov’s Instruction,” 171–173. And see my discussion of the internalization of the realisticactivist mysticism attributed by Buber to the Baal Shem Tov in his I and Thou (below, Ch. 7). And cf. Kaufmann’s comment: “Buber taught me that mysticism need not lead

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Shem Tov, Buber returned in practice to the dual model of “positive” and “negative” mysticism which characterized his writings during the first decade of the twentieth century and which he abandoned during the second decade, as we have seen above (Chapter 2). Insofar as I could tell, between the years 1910 and 1927 one finds no mention in Buber of a positive attitude towards any kind of mystical life. In his book I and Thou (1922) he wished to establish the dialogical principle in contradistinction to the mystical principle,6 and even though in 1927 he acknowledged the existence of a kind of mysticism which he would be able to accept, he never explicitly identified it with his own thought, as Bergman suggests. Even when Buber replied to Bergman’s comments in the framework of the volume published in his honor in The Library of Living Philosophers, Buber sufficed with relating briefly to Bergman’s criticism of the dichotomy that he (Buber) had created between gnosticism (i.e., knowledge of God) and devekut (in “Replies to My Critics,” 716–717), and did not relate there to Bergman’s assertion that his thought—as expressed in “With a Monist” and Daniel—was mystical. We may speculate that Buber was troubled by the identification of his thought with mysticism, for which reason he chose not to respond to a point that was sensitive for him; or perhaps we can say that the main thing for him was not the abstract definition, but the experience within life, as follows from his words in the above-mentioned essay on the Baal Shem Tov.7 It seems to me that Bergman is correct from the phenomenological viewpoint, assuming that we view Buber’s descriptions—both those of the pre-dialogical period and those from the dialogical period—as mysticism of the extroverted type, in which there is a unity that does not swallow up its separate components or, to use Buber’s own definition of the Baal Shem Tov’s mysticism, a “realistic-activistic mysticism” that does not negate the multiplicity of reality (“The Baal-Shem-Tov’s Instruction,” 180).

outside the world” (Kaufmann, “Prologue” to I and Thou, 23); however, we cannot know from whence Kaufmann learned this. 6 With the exception of one mystical state, which he saw as a preparation for the dialogic state (see on this below, §2). 7 “But if one really wishes to receive the words of the Baal-Shem assembled in this text, one will do well to forget all that one knows of history and all that one imagines one knows of mysticism and, while reading listen to a human voice that speaks today, here, to those who today and here read”—Buber, “The Baal-Shem-Tov’s Instruction,” 181.

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I will not deal any further in this chapter with comparison of the mystical elements in Buber’s thought during the dialogical period with his earlier descriptions of unity (as I did in Chapter Four); rather, I shall discuss the presence of mysticism in Buber’s dialogical thought within its own context. As in the last chapter I have already dealt with mystical descriptions from the dialogic period in relation to concrete reality (i.e., communication with a man, with a tree, and with a stone), I shall focus here upon another aspect of Buber’s mysticism—namely, that of the direct contact between man and the “Eternal Thou” (i.e., God). In Buber’s Daniel, the attitude towards God is still rather vague. He is referred to by the term, The One; this One serves, on the one hand, as the other side of concrete reality and, on the other hand, is realized in concrete reality by man’s activity in the world of duality. The explicit distinction made between the I as a present personality and the One as the personality who is always confronting one (that is to say, the Eternal Thou) belongs to Buber’s dialogical period and, in practice, already appears in his earlier lectures known as “Religion as Presence.” In this respect, we to a certain degree abandon here the extroverted model of Stace insofar as it relates to the world of the senses, as in Buber the Eternal Thou is a category that sui generic, even if it is also indirectly connected to concrete reality, as we shall see below. But in another sense, we do not abandon extroverted mysticism at all, as in the relationship between man and the Eternal Thou, the I remains I and the Thou remains Thou, while the distinct reality remains distinct. That is, Buber did not retreat from the basic model that characterizes all of his thought, of identity within difference; nevertheless, his descriptions of man’s discourse with the Eternal Thou are even more mystical than those of his earlier mysticism. I will mention here that the concepts of unity, ecstasy and transformation will continue to serve the framework for our discussion as criteria for examining Buber’s mysticism during the period in question. 2. Moderate Unification in the Dialogical Situation Buber particularly discusses the Eternal Thou—the relation to it and the relation between it and the three realms within which the dialogical relationship takes place8—in the third part of I and Thou, although

8 I deal with this relationship between the limited Thou and the unlimited Thou below, Ch. 10.6.

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it is also mentioned briefly in the first two parts of the book. While Buber strongly emphasized the centrality of earthly reality as the realm within which the dialogue between heaven and earth takes place, and even though “Every single Thou is a glimpse of that. Through every single Thou the basic word addresses the eternal Thou” (I and Thou, 123), Buber also noted the need to establish “the immediate relationship to the Thou that in accordance with its nature cannot become an It” (I and Thou, ibid.)—that same Thou whose two great servants are prayer and sacrifice (130–131). Within the context of his general discussion of the Eternal Thou, Buber conducted—as a continuation of his discussion of prayer and sacrifice as realms within which dialogical life is possible—a detailed comparison between the dialogical state and various kinds of mystical states known from the history of religions (I and Thou, 131–143). Buber’s extensive discussion of the relation between dialogue and mysticism in his book I and Thou led me to ask the question: Why was it important for him to discuss this issue repeatedly and why, specifically, in the discussion of the Eternal Thou? It seems to me that the reason Buber chose to again deal with the issue of mysticism in his discussion of the Eternal Thou, is because direct relationship to the Eternal Thou—as, for example, in prayer—to a certain extent bypasses the relative relationships directly related to concrete reality, and in this sense approximates the mystical phenomenon as understood by Buber during this period. His fashioning of the field of relationship between the I and the Eternal Thou in contrast to the mystical field thus made it possible for Buber to set up a kind of protective fence establishing a clear boundary between the two phenomena in a place where the gap between them might have become blurred. However, a more precise examination of the relation between the dialogical relationship and the mystical one indicates, in my opinion, that the structural framework of the dialogical relationship to the Eternal Thou is identical to that which applies within the mystical state, and that the distance between these states is expressed more in the results than in the point of departure, or more in the quantity than in the quality, as we shall explain below. The process is reminiscent of Buber’s rejection of the principle of Erlebnis (inner experience) for the sake of the dialogical principle, which we discussed in the Third Chapter. There, I wished to demonstrate that the principle of Erlebnis continues to be present within the dialogical principle, if only in a conditional way. Similarly, in the discussion of mysticism in I and Thou one may see that the platform of unification based upon ecstatic and

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transformative principles is also present in the state of the dialogical relationship, but its presence there is conditional. In other words, mystical unity (unio mystica) is presented in I and Thou, not as the structural opposite of relationship, but rather as its exaggerated extension. That is, just as in inner experience there is a certain danger of an exaggerated drawing of the attention inwards, similarly in unio mystica there is a certain danger in drawing the unitive relationship outward in an exaggerated way. In both cases a pattern or state that is important to man becomes destructive when not positioned in its appropriate place. I think that this is what Buber intended to say in his essay “With a Monist,” in saying that he is able to “negate convictions, but never the smallest actual thing” (“With a Monist,” 28). Let me elaborate on this point somewhat. In Buber’s discussion in I and Thou regarding the relation between dialogue and mysticism, certain critical elements that we already encountered from the early 1910’s stand out, only now Buber admits that there are in fact two different kinds of mystical events that he had previously tended to confuse: unification of the soul, and ecstasy.9 These two events are two aspects of mystical life, each of which is in turn further divided. I will focus here only upon those descriptions which contribute to the discussion itself. Man first enters into a unifying relationship to himself without any responsibility to the creation: “First, the soul may become one. This event occurs not between man and God but in man” (I and Thou, 134) As I noted above (Chapter 4.3.2), one is speaking here of a psychological event that centers man upon his own inwardness and that does not transcend the boundaries of this own psychological subjectivity—but

9 I and Thou, 134. And he indeed did so in his description of ecstasy in Ecstatic Confessions, where he identified the unification of the I within itself with ecstasy, in the sense of departing from oneself. It is therefore rather surprising that in 1957 he again confused the two in speaking about the early mystical stage in his life: One may call it the “mystical” phase [in Buber’s life] if one understands as mystic the belief in a unification of the self with the all-self, attainable by man in levels or intervals of his earthly life. Underlying this belief, when it appears in its true form, is usually a genuine “ecstatic” experience. But it is the experience of an exclusive and all-absorbing unity of his own self. This self is then so uniquely manifest, and it appears then so uniquely existent, that the individual loses the knowledge, “This is my self, distinguished and separate from every other self.” He loses the sure knowledge of the principium individuationis, and understands this precious experience of his unity as the experience of the unity. (Buber, Pointing The Way, Introduction, xv; emphasis in the original).

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nevertheless serves as a transformative pre-condition necessary for man going out towards the encounter: “This is a man’s decisive moment. Without this he is not fit for the work of the spirit . . . concentrating into a unity, a human being can proceed to his encounter—wholly successful only now—with mystery and perfection” (ibid.) Buber thus recognized that one of the states referred to in the history of religions as mystical is in fact prior to relation and a condition thereof.10 However, if a person is satisfied with this state of inner concentration he doesn’t achieve what he should, as in this state he is not yet realizing his humanity, which is in principle dialogic, nor the desire of either creation or Creator. He must therefore turn outwards from this unified inner state towards the creation and towards God. This mystical state must lead to what Buber refers to further on in the discussion as the “vital unity” of the relationship (I and Thou, p. 135), which relates to our discussion of the second aspect of mysticism. In the second stage, which Buber attributed to Meister Eckhart “in which one has the feeling that the Two have become One” (I and Thou, 134): that is, the mystic reports a complete unification of the soul with God, attained by means of birth of the Divine within man11 or by the “I” entering into the Godhead. This is the dynamic ecstasy in which man is nullified within the Divine being. Since in this state there is no speaking of Thou, it is rejected by Buber: I and Thou drown; humanity that but now confronted the deity is absorbed into it; glorification, deification, universal unity have appeared. But when one returns into the wretchedness of daily turmoil, transfigured and exhausted, and with a knowing heart reflects on both, is one not bound to feel that Being is split, with one part abandoned to hopelessness? . . . What does all “enjoyment of God” profit a life rent in two? If that extravagantly rich heavenly Moment has nothing to do with my poor earthly moment—what is it to me as long as I still have to

10 While in I and Thou Buber disagreed with the view of those mystics who identified this psychological state as unity with God or with the world essence, he did however acknowledge that this state—which is, as mentioned, a precondition for the establishment of relationship—is mystical. Cf. his words in his later essay, “The Education of Character” (1939): “It is the longing for personal unity, from which must be born a unity of mankind, which the educator should lay hold of and strengthen in his pupils . . . He who knows inner unity, the innermost life of which is mystery, learns to honour the mystery in all its forms” (116). 11 The most appropriate Hebrew term to characterize this state is ‫איחוז‬, and in English, “spirit possession.”

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The boundaries of reality with which Buber was prepared to deal are those of the known and distinct world alone, because only in a distinct world of separate things can there exist a distinct reality of I and Thou. Hence absolute mystical unity (unio mystica) is understood by Buber as existing outside of what he understands as the boundaries of reality. This absolute unitive experience is problematic for Buber for two reasons: first, he considered it to be based upon the desire to find pleasure within God, turning one’s back on the miserable and unredeemed situation of the real world—that is, such experience denies the ideal of work within the world, the ideal of avodah begashmi’ut (“service in corporeality” in the sense of activity connecting the concrete dimension with the spiritual dimension).12 Secondly—and this is the aspect that is important for our discussion—he thought that such unity is not absolute unity at all, but is in fact based upon a perceptual error on the part of the mystic, deriving from an incompatibility between his experience and the interpretation that he gives to it. Here, then, we encounter in Buber the meeting point, which is also the point of confrontation, between unio mystica and dialogic relationship, in which Buber claimed that absolute mystical unity is, in practice, “that unfathomable kind of relational act itself in which one has the feeling that Two have become One.”13 That is: there is in principle a certain proximity between unio mystica and the dialogical state, and had the dialogical relation not been imprinted in the plan of creation as the Divine will, there would have been no access to that state known as unio mystica. Let us note how Buber, in his lectures on “Religion as Presence,” which proceeded I and Thou, and in I and Thou itself, described unio mystica as the exaggerated extension of relationship: What mystics usually call union, Unio, means . . . a hypostasis of the pure relation . . . A hypostasis is an attribute [of a thing] elevated to an independent substance, to the dignity of independence. Something that in actuality only exists by clinging to a substance is now grasped as an independent substance, as has happened in the history of mysticism with God’s word, God’s wisdom, and the like. But it is possible to hypostatize,

On the ideal of “service in corporeality” in Buber, see below, Ch. 8. 3–4. I and Thou, 134. In the German: “Das andere Geschehnis ist jene usausforschliche Art des Beziehungsakts selbst, darin man Zwei zu Eins werden wähnt.” (Buber, Ich und Du, 101). 12 13

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to elevate to such independent substances, not only attributes but also relationships. I mean by this that what is called unity in mysticism is nothing other than the dynamics of the relationship. Thus it is not a unity, which has come into being at this moment, that transcends the relationship, that annuls I and Thou and fuses them together. Rather, it is the dynamic of the relationship itself that so to speak moves in front of the members of the relationship [that is, the I and the Thou], suppresses them, covers them, whereas the two members of the relationship, in the reality of the relationship, immovably confront each other. Here, there is relationship but with a strange danger, with the danger of an exorbitance of the human share, of the human share in the act of relation, an exorbitance that wants to annul the relation and thereby clouds the relation, obscures its outline, its actuality.14

Thus, at the basis of the relationship there exists an explicit reality of unity, but in the dialogical state this unity is controlled and moderate: “What we find here is a marginal exorbitance of the act of relation: the relationship itself in its vital unity is felt so vehemently that its members pale in the process.”15 In the proper I-Thou state the vital unity of the relationship serves as its basis. This unity, which lies at the basis of the relationship, is a moderate unity that preserves the distinction between the individuals that take part therein, on condition that it is not exaggerated: Those human beings may serve as a metaphor who in the passion of erotic fulfillment are so carried away by the miracle of the embrace16 that all

14 Buber, “Religion as Presence,” 93. Both when Buber affirmed mysticism and when he negated it, one cannot ignore the power of his psychological analysis and profound psychological observation, by whose means he analyzes mystical states. It is impossible to properly understand the mystical phenomenon in Buber without taking into consideration the psychological factor with which it is deeply imbued. Stace is quite correct in saying that in the study of mysticism one ought by right to use examples from the experience of modern people who live in a critical, scientific age, as earlier descriptions are often deficient in analytic power and exactitude. 15 I and Thou, 135; in the German: “Die Bezeihung selbst, ihre vitale Einheit wird so vehement empfunden. . . . ” (Ich und Du, 102). 16 In the Hebrew translation the word ‫“( התמזגות‬mixture”) appears twice in succession: once to indicate the moderate mixture in the state of relationship, for which the moderate erotic embrace prior to the outburst of passion serves as a metaphor, and the second time to indicate the exaggerated relationship, “fusing Thou and I” (Buber, I and Thou, 135). In the German original, there first appears the word “Umschlingung,” meaning embrace or caress, and the second time the word “verschmilzt,” meaning total intermixture or union, which Buber rejected. In the English translation, Kaufmann quite rightly differentiated between “embrace” and “fusing.” On the closeness among the various kinds of mystical union, relationship, and earthly Eros, cf.

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The excessive passion of those who participate in the vital unity of relationship leads to an overwrought dynamism that overwhelms them. The dynamic unity of the relationship races before those who participate in it and overpowers them. The basis of the relationship is thus within a substantive embrace, and the ruin of the relationship follows from excessive emotional activity within the clinging embrace. It is not the principle of unity per se that pushes away the relationship, because the relationship itself is such a unity, but this unity requires a certain degree of self-restraint and limitation. If the emotional component of the activity in the relationship is exaggerated, the “golem” (i.e., the dynamics of the relationship) rises up against its creator (i.e., the vital unity of the relationship) and obscures the lines defining those who take part therein. There thus comes about a situation which Buber completely rejected, “I am Thou, and Thou are I” (I and Thou, 133). Unio mystica is for Buber thus not a result of passivity, as people tend at times to portray it, but of excessive, inappropriate emotional activity, creating an illusion of total unity that in reality does not exist. In 1922 Buber described the gap between the dialogical relationship, which is a unity that preserves the wholeness of the integrative personalities of those that take part therein, and becoming overwhelmed by relationship, mistakenly interpreted by mystics as unio mystica. The gap between the two states may also be characterized as the gap between the unity of opposites and the “coincidentia oppositorum, as the fusion of opposite feelings” (I and Thou, 130).

Buber, “God and the Soul,” 186, and my discussion further on in this chapter (§4). As against this distinction by Buber between moderate union and unio mystica, see below (§6) for his descriptions of more radical mixture of the human with the Divine. 17 Buber, I and Thou, 135. A parallel between complete mystical unity and earthly Eros appears in R. Isaac of Acre: “On that same day I saw the secret of fire consuming fire, for the secret of fire is form, and the matter of this consumption is of a thing swallowed up within its fellow, [as in] ‘and he clings to his wife and they shall become one flesh’ [Gen 2:24]. When the enlightened pious man allows his soul to ascend and to cling properly, the Divine secret to which it [the soul] had been attached swallows it up, and this is the secret of ‘and they shall not come to see when the holy thing swallows it up, lest they die’ [Num 4:20].” (quoted by E. Gottlieb, “Illumination,” 237). For Buber, this swallowing is ontologically an illusion, derived from excessive excitement. Several times Buber also used the union of man and woman as a metaphor for the states of connection that he wished to establish.

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In order to demonstrate that unio mystica is not true unity, but rather the exaggerated extension of the relationship alone, Buber traced the steps of figures taken from the “love mysticism,”18 applying to them the criteria of “and from my flesh I shall see God”:19 just as in earthly Eros there is not really any ontological negation of the I or of the Thou save in appearances, so too the ontological negation of entities participating in a dialogical unity is only seemingly so. There are nevertheless cases in which Buber’s descriptions cross the boundaries of clear distinction between the human I and the divine Thou and one can see therein a mixture of the human and of the Divine,20 even though there too Buber did not forego his attempt to preserve the distinct identity of the personality within this mixture. A striking example of this appears in Buber’s doctrine of revelation: But revelation does not pour into the world through its recipient as if he were a funnel:21 it confers itself upon him, it seizes his whole element in all of its suchness and fuses with it. . . . It is not man’s own power that is at work here, neither is it God passing through; it is a mixture of the divine and the human. (I and Thou, 166)

In this description Buber was less cautious than in his discussion of the gap between unio mystica and the unity of relationship, using the words 18 On this concept see Dupré, Light from Light, 14–17. As I noted in the Introduction to this book, the error of both Buber and of Buber scholars derives from the fact that they saw the above quotation from Eckhart, “one and one are again united” as the only criterion for mysticism; that is, he totally identified mysticism with unio mystica. But love mysticism is specifically not unio mystica in the strict sense of the word, as has been noted by Zaehner: “Something of the soul must clearly remain if only to experience the mystical experience. The individual is not annulated, though transformed and ‘deified’ as St. John of the Cross says: it remains a distinct entity though permeated through and through with the divine substance. For the non-dualist Vedantin this is not so: the human soul IS God; there is no duality anywhere.” (Zaehner, “Mysticism,” 67, emphasis in the original). Similarly in Buber’s earlier words in Ecstatic Confessions, which he attributes to the Upanishads: “ . . . just as a man embraced by a woman he loves has no conciseness of what is outside or inside, so the mind, embraced by the primal self, has no conciseness of what is outside or inside.“ (Ecstatic Confessions, 3). But while these denote a state in which a person is not aware of the distinction between without and within, it does not require any loss of consciousness whatsoever. 19 Based upon Job 19:26, a verse that was understood in Kabbalistic exegesis as alluding to the parallel between the earthly and the Divine systems. 20 See below, §6 of this chapter, in which I discuss paradoxical language in Buber. 21 In the German source: “Sie ergeift sein ganzes Element in all seinem Sosein und verschmilzt damit”; that is, the revelation takes hold-seizes the entire being of man and is mixed with the totality of the components of his personality. We thus have here a description of “seizure” in the sense of spirit possession, without the person losing consciousness of his own separate identity within this process.

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“verschmilzt damit,”22 meaning actual mixture, rather than the infinitive “Umschlingung” in the sense of caress or embrace, as he used in his earlier distinction between unio mystica and dialogue. The sequel of his words also indicates a mixture of the Divine and of the human, and the context makes clear that they cannot be understood as taking place within the human consciousness, in which the Divine speech and their understanding by human beings is mixed. Buber uses here the verb “Mischung” in the sense of interfusion and mixture, literally. In light of this, we are entitled to say that Buber’s doctrine of revelation during the period of his dialogical work is entirely mystical, thereby providing further support for my claim that Buber’s mysticism specifically became stronger during his dialogical period, as during the period of his pre-dialogical work he did not express himself in such radical terms to indicate man’s contact with God, because his doctrine of revelation was then limited to manifestations of unity within earthly phenomena. 3. Dialogical Relationship as a Transformative Process of Moderate Ecstasy In the previous section we saw that the common denominator of unio mystica and unity of relationship is the “substantial linking”23 between two entities, and that the gap between them, according to Buber, is like that between embrace or caress, and merger, in the sense of melting together, “the miracle of the embrace” (I and Thou, 135), returns us to the phenomenological discussion of moderate ecstasy24 and to And indeed, Kaufmann translates this word as “fuses with it” rather than as “embrace.” It is nevertheless noteworthy that Buber took note that the mixing takes place with the element of “every person” and with his “suchness” (Sosein) and not with him per se. Kaufmann appropriately translated “with it” rather than “with him.” I will leave it to the reader to decide whether this nicety, by which Buber sought to indicate that man’s essence is not negated before the subject of revelation, is that which differentiates between mystical unity and dialogue. 23 I have made use here of Gottlieb’s formulation to characterize the concept of devekut in Rabbi Isaac of Acre (Gottlieb, “Illumination,” 236). I discuss the question of dialogical relationship vis-à-vis devekut in the second part of the book, in Chapter 8. 24 On moderate ecstasy and its relation to Israelite prophecy, see Wilson, “Prophecy and Ecstasy,” 322–323; Hyatt, Prophetic Religion, 17. Long after I noticed that I-Thou relationships express a state of moderate or mild ecstasy, I became aware that Kaufmann also drew a connection, albeit in a negative sense, between the I-Thou relationship and “the ecstatic type” (“His Failures and His Success,” 33, 38) Since ecstasy was also understood in a negative way among those who responded to his lecture (Bloch & Kurtzweil), they also hastened to protest against this identification (38). But 22

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the transformative component of the I-Thou relationship, just as the unity between person and tree in Daniel led us to discuss them in the Second Chapter. Surely the above-cited descriptions of unity were sufficient to provide a basis for my claim that we are dealing here with ecstatic states, since the unity of relationship as embrace-merging requires going out to the other and his surrounding-embrace (I and Thou, 135). However, I would like to portray the dialogical situation as a mystical state, not only in terms of the results of the unity, but also in terms of its human pole: that is, the state that emerges from the I—this, based on the criterion for examining mysticism in Buber which I proposed in the first chapter, that unites the principle of unity with the principle of ecstasy and with that of transformation. This dual direction—from unity towards the soul, and from the soul towards unity—is required in practice by Buber’s descriptions in I and Thou, because at times the I of the I-Thou relationship is described as constructed ontologically from the basic word I-Thou, that is, through the form of relation of connection and mutuality.25 From this point of view, it seems that the unity in the relationship builds the partners partaking in the unitive state.26 As against this, at times the emphasis is placed on the process that goes out of the I by virtue of “the innate Thou” (I and Thou, 78)—that is, one is speaking of an entity that realizes that which is embedded within itself. This is the “Thou-sense that cannot be satiated until it finds the infinite Thou sensed its presence from the beginning” (I and Thou, 128). I do not think that Buber sought to describe a process from two different view-points, but that one is speaking here of a profound duality beyond the intellect, as I shall show below in the section dealing with mystical paradox in Buber (§6). This description of the I extending outward from itself—upon which I shall elaborate in the next section—parallels one of the basic mystical patterns that is mentioned in I and Thou in the section that talks about mysticism, referred to there as “ecstasy” (I and Thou, 132). But

Kaufmann did not mean to say that the I-Thou relationship indicates an ecstatic state of the “I,” but rather that Buber wrote his book I and Thou in such a mood. 25 I think that it is thus that one needs to understand Buber’s words that “Man becomes an I through a Thou” (I and Thou, 80); in German, “Der Mensch wird am Du zum Ich.” 26 In Rotenstreich’s words: “The participants in the state of mutuality described in I and Thou are themselves built by means of the mutual relationship” (“The Fundaments,” 51). To this one might add Buber’s statement that “In the beginning is the relation” (I and Thou, 78).

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in addition to this pattern, the passage mentioned in I and Thou also contains another mystical pattern, in which there is an a priori experience of human and of world identity, which is therefore referred to by Buber as static (I and Thou, ibid.). According to this basic pattern, the existence of the I includes from the outset the totality of being, and only its cognitive distortion creates the illusion of two separate worlds: the world of the I and the world that is outside the I. The real truth is that of the I-World. Hence, from the viewpoint of the definition of ecstasy as a “stretching out of oneself ” it is stated that the I—the I-World—is initially found in reality as a whole, which appears seemingly external to the I. The second basic mystical pattern of a priori ecstasy parallels the presentation made by Buber of human reality in a stage of pre-creation, of prenatal life as a natural and cosmic association: The prenatal life of the child is a pure natural association . . . uniquely inscribed, and yet also not inscribed, in that of the being that carries it . . . This association is so cosmic . . . And as the secret image of a wish, this association remains to us. . . . What this longing aims for is the cosmic association of the being that has burst into spirit with its true Thou.27

In the prenatal state the fetus is attached to its mother, and in a broader circle to “the womb of the great mother” (I and Thou, 76). This unified a priori state is the source of man’s longing for his Thou, through his memory of having been in a primordial state of I-World. These longings derive from the fact that there has been taken from him his natural unified, primal state. Therefore, man’s true and complete being is that of a state of initial unification, in relation to which the separate I is a kind of illusion, if one suffices with it alone as an exclusive criteria for human existence. In Buber’s descriptions in I and Thou there also stands out the transformative component (see also the next sub-section), for the I in the I-Thou relationship is not comparable with the I in the I-It relationship, since in the I-Thou relationship the I extends beyond the position of the I in the I-It relationship, as it embraces its Thou. “How much of a person a man is depends on how strong the I of the basic word I-Thou is in the human duality of his I” (I and Thou, 115). That is, it is characterized by the transformative, vital component in the life of the I, which we encountered in Buber’s book Daniel. As we have 27

I and Thou, 76. This passage is also discussed below, pp. 295–296.

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seen, the pre-condition for relationship is that “the soul become one,” without which a person “is not fit for the work of the spirit.”28 Even in this pre-condition the transformative component of the soul is present. I will develop this aspect further in the next sub-section. Two Aspects of “I” in Mysticism and in Buber’s Thought Regarding the view dominant today as to the neutral character of science: it would be considered unacceptable were a teacher of philosophy to say to his students: “You have run up against a brick wall in your quest; if you nevertheless wish to advance along the path of knowledge, do not seek new solutions or new theories, but change yourselves . . . ” It would not occur to a Western philosopher that perhaps what is needed is an inner turnabout so that the student may break out of the bondage of his own mind. (Bergman, “Philosophy and Religion,” 29–30)

These comments by Bergman concerning the gap between the scientific and philosophical world-view of the West and the spiritual teachings of the East may serve as a suitable introduction to understanding the transformative component in Buber’s dialogical thought. One oughtn’t to see this change of self as a conversion in a purely psychological sense—that is, in the sense of making a decision and taking responsibility, although this too may be included in the process of change—but in the sense of a substantive transformation of the human essence. Thus, one may find in mystical teachings an explicit view about two realities of self: a lower and more narrow kind of self and a higher and more encompassing one. If we substitute the concept of “self” for that of I, then the lower and more narrow I that predominates in ordinary human life is not comparable to the higher I, which in this respect transcends the narrower I, and therefore understood as being of a more extensive and universal value and closer to God.29 It is only with his higher I that man can draw close to God and

28 I and Thou, 134. Cf. Buber’s comments in his essay “Herut”: “The unconditional affects a person when he lets his whole being be gripped by it, be utterly shaken and transformed by it, and when he responds to it with his whole being” (153). And also: “only unified man can establish unity. Unified, unifying, total man, free in God, is the goal of mankind longing” (ibid., 170). 29 While the concept of the “I” is not included in Kabbalistic doctrines of the soul, the distinction between supernal form (or “soul,” neshamah) within man, and a lower form, referring to the earthly existence of the soul, and the making of mystical experience conditioned upon connection to this higher dimension and its activation are dominant characteristics in Kabbalah. See Idel, “Universalization and Integration,” 36–37.

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arrive at a degree of mingling with Him. Therefore, among mystics, the first stage in the mystical path is always described as a stage of refining and purification of the lower I—at times even identified with its negation—leading to the birth or appearance of the truer, higher I with which it is possible to arrive at a level of enlightenment and of unity with God.30 These two kinds of I operate two different capabilities of cognition and of understanding. The given, limited I perceives the externality of things, while the higher I grasps the inner essence of reality, its unity and its connection to God (Underhill, “The Essentials of Mysticism,” 30, 34). The activity of the higher I directed towards a more sublime and truer grasp of reality emerges from the mystic’s dissatisfaction with the given state of the I and from a critique of its relativity and of its relative perception of reality (Underhill, ibid., 40), as well as from the mystic’s longing for a higher realization. Similar to my claim that Buber had internalized basic patterns from the world of mysticism and applied them with reservation to his dialogical thought, I also argue that Buber had internalized the transformative principle regarding the two realities of the I and the striving to realize man’s higher self: “Thus the I of man is also twofold” (I and Thou, 53). One reality of the I is the limited one of the primal word I-It, that “can never be spoken with one’s whole being” (ibid., 54), while the other is that of the I-Thou, which “can only be spoken with one’s whole being” (ibid.). The constricted I is manifested in two ways: in the I-It relationship, and in its complete detachment even from the It, which Buber refers to as “the I of the ego” (ibid., 115). “The more a human being, the more humanity is dominated by the ego, the more does the I fall prey to inactuality” (ibid., 115). As against this, the I spoken with all of man’s being—that is, with the concentration of all his inner forces around one center—is deserving of the term “personality” and it is only thus that “the person becomes conscious of himself as participating in being, as being with, and thus as being” (ibid., 113). That is, the identification of one I with non-reality and of the other with “being” are doubtless taken from mystical doctrines. The former I is identical with man’s “small will,” while the other is identified with the “great will that moves away from being determined to find destiny” (109).

30 Smith, “The Nature and Meaning of Mysticism,” 22; Underhill, “The Essentials of Mysticism,” 28.

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As in mysticism, so too in Buber the duality of human existence leads to two different kinds of perception of reality. The one is more superficial and fragmentary: “We are told that man experiences this world. What does this mean? Man goes over the surfaces of things and experiences them.”31 Whereas in the other case, there is revealed “the mystery of the obvious that is closer to me than my own I” (127)—that is, man arrives at the true concreteness of things. When the other, deeper perception of reality is presented by Buber from the human pole, that is, from the side of the I, it is portrayed as transcendent to the limited I of the basic word I-It, and this in two different ways: inwardly and outwardly. The first way is expressed in a spiritual decision and in inner concentration (ibid., 137), while the second, outer way follows upon the inner way and is expressed in departure from the self: “Whoever goes forth to his Thou with his whole being and carries to it all the being of the world, finds him whom one cannot seek” (127). In this state, “Whoever stands in relation, participates in an actuality; that is, in a being that is neither merely a part of him nor merely outside him” (I and Thou, 113). That which was previously something external to man is no longer merely external to him, as the I in relationship extends itself to meet it and encompass it. Against the possible argument, that one is not speaking here of a real coming forth in the ecstatic sense, but only of a going outside of the self in terms of intention, I would answer with Buber’s words—that are admittedly not fully explicated—that “Man becomes an I through a Thou” (80), to which I would add his words about the fragment of mica, that, “it was while contemplating you that I first understood that I is not something ‘in me’ ” (I and Thou, 146–147). Similarly, his previously-mentioned description (above, pp. 114, 136, 143) in Daniel that, “Appearing to be only where I was, I nonetheless found myself there, too, where I found the tree” (Daniel, 47). These examples prove, in my opinion, that the true I, because of which man is called man, extends beyond itself in the literal sense and not only up to the “limits of the interpersonal (Inzwischen)” but beyond it, to the point of the Thou, literally. The I of the basic word I-Thou is

31 Buber, I and Thou, 54. By “experiencing,” he refers [is meant] to intellectual comprehension (“erfahren” in German). Kaufmann notes in a footnote to his English translation (55) the word play between erfahren and befahren, used by Buber in order to note that intellectual comprehension moves over the surface of things and does not perceive them in depth.

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thus composed of an I and a Thou: it is an ecstatic entity whose point of departure is around its body, but whose point of conclusion spreads beyond itself without forfeiting its prior hold on the environment of its body, and without man losing his sense of distinct selfhood. I have therefore referred to it as moderate ecstasy.32

32 A description of moderate ecstasy is found in another modern thinker, Rudolf Steiner. It was Hugo Bergman who noted that the common denominator of Steiner and Buber was their interest in secular life; see his paper, “Parapsychology and anthroposophy,” p. 35. And indeed, it was particularly important to both Buber and Steiner not to cut the “umbilical cord” connecting man to external reality. Hence, it is hardly surprising that both advocated a moderate ecstasy that does not “break the vessels” and allows for the attainment of mystical states within the earthly realm. Steiner’s description is likely to shed light upon the intermediary ecstatic states that occur between the I and its negation, due to the scientific-critical character he wished to give to his writings based upon super-sensual experiences: Now an experience that occurs when outside the body is of a quite different nature from one made when in the body . . . for there we feel ourselves linked to all that may be called the outer world. All our surroundings are felt as belonging to us just as our hands do in the world of the senses.—R. Steiner, A Road to Self-Knowledge, 25.

Now in his ordinary consciousness man call himself “I,” signifying the being which presents itself in his physical body. The healthy life of his soul in the world of the senses depends on his thus recognizing himself as a being separated from the rest of the world. That healthy psychic life would be interrupted if he characterized any other events or beings of the outer world as part of his ego. When man realizes himself as an etheric being in the elemental world, things are different. Then his own ego-being blends with certain occurrences and beings around him. The etheric human being has to find himself in that which is not his inner being, in the same sense as “inner” is conceived in the physical world. In the elemental world there are forces, occurrences, and beings which, although in certain respects part of the outer world, must yet be considered as belonging to one’s own ego . . . In the physical world we have our thoughts, with which we are so bound up that we may look upon them as forming a constituent part of our ego. But there are forces, occurrences, and so forth which act as intimately upon the inner nature of the etheric human being as thoughts do in the physical world; nor do they behave like thoughts, but are like beings living with and in the soul. Therefore clairvoyance needs a stronger inner force than that which the soul possesses for the purpose of maintaining its own independence in the face of its thoughts.—R. Steiner, The Threshold of the Spiritual World, 102–103. One can see here that Steiner confronted a similar problem to that which we have seen above in Buber—namely, the occurrence of states of ecstatic unity in which the distinction between the participants in the unification is preserved. According to Steiner, this state occurs when the person’s I is freed in a certain limited way from his body and extends to his trans-sensory spirit environment, called by Steiner an “etheric body” and “elemental world.” In this etheric reality, there is no clear division between things in comparison to the physical world. Therefore the etheric body of the person and the etheric forces which surround him are mingled with one another in a way that

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That the I in relationship transcends the given I is also articulated in Buber’s words about the spirit residing in the intermediate realm between the I and the Thou” and about the man who lives in the spirit: Spirit is word. . . . because in truth language does not reside in man but man stands in language and speaks out of it—so it is with all words, all spirit. Spirit is not in the I but between I and Thou. It is not like the blood that circulates in you but like the air in which you breath. Man lives in the spirit when he is able to respond to his Thou. . . . It is solely by virtue of his power to relate that man is able to live in the spirit. (I and Thou, 89)

Since the spirit is speech, and since the place of the spirit, like speech, is outside of the I, like the air that penetrates man from without inwards, and since man does not speak from within the language of spirit which is concealed within him, but from the very fact of his being there in the intermediate realm, it follows that dialogical man extends beyond himself, not only in the sense of identification or empathy, but in a substantial-ontological sense as well. In addition, as I noted, the dialogical I is transcendent towards the inside, as one may well ask how the I understands itself as such in its own pole, when it abandons its own “being-that-way”33 when it does not “wallows in his being-that-way” (ibid., 114), and when it becomes part-of-reality because of its participation in reality? What is the self perception of an I that does not say about itself “I am this way and not that,” but simply says “I am” (113)? Buber noted that the measure of personality is greater in such a person, and that it “becomes conscious of itself as subjectivity (without any dependent

is not possible in the physical world. Hence the I, that has been extended beyond the physical body locates itself within the etheric body that transcends the physical body and has became conscious therein, no longer feels itself separate from the world in the way it feels it in the physical plane. In this state, the spirit reality is apprehended by the I as belonging to its essence and as a part thereof. An activity that, from the viewpoint of the normal state of consciousness would be considered external to man, now flows to him from both without and within. The defined states of without and within, that give man his feelings of security in his separate existence, penetrate one another, and therefore man needs to gather extra strength in order to preserve his feeling of separation. While in Buber there is neither etheric body nor etheric world, within which there dwell spiritual powers and entities, in both Buber and Steiner there is a basic pattern of moderate ecstasy. 33 “The ego says ‘that is how I am’ . . . know your being-that-way,” (Buber, I and Thou, 113–114).

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genitive)” (I and Thou, 112). This, as opposed to the I as an entity unto itself, which “becomes conscious of itself as a subject (of experience and use)” (I and Thou, 112). Thus, the I that perceives itself as a person is transcendent to the I that understands itself simply as a being unto itself. One might say, that on one occasion the word I appears in a constricted way in the framework of the word “mine,” that is, in the possessive form, while on other occasions it appears in the word I am here—and that these represent two different perceptions of the I. Moreover: how is such an I-I am here likely to perceive itself from within if we add to the fact of its existence, that it is constructed not only from itself, but also from the Thou? Are we not forced to acknowledge that the self-perception of the dialogic I must be very different from that which is generally speaking identified as the I consciousness, and in this sense transcendent to it? Thus far, we have been speaking about Buber’s use of the basic pattern taken from the realm of mysticism in terms of the duality of human selfhood, as applied to the duality of the human I in I and Thou. I shall now refer to a certain polemical element in Buber’s words, in which the pattern of the dual-face of the human being appears, but with a certain reservation. Here, this duality is analogous to the gap between the dialogical principal and what Buber understood as mysticism during the period of which we are speaking. It was important for Buber to emphasize that there are not two I’s within the human being, but that within the single I there operate two different functions that completely change its manifestations, which are not cancelled by one another. Thus Buber said that “No human being is pure person, and none is pure ego . . . Each lives in a twofold I” (I and Thou, p. 114). It follows from this that the narrow I is included in a certain way in the broader I, and vice versa. The field of human life is expressed, not only in the constant interchange between the basic words I-Thou and I-It, but also in their admixture with one another—all dependent upon the proportion. That is, there are some people who are deserving of the term “person” and others more deserving of the term “ego,” all dependent upon the degree of presence of each function of the I in each event and state and in the person’s life as a whole. Unlike unio mystica, we are not speaking here of a given human I being swallowed up within a higher divine I born within the soul,34 in the sense of the

34

On the metaphor of swallowing up, see Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 70–73.

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I’s disappearance within that which swallows it up, but rather of a change in the nature of the I under different conditions. An additional polemical element within the mystical context follows from Buber’s words concerning the manner in which the opposition between the above-mentioned unification of the soul and what he refers to as the doctrine of immersion is expressed. Whereas the unification of the soul focuses the totality of its forces as a pre-condition for relation, immersion entails: . . . ignoring the actual person. Immersion wants to preserve only what is “pure,” essential, and enduring, while stripping away everything else; the concentration of which I speak does not consider our instincts as too impure, the sensuous as too peripheral, or our emotions as too fleeting—everything must be included and integrated. What is wanted is not the abstracted self but the whole, undiminished man. (I and Thou, 137)

The doctrine of immersion thinks that, in order to connect with the Divine essence, man must cast off the components of his own personality and thereby pass from the level of an I to that of being—which is, in practice, the transcendent I—which is alone fit to enter into contact with The Essence. But for Buber, it is precisely the encompassing and transcendent I, connected to the Eternal Thou, that is deserving of the term “personality,” as opposed to the term “mystical being,” which in relation to the entire man is an entity bereft of humanity. To return, in concluding our discussion of the connection of the I and the Thou from the viewpoint of ecstasy, to the distinction drawn by Uffenheimer among four types of ecstasy, it would seem that the ecstasy described by Buber, in which “one and one [are] made one” (I and Thou, 134, quoting Eckhart) belongs to that category of ecstasy in which the wholeness of the integrative personality is not preserved,35 whereas the relationship that leads to unification belongs to that type which does preserve it.36 True, in I and Thou Buber only recognized that type of ecstatic life which harms the I and the Thou, but according to Uffenheimer there are, as mentioned, two other kinds of ecstasy which do not harm man’s integrative personality: the apathetic-introverted form of ecstasy, in which man

35 The types of ecstasy referred to by Uffenheimer as “mass insane ecstasy” and “individualized fainting ecstasy.” 36 That is, we have here a new version of the duality in Daniel between Orpheus’s ecstasy, in which man is not torn apart by the beasts but arranges them around himself, and the ecstasy of Dionysus, in which the beasts—that is, the passion of human desires—strive towards man and tear apart his integrated personality.

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turns inwards in a state of intellectual and emotional enlightenment, and that which he describes as the ecstasy of the integrated personality, which comes about “in wake of the arousal and concentration of the psychological forces around a specific subject, without harming the inner balance of the personality and its integration within the framework of the external world” (Uffenheimer, “Prophetic Ecstasy,” 61–62). This model resembles the I-Thou relationship in Buber, which I presented as moderate ecstasy, in which the spiritual forces of the soul are concentrated around the Thou in relationship.37 4. Mysticism and Dialogue in the Essay “God and the Soul” In light of the sweeping presentation of mysticism in I and Thou as a negative phenomenon opposed to the aim of creation and the purpose of man, it is rather surprising to find that, in a later period (1945), Buber presented it in a more complex and empathetic way, once again making use of both a negative and positive paradigm.38 This, because we might have assumed that in I and Thou his descriptions still bore a certain sign of mysticism, within the framework of his freeing himself from it, whereas during the later period, when he grounded his thought in a more anthropological-philosophical manner, his descriptions of the dialogical area might have been expected to be more “moderate” and possibly even more rational in nature, so that the discussion of relationship against the background of mysticism ought to have been pushed into a corner—but this was not the case. In his essay “God and the Soul,” first published in his collection of essays Be-Pardes ha-Hasidut (1945; in English, in The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism), Buber discussed mysticism, 37 Yet, as I noted in the first chapter, one could say that the ecstasy of concentration on an external object was identified by Uffenheimer specifically with Israelite prophecy and not with mysticism (which for him belonged to a third type, the apathetic-introverted). However, a discussion of this issue of the relationship between mysticism and prophecy goes beyond the framework of this book. I will only say that Uffenheimer’s study does not deal at all with the issue of unity, but with the attempt to sketch the state of the prophetic I in terms of the fourfold model of ecstatic states that appear in the history of religions. It would seem that, for Uffenheimer, the issue of unity was not important for understanding the prophetic phenomena, or that he was not conscious of the importance of this issue in terms of the relation between mysticism and prophecy. Thus, Uffenheimer’s paradigm is not fully consistent with the goal of this study, that combines the ecstatic principle with that of mystical unity. 38 However, this frenetic aspect of Buber’s attitude toward mysticism was expressed even earlier, in 1927, in the introduction to his collection of instructions of the Baal Shem Tov (“The Baal-Shem-Tov’s Instruction,” 179–181.

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once again putting it to the test in light of his dialogical teaching. In this essay, mysticism is described as “a singular and remarkable special type of religious life” (“God and the Soul,” 184); in these words we are, in effect, returning to Buber’s book Ecstatic Confessions, written in the first decade of the twentieth century. The mystical experience is described as “an experience of unity,” which as such is clearly distinguished by Buber from “a contemplation of unity in which . . . the basic situation of all our human contemplation, remains: the division of being into a contemplating and a contemplated” (“God and the Soul,” 184–185). Any vision of light, or epiphany, is no more than one of the garments in which mystical experience enwraps itself for purposes of its revelation—first within the experience itself, and thereafter within man’s consciousness.39 Like relationship, which is a “spiritual association” (I and Thou, 77), given to man in place of the natural association that was lost forever;40 Thus too . . . mysticism in the exact sense can only be spoken of, to be sure, where it is not a question of men of an early dawn stage, preceding the clear sundering of subject and object, but of those whose basic situation has become a manner of course: a self-enclosed I and over against it a self enclosed world. (“God and the Soul,” 185)

Mysticism is rooted in the “longing for union,” (“God and the Soul,” 186), just as at the root of the dialogical principle lies the “longing for the Thou” (I and Thou, 79, 113), as in both cases the motive for activity was the desire to overcome the duality on the part of those who are aware of the loss of the primordial unity. In this essay, Buber describes the mysticism that grew on the soil of the theistic religions, in a way rooted in a significant closeness to the I-Thou relationship. Here the mystic knows of a close personal intercourse with God. This intercourse has as its goal, certainly, a union with God . . . But in erotic intercourse between being and being as in the intercourse between man and God it is still just the duality of these beings which is the elementary presupposition of what passes between them. It is not the duality of subject and object: neither is to the other a mere object of contemplation 39 That is to say, the essence of mystical experience lies in that state in which “What is decisive is that the act of contemplating is obliterated in the contemplator; not the dissolution of the phenomenal multiplicity, but that of the constructive duality, the duality of experiencing I an experienced object, is the decisive factor, that which is peculiar to mysticism in the exact sense” (Buber, “God and the Soul,” 185) . 40 That is, man’s being in the womb of his mother and the womb of the world before his separation as a subject confronting an object.

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chapter five that does not itself participate in the relation. It is the duality of I and Thou, both entering into the reciprocity of the relation. No matter how absolute God is comprehended as being, He is here, nonetheless, not the whole but the Facing One. He is The One standing over against this man; He is what this man is not and is not what this man is. It is precisely on this duality that the longing for union can base itself. In other words, in this close intercourse that the mystic experiences, God, no matter how infinite he is comprehended as being, is still Person and remains Person. And even if the mystic wants to be merged in Him, he means none other than Him whom he knows in this intercourse, just this Person. The I of the mystic seeks to lose itself in the Thou of God . . . The mystic never thinks of calling into question the personal character of this divine “I am” . . . The I of the revealing God, the I of the God who grants to the mystic the intercourse with Him, and the I of God in which the human is merged are identical. In the realm of the intercourse with God the mystic remains what he was in the realm of revelation, a theist. (“God and the Soul,” 186–187)

The starting point of the mystic in theistic religions, and his point of departure towards the world, are fully identical with that of the dialogic state, which is also based upon experience of duality and the longing for unity. Similarly, like the dialogical intercourse with the Eternal Thou, the mystic in theistic religions knows God, not as absolute Being, but in his contraction within personality41—that is, as a Thou who allows the establishment of a relationship with him. The mystic is called a theist by Buber, specifically because he acknowledges the separateness of the Eternal Thou, just as the theistic doctrines of revelation are based upon God’s autonomy. But whereas in I-Thou relationships the longing of the human pole for the Eternal Thou does not lead to loss of its own autonomy in the divine Thou, the mystic goes further in his longing for unity and seeks to be negated within God.42

41 I deal with the appearance of God in His contracted state as a “Thou” in Chapter 9, which discusses Buber’s dialogical interpretation of the Kabbalistic and Hasidic doctrines of tzimtzum. 42 In Sufi mysticism one finds a ranking of three stages of development on the way towards unity with God: astonishment, closeness and annihilation (Maréchal, Studies, 114). Buber moderated (himtik, “sweetened,” in Kabbalistic language) the third stage.

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5. The Inclusion of Reality in the Eternal Thou For in truth there is a cosmos for man only when the universe becomes a home for him with a holy hearth where he sacrifices. (Buber, I and Thou, 150)

There are two interrelated reasons, which might be described as ontological and psychological, for the necessity of man’s direct communication with the Eternal Thou. From the ontological viewpoint, the relativity of the world of relationships follows from the fact that “it attains perfection solely in the immediate relationship to the Thou that in accordance with its nature cannot become an It” (I and Thou, 123); and that “Every encounter is a way station that grants him a view of fulfillment” (ibid., 128); and “In every Thou we address the eternal Thou, in every sphere according to its manner” (I and Thou, 57). But all this is only a window, an opening through which “we gaze toward the train of the eternal Thou” (ibid.). “Every actual relationship in the world is exclusive; the other breaks into it to avenge its exclusion. Solely in the relation to God are unconditional exclusiveness and unconditional inclusiveness43 one in which the universe is comprehended” (I and Thou, 148). “ . . . in each [i.e. all the relative relationships] he thus fails to share, and yet also does share, in the one because he is ready” (I and Thou, 128). That is, these relationships do not have the immediacy and fullness that are unique to the direct relationship with the Eternal Thou. From the psychological viewpoint “the Thou-sense of the man, who in his relationships to all individual Thous experiences the disappointment of the change into It, aspires beyond all of them and yet not all the way toward his eternal Thou” (I and Thou, 128). He strives towards an entity of Thou that is present in its essence, for “only our nature forces us to draw it into the It-world and It-speech” (I and Thou, 148); “He thirsts for something spread out in time, for duration” (ibid., 162). The important place given by Buber to the un-mitigated relationship, to the Eternal Thou, is likely to place in question the importance of the need for relative relationships, or at least to challenge Buber’s words that “the word of him who wishes to speak to God without speaking to men goes astray” (“Dialogue,” 15). This point of tension between dedication to the relative—albeit understood in light of his 43

In the German original: Einschliesslichkeit.

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connection with the absolute—and his devotion to the absolute, may be resolved by setting apart a time and place for each realm, by means of the Hasidic principle of periods of “ascent” and periods of “descent.” However, Buber’s “conversion,” as I have shown, is precisely a rejection of such a division. Thus, Buber followed a different path while making use—consciously or unconsciously—of the principle of mystical inclusion, albeit introducing therein a certain change, which made it suitable to his general world view. Once again, we encounter a mystical paradigm at the very heart of the dialogic relationship: In the relation to God, unconditional exclusiveness and unconditional inclusiveness are one. For those who enter into the absolute relationship, nothing particular retain any importance—neither things nor beings, neither earth nor heaven—but everything is included in the relationship. For entering into the pure relationship does not involve ignoring everything but seeing everything in the Thou . . . Looking away from the world is no help towards God; staring at the world is no help either; but whoever beholds the world in him, stands in his presence . . . leaving out nothing, leaving nothing behind, to comprehend all—all the world—in comprehending the Thou . . . to have nothing besides God but to grasp everything in him, that is the perfect relationship . . . . Whoever goes forth to his Thou with his whole being and carries to it all the being of the world, finds him whom one cannot seek.44

One can see these words of Buber as a mystical midrash on the Rabbinic homily stating that God is called the Place because “he is the place of the world and the world is not his place.”45 But things are

44 I and Thou, 127. And see also his words in the Afterword to I and Thou: “Hence the man who turns toward him need not turn his back on any other I-Thou relationship: quite legitimately he brings them all to God and allows them to become transfigured ‘in the countenance of God’ ” (I and Thou, 182); One may perhaps see the source of this view in his discussion of the characteristics of Hasidism: “In the Hasidic message the separation between ‘life in God’ and ‘life in the world,’ the primal evil of all ‘religion,’ is overcome in genuine, concrete unity” (Buber, “Spinoza,” 99). 45 Genesis Rabbah 68.9, and perhaps even more so this in the long version of Sefer Yetzirah: “And the Holy Temple is prepared in the middle: Blessed be the glory of God from His place, for He is the place of the world and the world is not His place, and he carries them all” (4.2). On the concept of “place” in Sefer Yezirah, in Rabbinic literature, in Sefer ha-Zohar and in Philo, see Liebes, Torat ha-Yetzirah, 194–199. However, as I shall demonstrate below (pp. 213–215), in Buber the Eternal Thou being the place of the world bears no relation to the question of God’s transcendence or immanence. Rather, God as the place of the world is in a time and place where man is “seeing everything in the Thou . . . beholds the world in him . . . and carries to it all the being of the world” (I and Thou, 127) On Buber’s use of the term makif, “encompassing embrace,” see the next section.

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more complex than that, as they include two statements that are not consistent with one another.46 On the one hand, man sees “everything in the Thou”—that is, that all of reality is incorporated within the Thou and it is to be seen therein; on the other hand, it would seem that incorporation is a human act, as “he carries to it all the being of the world.” In the former state, man needs a grasp of the Thou that leads to the recognition that all is included therein, while in the second state man brings all of his relationships as a kind of an offering to God, by including them within the Thou.47 Him seeing everything within the Thou then means, that he brings to the Thou everything that belongs to him. In such a state, the person who turns to the pure and perfect relation gives to the Eternal Thou the fullness of the entire world, as he sees “everything in the Thou.” It follows that entering into relationship with the Eternal Thou does not entail foregoing anything, since the relation is not lacking anything in the world. The relation to the Eternal Thou is not only an inclusion of the I within the Thou, but also the inclusion of both the I and the Thou within reality as a whole. One may draw an analogy between the portrayal of inclusion in Buber and the depictions of inclusiveness in Kabbalah because, as Idel has noted,48 the Kabbalistic principle of incorporation does not necessarily lead to the nullification of the I within God, nor to negation of any part of reality within God, nor of its components within one another. However, the incorporation of the earthly reality in a certain way within a broader inclusiveness is not a widespread approach, albeit it is possible to find it in Hasidism.49 The incorporation of relationships with things in the world in that unity in which “nothing particular retains any importance . . . but everything is included in the relationship” (I and Thou, 127), returns us to the description in Ecstatic Confessions, according to which all of the things

I deal with Buber’s paradoxical language in the next section. “For in truth there is a cosmos for man only when the universe becomes a home for him with a holy hearth where he sacrifices” (Buber, I and Thou, 150). 48 “Its mystical significance, seems to be mainly connected to the integration of some elements into a more comprehensive entity or to the fact that this entity comprises a plurality of components . . . according to Geronese Kabbalistic sources, man comprises all the sefirotic realm in his structure. Later Kabbalistic terminology employs this root [kll] to express the integration of various divine attributes in each other . . . However . . . this process of integration does not abolish the individuality of the integrated sefirah. (Idel, “Universalization and Integration,” 35). 49 See the homily of R. Moshe Hayyim Efraim of Sudylkow, the Baal Shem Tov’s grandson, below, Ch. 11.3.II. 46 47

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within reality are perceived in their unity within the “I,” without losing their uniqueness (Buber, Ecstatic Confessions, 2), in a manner which is hard for the mind to comprehend. But in I and Thou Buber left the very ground of the soul and removed or transferred the attribute of incorporation outside of the I into the Eternal Thou. Whereas in Ecstatic Confessions the process is described primarily as an inward one and is only imposed upon God (see above, Chapter 1.4.I), in I and Thou one is literally speaking of the living God. This is an additional reason for my claim that Buber, in certain respects, became more mystical; a claim that will become more finely honed in the next section. 6. The Language of Paradox in Buber Into this Dark beyond all light, we pray to come and, unseeing and unknowing, to see and to know Him that is beyond knowing precisely by not seeing, by not knowing.50 Yes, in the pure relationships Thou felt altogether dependent, as Thou could never possibly feel in any other—and yet also altogether free as never and nowhere else; created—and creative. Thou no longer felt the one, limited by the other; Thou felt both without bounds, both at once. (I and Thou, 130)

One of the characteristics noted by Stace regarding the mystical state is the use of paradoxical description, beyond the capability of comprehension by human reason—a description which he referred to, as noted earlier, as “identity in difference.” According to Stace, the source of this paradox lies in the fact that it is beyond the limits of comprehension for a given entity to be simultaneously identical and different in relationship to some other entity; rather, they are either identical to or distinct from one another. Regarding the descriptions of unity in Buber with which we have dealt thus far, Stace’s words must be qualified by saying that the descriptions of unity in Daniel and of relationship in I and Thou are indeed of identity in difference—as compared to the I in the basic word I-It, whose relationship to the It is exclusively one of difference—but we cannot describe them as contradictory. This, if we accept the principle of transcendence of the dialogical I—that is, its being by virtue of its very uniqueness extending and encompassing the Thou, and only then being deserving of this designation. In this

50

Pseudo-Dionysus, quoted by Dupré, Transcendent Selfhood, 97.

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respect, the fact of the dialogical I being simultaneously both here and there is not paradoxical. As against this, Buber’s other descriptions—specifically those from the period of his dialogical work—present a much more difficult intellectual challenge to conventional reason, as they seem to literally contradict one another. This is so because, while one might be able to argue that the practical intellect cannot comprehend what is meant by an ecstatic I that is both here and there, man’s imaginative capability is able to create for itself a certain image of this. But other of Buber’s descriptions seem difficult from every possible aspect. Buber was aware of the paradoxical nature of some of his descriptions, which he attributed to the unique nature of the religious situation: “It is the sense of the situation that it is to be lived in all its antimonies—only lived—and lived ever again . . .” (I and Thou, 143–144)—unlike philosophical contradictions, in which two statements contradict one another only seemingly and in practice live alongside one another in harmony. It follows from this that Buber expressed himself in a paradoxical manner deliberately, in order to describe an experience that occurs on a different plane than that ruled by reason. For example, regarding I-Thou relationships he stated that “I require a Thou to become; becoming I, I say Thou” (ibid., 62). Regarding this, common sense is likely to ask how it is possible that an I that only becomes an I through a Thou is able to say the Thou whereby it becomes an I—for without a Thou it is not at all an I? Another paradoxical description is expressed in the characterization of the dialogical situation as an overlapping of will and grace: “But it can also happen, if will and grace are joined, that as I contemplate the tree I am drawn into a relation, and the tree ceases to be an It” (58). One might argue, for example, that the human activity arouses the Divine grace or, alternatively, that Divine grace acts at a certain time upon the human entity in moving it—that is, to understand the relationship between will and grace as a relationship of cause and effect, of early and late. One might also further argue that grace awaits all the time, but there is not always will that goes forth to encounter it, and that therefore it is only the awakening of the will towards grace that brings about the dialogical situation. Indeed, Buber noted on more than one occasion that God is present all the time, but that man is not.51 But here we are speaking of the appearance of grace, not of 51 For example “The eternal Thou is Thou by its very nature; only our nature forces us to draw it into the It-world and It-speech” (I and Thou, 148; emphasis in the original).

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the eternal and constant presence of God. It therefore seems to me from this, as well as from other sources that I shall quote, that this was not his intention, and that Buber’s description is deliberately couched in terms of the paradoxical and mysterious character of identity in difference, since he wished to say that the attributes of will and grace interpenetrate one another simultaneously, in a seemingly miraculous way that does not allow us to distinguish where man’s will ends and where the grace of Creation begins. Yet it is entirely clear that he is not prepared to say that man’s being and will are negated within grace. Here, even the ecstatic principle of the extension of the I does not provide any answer, for “the relationship is election and electing, passive and active at once.”52 True, “The basic word I-Thou can be spoken only with one’s whole being”; however, “the concentration and fusion53 into a whole being can never be accomplished by me, can never be accomplished without me” (ibid., p. 62). We are therefore left with the question: in what sense can an act that can never be done without me, that involves a supreme effort of concentration of the forces of the unified personality, nevertheless not be done by me? And, if one were to argue that this is not a question, but that man is the actor, while the Divine role is no more than that of assistance and that we are dealing here with division of tasks, I will base my words upon further sources. The first source I wish to quote may be interpreted in two different ways, but I will nevertheless begin with it. In his discussion of the Eternal Thou and its relationship to man, Buber noted that “God embraces but is not the universe; just so, God embraces but is not my self ” (I and Thou, 143). It is perhaps of some interest, even to the English reader, to note that the Hebrew translation supports my thesis on this point. The first time, speaking of God embracing the universe, it uses the word ‫מקיף‬, i.e., encompassing whereas further on, where it speaks of God embracing man’s self, it uses the word ‫כולל‬, “to include,” and does not merely speak of surrounding—but it nevertheless is not identical with him. There are thus two contradictions in the Hebrew translation: that between the two parts of the sentence (“embrace” vs. “include”) and in the second part within itself (that God includes I and Thou, 62. German: Passion und Aktion, that is, simultaneously passive and active. 53 Verschmelzung, in the meaning of embracing and petting, as we have seen above. 52

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myself but is nevertheless not me). The German source in both cases uses the verb “umfassen,”54 which means to surround or to embrace, to include and to apprehend in one’s understanding. Buber’s use of this same verb twice in succession raises a puzzling question: why did the Hebrew translator choose to alter the verb the second time from “embrace” to “include,” as against Buber, thereby creating difficulty in understanding the passage? It seems to me that the translator understood that Buber, in seeking to express a certain contradictory idea in this sentence, made use of a German verb that includes the senses of both encompassing and incorporation. But had the Hebrew translator twice used the verb mekif, “encompass,” the second half, dealing with man, would have automatically been included in the first part of the sentence, and the statement as a whole would have been redundant, for it would have then been similar to the Kabbalistic view regarding “encompassing lights” (orot makifim) and inner lights (orot penimi’im), according to which that which encompasses is transcendent to that which is inner. The attribution of a statement in this spirit to Buber would be inconsistent with his general tendency to explain the relation to the Eternal Thou as being difficult to be apprehended by reason. Indeed, immediately after this Buber continues by saying that “Man’s ‘religious’ situation, existence in the presence, is marked by its essential and indissoluble antinomies” (ibid., 143). It follows from this that God ought to be seen as both encompassing human reality and as including it, without thereby canceling its humanity. I have designated these descriptions by Buber as mystical and not merely a-rational, or religious, as Buber called them, as it is difficult in such I-Thou states to know who is the one acting, in light of the fact that man is described as included within God. In this sense, the I-Thou descriptions appear, not only as having obscured contours, but also as expressing two opposite things, as if we were to say that light is darkness and the darkness is light. True, Buber rejected as mystical obscurantism Feuerbach’s words that “the unity of I and Thou is God.”55 Nevertheless, particularly with regard to man’s relation to “the Eternal Thou,” it is entirely justified to ask where, in Buber’s descriptions, God ends and where man begins. If we remember Buber’s enthusiastic

54 “Gott umfasst das All, und ist es nicht; so aber auch umfasst Gott mein Selbst, und ist es nicht.” (Buber, Ich und Du, 111). 55 Buber, “The Dialogical Principle,” 210; and cf. above, pp. 89–90.

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words in the Introduction to Ecstatic Confessions, in which he notes, relying upon the Upanishads, that “just as a man embraced by a woman he loves has no consciousness of what is outside or inside, so the mind, embraced by the primal self, has no consciousness of what is outside or inside” (Ecstatic Confessions, 3), we may now say then that the “outside” (that is to say God) is also essentially “inside” (man’s being), and that the inside is essentially “outside,” yet nevertheless inside. Surely this paradoxical description has direct implications for the question of human free will. In many different places Buber mentioned that man’s entering into that unique sphere towards which his writings point is an entry into the unconditional. But it would seem that in his relation to God it is both conditional and unconditional: Yes, in the pure relationships Thou felt altogether dependent, as Thou could never possibly feel in any other—and yet also altogether free as never and nowhere else; created—and creative. Thou no longer felt the one, limited by the other; Thou felt both without bounds, both at once. (I and Thou, 130).

About five years later, in his essay “Spinoza, Sabbatai Zvi and the Baal-Shem” (1927), Buber once again dealt with the question of Divine fiat and free will, pointing towards that which is impossible to explain: Does that mean [regarding free will] that God has given away a portion of his determining might? We only ask that when we are busy subsuming God under the laws of our logic. But the moment of breakthrough in which we experience directly that we are free and yet now know directly that God’s hand has carried us, teaches us from out of our own personal life to draw near to the mystery in which man’s freedom and God’s determining power, the reality of man and the reality of God, are no longer contradictory. (Buber, “Spinoza,” 103)

While it was important to Buber to emphasize the preservation of the I, particularly for the possibility of establishing relationship, and hence he does not claim that man’s will is nullified within the Divine decree, nevertheless, this integrative I is thoroughly filled with Divine reality, until one can no longer recognize it and its own freedom, even though it has freedom. Thus Buber was able to say further on in his discussion of the partnership of God and man in redeeming the world, that “God and man do not divide the government of the world between them; man’s effecting is enclosed in God’s effecting and is still real effecting.”56 In light of all that has 56

Buber, “Spinoza,” 105; cf. idem., I and Thou, 166.

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been said, it follows that Buber’s mysticism is no less mystical than the mystical activism he attributed to the Baal Shem Tov, nor than the mystical passivity he attributed to the Maggid of Mezhirech. Indeed, it is even more mystical by the fact of including them both in a paradoxical manner, without negating one or the other. If Buber identifies the religious sphere with the sphere of life itself, then the sphere of true life towards which Buber wished to point is that of mystical life, which I have referred to as mysticism of life and the mystery of the earth. 7. Sensory Reality as an Illuminated Vision And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever (Daniel 12:3) When a man steps before the countenance, the world becomes wholly present to him for the first time in the fullness of the presence, illuminated by eternity, and he can say Thou in one word to the being of all beings. (I and Thou, 157).

As we have seen above, students of mysticism largely tend to identify it with unification, relying mainly upon the stance of mystics, whereas illumination and vision are identified as a stage preceding unity. It follows from this that, in relation to mystical unity, indicating a merging among the entities, illumination does not signify actual unity, but rather a drawing close to God or to the profound Divine significance of existence. Even though there are mystics who have noted that in their vision they saw light in the literal sense, in general one is speaking here of a borrowed term, according to which “illuminated reality” (including an “illuminated person”) refers to a reality that has been uplifted as a result of its penetration with a revelation of the light of understanding and of the Divine. The man who has been thus illuminated then draws close to the uplifted reality, and both of them are partners to the illumination. The meaning of this light for the one who sees it is that he is prepared to communicate and to form a connection with the deep, true dimension of reality. Hence, the illuminative state entails a psychological and cognitive change, by whose means man may grasp the components of reality and their value with a new and different attitude. One might say that, in contrast with the state of unio mystica in the strict sense of the term, in which seeing is nullified within total unification, illumination is to be seen as an epiphany and a vision indicating a certain degree of gap between the I and the divine reality.

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The perception of the pure mystical state as being based upon the obliteration of “the duality of experiencing I and experienced object,” that is, as a state in which “the act of contemplating is obliterated in the contemplator” (“God and the Soul,” 185), is also characteristic of Buber. This may be one reason why he did not identify his dialogical thought with mysticism, because he attributed to his own thought faculties of seeing and hearing that are outside of mysticism. It follows from this that, according to Buber, the description of mystical existence as seeing, as “contemplation of unity” (ibid., 184), is an excessively great departure from the pure mystical principle. Plotinus, Buber argues, described his experience in terms of seeing in accordance with Greek custom, but in practice his seeing was “only one, if also the thinnest, of the garments in which the mystical experience clothes itself, in order to be able to reveal itself.”57 On the one hand, the three realms within which the world of relation exists (nature, human beings, and spiritual entities) are connected with seeing and hearing, and therefore do not fulfill Buber’s strict definition of mysticism as a state in which observation is nullified; on the other hand, relation is not only gazing, as in gazing a clear division exists between the gazing subject and the gazed-upon object (“Dialogue,” 8–10), but entails a substantive closeness to the “Thou”58—and in this respect, the similarity to mystic unity is prominent. In the present section, I wish to focus upon those descriptions of light in Buber that pertain to states of relationship. As we said earlier, experiences of light are identified by scholars of mysticism with the second mystical state in the three-step scale of purity, illumination and unification (Underhill, “The Essentials of Mysticism,” 36). According to the 57 “God and the Soul,” 185. In these words on Plotinus, Buber continued his tendency from Ecstatic Confessions to see visions involving experience of unity as an addition to the authentic experience, derived from the inner psychological structure of the one undergoing the experience or from the tradition that he had internalized. 58 Again, I claim that there is a substantive closeness, rather than closeness in terms of identification or empathy, on the basis both of the above discussion and of Buber’s comments about the gap between empathy and dialogical relation: It would be wrong to identify what is meant here with the familiar but not very significant term “empathy.” Empathy means, if anything, to glide with one’s own feeling into the dynamic structure of an object . . . Inclusion is the opposite of this. It is the extension of one’s own concreteness, the fulfillment of the actual situation of life, the complete presence of the reality in which one participates . . . the fact that this one person, without forfeiting anything of the felt reality of his activity, at the same time lives through the common event from the standpoint of the other. (Buber, “Education,” 97).

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strict definition of mysticism, in which its uniqueness is identified with unity alone and the other two stages are seen merely as preparation, one might classify Buber’s experiences as belonging at least to the second stage of the three-fold hierarchy, that of illumination. The appearance of reality within the realm of relationship as illuminated, an explicitly different relation to the perception of components of reality, and the connection with a unifying tendency, all characterize the dialogical sphere: When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer . . . a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition that can be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is Thou and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light.59

The portrayal of reality in the dialogical experience as illuminated or shining is one to which Buber returns quite a few times. I will cite a number of examples from I and Thou. In a work of art, for example, a person sees a certain form and it asks him to realize it in reality, and the person gazes at it “radiant in the splendor of the confrontation” (I and Thou, 61). The infant “lives in the lightning and counter-lightning of encounter” (ibid., 77 ). “Then the Thou-world radiated from the ground for the length of one glance, and now its light has died back” (ibid., 145); “These moments are immortal . . . their force enters into the creation and into man’s knowledge, and the radiation of its force penetrates the ordered world and thaws it again and again” (ibid., 82). “When a man loves a woman, so that her life is present in his own, the Thou of her eyes allows him to gaze into a ray of eternal Thou” (154). And similarly with regard to the incorporation with the eternal thou: “Hence the man who turns toward him need not turn his back on any other I-Thou relationship: quite legitimately he brings them all to God and allows them to become transfigured ‘in the countenance of God’ ” (ibid., 182);60 “human life is . . . so permeated by relation that this gains a radiant and penetrating constancy in it. The moment of supreme encounter are no mere flashes of lightning in the dark but like a rising moon in a clear starry Buber, I and Thou, 59; cf. ibid., 126. In the original German: “Der Mensch, der sich ihm zuwendet, braucht sich daher von keiner andern Ich-Du beziehung abzuwenden: rechtmässiig bringt er sie alle ihm zu und last sie sich ‘in Gottes Aangesicht’ verklären” (Ich und Du, 129–130). 59 60

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night” (163). In this context, the present situation of Western culture more resembles Buber’s essay The Eclipse of God. But in Buber this illumination is connected as well with moderate unification, and hence the dialogical relationship is present in practice between the state of illumination and that of unity. First, the perception of the Thou is a perception of its wholeness and not of its separate parts, but without foregoing any one of its separate components. In such a state, all of reality flows into the Thou and is included therein, and therefore lives by its light. This integration of illumination and unification bears a new and more profound significance. As we have seen, the dialogical I is the highest function of human reality; hence, we may say that dialogical reality is a transformative, illuminated and unified reality, including the person who takes part therein. In such a reality, the known relationship among things changes, compared to those that prevail in un-unified and un-illuminated reality: “The It-world hangs together in space and time. The Thou-world does not hang together in space and time” (84); and “Every It borders on other Its; It is only by virtue of bordering on others. But where Thou is said there is no something. Thou has no borders” (55). “The present—not that which is like a point . . . but the actual and fulfilled present—exists only insofar as presentness, encounter, and relation exist” (63). This same intense and “tremendous concentration”—as in the abovementioned words of Agnon (quoted in Kaufmann, “Buber’s Failures and Triumph,” 38)—upon one thing, grasping it in its entire and in the inclusion therein of all reality, create a state in which the sequence of time and space retreat into the margins of the phenomenon and are carried thereby in another manner than that of the given state of life.61 Man is then confronted with an image of an illuminated, sensory vision to which he is subsequently connected. This state may definitely be identified with the characterization of mysticism in Dupré as “infused contemplation,” and with five of the seven characteristics of mysticism enumerated by Stace: (a) unifying vision; (b) non-applicability of normal categories of time and space; (c) a feeling of objective reality, that is, that the special state is not limited to man’s own psychological realm;

61 Cf. Buber’s comments about prayer and sacrifice: “And even as prayer is not in time but time in prayer, the sacrifice not in space but space in the sacrifice . . . ” (I and Thou, 59).

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(d) a feeling of blessedness and of grace; (e) contact with the realm of the holy.62 From the time that Buber chose the dimension of the concrete as that realm in which man must encounter the spirit, the sensory revelation itself became for him a visionary image. Everything in the world is a Divine vision; thus, there is no need to add anything to it, such as special consciousness, soul or wood nymph,63 that is, an addition of transsensual reality. The sensory vision is itself a Divine wonder and mystery, which appears before the I as a visionary picture cut off from any other context, since it includes every other context in a different way. This is one of the important characteristics of Buber’s thought: namely, that the sensory vision, without any addition, is itself the divine vision, and that therefore one need not add anything to it. One might counterpoise Buber’s words concerning mysticism with those of Zaehner: “The person who has had the [mystical] experience feels that he has gone through something of tremendous significance beside which the ordinary world of sense perception and discursive thought is almost the shadow of the shade” (Zaehner, “Mysticism,” 70). According to Buber, the ordinary world of the senses is not simply “ordinary” and is not merely a shadow, but includes profound significance when one applies to it mental concentration which do not flit about from one thing to another. On this point Hasidism’s influence upon Buber is strongly felt; regarding this influence and the manner of its internalization within Buber’s thought, we shall now turn in the second part of the book.

62 Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, 131–132. In Stace, experience of the in-applicability of the regular categories of time and space (the second characteristic listed above) belongs to the introverted model, whereas the unifying vision only belongs to the extroverted model, characteristic of Buber since his book Daniel. On the comparison between Buber’s mysticism and Stace’s categories, see above, Ch. 2.3.II. 63 Buber, I and Thou, 58–59; and see below, Ch. 7.4.

PART II

THE INTERNALIZATION OF HASIDIC PRINCIPLES IN BUBER’S THOUGHT

CHAPTER SIX

HASIDISM IN BUBER’S THOUGHT: INTRODUCTION Many of the “free thinkers” can learn from Hasidism that there is holiness. Many of the “Orthodox” can learn from it what holiness is. (Buber, Be-Pardes ha-Hasidut, 122)

1. Introduction In the introduction to this book I observed that Buber research has devoted a great deal of attention to discussing the legitimacy of Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism, specifically, while much less effort has been devoted to understanding the shaping of his thought against the background of his actual contact with Hasidic sources.1 Hasidism’s impact upon Buber’s thought has only been portrayed in very general terms,2 and there has been no detailed examination of the manner in which he internalized Hasidic teachings that might suggest the depth, extent, and power of this process. The second half of this book is devoted to an examination of the place of Hasidism in Buber’s thought. I shall attempt to present his dialogical thought in light of his interpretation of Hasidism and through Hasidic sources, and to clarify the manner in which he internalized Hasidic principles in his thought, starting with their most general aspects and continuing with a detailed discussion of Buber’s use of Hasidic-Kabbalistic terms.

1 Buber’s principled negative attitude towards Kabbalah, which he identified with Gnosticism, and in which he saw a type of religiosity that contradicted the idea of realization (below, pp. 346–349), is well known. Hence, Buber saw the transition from Kabbalah to Hasidism as “the true religious revolution . . . the Hasidic movement takes over from the Kabbala only what it needs for the theological foundation of an enthusiastic but not overexalted life in responsibility—responsibility of a single one for the piece of world entrusted to him” (Buber, “Christ, Hasidism, Gnosis,” 252–253). Nevertheless, this did not prevent Buber from relating to Kabbalistic teachings in a positive manner when these did not contradict the principles he wished to establish (“Spirit and Body,” 117–121). 2 Friedman, Buber’s Life and Work, 94–123; Schaeder, Hebrew Humanism, 287–338.

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I also wish to show how Buber’s thought took shape against the background of Hasidic sources in relation to the principles of adoption and rejection, and of continuity and change. In general, I will attempt to present his thought as an additional stage in the development of Jewish spirituality and of Jewish hermeneutics. I shall demonstrate how Buber’s understanding of the uniqueness of the Baal Shem Tov and of his life-work occupied a central place in his worldview and in his own intellectual project (below, Chapter 7). I shall also show how Buber’s positive attitude towards this world was reflected in his understanding of Hasidism’s attitude towards the reality of the world (Chapters 7.3–4; 11.4). I will then examine the implied correspondence created by Buber between the idea of devekut (attachment to God) in Hasidism, and the I-Thou relation, and the manner in which these interrelations take shape against the background of typologies of devekut in Hasidism (Chapter 8). I will further present the influence of Hasidic and Kabbalistic doctrines of tzimtzum on Buber’s dialogical thought and the manner in which these were internalized (Chapter 9), and discuss certain scholars’ critique of Buber’s exegesis of Hasidism (Chapter 11). I shall thus focus in this section of the book upon four interconnected principles pertaining to the very heart, both of Hasidic teachings and of Buber’s thought: namely, devekut (attachment); avodah be-gashmiyut (service in corporeality); olam ha-zeh (the status of this world); and tzimtzum (the theory of Divine contraction). These principles are further divided into certain Hasidic and Kabbalistic terms that were internalized in his thought, with certain changes; namely: avodah de-katnut and avodah de-gadlut (“service in smallness” and “service in greatness”), ha’al’at nitzotzot (“uplifting of sparks”), kelipah (“shell”), yihud (“unification”), kavanah (“intention”), ha-halal ha-panui (“the void”), panim el panim (“face to face”), panim ve-ahor (“face and back”). At times the internalization of these principles in Buber’s thought may easily be seen, because he referred to them by name or categorized them in his dialogical language, thereby creating an analogy between them and his own thought; at other times, however, these principles were internalized in a more organic and implicit way, requiring a more careful reading of his writings in order to identify them. This is the case regarding the principles of distancing (hitrahkut) and expansion (hitpashtut), which where replaced in Buber’s terminology by the pair of principles “distance/relation,” that are connected in Buber’s thought to the doctrine of Divine contraction (tzimtzum), or with regard to the

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I-Thou, as opposed to the I-It relationship, which are in turn related to the concepts of ratzo v’shov, of back and forth oscillation, or to states of greatness and smallness in Hasidism.3 By engaging in these subjects and concepts, it will be possible, as I noted earlier, to discern the degree of relationship between Buber’s thought and Hasidic teachings and the unique nature of his teachings, and thereby to discern both the degree of continuity between his thought and these doctrines, and the changes which Buber wrought in them—as well as to relate to the polemic regarding his understanding of Hasidism. Before entering into the discussion as such, with the goals outlined here, I wish to relate briefly to the debate among scholars concerning Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism, and thereby clarify the point-ofview from which I have chosen to deal with Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism in the following chapters. Two Different Points of View on Buber’s Interpretation of Hasidism Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism represents an interesting meeting point between the disciplines of Kabbalah and Hasidism and that of twentieth century Jewish thought, requiring two different points of view and, in practice, their integration. That which, for the scholar of Hasidism, might serve as an opening for a critique of Buber will, for the study of modern thought, serve as a basis for deeper insight into his thought, shedding light upon parallel phenomenon in his own time. The scholar of Hasidism will quite justifiably ask (and even with some severity4—as may be seen from the polemic between Gershom Scholem, his students and heirs, and Buber’s students and heirs) to what extent Buber dealt honestly with the Hasidic sources. Did he impose his own worldview upon Hasidism, which he then referred to as Hasidism? Was it justified on Buber’s part, for example, to interpret Hasidic sources using terms taken from dialogical thought? By contrast, the scholar of modern Jewish thought might ask such questions as: What place did the teachings of Hasidism occupy in Buber’s 3 On the aspect of ratzo ve-shov, and states of greatness and smallness in Hasidism, see Scholem, “Devekut or Communion with God,” 218–222. 4 The two sharpest critiques of Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism, even after he admitted that his interpretation of Hasidism focused upon only one tendency therein, were those of Steven Katz (“Buber’s Misuse,” 52–93) and of Yehudah Gellman (“Buber’s Blunder,” 20–50). For more on the Scholem–Buber controversy, see Idel, “Buber and Scholem on Hasidism,” 389–403 and further bibliography there, n. 1.

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thought? What did he adopt from Hasidism and what did he reject, and why? In what way did Buber internalize Hasidic and Kabbalistic principles within his thought (hermeneutics), and what changes did he make in the course of internalizing them in this way? How, for example, are these principles imbedded in his dialogical thought and in his philosophical anthropology? How did Hasidic sources provide Buber with inspiration for his dialogical teaching? And, in a broader context, is there any similarity between Buber’s way of interpreting Hasidism and the interpretations of other twentieth century thinkers? Such a similarity might indicate more general cultural and spiritual tendencies within modern Jewish thought. But in this part of the book, I will concentrate upon Buber’s thought alone. I think that these questions, which pertain first and foremost to the understanding of Buber’s thought, are parallel to questions that confront the student of Hasidism and Kabbalah in attempting to identify the transformations wrought by Hasidic teachings in comparison with their earlier, Kabbalah stages, and in particular the significance of these changes. From this point of view, just as criticism by researchers of Hasidism regarding the changes made by Hasidic masters in the Kabbalistic doctrines that preceded them (and even its popularization) would be invalid, and such criticism is of no value in understanding the Hasidic phenomenon, so too criticism of Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism does not lead to any deeper understanding of his thought, which was doubtlessly decisively influenced by Hasidism. Just as Buber, in his own words, became a filter in his contact with Hasidic teachings (“Interpreting Hasidism,” 221), so did the Hasidic teachers themselves serve as a kind of filter to the earlier stages of Kabbalah.5 In this sense, Buber’s thought, insofar as it was shaped by Jewish, including Hasidic, sources, ought to be seen as an additional link in the growth of Jewish spirituality that occurred over the course of generations, through the adoption and rejection of earlier elements, and by giving new weight to the relationship among them. Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism—like traditional interpretation in general—is intended primarily to serve as a source of inspiration for the people of his day.6

5 On the complex process of Hasidism’s relation to earlier stages of Kabbalistic literature, see Idel, Hasidism, 2–29. 6 This source of inspiration is connected with the renewal of the relationship with the absolute: see Buber, “Interpreting Hasidism,” 218; ibid., “On Eternity and on the Moment,” 124.

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But one must add that the confrontation with Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism is more complex than that regarding the relationship between two earlier stages of development in the Jewish exegetical tradition. This complexity entails two aspects: 1. On the one hand, Buber approached Hasidic texts as a thinker, and therefore the motivation for his involvement with Hasidism, his basic hermeneutic stance, and his decision regarding the question of upon what he needed to focus, were different than those of the researcher (Buber, “Interpreting Hasidism,” 218–219). As a thinker, he could engage in new and selective theoretical midrash on the basis of earlier sources. Such midrash needs to be evaluated on the basis of its own intellectual innovation, coherence and relevance. It is nevertheless impossible to ignore the fact that Buber was a critical thinker who lived in a critical age and knew the value of scientific cognition and its benefits, not only for the study of religion, but for “the instruction of future generations in the faith” (“Interpreting Hasidism,” 218). Hence the criteria used in academic disciplines, which Buber himself referred to as being objective, also contribute to the purpose for which he undertook his project involving Hasidism, and their conclusions may not be seen as totally erroneous. Moreover, Buber explicitly stated that scientific knowledge played a role in his Hasidic project, albeit only in an auxiliary way (“On Eternity and on the Moment,” 124)—that is, he recognized its importance in principle. This fact is likewise expressed by the fact that he responded to the criticism directed against him within the same “field” as his critics’ historical-critical approach.7 His textual analysis was conducted on the same theoretical plane as that of the academic scholars, so that his characterizations of Hasidic teachings touched upon the realm of research—even though certain of his other positions were not at all germane to the plane of research (see below, §2.2). In other words, the dispute between Buber and his critics on the uniqueness of Hasidism could have been conducted as an academic dispute among scholars. In this respect, the academic criticism of his interpretation of Hasidism was entirely justified and needs to be taken See Friedman “The Buber–Scholem Controversy,” 457; Levenson, “The Hermeneutic Defense,” 307–311. Thus, for example, Hasidism’s attitude towards the material world is directly connected to Buber’s thought, which sought solutions to the problems of his day, and which also interests research. 7

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into consideration, and the argument that it need not be confronted because they (i.e., Buber and his critics) are like two parallel lines that never meet, is invalid. The very fact that Buber stated a number of times that his interpretation of Hasidism is not to be identified with his own thought indicates that he himself drew a clear distinction between exegesis and thought. In this respect he differed from the precritical age, in which a sympathetic interpretation of an early source was introduced as original thought. 2. The convergence of the two points of view on Hasidism—that of Buber and of the academic researchers—and their confrontation with one another enables us to understand more precisely both the degree of distance and the relation of his thought to earlier stages in the history of Jewish spirituality, thereby providing us with a clearer and deeper understanding of his thought. In the final analysis, our examination of the internalization of Hasidic principles in Buber’s thought differs if we agree with Scholem’s argument that Buber read Hasidic sources as an existentialist and that the type of Hasidism for whom Buber served as a kind of self-appointed spokesman never existed; if we state that his interpretation of Hasidism has support in Hasidic sources; or if we take some intermediate position. Hence my introductory comment that the discussion of Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism is an interesting and significant meeting point between two areas of research—that of Hasidism and that of modern Jewish thought—on the condition that neither realm completely “swallows” the other. But in light of the fact that I wish to examine the place and influence of Hasidism upon Buber as expressed in the internalization within his thought of basic Hasidic principles, I must methodologically separate this point-of-view from one concerned with the degree of integrity practiced by Buber with regard to interpreting its teachings, and integrate the latter either at the end of the discussion or separately. I shall relate to this aspect in the footnotes, at those points where such an integration seems to me to provide an added dimension to the discussion. I have devoted a separate chapter (Chapter 11) to several aspects related to the dispute over Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism, where I have presented my own position regarding it. The inclusion of these notes in the body of the discussion, and the separate chapter dealing with the polemic per se, serve the general purpose of this part of the book by examining Buber’s internalization of Hasidic principles, also from the point of view of the gap between them and the source. Nevertheless, a comprehensive discussion of the various

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aspects of the polemic concerning Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism would go beyond the scope of this book. Such a discussion would require a separate work, as it would need to include numerous Hasidic sources and a precise analysis, both quantitative and qualitative, of the relationship among the different approaches within Hasidism and the different components of each and every approach. Hence, I shall limit myself to the polemic regarding Buber’s understanding of the attitude of Hasidism towards this world (Chapter 11) and draw a connection between avodah be-gashmiut (“service in corporeality”) and the ideal of devekut (Chapter 8). Let me begin by saying that it is difficult to find things that Buber said about Hasidism which do not have some kind of basis in Hasidic sources. But more than Buber was loyal to any one tendency of one school in Hasidism, his exegetical project ought to be seen as a kind of “gathering of the sparks of his soul” in all of its sources (below, Ch. 11.2). Four questions lie at the heart of our discussion, the relation among which will be dictated by the point of view that I have chosen: 1. What did Buber choose to emphasize in his interpretation of Hasidism? As Buber noted that his approach to Hasidism was selective and his interest was in “a selection of those manifestations in which its vital and vitalizing element was embodied” (“Interpreting Hasidism,” 218), that which he rejected certainly did not find its way into his thought, and therefore testifies to its nature. 2. How great was the gap between his interpretation of Hasidic teachings and his own teaching? At first glance, this gap may already be discerned in the semantic sense, as some Hasidic and Kabbalistic terms mentioned in his interpretation of Hasidism did not find their place within his thought.8 But this matter is not only a semantic one, but one of the changes in form which occurred to Hasidic principles within his thought, for even when Buber adopted patterns, principles and concepts from Hasidism, he gave them a new form. To these one must add those elements that interested critical research:

8

For example, the four worlds, or the concepts hayut, mohin and kelipah.

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3. Were those elements that Buber selectively gathered from Hasidism interpreted by him correctly, or did he impose his own views upon them? 4. Did those elements which Buber chose—for example, his focus upon the Hasidic tale and his perception of it as the vital element within Hasidism—distort the shape of Hasidism? 2. The Place of Hasidism in Buber’s Worldview Everybody agrees as to the great influence Hasidism exerted upon Buber’s early thought and his dialogical thought, as Buber explicitly emphasized this point through all the years of his work. It was perhaps expressed in the most succinct but penetrating way in his statement that, particularly from 1905 onwards, Hasidism was the cornerstone of his thought.9 In my introduction to this book I discussed briefly the question of the relationship between Buber’s dialogical thought and Hasidic teachings. Like Barzilai, I think that Buber’s dialogical discourse should be seen as an independent exposition, just as Buber himself stated that he saw in Hasidism merely a supporting basis for his thought, as well as the obvious fact that reading Hasidic writings does not necessarily require that one arrive at the dialogical principle. I nevertheless think that, in those Hasidic sources that influenced Buber, one ought to see more than merely a source of inspiration or support for his dialogical teaching; that, in practice, one is speaking of a profound set of interrelations with them, which led to the crystallization of his dialogical presentation. In general, Buber’s world-view is based upon mutual interrelationships, and one ought not to exclude from this his hermeneutic attitude towards the sources—that is, that the sources for him constituted a Thou. The complex intermingling between the I and the Thou as I have presented it, particularly in Chapter Five, makes it impossible for us to see the influence of Hasidic sources upon Buber as merely a source of inspiration that came from without and that supports his thought; rather, one is speaking of a profound duality, in which the Thou is admixed with the I. Buber’s own Thou, implanted within his I, united with the Thou of Hasidism, and

9 I have made use of Barzilai’s translation, who used the phrase “the supporting ground of my thought” (Buber, “The Dialogical Principle,” 213).

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was thus combined within his thought. With regard to the substance of his teachings, it is difficult to imagine Buber’s dialogical thought taking shape without the idea of God’s immanence in the world, without the Hasidic idea of devekut, without the Hasidic fellowship, and without the love of man and the love of God which he saw in it (below, Chapter 10.1). The claim that Buber was first and foremost a universal rather than a Jewish thinker, since the exposition of the dialogical idea is independent and universal, is in my opinion an artificial one. For Buber, the inner and the outer, the universal and the particular, are like the chicken and the egg—that is to say, it is impossible to determine which came first. Buber’s thought is both universal and Jewish, just as he himself was both Jewish and universal. His books Daniel and I and Thou, which are universal in their character, could not have been written without Buber’s Judaism and Jewishness, just as his essays on the essence of Judaism could not have been written as they were had he not been a universal personality. Hence, Buber dealt repeatedly with the question of the contribution of Judaism, to both Jews and to non-Jews. I. Buber Understanding of the Influence of Hasidism on Him Buber’s involvement with Hasidism encompassed his entire lifetime. As implied by his personal testimony, the motivation for his project in the field of Hasidism was not historical-scholarly, but rather culturalspiritual, and at its center stood the questions of man’s relationship to God and of man’s relationship to the physical world (Schaeder, Hebrew Humanism, 292). Buber’s involvement in Hasidism was, on the one hand, an important component in the shaping of his spiritual personality10 and, on the other, derived from his recognition that Hasidism enables Western man, both Jewish and non-Jewish, to deal successfully with the spiritual, cultural and human crisis within which he finds

10 See his words in his essay “The Foundation Stone”: “Only listen to a saying such as this which made me, over forty years ago, into a Hasid of the Baal-Shem-Tov: ‘He takes unto himself the quality of fervor . . .’ ” (70). The feeling of historical continuity between himself and Hasidism is expressed in the strong words: “I bear in me the blood and the spirit of those who created it [the Hasidic legend], and out of my blood and spirit it has become new” (Buber, The Legend of The Ba’al Shem, 10). On his personal approach towards Hasidic sources, see this section.

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himself.11 It therefore should not be surprising that a Hasidic principle, such as the intimate relationship between the Hasidic masters (Zaddikim) and their disciples, found its way into his educational and therapeutic approach,12 and that the social ideal of the Hasidic fellowship fructified his social approach.13

Buber, “Hasidism and Modern Man,” 23–24. According to Buber, the great crisis of his time derived from the fact that he had lost the living feeling regarding his unique essence and his purpose in life (Buber, “In the Midst of Crisis”). 12 See below, 275–277. Buber’s preference for the practical side of education over the theoretical aspect, a position which led him to reject Hebrew University’s offer that he hold the chair of pedagogy (Simon, “Buber the Educator,” 207), is reflected in Buber’s comments about the Maggid of Mezhirech: “He was, of course, not a professional teacher, not a man with one specialized function. Only in eras when the world of spirit is on the decline is teaching, even on its highest level, regarded as a profession. In epochs of flowering, disciples live with their master just as apprentices in a trade lived with theirs, and ‘learn’ by being in his presence, learn many things for their work and their life because he wills it, or without any willing on his part. That is how it was with the disciples of the Maggid. Over and over they say that he himself as a human being was the carrier of a teaching, that, in his effect on them, he was a Torah personified.” (Tales of the Hasidim, Early Masters, 17–18). The passages quoted by Buber from Tzava’at ha-Ribash, that a person needs to “take unto himself the quality of fervor . . . for he is hallowed and becomes another man and is worthy to create . . .” and that “Man’s being created in the image of God I grasped as deed, as becoming, as task” (“My Way to Hasidism,” 51) are reflected, in my opinion, in his essay, “The Education of Character” (1933), where he comments that: “It is peculiar to him [the great character] to react in accordance with the uniqueness of every situation which challenges him as an active person . . . It [the situation] demands presence, responsibility; it demands you . . . As his being is unity, the unity of accepted responsibility, his active life, too, coheres into unity” (“The Education of Character,” 142–143; and see below, at the end of the concluding chapter). 13 Mendes-Flohr, “Friendship and Renewal,” 60; Yassour, “Hevrutah and Socialism,” 79. These two articles particularly emphasize the Western sources from which Buber drew inspiration regarding social questions; that he was influenced, already at the beginning of the twentieth century, by revolutionary social approaches and contemporary sociological doctrines. However, it seems that the ideal of fellowship in Buber received its seal of utopian holiness from the inspiration of the Hasidic sources. Thus, for example, in Buber’s childhood memories of his encounters with the Hasidic congregation in the city of Sadigora, we read: “Here, however, was another, an incomparable; here was, debased yet uninjured, the living double kernel of humanity: genuine community and genuine leadership . . . [emphasis in the original]. The palace of the rebbe, in its showy splendor, repelled me . . . But when I saw the rebbe striding through the rows of the waiting, I felt, ‘leader,’ and when I saw the Hasidim dance with the Torah, I felt, ‘community.’ At that time there rose in me a presentiment of the fact that common reverence and common joy of soul are the foundations of genuine human community.” (“My Way to Hasidism,” 45); and cf. below, n. 20. The relationship in Buber between the image of the Hasid and the image of the halutz, of the Zionist pioneer, who integrated national and social values, was noted by Simon in his essay, “Buber the Educator” ( 209–212). There is no doubt that Buber hoped that national and collective life in the renewed Land of Israel would be in a Divine light. 11

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At the basis of Buber’s essays concerning Hasidism stood “the desire to convey to our own time the force of former life of faith and to help our age renew its ruptured bond with the absolute.”14 This desire was understood by Buber as related to “the claim of existence itself ” (“Hasidism and Modern Man,” 16): a demand addressed to man, realized through a decision of the soul on behalf of existence, and expressed in “a dialogue with being” and in “ontic partnership.” Buber felt that he was called upon and even commanded to realize the Hasidic exegetic project,15 and essentially saw himself as the messenger or prophet of Hasidism to the Western world16 and its heir in the Zionist enterprise (“My Way to Hasidism,” 50). The feeling of mission and power that pulsed in Buber’s heart in his work in the field of Hasidism may be seen if we place the description of his motivations for dealing with Hasidism against the background of his characterization of revelation in his book, I and Thou. As in his doctrine of revelation, so too in the description of his motivations for dealing with Hasidism, Buber spoke of a direct demand addressed to man (and regarding his project in Hasidism the demand was addressed directly to him), which makes life weightier and of greater significance (I and Thou, 158–159). This demand is not like a formula set from the outset, but happened as it happened (“Hasidism and Modern Man,” 26). In order to realize this demand, Buber did not make use of a filter, but himself became a filter (“Interpreting Hasidism,” 221). Buber sought to execute this task faithfully, as an honest craftsman who seeks to realize the task that has been imposed on him in keeping with his maximum ability (“Hasidism and Modern Man,” 26). However, as we have said, this was not merely a task of transmission and translation, the work of a faithful artist, but a path in which Buber himself walked:

14 Buber, “Interpreting Hasidism,” 218. Cf. Dupré’s comments about the divided life of Western man (Transcendent Selfhood, 22). 15 “There was something that commanded me, yes, which even took hold of me as an instrument at its disposal” (Buber, “Hasidism and Modern Man,” 22); “But now [after the First World War] it became overpoweringly clear that this life [the Hasidic way of life] was involved in a mysterious manner in the task that had claimed me” (ibid., 24). 16 Buber acknowledged that Hasidism sought to act exclusively within the limitations of Jewish tradition and not to spread itself to cultures beyond Judaism. Nevertheless, there was “something that hid itself in Hasidism and would, or rather should, go out into the world. To help it do this I was not unsuited” (ibid., 22).

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chapter six Since I began my work on Hasidic literature, I have done this work for the sake of the teaching and the way. But at that time I believed that one might relate to them merely as an observer. Since then I have realized that the teaching is there that one may learn it and the way that one may walk on it. The deeper I realized this, so much the more this work, against which my life measured and ventured itself, became for me question, suffering, and also even consolation. (“Hasidism and Modern Man,” 25)

Buber’s Hasidic project was thus accompanied by a process of drawing closer to it and internalizing its values; his path towards Hasidism, as Buber understood it, became in no small measure his own path: “It was necessary, rather, to take into my own existence as much as I actually could of what had been truly exemplified for me there [in Hasidism]” (ibid., 24). This internalization was personal and selective, as Buber did not advocate a doctrine of general faith that is given to all, in the sense of all or nothing. In his relation with Hasidism, his existential tendency, to begin with the I and not with Jewish tradition was striking. Therefore, Buber noted in several places that his interpretation of Hasidism was not to be identified in any simple way with his own teaching.17 Similarly, the choice of Hasidic principles adopted by Buber also reflected his own personal doctrine of revelation: I could not become a Hasid. It would have been an unpermissible masquerading had I taken on the Hasidic manner of life—I who had a wholly other relation to Jewish tradition, since I must distinguish in my innermost being between what is commanded me and what is not commanded me. (“Hasidism and Modern Man,” 24)

Buber saw in Hasidism an anticipation of a certain spiritual force which needed to find its completion in Zionism ( Jaffee, “Introduction,” x). While Buber also identified with earlier stages in the history of Jewish spiritual creativity—he saw in the faith of the biblical prophets, in early Christianity, and in the mythical aspects of Rabbinic literature and Kabbalah, an expression of the authentic spiritual power embodied periodically among members of the Jewish

“I beg that my interpretation of Hasidic teaching not be confused with my own thought; I can by no means in my own thinking take responsibility for Hasidic ideas, although my thinking is indebted to them and bound up with them”—“Interrogation,” 88; cf. Mendes-Flohr, “Buber’s Conception,” 266. 17

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people—it was in Hasidism (thus he argued in 1914) that the Jewish myth reached its high point, with the belief that “every man is called to determine, by his own life, God’s destiny.”18 Buber’s valuation of the importance of Hasidism in his own life, for the revitalization of Judaism, and for the perfection of modern man, requires that we attribute to Hasidism greater weight in his thought as a whole. Buber’s description of the Hasidic myth concerning the man who redeems God and the Shekhinah within the world19 became part of his own world. I therefore think that any discussion that minimizes the impact of Hasidism upon the shaping of Buber’s world view, by attributing greater weight to the internalization of Western philosophical and anthropological traditions in his thought20 is incorrect, as it does not properly note the vital religious component in his thought, which was the fruit of his contact with Hasidism. Buber’s understanding of Hasidism became a central layer in his worldview, and occupied a permanent place in his writings. It was a cornerstone of his book Daniel, in his description of the self-realization of the soul that acts through concentration of all its powers and realizing the Divine within the world, and it is also present in his classical book I and Thou (below, Chapter 7) and in all of his dialogical writings.

Buber, “Myth in Judaism,” 106. In his first address on Judaism, “Judaism and the Jews” (1909), Buber noted, in chronological order, highpoints in the history of the Jewish spirit. The last of these was “the age in which late Hasidism dared, in the shared existence and shared effort of men, to forge God’s destiny on earth” (“Judaism and the Jews,” 12). 19 Buber, “Judaism and Mankind,” 28; “Myth in Judaism,” 106. 20 For example, Barzilai, Homo Dialogicus, 12 and 25 n. 110. This tendency is also striking, in my opinion, in the absence of emphasis on the role of Hasidism in the formation of Buber’s concept of society (see above, n. 13, for the papers of MendesFlohr and of Yassour). Against this, see the view of Gries: “Therefore he [Buber], more than Scholem, felt the life pulse of the Hasidic movement and the tremendous importance which Hasidism attributed to the living event in their community. Even if we would concur with Scholem that Buber’s formulations regarding the sanctification of the present belong more to his own existentialist philosophy than to the contents of Hasidic life, we cannot ignore that Hasidim indeed created a congregation of fellows, among whom the inter-personal connection and context served as a living and concrete expression for the mystical dimension of their lives. We cannot ignore the testimony of their opponents regarding the power of their social activity, supported in the Hasidic writings as an expression of the love below that reflects and evokes love in the higher realms” (Sefer Sofer ve-Sippur, 92). 18

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II. Buber’s Approach to Hasidic Sources I noted above (pp. 191–192) that Buber’s textual analyses exist within the same universe of discourse as that of scholarly research. However, it follows from Buber’s comments about his Hasidic project that the profound and fundamental gap between his approach of explaining Hasidism and that of the researchers of Hasidism does not derive primarily from a diverse interpretation of the sources, from the preference of one genre over another, from selective emphasis on a particular tendency within Hasidism, nor even from the difference between the wish to understand the past and the desire to make a significant contribution to spiritual life in the present. Rather, it is rooted in a different kind of contact with the sources that penetrates to the depths behind the world of ideas represented in the teachings and in the stories. Buber thought that Hasidic teachings, and particularly its tales, serve as a garment for a deeper core and reality, which one may reconstruct and which he wished to revive. Buber characterized the gap between the goal of his own Hasidic project and that of the scholars as analogous to the gap between the wish to perceive power, events and life, and the desire to understand principles and teachings.21 In response to the criticism of Scholem and of Schatz, Buber distinguished between the scholarly-historical path— which views the area of research as an object of knowledge, examining the sources of the tradition under discussion, the background to its growth, the stages of its development, and its internal splitting into separate branches—and another, completely different way, at whose root lies the attempt: to recapture a sense of the power that once gave it [the ancient tradition] the capacity to take hold of and vitalize the life of diverse classes of people. Such an approach derives from the desire to convey to our own time the force of a former life of faith and to help our age renew its ruptured bond with the Absolute. (“Interpreting Hasidism,” 218)

21 Since Buber repeatedly emphasized this gap in his responses to his critics, one cannot accept the view of Kepnes (“A Hermeneutical Approach,” 201), that Buber moved, in his contact with Hasidism, from a romantic approach, that sought to penetrate to the inner life of the subject, and from a mystical approach, that wavered between the position of an interpreter and imaginary author, to a more restrained approach reflecting a dialogical relation between interpreter and text.

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Such a power, as embodied in the Hasidic movement, is an embodiment of the “soul-force of Judaism” (“My Way to Hasidism,” 48). That same “old power lives in it that once held the immortal fast to earth, as Jacob the angel, in order that it might fulfill itself in mortal life” (ibid., 48–49). In general, for Buber the substantive factor underlying the great religions was not doctrine, but the event, which is simultaneously life and the word.22 Hasidic literature was created out of the desire of those who transmitted it to give verbal expression to “an overpowering objective reality” (“Hasidism and Modern Man,” 25) which they experienced. The Hasidic tale was uniquely suitable to conveying this life-event due to the proximity of the teaching to the event in which it was created: This form [the anecdote] has enabled me to portray the Hasidic life in such a way that it becomes visible as at once reality and teaching. Even where I had to let theory speak, I could relate it back to life. (“Hasidism and Modern Man,” 26)

Like Buber’s understanding of his own thought, so too in his interpretation of Hasidism he was faithful to his view that the main thing is embedded in the objective reality reflected in the teachings. Against the background of his agreement with Gershom Scholem that Hasidism did not create a new Kabbalistic doctrine, Buber said that the emergence and success of Hasidism derived from a completely different realm: An old teaching as such never engenders a new life of faith in a later age. Rather this new way comes into being within the context of personal and community existence and signifies a far-reaching transformation despite the persistence of traditional forms. At the time of its birth, as well as in the stages of development that follow, the new faith assimilates itself to an old doctrine, appeals to it, indeed finds in the doctrine its own origin. Certainly, in the life of the founder, elements of this doctrine already appear to have fused with his own experience of faith, but with modifications characteristic of the way of life that his own mode of existence has initiated. (“Interpreting Hasidism,” 219) 22 This description by Buber, that makes events and life situations prior to Torah, is consistent with Yehuda Liebes’s description of the creation of the homilies in Saba de-Mishpatim (one of the sections of the Zohar) as developing from an encounter among friends, without the author knowing where things would lead. In Liebes’ language: “The ‘frame story,’ the relations among the sages, the love and Eros involved in studying of Torah—all these are the essence of the Zohar” (“Zohar and Eros,” 90–91).

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The life of faith of the founder of Hasidism (the Baal Shem Tov), that is, his unique relation with reality, is what facilitated the initial growth of Hasidism. But this life of faith was not created in a vacuum, but rather through contact with elements and components from the old teaching—although its essence was immanent in an outburst of vitality expressed in renewed life of faith.23 The adherence to earlier sources that confirm the life of faith in the present is a kind of “creative midrash,” seeking in the sources Archimedean points to serve as sources for the new existential-life situation. The relationship between the new spirit and the old teaching gives new emphases to the old teaching that it did not previously have. Thus, to quote Gershom Scholem’s words regarding the place of devekut (clinging to God) in Hasidism, the earlier viewpoints underwent a change of place.24 Therefore, thought Buber, Hasidism was distinguished by an “enduring, vital, and intimate connection to everyday life” (“Interpreting Hasidism,” 221), which in principle did not derive from doctrine, but created doctrine. Hasidic teachings were thus understood by Buber as an interpretation and translation of a powerful event and of a type of spiritual life that profoundly influenced those that experienced it. This life was of the order of something hidden: It was—so I might even venture to express it—something that hid itself in Hasidism and would, or rather should, go out into the world. To help it do this I was not unsuited. (“Hasidism and Modern Man,” 22)

And also: But I became more and more aware of a fact that has become of utmost significance to me: that the kernel of this life is capable of working on men even today, when most of the powers of the Hasidic community itself have been given over to decay or destruction, and it is just on the present-day West that it is capable of working in an especial manner. (“Hasidism and Modern Man,” 27).

23 Compare his earlier remarks in his essay “Spirit and Body of the Hasidic Movement”: “Hasidism took over and united two traditions without adding anything essentially different to them other than a new light and a new strength.” (“Spirit and Body,” 117). 24 Buber’s characterization of the element of renewal of Hasidism in relation to earlier sources is not that different from that of Rahel Elior: “The Hasidic movement to a large extent made use of the framework of the Kabbalistic tradition as a basis for renewed freedom in the fundaments of religious thought, and as a precedent for refashioning new spiritual priorities” (“Between Renewal and Change,” 34).

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Whereas Hasidism was originally addressed to members of the Jewish people, its living and hidden inner kernel was characterized by Buber as something addressed to all human beings; while it flourished in the eighteenth and nineteenth century among Eastern European Jewry and, at least according to Buber, thereafter degenerated, its essence may yet act upon modern man in a unique way. In his interpretation of Hasidism, Buber repeatedly sought to emphasize the spiritual power which he identified in Hasidism by means of those principles that might point towards it; hence, he chose to forego a full presentation of all of its varieties. It sufficed for him to have a selective choice of its manifestations in order to identify its vital fructifying components. He postponed involvement in the ideological varieties within Hasidism and its various branches to a later stage (Be-Pardes ha-Hasidut, ”Introduction,” vii). The articulation of his stance with regard to that which distinguishes among the various approaches in Hasidism was “forced upon him” as a result of the criticism leveled against his interpretation of Hasidism. Buber’s claim as to the possibility of arriving at the vital core of Hasidism beyond its intellectual or ideational garment or, in his words, to arrive at “the situation which cannot be described,” or his words concerning “the ‘supra-verbal’ transmission of the mystery” (Schaeder, Hebrew Humanism, 294) raises complex epistemological and hermeneutical questions. These cannot be examined by means of rational or scientific criteria, just as it is impossible to prove his dialogical philosophy, with all of its ontological-metaphysical implications, scientifically. Compared to the rationalistic research method, Buber’s hermeneutic point of departure is far more distant from that which seeks to understand the past as such (as in the approach attributed to Scholem), than it is from an exegetical approach (attributed to Buber), that is essentially concerned with the original meaning of the sources for the present (Levenson, “The Hermeneutical Defense,” 301). The gap separating Buber’s hermeneutical point of departure from the theoretical and exegetical approaches is identical to that between the rational and the irrational or between the scientific and the mystical. Whereas scholarship explained the causes of Hasidism’s success and expansion in terms of the sociological or religious-spiritual context, which may be understood in a rational way—such as that view which saw Hasidism as a popularization of Kabbalah suited to the situation of ordinary people (“people of corporeality”), or the psychologization of the theosophic principles of Kabbalah, which made it more accessible

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and relevant to a broader public—Buber spoke, as stated earlier, about power, reality and a way of life that created the situation leading to the ascent and success of Hasidism. These distinctions are irrelevant, as we said, to the realm of rational research but, as Schaeder put it, belong more to the realm of vision (ibid.): the power of vision directed towards the past. And indeed, regarding this position on Buber’s part, one might well ask: at the basis of Hasidism did there lie power, reality and life of a new type, for which all of its teachings served as a kind of a garment? Is it possible today to relate to this power and life beyond its specific teachings and to penetrate to its core, as Buber thought? The epistemological suspicion towards Buber’s basic axioms is understandable, but one must add that the attempts made by the mainstream of scholarship to understand the circumstance of the ascent and success of Hasidism raise more than a few difficulties. Thus, for example, the sociological explanations previously given for the ascent and success of Hasidism are today subject to doubt.25 It seems to me that the conjectures offered by research as to the circumstances of the dynamic expansion of Hasidism, as well as the appearance within its spiritual-historical realm of so many spiritual leaders of impressive stature in such a short period of time, leave the student with a certain embarrassment. One cannot reject the possibility that the deeper cause for the ascent of Hasidism and its success lies in a different realm, one that is hidden to the analytic, rational thinker. Indeed, this is so even if the possibility of proving the existence of such a level is beyond the realm of research. In conclusion, it must be said that, even though Buber’s point of departure lies on a completely different hermeneutic and ontological level than that of the standard scholarly approach, one cannot say in any simple way that one is dealing with two entirely separate approaches and that therefore one has nothing to do with the other. In practice, the two different points of departure—the scholarly and that of Buber—justifiably criticize one another. The historical-rationalistictextual point of departure, to which Scholem adhered, correctly led him to argue that one can find many statements in Hasidic sources that contradict Buber’s representation of this movement. Buber answered

25 For a critique of its social approach, see Elior (“Between Renewal and Change,” 30). For a critique of its crisis historiography [“critical historiography”], see Idel, Hasidism, 47–48.

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Scholem with the theoretical tools accepted within research by quoting Hasidic texts, thereby demonstrating that he does not see his own discourse as contradicting that of the research community, and that he too seeks to present an objective presentation of Hasidism.26 Buber’s stance is thus also critical of that of Scholem. In practice, Buber argued that, using a different method—one that he does not teach—one could uncover the vital force within Hasidism, that relates to its teachings as the relationship between kernel and garment. It follows that, while Buber’s Hasidism project is directed towards the present, it simultaneously penetrates deeply into the concrete reality of the past.27 This stance on the part of Buber is, in practice, derived from the view that the research stance represented by Scholem is naïve (Levenson, “The Hermeneutical Defense,” 307) since, by focusing upon the external wrapping of its ideas, it does not penetrate to the depths of the Hasidic teachings. III. Did Buber’s Understanding of Hasidism Change Fundamentally? Buber’s fundamental perception of the Hasidic message did not undergo any substantive change throughout the course of his life. There is a clear and continuous line that may be seen running through all of Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism, from his earliest description of Hasidism in 1906 through his later characterizations, and within his later thought, in which the main elements of Hasidic teaching are described in dialogical terms. I think that the attempt of Buber scholars—as well as of Buber himself—to create a dichotomy between the early, mystical Buber and the later, dialogical Buber, does not take sufficient account of Buber’s exegetical unity within the area of Hasidism. Moreover, Buber’s earlier enthusiastic characterization of the Hasidic revolution as “world-pietism” is an expression of such a tendency already in his early mysticism. This tendency, that demands concrete life in the world, continued into his later interpretation of Hasidism, and is a cornerstone of his dialogic thought.

Levenson, “The Hermeneutical Defense,” 307; Gellman, “Buber’s Blunder,” 26. This argument is somewhat reminiscent of Rudolf Steiner’s occult history, according to which it is possible, not only to reconstruct ideas coming from the past, but also to make living contact with the powers that underlay external history, and in this respect to be present in the past as well (An Outline of Occult Science [New York, 1979], 104–105). 26 27

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In fact, Buber was not satisfied with his early renditions of the Hasidic tales, and even thought that at the outset of his Hasidic project he was too much subject to the Zeitgist of the turn of the twentieth century—a Zeitgeist that was limited to curiosity and to the desire to accumulate knowledge about different religions, without focusing upon the decision on behalf of a project within life, and without responsibility for existence. He also, almost without exception, characterized Hasidism in dialogical terms only during the dialogical stage of his life.28 Nevertheless, his basic intuition regarding the uniqueness of Hasidic spiritual life did not change (Schaeder, Hebrew Humanism, 288–303). As we have seen in the first chapter, already at the beginning of his Hasidism project, in the Introduction to his book of tales of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (1906), Buber characterized Hasidism as a kind of spiritual life that does not turn its back to the world or to the soul, as a religiosity that “brings the transcendent over into the immanent and lets the transcendent rule in the immanent and form it, as the soul forms the body” (Tales of Rabbi Nahman, 10). Buber’s earlier characterization of Hasidism used hardly any dialogical terminology, but certainly did not contradict the dialogical. The description of Hasidic spiritual life in his first book on Hasidism is not only consistent with his characterization of the relation between spirit and matter in his book I and Thou, but serves as a kind of basis for the “breakthrough” of the dialogical principle in the continued development of his thought. The fact that Hasidism does not deny the personal element or the individual beings found in the world was consistent with Buber’s understanding of the uniqueness of modern thought, that characterizes the importance of individual and concrete things and their ontological status, at the expense of general principles, and even longs for their realization and the strengthening of the details as a vehicle for expressing the multiplicity of God that is revealed thereby and that knows itself through them. I shall postpone to later in the book (Chapter 11) discussion of the question as to whether Hasidism indeed represents this aspect of modern thought and to what extent it does so. As mentioned, throughout the years during which he wrote about Hasidism, Buber remained loyal to this interpretation of Hasidism, notwithstanding the changes that occurred in his thought. Even when Buber admitted, as in his 1963 response to those who criticized his 28 Buber already used the terminology, “I and Thou,” in the introduction to his book about the Baal Shem Tov (The Legend of the Baal Shem, 13).

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approach to Hasidism (“Interpreting Hasidism”), that two different streams existed in Hasidism, which only at times were united in a given personality, this did not involve a retreat from his initial, basic position—namely, that one finds in Hasidism an expression of a new form of spiritual life, compared with Kabbalah and medieval Christian mysticism. One ought nevertheless to note a number of changes that occurred in his presentation of Hasidism: (a) his distancing himself from statements that could be interpreted as pantheistic; that is, a careful distinction between the pantheistic idea and the dialogical principle—that for him contradicted the pantheistic principle—which he attributed to Hasidism;29 (b) the non-identification of the activist and realizing tendency in Hasidism, with which Buber identified, with mysticism— albeit in the introduction that he wrote to a collection of the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings, Buber did attribute mysticism of this sort to the Baal Shem Tov (see below, Chapter 7.1); (c) creation of a dichotomy between the Kabbalistic-theosophic element in Hasidism, which Buber identified with Gnosticism, and the ideal of devekut, or devotion. I view this change as non-substantial, as already from the beginning of his Hasidic project Buber did not see the theosophic principle (that is, the doctrine of the sefirot and of the divine faces, partzufim), as essential to Hasidism. Already then, in The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, he criticized it within the context of his critique of Sefer ha-Zohar. This criticism was exacerbated when Buber posed it as opposed to devekut (see below, Chapter 11.2). (d) In Buber’s later writings concerning Hasidism, there is a retreat from his earlier, sweeping stance that tended to identify Hasidism, in all its branches, as a central, unifying axis. 3. The Relationship among the Cosmic Worlds in Buber’s Interpretation of Hasidism Recognition of Hasidism’s ongoing significant impact upon Buber’s worldview must lead us to an examination of the manner in which

29 Here Buber deleted from the first edition of his book on the Baal Shem Tov the formula, “Everything is God and everything serves Him.” This, as opposed to his remarks about Goethe, which served him in his book I and Thou, “In all elements God’s presence” (Schaeder, Hebrew Humanism, 83–84). Cf. on this in his essay “Spinoza,” 92–99, and below, Chapter 9.4.

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Hasidic views were internalized in his thought, according to the principles enumerated above. Here I wish to sketch the broad contours of the tendencies found by Buber in Hasidism, which took on different form in his own thought. These will serve as a framework for our discussion of specific details in the following chapters. In Buber’s view, Hasidism was Kabbalah or mysticism become ethos. That is, the view that theosophy or Gnosticism—terms used by Buber to designate the doctrine of Sefirot and the related praxis of mystical kavvanot (“intentions”)—developed into dicta about man and his path towards God (“Christ, Hasidism, Gnosis,” 252), is a key element in his understanding of the essence of Hasidism,30 and it was this Hasidic element that fructified his own worldview. This approach, which perceives the theosophic Kabbalah of Hasidism as no more than a supporting theological element, sets the tone both for his interpretation of Hasidism and for the manner in which he internalized its principles in his thought, as expressed in the complete rejection of the doctrine of the four worlds and the Sefirot.31 Hasidism, according to Buber, gave a new direction to the Kabbalistic doctrine of emanation: The meaning of emanation, according to a Hasidic saying, is “not as the creatures suppose that the upper worlds should be above the lower ones, but the world of making is this one that appears to our material eye; however, if you fathom it deeper and disclose its materiality, then just this is the world of formation, and if you disclose it further, then it is the world of creation, and if you fathom its being still deeper, so it is the world of separation, and so until the Unlimited, blessed be He.” This space-time world of the senses is only the outermost cover of God. Therefore it is called the ‘World of the Shells.’ (“Spirit and Body,” 119)

30 Gershom Scholem saw in Buber’s view—that there is a conflict between the doctrine of Sefirot (Kabbalistic gnosticism) and the Kabbalah which become ethos in Hasidism—“an extraordinary mixture of truth, error, and oversimplification” (Scholem, “Buber’s Interpretation,” 233). See my position on this subject, below, Chapter 11.2. 31 “I am against gnosis because and insofar as it alleges that it can report events and processes within the divinity. I am against it because and insofar as it makes God into an object in whose nature and history one knows one’s way about” (“Replies to my Critics,” 716). See also his words addressed to Bergman elsewhere: “I have no quarrel with this, but let someone else study these aspects [i.e. of the supernal worlds]. But I am not interested in this. I have more than enough research tasks in the world that surrounds me in an unmediated way.” To this, Bergman added: “He told me that he will have enough time in the next life to experience these things” (Bergman, “Conversations with Buber,”, 144).

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This perception of reality as a series of coverings, one within another, has a strong basis in Kabbalistic sources as well as in Hasidic ones,32 but it is the overall perception of reality as a vertical system of worlds, one above the other, that sets the tone.33 While one can argue that “above” and “below” are borrowed terms in Hasidism and in Kabbalah, they are nevertheless widely used to express the transcendence of the Infinite, on the one hand, and the immanence of His attributes, on the other. In the above-quoted passage from Buber, one can see his empathy towards a change in direction towards a more horizontal axis, leading from the coarse and external to the more inward depths of reality: a tendency dominant in his writings, as expressed in a complete negation of the vertical axis.34

32 See Sefer Etz Hayyim, Sha’ar Derush ‘Iggulim ve-yosher, Sect. 2: “Behold, every world has ten specific sefirot within it . . . And all of them are in the form of circles, within one another and inside one another, to infinity, without any limit or number. And they are all like onion skins, one within the other.” Or, in the language of Sefer ha-Zohar, “They are all coverings one to another, brain within brain and spirit within spirit” (Zohar I.19b–20a). The principle of going from the outermost sphere to the inner sphere of the brain-marrow, is according to Sefer Etz Hayyim only from the viewpoint of man: “For this saying speaks from our own perspective, of we who dwell in this lower world, for whom that which is closest is called the shell that surrounds us, and within that is the brain-marrow, but it [the shell] is the sphere that surrounds it, and after that is another sphere, within it from our viewpoint, and which is like a brain to the former one . . . But from the perspective of the worlds itself, it is not thus. Rather, the innermost of all is the shell, and that which surrounds them all is the brain” (Etz Hayim, 23). 33 And thus in Sefer Etz Hayyim: “Almost the entire Sefer ha-Zohar and Tikkunim do not speak except of the straight [lines; see next note] . . . And we do not at all deal with the subject of the circles, but only of the aspect of that which is straight” (24). Another paradigm, that of the partzufim, combines the principle of the straightness, of above and below, with the principle of inner and outer. This combination is done by means of embodiment of the lower upon the higher, in such a way that it enwraps it from without: “For we have taught: there is hesed and there is hesed. There is hesed which is within [that is: in atika d’atikin, which is located above zeir anpin] and there is hesed that is from without [that is: ze’ir anpin]” (Idra Rabba, in Zohar III.133b):. “You should know, that that which is from without is called the fear of God . . . What is meant by ruah? Spirit that is embodied in it, in which zeir anpin is dressed. And from this spirit all those things that are below are dressed” (ibid. 134a). Thus also the lower sefirot of netzah and hod, that which are the feet of the configuration, are found “outside of the body” (ibid., 143a). 34 This axis is known in Kabbalah as kav (line) or yosher (straight). One can thus see Buber’s reservations regarding the straight axis, which has above and below, and his greater affinity to the principle of Kabbalistic circles, insofar as this principle expresses his view that one needs to penetrate to the innerness that is beyond the external. It is in this context, in my opinion, that one ought to understand his words in I and Thou: “We are told that man experiences his world. What does this mean? Man goes over the surfaces of things and experiences them” (55). On Buber’s entering into the realm

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But Buber seems to have introduced a far-reaching change in the Hasidic source quoted above, thereby changing its significance and its intention. One may assume that the Hasidic source in question is taken from the writings of the Maggid of Mezhirech, according to whom the path towards God passes through the things that exist. This line of thought is expressed in his attitude towards the letters of prayer as a means of passing through various layers of reality towards the divine Naught. A comparison of his words with Buber’s interpretation will indicate the great gap between them: In prayer one needs to put all one’s strength in the words, and he will go thus from letter to letter until he forgets his physicality, and think that the letters are combined and united with one another, and this causes great pleasure . . . And this is the World of Formation (Olam haYetzirah). And thereafter he goes to the letters of thought, and does not utter that which he speaks, and he comes to the World of Creation (Olam ha-Beriah). And thereafter he comes to the attribute of Ayin, of the “Naught,” in which all his physical powers are nullified, and this is the World of Emanation (Olam ha-Atzilut), the Attribute of Ayin.35

The common denominator of the Maggid’s words and Buber’s description is their refraining from mentioning the vertical axis of the worlds and their mention of the path leading to the depths of reality, but with regard to everything else said there about the relationship among the worlds the gap between the source and its interpretation is very great. In the Maggid there is a transition from the distinct letters (alma depiruda) to those letters that are joined into words (alma de-yihuda = the World of Formation) in a manner that to a certain degree conceals the existence of the separate letters. Further on this tendency is sharpened, as the letters of thought take the place of the letters of speech, until all of the worshipper’s physical powers are negated and, correspondingly, the independent existence of the letters in their source is also nullified in the Ayin, the transcendent Naught. Each new stage involves an overcoming of that which preceded it, through its incorporation within a

of the mystery of the earth, see below, Chapter 7.4. On circles and straight lines in Kabbalah, see Pechter, “Circles and Straight Lines.” 35 Maggid Devarav le-Ya’akov, 85–86. On the principle of attachment to the letters and its attribution to the Baal Shem Tov, see M. Rosman, Founder of Hasidism, 114–115. On the difficulty in directly attributing any written formulations to the Baal Shem Tov, see Gries, “The Historical Image,” 420.

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new reality since, as said, one contemplating the letters of thought abandons at this stage the spoken letters—and so on. Buber’s line of thought is diametrically opposed to this. First of all, the very identification that Buber created between the World of Action and “that which appears to our material eye” is by no means simple, as the world visible to the senses is, according to Lurianic Kabbalah, only the very edge of the World of Action, the “ends of its feet,” soto-speak.36 Moreover: according to Buber’s description, the sensory World of Action is the axis to which everything is connected. The other worlds—of Creation, of Formation, of Emanation, and “until the Unlimited, blessed be He”—are described by him as inward dimensions of the World of Action, so that any entry into a more inner world is in practice a deeper uncovering of material reality: “if you fathom it deeper and disclose its materiality, then just this is the world of formation, and if you disclose it further, then it is the world of creation.” We see, therefore, that according to Buber’s interpretation this world is the axis served by all the other worlds. The aim is not to arrive at the Naught, but to uncover the Naught within that which Is. It is as if one were to say, in Kabbalistic terminology, that everything is included in the World of Action—that is, we have before us the attributes of Formation within Action, Creation within Action, Emanation within Action, and even of the Unlimited within the World of Action. From here, the way to Buber’s view regarding the uncovering of the absolute within the finite, and of the eternal within the transient, is not far. If we compare Buber’s exegesis of the relationship among the different levels of reality to the position represented by the Parable of the Beautiful Maiden in Sefer ha-Zohar,37 placing the various different levels

36 “But the body of them all are the four elements of this lowly world, which is called the Land of Action” (Ez Hayuim, Sha’ar Kitzur ABY” ’A, Ch. 10, p. 234). That is to say, the four elements visible to the eye—namely, mineral, vegetable, animal, and human—are as-it-were the body of all the worlds and are called “The Land of Action.” The term eretz (“land”) refers to the sefira of malkhut; the Land of Action is thus malkhut de-‘assiyah, the lower extremity of the world of asiya, in accordance with the principle that each world is sub-divided within itself to ten sefirot. And cf. R. Yehudah Ashlag: “And the world of assiyah also includes within itself this world (Petiha le-Hokhmat ha-Kabbalah [B’nei Berak, 1998], 5). In relationship to the World of Action as a whole, this world is called “the end of the legs” (siyum raglim): a term commonly used by R. Isaac Luria to indicate the end of an entire system, called a partzuf—configuration) or nekuda de’olam hazeh (the point of this world). 37 Zohar II.99a–b. For a discussion of this metaphor in a different context, see below Chapter 10.5.

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of reality within the circle of hermeneutics, we find that in the Zoharic parable the exegetical circle closes with the understanding of the peshat, the literal meaning, from the perspective of the secret38—and that in this there is a certain similarity to Buber’s interpretation. But even if we say that in the Parable of the Beautiful Maiden the understanding of the literal meaning from within the sphere of the secret is not only the completion of the process, but also its climax, the connection with the secret per se, that expresses existence on the higher levels of being, is seen in the parable as a thing of value that stands in its own right. This is opposed to the presentation of the Hasidic saying by Buber, according to which all the worlds are observed from within the World of Action, in relationship to it and on its behalf. This is a very farreaching hermeneutic change. The Negation of the Vertical Axis in Both Directions To use Kabbalistic terminology, it would seem that in his interpretation of Hasidism, Buber adopted the principle of lower unity ( yihud tahton)39 and of arousal from below (it’aruta diltata—which in Kabbalah and in Hasidism are generally speaking related to Divine immanence), referring to the connection of the reality of this world with the spiritual element that is close to it, while rejecting the principles of upper unity ( yihud ‘elyon) and arousal from above 40 (it’aruta dil’ela—which in Kabbalah and Hasidism generally involves God’s transcendence). However, comparison between this Hasidic source and Buber’s thinking suggests that Buber took an additional step, in that he completely negated the vertical axis from above to below or from below to above— which is, as mentioned, so dominant in both Kabbalistic and Hasidic

38 She says to him, “Do you see that word, that hint with which I beckoned you at first? So many secrets there! This one and that one!” Now he sees that nothing should be added to these words and nothing taken away . . . Not even a single letter should be added or deleted. Human beings should become aware, pursing Torah to become her lovers.”—Trans. D. Matt, The Essential Kabbalah (San Francisco: Harper, 1996), 143. 39 On the higher and lower unifications, see Fine, “Unifications in Lurianic Kabbalah,” 83–85. On the connection between the lower unity and the upper unity and the relationship to women, see Lowenthal, “Women and The Dialect,” *8–19. 40 Buber used the term itaruta dil-tata (“arousal from below”) in his essay “Redemption” (209), where he also mentions itaruta d’laeila (“arousal from above”), but to the latter he only allotted a minor role. The Hasidic stories which he brings further on deal entirely with man’s activity in lifting up the Shekhinah (Divine presence) from the ashes.

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sources—and that his rejection of the vertical axis is expressed by him in two different ways: (a) the negation of the above; (b) the negation of the below. Buber did not make much use in his thought of the terms “above” and “below,” and when he did do so it was in a borrowed sense, according to which “above” is God, and “below” is the world of human beings (“Dialogue,” 15). I would like to elaborate upon these two manners of rejecting the vertical axis: a) The negation of the above: When Buber states that “As long as the firmament of the Thou is spread over me, the tempests of causality cower at my heels” (I and Thou, 59), he does not mean to say that the world of the Thou and its heavens are located above this world or above the world of the It, but that the world of the Thou is comparable to the heavens in terms of its value in relation to the world of the It. Similarly, Buber refrains from presenting the relationship between the three spheres of relation and the direct relation to “the Eternal Thou” in a vertical model. Even though he observes that every relationship pertains to “the train of the eternal Thou” (I and Thou, 150), the statement that “Extended, the lines of relationships intersect in the eternal Thou” (ibid., 123) is in no way intended to allude to the reality of a vertical axis and does not make use—in my opinion deliberately—of the vertical axis, even as a metaphor or image, but rather is intended to describe a Divine reality that is present, in which the extended lines of relationship can and should intersect. We therefore see that Buber was particularly careful in his formulations that they not be identified with the system of emanation of the worlds, as this is expressed in Kabbalah or in neo-Platonism. b) The abolition of below: Just as Buber’s teaching is not a transcendent doctrine, in which the communication with God occurs in the transition from one reality to another, along an axis that is somehow horizontal, it is also not a doctrine of immanence in any simple sense, in which man encounters God “down below”: Looking away from the world is no help toward God; staring at the world is no help either . . . “World here, God there”—that is It-talk; and “God in the world”—that, too, is It-talk.41

41

I and Thou, 127. See also above, Ch. 5.5.

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It is true that one way of understanding this passage is that any statement about God belongs to the realm of the It; however, it seems to me that Buber also wished to reject the possibility that his words would be understood in any simple way with the principle of immanence, not to mention that of pantheism. It follows from Buber’s words that the principle of immanence does not entirely overlap that realm within which man is likely to discover the Eternal Thou or the Thou in every realm of life. It is true that what is ubiquitous in Buber is the principle of presence, rather than the principle of immanence, i.e., the presence of a Divine aspect within concrete reality. In other words: all of reality is filled with Divine meaning by virtue of the power embodied therein, and man has the key—“the key of the Thou”—by whose means he may establish connection with God and with the meaning of existence here and now. Similarly, he has in his hand the “key of the It,” by whose means he can not establish connection with them. While the World of the Thou emerges in its presence in that place where man does not abandon the world, it is not identical with it as such. The superiority of man’s service in this world over against his abandoning this world derives from the fact that, according to Buber, God specifically placed man in this world because He wanted man’s service to be of the world. Thus, according to Buber, matter is not in itself evil,42 just as it is not good in itself. In the same way, things in this world are neither idols nor God; rather, everything depends upon man’s manner of contact with them (I and Thou, 153–155). There is no reality that is without the Divine, not because there is no reality lacking in divine immanence, but rather because there is nothing in the world that cannot be turned into a Thou by virtue of the divine potential hidden therein. Therefore, in relating to Buber’s thought, one must exchange the principle of immanence—which means “below”— for that of presence of the Thou, which simply means “that it may be present through us”: “The eternal Thou is Thou by its very nature; only our nature forces us to draw it into the It-world and the It-speech” (I and Thou, 148). Buber’s descriptions of the relations to the Eternal Thou give this connection the nature of inclusiveness rather than of relation to a God who is above or below; of a reality that is available

42 “The basic word I-It does not come from evil—any more than matter comes from evil. It comes from evil—like matter that presumes to be that which has being.” (I and Thou, 95).

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and may be called upon in every place and at every time. From this point of view one may understand his words, that I have already dealt with from a different viewpoint, that “The It-world hangs together in space and time. The Thou-world does not hang together in space and time” (I and Thou, 84). I am aware that these words can be read in a Kantian manner, according to which the It-world is understood in terms of cognitive categories that occupy space and time, whereas the Thou-world is understood by means of other categories. However, I think that there is no need to perform an epistemological reduction of this passage, which gives a characterization of reality according to which the Thou-world is a different world-reality than that of the world of space and time, one that exists alongside it. By its nature, and as opposed to the It, the Thou is not limited,43 and therefore it is not below. However—and it is important to Buber to stress this fact— “the pure relation can be built up into spatio-temporal continuity only by becoming embodied in the whole stuff of life” (I and Thou, 163). However—and this too need to be emphasized—“The Thou knows no system of coordinates . . . the radiation of its force [of the moments of Thou] penetrates the ordered world and thaws it again and again” (ibid., 81–82). The “Thou-world” bridges the distance between subject and object, and everything else flows into it and takes shelter in its light, as we have seen (Chapter Five). The Thou-world is therefore very different from the world of multiplicity, and its description creates the impression that it is not at all a three-dimensional world—that is to say, it does not belong to the same “species” as that which we call “this world.” It nevertheless exists with it without being above it.44 Buber therefore envisioned two planes of being, alongside one another rather than one being above the other. This fact is reflected in his understanding of the Kabbalistic-Hasidic doctrine of uplifting the sparks in a metaphorical manner, as elevating the sparks.45 The principle

43 “Every It borders on other Its: It is only by virtue of bordering on others. But where Thou is said there is no something; Thou has no borders” (Buber, I and Thou, 55). 44 Hence one needs to understand Buber’s “joy in the concrete,” attributed to him by Schatz, only in light of his view that the world of spirit belongs to the same plane as the world of matter, without being above it. That is, in Buber we are not dealing with love of the concrete in the simple sense, as thought by Scholem and Schatz, but rather as a love of the concrete impregnated by the reality of the spirit. 45 See my discussion below, Chapter 11. 3. For a critique of Buber’s metaphorical interpretation of the uplifting of the sparks, and his attribution thereof to R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonoyye, see Gellman, “Buber’s Blunder,” 26–31.

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of bringing the Divine plentitude down into the world was transformed by Buber, already in his book Daniel, into the principle of God’s realization (Verwirklischung or Realisierung) by means of man, creating a unity in reality. It follows from this that concepts of unity and intention (kavvanah) were directed by him entirely towards man’s activity in the world, expressed in the transformation of his inner forces and their being directed in a manner that strengthened human activity. This, without relating to the source of this realization in the upper worlds and to the manner of their being drawn down from above to below. The Hasidic revolution regarding the importance of avodah, service in the concrete states, was accompanied in Buber by another revolution, in which he fashioned an entire spiritual sphere in the changing states of life, from which and in which alone service in corporality becomes divine service. We have thus far discussed that which relates to the negation of the vertical axis. However, Buber also transformed the order of things in comparison to that found in Hasidic texts, in such a way that that which was considered supreme and of greatest importance in Hasidic thought became lesser for Buber, whereas that which was considered of lesser value in Hasidism became of supreme importance for Buber. This was the case, for example, regarding the subjects of greatness and smallness and service in corporeality. As Scholem has shown, in Hasidic sources “smallness” and “greatness” indicate changing soul states of the believer, that vary from a state of lack of wholeness or even lowliness to “the full development of a thing to its highest state.”46 However, the dominant tendency is to identify states of smallness with the state of “descent of the zaddik,” that is, his involvement with the mundane matters of concrete reality. In other words, “greatness,” gadlut, does not relate to everyday activity, but to those states of divine service that are commonly found in prayer and are connected to high levels of consciousness. Thus, the states of gadlut and katnut in Hasidism are connected to the vertical axis of above and below. The two states in Buber’s thought, of I-Thou and I-It, bear a certain resemblance to states of greatness and smallness, albeit, as mentioned, on a so-to-speak horizontal axis. The state of I-Thou signifies the full

46 Scholem, “Devekut or Communion with God,” 220. For more on this pair of terms in the human realm, see: Pachter, “Smallness and Greatness”; Mark, “On States of ‘Smallness’ and ‘Greatness’.”

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realization of man and his unique status within being, and also entails a certain enhancing of consciousness vis-à-vis reality, whereas the state of I-It signifies engagement with orientation in the world and the benefit that man derives from this, such that man’s perception in reality is only partial and superficial. Buber’s innovation lies in that, for him, the highest form of spiritual service and spiritual activity ( gadlut) lies in dialogical realization, specifically in the most difficult earthly states, such as, for example, work in a factory: And nothing is so valuable a service of dialogue between God and man as such an unsentimental and unreserved exchange of glances between two men in an alien place. (“Dialogue,” 37)

This reversal of values is intended to state that man’s greatest service is in his contact with the world, in responsibility towards it, and in action within it. By contrast, ecstatic spiritual experience that departs the boundaries of reality, which is called by Buber “the world,” is for him a flight from responsibility and an unnecessary focusing upon the I, and therefore comparable to a stage of “smallness” in relationship to man’s spiritual task. Indeed, this smallness is even lower than the smallness of the I-It stage that belongs, by dint of reality, to “our melancholy lot” (I and Thou, 75). Buber’s emphasis upon the value of spiritual service in corporeal states comes at the expense of the pure spiritual consciousness referred to in Hasidism as gadlut de-mohin, “greatness of mind.” Therefore Buber does not at all use the term mohin, “mind,” either in his interpretation of Hasidism and certainly not in his own thought. In Hasidic sources, there are only very tentative beginnings towards the change in values regarding the relationship between above and below,47 and these things do not at all lead to a transformation of values, such as takes place in Buber, according to which that which is below (in its borrowed sense, as we have noted) is greater than the above. This change in values, in Hasidism, is expressed in a story brought by Buber in his essay “Spirit and Body of the Hasidic Movement” in which he tells about the anger of R. Haim of Sanz, at an annoying person

47 For example, R. Yehudah Ashlag presents a more complex picture of the mutual relation between states of ascent and states of descent, so that only spiritual work, among all the states of life, can thereafter facilitate the receiving of higher lights in states of “greatness” (Petihah le-Hokhmat ha-Kabbalah [B’nei Berak, 1998], 29–33). However, in Buber’s thought greatness ( gadlut) is entirely involved with man’s activity in the concrete world and the changes that he introduces therein.

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who pestered him with all kinds of requests immediately after he had completed his prayer in the presence, so to speak, of the World of Emanation. Upon this, says Buber, a friend criticized him by stating that Moses himself went down from the mountain, when he was still attached to God and nevertheless turned to listen to the requests of the Israelites. These words calmed R. Haim, and that very night he turned to listen to requests of his hasidim. Concerning this, Buber writes: “ ‘Above’ and ‘below’—the decisive importance is ascribed to the ‘below.’ Here on the outermost margin of having become, the fate of the aeons is decided“ (“Spirit and Body,” 140). The conclusion reached by Buber from this story—namely, that greater importance is attached to that which is below—is not the one which necessarily follows from it, as it shifts the focus towards corporeality: a conclusion which does not derive from the story and therefore is more expressive of Buber’s thought than it is of the Hasidic spirit. In Buber’s interpretation of a Hasidic story that he brings in his essay “The Love of God and the Love of Man,” this tendency is continued and receives a more radical direction. I will first bring the story in Buber’s words: Rabbi Mordekai of Neshiz, one of the early zaddikim . . . had pursued a business in his youth and used all through the year to lay something aside from his earnings in order to be able to buy a beautiful etrog at the end of the year. On the way into the city where he wanted to look for one, he met a water carrier who wept and wailed because his only horse had perished. The rabbi gave him the money that had been saved for the holy purpose in order that he might buy another horse with it. And when he was asked whether it had not been hard for him to make such a sacrifice, he said, “What difference does it make? All the world says the blessing over the etrog, and I say the blessing over the horse that has been bought!” (“Love of God,” 242).

Concerning this story, Buber noted that “A God who so truly takes part in the destiny of His creation . . . cannot tolerate . . . that in his life and actions man should make a fundamental distinction between above and below.”48 It therefore seems to me that Buber brought this story, not only in terms of the position that diminishes the importance

48 Buber, “Love of God,” 242. Even if Buber’s conclusion is correct and there is an equal value to the etrog and the horse, his claim that God cannot stand a distinction in principle between above and below, while it may be God’s opinion, is certainly not that of Hasidism, in which a gap remains in principle between the reality of the upper worlds and that of this world, notwithstanding all its importance.

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of a priori halakhah,49 but also to stress that the great act on the part of the person leads to a state of equanimity between things which in the ordinary condition would be distinguished from one another in their relationship towards holiness. Thus, the “distinction” between the things is not negated in their upper roots, in the world of Sefirot, but rather the heart of the matter and its root is found in the event itself. Man’s intention and action “inverts” reality, the above is literally below. The differences are negated by means of man’s unifying activity in the world, just as “the world of the Thou” melts space and time by filling them with a different reality. Therefore, in order to arrive at the element that unites reality, there is no need for a mystical flight to the highest spheres so as to bring down abundance from there, but it is sufficient to engage in proper human activity in this earthly world, that turns reality about.

49 On the criticism of the lesser weight given by Buber to halakhah in Hasidism, both as in means of arriving at devekut and as a realm which one needs to cross in order to sanctify all of secular life, see Schindler, “Hasidism According to Buber.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

REALISTIC AND ACTIVISTIC MYSTICISM AND THE MYSTERY OF THE EARTH Only listen to a saying such as this which made me, over forty years ago, into a Hasid of the Baal-Shem-Tov: “He takes unto himself the quality of fervor. He arises from sleep with fervor, for he is hallowed and become another man and is worthy to create and is become like the Holy One, blessed be He, when He created His world.” (Buber, “The Foundation Stone,” 70–71) .

1. Buber as a Disciple of the Baal Shem Tov Upon reading I and Thou, one is likely to wonder why Buber does not mention Hasidism or the name of the Baal Shem Tov even once, even though these, by his own words, exerted a profound, decisive influence upon his life and thought.1 This question is heightened if one remembers Buber’s remarks that, during the years prior to the writing of I and Thou, he dealt almost exclusively with Hasidism (“The Dialogical Principle,” 215). The reason for this may be rooted in his pendulum-like swings from the discussion of Judaism as a unique form of life-in-faith to the 1 I would like to note in this connection that Buber’s autobiographical description of his “conversion” (“Dialogue,” 30–32), discussed in the third chapter, is strikingly similar to the description in his essay on Hasidism, “The Beginnings” (1940), regarding the change of heart undergone by Talmudic scholars who met the Baal Shem Tov: “The founders of the movement were very much intent, to be sure, on bringing important Talmudists into their camp. But this was accomplished in each case—as the legend relates of Baer of Mezritch in the house of the Baal-Shem—through criticism of his former mode of life and introduction into another. It involved, therefore, an inner transformation which removed to the periphery what had formerly been the center of his existence while the new service took possession of the center. This service is one of the strongest fusions of intercourse with God and intercourse with man that is known to the history of religions.” (“The Beginnings,” 41–42). One might say, speaking allegorically, if not in a mystical vein, that Buber in his own conversion encountered the Baal Shem Tov, and thereby moved from an ecstatic life to a new type of divine service. On the one-sidedness in Buber’s perception of the Baal Shem Tov, see below, Chapter 11.2, and cf. there my own remarks about the Maggid.

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presentation of his own world-view in universal terms, for a much wider public.2 While his manner of presenting Judaism itself combined particular characteristics with universal ones,3 as Buber always saw Judaism as bearing a universal message for humankind, in his all-inclusive thought he may have preferred to address the public as a universal thinker, even though it was clear to him that his universalism was intertwined with his Judaism and with his Jewishness. Buber was aware of the fact that the uniting of the national element with the religious was not characteristic of the non-Jewish world who had accepted Christianity; hence, he may have wished to address them in terms of their own point of departure. One should also note that an excessive emphasis upon the national factor displeased Buber. The issue of the proper relation between the national factor and the universal factor in the Jewish religion arose in his discussions of the doctrine of exile and redemption in Hasidism. Buber noted the centrality of the national principle in this doctrine as against its other components—i.e., the exile and redemption of the world (e.g., the doctrine of the nitzotzot, or fallen sparks), the exile of the individual and the redemption of individual, the exile of the Shekhinah and its redemption. Buber viewed the centrality of the national principle within the general framework of the doctrine of exile and redemption as a hindrance to the realization of the universalism that he saw to be inherent in Hasidism: The teaching of redemption which existed in it was so great that Hasidism could have developed into one of the great religions of redemption in the world, but the central importance of the national element has prevented it. Hasidism could not become the property of the whole of humanity because it could not aspire to the redemption of the world as the essential thing and to the redemption of Israel as merely a tiny part of the great redemption. It could not pass to humanity because it could not disconnect the redemption of the soul from the redemption of the nation . . . for, in the eyes of Hasidism, between the world and the individual there is an intermediate existence which cannot be overlooked—the nation. (“Redemption,” 205)

On the attempt to incorporate both the particularistic and the universal aspect at the turn of the nineteenth century, see Mendes-Flohr, “The Berlin Jew,” 14–31. 3 This characteristic was particularly expressed in his lecture “Judaism and Mankind.” 2

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On the other hand, Buber did not identify with the diametrically opposed view, that would tend to forego the national dimension and make the relationship of the individual to the spirit the exclusive value. His perception of the nation as an organic spiritual entity mediating between the individual and the cosmos brought him closer to the Hasidic stance, but his position as a member of the larger human community, involved in both Western (i.e., German) culture and in Eastern European Jewish culture (and even in the religions of the Far East) led him to the recognition that, in order for Judaism to fulfill its function among the nations, its national aspect needed to be deemphasized. This tendency is the predominant one in his book Daniel, and it continues in I and Thou and in his dialogical writings as a whole, which were presented as writings of a universal nature. This conjecture of mine may be helpful in solving an additional puzzle, one that follows from the fact that, not only is the word “Hasidism” absent from I and Thou, but also the names of its major teachers. While Buber mentioned in his book his reservations regarding Christian and Eastern mystics who in his view placed themselves outside the realm of relation, he did not see fit to mention his criticism of or, alternatively, his identification with Jewish mystics. This omission may definitely be seen as a kind of “corrective discrimination” on Buber’s part in a book of an explicitly universal character written by a Jew. However, in his introduction to a collection of the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings that he gathered and edited five years after I and Thou (i.e., in 1927), the threefold link between Buber’s I and Thou, the image and teaching of the Baal Shem Tov as these were depicted by Buber, and Hasidic mysticism, is revealed. According to Buber, the Baal Shem Tov was: the founder of a realistic and active mysticism, i.e., a mysticism for which the world is not an illusion,4 from which man must turn away in order to reach true being, but the reality between God and him in

4 Gershom Scholem’s critique of Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism did not focus upon the question of whether or not the Baal Shem Tov in fact advocated an a-cosmic or pantheistic world-view, but rather on the relationship of Hasidism to the doctrine of sparks—that is, on the question of the relation between the divine spark and the concrete realm. See on this below, pp. 353–358. Scholem observed that the parable of the partitions, that appears in the books of the students of the Baal Shem Tov in several different formulations, was interpreted in an a-cosmic manner by the author of Degel Mahaneh Efraim, whereas R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonoyye gave it a more pantheistic interpretation (Scholem, “Devekut or Communion with God,” 224).

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chapter seven which reciprocity manifests itself, the subject of the message of creation to him, the subject of his answering service of creation, destined to be redeemed through the meeting of divine and human need; a mysticism, hence, without the intermixture of principles and without the weakening of the lived multiplicity of all for the sake of a unity of all that is to be experienced (Yihud, unio,5 means not the unification of the soul with God, but unification of God with His glory that dwells in the world). A “mysticism” that may be called such because it preserves the immediacy of the relation, guards the concreteness of the absolute and demands the involvement of the whole being; one can, to be sure, also call it religion for just the same reason. Its true English name is perhaps: presentness. (“The Baal-Shem-Tov’s Instruction,” 180–181).

These words of Buber concerning the Baal Shem Tov and the mystical path he founded are a clear echo of his world of dialogical concepts, and are consistent with the descriptions in I and Thou. Thus, for example, Buber’s statement that the broad significance of the term ‘Hasid’ is “to love the world in God” (ibid., 179) fits with his statement in I and Thou that one ought “to have nothing besides God but to grasp everything in him, that is the perfect relationship.”6 The characterization of the Baal Shem Tov’s mysticism as a realistic-activistic mysticism for which the world is not a mere illusion is consistent with his words in I and Thou, that in order to establish a relationship “one does not have to strip away the world of the senses as a world of appearance.7 There is no world of appearance, there is only the world . . . Nor is there any need to ‘go beyond sense experience’ . . . not renouncing the world but placing it upon its proper ground.”8 This tendency on Buber’s part—as a result of the Hasidic influence—towards a realistic world-view, that does not see material reality as mere illusion, was a central factor in his decision to distance himself from the religions of the Far East from the second decade of the twentieth century on and is expressed, as we have seen, in the criticism of that world-view in I and Thou. Moreover: his reference to the joint activity of God and man and

Emphasis in the original. Buber, I and Thou, 127. Or his remark: “but whoever beholds the world in him [i.e. in God] stands in his presence” (ibid.). 7 In the German original, Ich und Du (91), there appears the word “Scheinwelt,” meaning a world of appearance. 8 Buber, I and Thou, 125, 127. Already in 1914 Buber attributed this stance to the Jew: “Whereas to the other great monotheist of the Orient . . . corporeal reality is an illusion, which one must shed if he is to enter the world of truth, to the Jew corporeal reality is a revelation of the divine spirit and will” (Buber, “Myth in Judaism,” 105). 5 6

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the fact that they need one another in the project of creation, as stated in his words about the Baal Shem Tov, is identical to what he says in I and Thou: “That you need God more than anything, you know at all times in your heart. But don’t you know also that God needs you—in the fullness of his eternity, you? . . . You need God in order to be, and God needs you—for that which is the meaning of your life” (I and Thou, 130). Buber’s identification of realistic mysticism from the school of the Baal Shem Tov with the concept of presentness, (“The Baal Shem Tov’s Instruction,” 181), corresponds to Buber’s words in I and Thou, that the main thing is “the total acceptance of the present.”9 The spiritual activism attributed by Buber to the Baal Shem Tov’s mysticism, in which man answers God by means of his redemptive acts in creation, corresponds to his words in I and Thou, according to which in dialogue “It is the whole human being, closed in its wholeness, at rest in its wholeness, that is active here, as the human being has become an active whole” (I and Thou, 125). In dialogue man answers his Thou: “spirit in its human manifestation is man’s response to his Thou” (ibid., 89). This response on man’s part is an expression of supreme activism on his part; it is a deed of risk (ibid., 60), of decision and of doing, and these combined together are united in man’s artistic project: This is the eternal origin of art, that a human being confronts a form that wants to become a work through him. Not a figment of his soul but something that appears to the soul and demands the soul’s creative power. What is required is a deed10 that a man does with his whole being: if he commits it and speaks with his being the basic word to the form that appears, then the creative power is released11 and the work comes into being . . . whoever commits himself may not hold back part of himself. . . . The form that confronts me I cannot experience nor

9 Buber, I and Thou, 126. The concept of presence [Gegenwart] is mentioned by Buber numerous times in his dialogical thought, already several years before his book I and Thou, as noted by Horwitz (Buber’s Way, 12). But regarding this term specifically, which according to Horwitz signified perhaps more than anything Buber’s distancing from mysticism (ibid., 11–13), Buber used it in 1927 to refer to activist and realistic mysticism. 10 In the German original (Ich und Du, 16), “die wirkende Kraft,” that is, the essential thing is innate in man’s creative power. 11 The “creative power” here is “die wirkende Kraft” in the German original, which may be understood here as the active power of the form, or the sharing of the active power of man and that of the form in a mixture of the two. One ought to note the choice of the phrase “the active power” as opposed to “the active intellect,” known to us from philosophy in general and from medieval theories of prophecy in particular.

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chapter seven describe; I can only actualize it. And yet I see it, radiant in the splendor of the confrontation, far more clearly than all clarity of the experienced world. . . . What can equal its presence? And it is an actual relation: it acts on me as I act on it.12

The I in an I-Thou relationship sees a form as presence: that is, we have here a description of a revelation in which the form that appears asks man to actualize it in the world by giving it concrete expression. To do so, man must be in a state of supreme activity. This form, which so-tospeak wishes to be born into the realm of the concrete through man’s intervention, belongs to the dialogical sphere referred to by Buber as “life with spiritual beings” (I and Thou, 57),13 and therefore carries the seal of the absolute and the eternal. Giving of concrete form to a spiritual image is, according to Buber, parallel to the Baal Shem Tov’s mysticism which “guards the concreteness of the absolute” (“The Baal Shem Tov’s Instruction,” 180). We thus have here a Buberian version of the Kabbalistic-Hasidic principle of drawing down the spiritual (hamshakhah ruhanit), or of drawing down power and abundance (“the creative power is released”),14 that is accomplished by giving concrete

12 Buber, I and Thou, 60–61 (cf. 91). I also discuss this passage in my discussion of Buber’s understanding of zimzum and of revelation (below, Ch. 9.8). As I observed earlier (174–179), in my discussion of paradoxical formulations and descriptions in Buber, here too realization is the result of a joint project of the actor and the one acted upon, a synchronic mixture of hesed and ratzon, of grace and will, of a relational unity above intellectual cognition between the Thou (the form) and the I. On the one hand man is the actor, because he is the one who realizes by means of intense activity, but on the other hand “the exclusiveness of such a confrontation demands this” (I and Thou, 60). Even though Buber’s words here are not entirely clear, it seems to me that the “creative power” does not only refer to the man who realizes, but that the meaning of the words “then the creative power is released” is that the creative power takes hold of both of them, of the form and the I. We therefore have a kind of mysticism of a realizing will, in which there is a paradoxical unifying of the wills in the sense of an identity in difference. The realizing man is, on the one hand, a free person who offers sacrifice and who dares; on the other hand, he is a compelled man, “If I do not serve it [i.e., the form] properly, it breaks, or it breaks me” (ibid. 61). 13 I shall attempt to show below (Chapter 9.7) that these “spiritual beings” are tantamount to the kelim (tools) mentioned in Kabbalah that participate in the constantly renewed Creation and its mending. 14 On the relationship between ecstasy and devekut and the drawing down of the Divine abundance, see Idel, Hasidism, 1, 65. Although Buber sought to nullify or negate the vertical axis (see above, Chapter 6.3), there is no doubt that we have here a variation of the spiritual drawing down of the Divine power by giving expression to the “form.” This drawing down is not accomplished by any premeditated or planned activity on the part of man, but rather through the vision of the form that appears in the dialogical situation that seeks therein its realization, as well as through the moderate ecstatic state of the person who takes part in this situation. Nevertheless,

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expression, through human activity, to a spiritual form that seeks to be born into the realm of the concrete. This activity brings about a change in reality. By means of the comparison that I have conducted between Buber’s characterization of the Baal Shem Tov’s mysticism and the relevant passages in I and Thou, one may conclude that the teaching of the Baal Shem Tov, as understood by Buber, was identical with the activist and realistic mysticism and with Buber’s dialogical thought. While Buber objected to his thought being identified with that of Hasidism in any simple way, this referred particularly to the descriptions of supernal worlds, which he identified with Gnosticism, to which he took exception, and to man’s activity in these upper worlds. I will now turn to Buber’s interpretation of those terms related to the principle of immanence in Hasidism and to the manner in which they were internalized in his thought. Buber’s repeated usage, in his interpretation of Hasidism, of the terms “divine vitality (hayut elohit),” Shekhinah, “sparks” and “mystery” results from his selective choice of Hasidic sources. All this relates in turn to his view as to the concrete spiritual status of earthly reality, which he claimed to have derived from the Baal Shem Tov. 2. Divine Vitality and the Revelation of the Shekhinah Only when two say to one another with all that they are ‘It is Thou’ is the indwelling of the Present Being between them. (“Dialogue,” 30)

The realistic tendency attributed by Buber to the Baal Shem Tov is reflected in his book I and Thou (see above, pp. 152–157), at the end of his discussion of the relationship between unio mystica and the dialogical relationship. His words there indicate the tendency of his thought: unio mystica, as an exaggeration of the relationship, takes place at the extreme pole of being, whereas “what is greater for us than all enigmatic

in Buber this activity on the part of man ought not to be identified with magic, since Buber completely negated the introduction of schematic thought into the realm of the mystery. That activity which is fixed and planned from the outset—be it magical activity or obedience to traditional law—is in contradiction to the direct relationship to God, unless the law itself arises from within the dialogical situation, in the sense of an “immediate transient halakhah.” On the relationship between halakhah, magic and dialogue with God, see Kosman, “Halakhah, Magic and Dialogue.”

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webs at the margins of being is the central actuality of an everyday hour on earth, with a streak of sunshine on a maple twig and an intimation of the eternal Thou.” (I and Thou, 135–136) Bergman’s comment regarding the possibility of understanding Buber’s dialogical thought against the background of the Hasidic doctrine of emanation can serve as an important point of departure for the rest of our discussion: There is a certain Hasidic saying that can serve as an initial key towards understanding Buber’s teaching: Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk said of himself: “I learned this in the Land of Israel—when I see a bundle of straw lying in the road, the very fact that it is lying lengthwise on the street and not crosswise is itself a kind of a revelation of the Shekhinah.” A bundle of straw—thus we are to interpret this saying—can speak to a man’s heart, can reveal something to him, or can, as Buber would put it, bring him to an I-Thou relationship. (Bergman, Buber’s “Dialogical Thinking,” 13)

The perception of the heart—that is, a different apprehension of the object, a gazing upon its unique state within a given context from the perspective of relationship—changes an object into a Thou for the I. This Thou, according to Bergman, is a kind of a revelation of the Divine Presence (Shekhinah)—that is, of the immanent aspect of God within something in the world. I therefore wish to examine Buber’s interpretation of several typical immanent principles in Hasidism. As I stated in my introductory discussion to this part of the book (Chapter 6), our discussion will take us from an examination of Buber’s interpretation of Hasidic-Kabbalistic principles to the internalization of these basic principles within his own thought, while noting the distance between them. Three components of God’s immanence in the world may be identified in Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism: (a) Divine creative power or vitality (hayut); (b) Exile, revelation and the indwelling of the Shekhinah; (c) Exile and the uplifting of sparks (nitzotzot).15 The relationship among these will become clear as we gather Buber’s references to these ideas in essays from different periods. I will begin with the distinction drawn by Buber between the Divine vitality and the revelation of the Shekhinah in

15 In the next section I will discuss the doctrine of nitzotzot (sparks), and in the one thereafter the idea of the mystery of the earth.

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Hasidism, and I will thereafter take note of how they were internalized in his thought. In his essay, “God and The Soul,”16 Buber drew a clear distinction between God’s creative power (Divine vitality), that fills the entire world, and the exile, revelations and indwelling of the Shekhinah. Note his attitude towards these two principles of immanence: Man is visited by the divine might or substance in two ways: as creature by the creative strength of Elohim which lends him its strength, and as person by the settling down of the Shekhinah which, when it comes, lifts him above himself. The first kind is constitutive and enduring, the second gracious and unforeseeable: if one can compare the former to that underground water that soaks the depths of the earth and from there keeps the soil moist and fruitful, so one can compare the latter to the fructifying rain that “descends to the earth and causes the grain to grow.” (“God and the Soul,” 197)

The immanent element in Divinity, that gives life to all of nature (“the creative strength of Elohim”) was attributed by Buber, following the Maggid of Mezhirech, to the Divine name Elohim (God).17 Elohim/ God, as the contraction of the absolute and infinite Godhead, is the most basic and continuous revelation of the Divine within the world and within man. That is to say, it is the principle of life, or vitality, without whose power and persistence created reality would not exist. Hence, this vitality is compared to the waters of the depth that constantly vivify created reality, including man as a created being. This is contrasted with the Shekhinah—or, to be more precise, the indwelling of the Shekhinah—“which, when it comes, lifts him [man] above himself ” (ibid., 197). The indwelling of the Shekhinah is the unexpected Divine factor in reality, as it does not always appear. When it appears in the world it is “gracious and unforeseeable,” a

Buber notes there, in a footnote, that the doctrine of nitzozot differs both from the apprehension of vitality and from the revelation of the Shekhinah; see on this in the next section. 17 This, as opposed to the term elohut, translated here as “Godhead,” whose point of departure is more transcendent. Albeit, Buber notes that in Hasidism, and even earlier, in Kabbalah, the pairing of these two entities is emphasized: “The Godhead emanates a world in order to bring into operation that in itself which is person, the personal kindness, the personal will to give; and in order that this world might receive what It desires to give of itself, the Godhead becomes God for it altogether. The Maggid [of Mezritch] goes so far as to designate the self-limitation itself with the name ‘God’. . . . According to the tradition of the secret teaching, the God working in nature, limiting Himself to it, is called Elohim . . .” (Buber, “God and the Soul,” 192). 16

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temporary revelation that comes and goes. Hence, it is compared to the rain which “descends to the earth and causes the grain to grow.” While it initially flows from above, its main function is to cause the fruits to grow at the proper time, from below to above. Therefore, in contrast with the Divine vitality, it is characterized by movement and change, expressed alternatively by being hidden and revealed. While the Shekhinah dwells among things, it is also “wandering, erring about, dispersed” (“Judaism and Mankind,” 28). The dynamic nature of the Shekhinah and its erratic manifestations are also expressed in the changes that took place in the manner of its revelations during the course of history: “ ‘It is not God who changes, only theophany’ . . . theophany engenders history” (“Preface to the 1923 Edition,” 4–5). In his essay “Myth in Judaism” (1914), Buber distinguished between God’s revelations in biblical times by means of fire and smoke and lightning, which he sees as an expression for the transcendence of speech, and those of the post-Biblical period, in which God could no longer be directly apprehended, “but all His manifestations in nature and in history can be so perceived.”18 Thus, the pair of terms concerning divine immanence may be posed in parallel to the corresponding pair of aspects in man: Divine power [“the creative strength of Elohim”] corresponds to man as a created being, whereas Divine being and presence, one of the manifestations of God as personality,19 corresponds to man as personality: a distinction that brings us closer to the subject of dialogue, as we shall see presently. The goal of Divine power is creation and its persistence, while that of the Shekhinah as Divine presence is redemption.20 The Shekhinah has a close connection to redemption, in that it is both redeemed and a participant in the project of redemption. The Divine revelation speaks to man from within the mighty forces of nature and from historical events, while in responding to God via his contact with things and events man performs redemptive activity within reality: “The Shekhinah is banished

18 Buber, “Myth in Judaism,” 106. Buber also mentions there the exile of the Shekhinah within physical objects, thereby bringing it closer to the “exile of the sparks.” 19 On God’s manifestation as a personality, see Buber, “God and The Soul,” 196, and below, Chapter 9, where we discuss tzimtzum. 20 “It is not merely in appearance that God has entered into exile in His indwelling in the world; it is not merely in appearance that in His indwelling He suffers with the fate of His world. And it is not merely in appearance that He waits for the initial movement toward redemption to come from the world—really initiating and not merely in appearance.” (Buber, “Spinoza,” 104–105)

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into concealment; it lies, tied, at the bottom of every thing, and is redeemed in every thing by man, who, by his own vision or his deed, liberates the thing’s soul.” (“Myth in Judaism,” 106) Thus, on the one hand, the initial movement towards redemption needs to be performed by man. Buber speaks in his essay “Redemption” of the Holy Yehudi’s response to the anger of a Polish peasant directed at him and his students because they were not strong enough to free his wagon which had turned over: “He is telling us that we can uplift the Holy Name (deliver the Shekhinah from exile) but we do not want to” (“Redemption,” 210). Man’s redemptive activity is considered “the lower awakening” (ibid., 209)—an activity also embodied in his crying out for the exile of the Shekhinah (214–216)—that brings about the beginning of the redemption, “God’s reply to the petitions for redemption is that Israel must begin. God is indeed the ‘redeemer,’ but the beginning must come from below, from man, from the nation” (ibid., 216). On the other hand, the activity of redemption cannot take place without the Shekhinah: And if a man with the concentrated strength of his soul turns himself to heaven and his mere creaturely strength does not suffice to bear the devotion of his whole self upward, then, as soon as he has said only, “Lord, open my lips,” the Shekhinah, which sojourns in exile with us, clothes itself in him and itself speaks the words and in them soars upward to Her “Spouse.” (“God and the Soul,” 197–198)

Thus far regarding Buber’s interpretation of the two principles of immanence mentioned in Hasidism, that is, his hermeneutic move. However, it seems that within this description by Buber—which is not all that far from what scholarly research has to say about the concept of divine vitality/hayyut 21 and the Shekhinah—there are also sparks of his own soul. For our purpose, it is particularly important to note Buber’s discussion of the Revelation of the Shekhinah and its manifestation as Divine presence, as against human personality and its identification with manifestation of Divine grace, as these features bring its subject closer to the dialogical principle. The dialogical principle is a redemptive dialogue between man and God, whether by means of the created beings or directly with “the Eternal Thou,” requiring both an active encounter between the two entities and their joining in the 21

Elior, Torat Ahdut ha-Hafakhim, 28, 63; Idel, Hasidism, Index, s.v. hayut, p. 428.

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encounter with the attribute of Hesed which, as I have shown, is identical to the revelation of the Shekhinah. In the above-quoted words by Buber concerning the relationships between man and the Shekhinah, one may again distinguish the dual relationship between them. On the one hand, the Shekhinah enables man to rise above himself, and it is even embodied in him so as to say the words “O Lord, open my lips and my mouth shall speak Your praises” [ Ps 51:17; the opening words of the Amidah, the Jewish Prayer par excellence]; on the other hand, it is the same man who must turn “with the concentrated strength of his soul” to the Heavens, in order to thereafter say what it [the Shekhinah] needs to say with his mouth. We thus need only to read Buber’s words regarding the attribute of grace involved in the indwelling of the Shekhinah and his remarks regarding its transient and wandering nature and it being connected to God, according to Hasidism, as a woman is to her husband (“God and The Soul,” 198; “Redemption,” 216). Thereafter, we may compare these with his words in I and Thou regarding the establishing of relationship as an unexpected event, in which “The Thou encounters me by grace—it cannot be found through seeking” (I and Thou, 62), as well as his words that “In every sphere, through everything that becomes present to us, we gaze toward the train of the eternal Thou” (ibid., 57)—that is, that every relationship involving Divine grace is connected to God himself. In so doing, we will note the degree of internalization of the principle of the revelation of the Shekhinah and its relationship to the “Eternal Thou” in his thought.22 We may conclude from this that, when Buber speaks about the grace of relationship, he is also speaking of “the Shekhinah, which sojourns in exile with us . . . itself speaks the words and in them soars upward to Her ‘Spouse’ ” (“God and The Soul,” 198). Here, dialogical man must persist in his insistence that “our human element should be equal to communion with the Shekhinah and not pull Her down; for certainly it raises us in the word ‘from temple hall to temple hall,’ but in each one we are judged” (ibid., 198). And perhaps, we may add, that we are judged in each and every relationship, just as

There may also be a covert connection in Buber between grace found in relationship, the revelation of the Shekhinah, and the realms of relationship being connected to the basic words—that is, to the World of Speech, which is connected in Kabbalistic literature to Malkhut and to the Shekhinah. 22

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Buber felt that he was judged by the horse when he sought simply to derive pleasure from touching him.23 In relationship, there is thus gathered together Divine grace (i.e., the indwelling of the Shekhinah), God (i.e., the “Eternal Thou”) and the idea of redemption. Man’s entering into the realm of dialogue is also an ethical act, a commitment towards the Shekhinah and towards the created beings which the Shekhinah wishes to raise up, as follows from the similarity between his words concerning Hasidism and his own outlook: . . . for man cannot love God in truth without loving the world in which He has set His strength and over which His Shekhinah rests. . . . In Hasidism—and in it alone, so far as I can see, in the history of the human spirit—mysticism has become ethos. Here the primal mystical unity in which the soul wants to be merged is no other form of God than the demander of the demand. Here the mystical soul cannot become real if it is not one with the moral. (“God and the Soul,” 198–199; emphasis in original)

As in the above description of man’s artistic project and the discussion of mystical paradoxes in Buber (Ch 5.6), we again encounter the mysterious mingling of the I and the Shekhinah: a mingling that nevertheless leaves them as separate entities. The redemptive activity of the Shekhinah is not merely appearance, but part of the project of completion of creation (“Spinoza,” 104–105). Nor is man’s independence a matter of appearance alone, notwithstanding that his distinctness and independence are not discerned by means of defined boundaries that are understood by the intellect: It would be senseless to ponder how great the share of man be in the redemption of the world. No share of man and share of God exists. There is no “up to here” and “from there on” . . . It is senseless to ask how far my own action reaches and where God’s grace begins; they do not in the least limit each other. Rather what alone concerns me before I bring something about is my action and what alone concerns me after it has been accomplished is God’s grace; the latter not less really than the former, and neither of the two a partial cause.24

In addition to the identification of the Shekhinah with the attribute of grace, that takes part in the relationship, Buber’s interpretation

23 24

Buber, “Dialogue,” 23. And above, p. 122. Buber, “Spinoza,” 105; and cf. ibid., Eclipse of God, 129–130.

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of Hasidism involves other features as well. The Shekhinah wanders among things, is covered up by them and changed in their depths (“Myth in Judaism,” 106), and in this state it is less redemptive and more expecting of man that he redeem her (“Redemption,” 213–216). In this state there is a significance resemblance between the Shekhinah and the sparks that are captive in the depths of the shells.25 While Buber observed that one must distinguish between the doctrine of the sparks, which is a domain unto itself, and the principles of Divine life and manifestation of the Shekhinah,26 in his essay “Redemption” one sees that the Shekhinah is an over-arching principle that embraces all of the immanent aspects of God in the world:27 The supreme type of exile and redemption, however, is the exile and redemption of the Shekhinah. Here, the other three types, the cosmic, 28 the individual, and the national, find their sublimation and their perfection. In the tradition of the secret teaching, the exile of the Shekhinah is connected with the breaking of the ancient worlds, when the holy sparks have fallen into the shells, and also with the sin of Adam . . . It is also connected with the guilt of Israel and its destiny, because the Shekhinah accompanies Israel into exile. (“Redemption,” 213)

3. The Doctrine of Sparks In the introduction to his collection of essays, Be-Pardes ha-Hasidut (In the Garden of Hasidism; 1945), Buber wrote as follows regarding the doctrine of sparks (nitzotzot): I wish to be understood properly. It is true that I am unable to believe in a simple, literal way what Hasidism teaches in wake of the latter Kabbalah: 25 “After the sparks of His creative fire fall into the things, His glory itself descends to the world, enters into it, into ‘exile,’ dwells in it, dwells with the troubled, the suffering creatures in the midst of their uncleanness—desiring to redeem them” (Buber, “Spinoza,” 101). 26 Buber, “God and The Soul,” in a footnote at the bottom of page 197. 27 Thus the Shekhinah is connected both to the reality of good and to the reality of evil: “The Shekhinah embraces both, the ‘good’ and the ‘evil,’ but the evil not as an independent substance, rather as the ‘throne of the good,’ . . . as the power that leads astray and that only needs the direction to God in order to become ‘good.’ It is the thornbush which, seized by divine fire, becomes the revelation of God. . . . Sin is the going astray of the force, but the force that goes astray is itself from God.” (Buber, “The Foundation Stone,” 80–81). On the phrase ‫“( ניצוץ השכינה‬spark of the Shekhinah”), see the quotation in Idel, “the spark of the Shekhinah,” in Hasidism, 63. 28 Which is the exile of the holy sparks.

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namely, that sparks of the primeval Divine substance are entrapped within all things and objects, each one a complete level unto itself, and that we may redeem them by means of our contact in holiness with these things and objects. But I do not know of any better image for what I do believe, that which Hasidism has taught me to believe: namely, that there is Divine substance innate in all things and objects, and that I am not permitted to perceive this substance except through true encounter with them, through I-Thou relation. But I am allowed to act upon it through this relation, I am allowed to perform “redemptive” acts—but I must add: in the same way as it acts upon me. This true mutuality—this I do believe—is a redemption of the divine substance.29

Upon reading these words one may wonder: in what precise sense was Buber unable to believe in a literal way, as opposed to the new belief that Hasidism taught him and in which he was able to believe? What is the gap between the Kabbalistic-Hasidic outlook regarding the entrapped sparks that await their redemption and Buber’s own belief regarding the “Divine substance innate in all things and objects” upon which man acts in a redemptive way? Perhaps Buber meant to say that he is unable to literally accept the Kabbalistic myth of the breaking of the vessels, the scattering of the sparks, each one of which embodies “a complete figure like that of man, doubled up, his head on his thighs without being able to move his hands and feet, like an embryo” (“The Foundation Stone,” 83), which are uplifted in the literal sense? Is it perhaps this mythic innocence that Buber has lost?30 In his essays on Hasidism, Buber mentions extensively the doctrine of sparks, giving it an interpretation that brings it closer to his personal world-view, both from a semantic and a conceptual point-of-view. The breaking of the vessels, the scattering of the sparks, and their sinking within the thickness of the shells (kelipot) is a cosmic event that embraces the spiritual, the universal-earthly and the human reality. This cosmic event is related to the coming into existence of evil; however, consistent with his earlier world-view (“With a Monist,” 28), he is unable to negate any realities, but only convictions. Buber states that, according to Hasidism, “Nothing, in fact, is unholy in itself, nothing 29 Buber, Be-Pardes he-Hasidut, “Introduction,” 5–6. Here, too, one may discern a similarity between the sparks and the Shekhinah, as in the passage quoted Buber identifies the sparks with the Divine substance, whereas in his essay “God and the Soul” he identifies the Shekhinah with the Divine essence, as we have seen. 30 In Chapter 11, in which we discuss the polemic over Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism, I suggest an additional possibility for understanding the gap between the doctrine of sparks and the manner of their internalization in his thought.

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is in itself evil. What we call evil is only the directionless plunging and storming of the sparks in need of redemption. It is ‘passion’—the very same power which, when it has been endowed with direction, the one direction, brings forth the good in truth, the true service, the hallowing.”31 The scattered sparks are thus the meeting point between the exilic state of reality embodied in a power that did not find its way to God, and the possibility given to man to give to this power a change of direction leading towards God.32 The sparks dwell in objects found in the world in a manner that might be called static, whereas in the human soul the sparks have a more dynamic nature: “One sees in them the directionless storming and plunging of the sparks in need of redemption—temptation, turmoil, and undecided deed” (Buber, “Spinoza,” 102). The factor uniting the cosmic realm with the human is the chaotic state of reality, that finds colorful expression in the dissemination of sparks in the world and in their directionless movement. Buber’s terminology—“directionless,” “turmoil,” and “undecided deed”—return us to his book Daniel, to the description of a world that finds itself in a state of duality and in the vortex of directionless multiplicity that threaten man’s integrity. The mending (tikkun) of this chaotic reality may be accomplished by the unique direction of the individual, who arranges the chaotic reality around himself and creates unity therein (see above, pp. 79–83). In man’s inner life the scattering of the sparks is expressed in the alien thoughts that come to confuse him and lead him astray; man’s task is not to reject them, but to work with them and to give them new direction: The alien thoughts . . . their determining power in the course of life is great, and we may not wish that they should wholly leave us. In our language: the fantasy—for it is of this that we are speaking—that wishes to draw us away from the truth is a necessary element in its service. We should not thrust away its abundance that waylays our hearts, but

31 Buber, “Spinoza,” 98. And compare Buber’s comments in I and Thou, 95–96: “The basic word I-It does not come from evil—any more than matter comes from evil. It comes from evil—like matter that presumes to be that which has being. When man lets it have its way, the relentlessly growing It-world grows over him like weeds, his own I loses its actuality, until the incubus over him and the phantom inside him exchange the whispered confession of their need for redemption.” 32 Buber mentioned there (“Spinoza,” 98) the word “power,” which is central in his book Daniel. See also: “We must transform the element that wants to take possession of us into the substance of true life” (“The Foundation Stone,” 78).

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receive it and fit it into real existence; only in the strength of such an act shall we attain to that unity that does not look away from the world but embraces it. (“The Foundation Stone,” 78)

Alien thoughts are the result of captive sparks, of “ ‘clear lights,’ ‘that have sunk into the depths and have taken on soiled clothing’ ” (ibid., 79). These sparks push forward the alien thoughts, so that man may act within them (i.e., the alien thoughts) and through them (in the sparks themselves). The misguided and directionless power within the reality of the world and of human life seeks a transformative ascent, in which the things will receive their direction towards God. The mending of the soul and of the creation is thus accomplished through the fact that “the power that leads astray” receives the direction towards God (ibid., 80). Man’s seizing hold of the relative things of the world, to which he is attached by virtue of his desires, needs to change direction, and thereby the things are transformed into an epiphany of God, similar to “the thornbush which, seized by divine fire, becomes the revelation of God” (ibid., 80). Whereas in the corrupt state the chaotic and errant elements in reality (alien thoughts, desires, and objects in the world) were like matter without form,33 here they take on divine form and are thereby sanctified: “He must forge the glowing mass of wrath into zeal for God. He must transfer the pleasures of earth into the enjoyment of heavenly splendor” (ibid., 81) We encounter here Buber’s understanding of the Hasidic doctrine of sparks, as a result of which there ensued the sharpest debate between critics of his interpretation of Hasidism and himself (see below, Ch. 11.3). In his interpretation, Buber did not create a dichotomy between the reality of the sparks and the reality of the shells, but rather sought to mediate between them: But the realization of their longing cannot take place other than in the form of the kelipa, in the form of temptation, in other words, in fantasy. . . . Here decision takes place in each man, and on it redemption depends. Therefore, we should not push the alien thought away from us as something burdensome and offensive and thus cast off the holy sparks. Their appearance signifies an appearance of God in the things that are seemingly farthest from Him, as it is written ( Jeremiah 31:2): “The Lord has appeared to me from afar.” (Buber, “The Beginnings,” 54).

33

Regarding the terms “matter” and “form,” see below, pp. 356–358.

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Buber’s stance with regard to the shell-like element in reality, that is to say, in relation to evil, sets the tone for his interpretation of Hasidism: “One shall not murder the ‘evil urge,’ the passion in oneself, but serve God with it ” (“Spirit and Body,” 126). In Hasidic sources, there is in fact an ambivalent attitude towards the realm of the concrete. There are those cases in which the concrete realm is depicted as a kind of shell, in which there is a certain dichotomy between the Divine element and the earthly one (that is, between the spark and the shell), and redemption implying then the freeing of the spark from its shell. In other cases, earthly reality is described as a garment for the spirit, and earthly reality is perceived as a thick wrapping around the spiritual element, but not as opposed to it (see below, pp. 349–362). It is clear that in his interpretation of Hasidism Buber did not create a dichotomy between spirit and matter; rather, he chose the second, more monistic tendency: The space-time world of the senses is only the outermost cover of God. There is no evil in itself; the imperfect is only cover and clasp of a more perfect.34

The shell is only temporarily so, and is more like a garment, a “wrapping” and raw material, then a demonic entity from which one needs to flee. Therefore the redemption of the sparks does not only relate to the sparks themselves, but also to the things, to the objects and situations and moments in which the shells are present: God and the moment cannot be known beforehand; and the moment is God’s moment . . . Everything wants to be hallowed, to be brought into the holy, everything worldly in its worldliness . . . everything wants to become sacrament. The creatures, the things seek us out on our paths; what comes to meet us on our way needs us for its way. “With the floor and the bench” shall one pray; they want to come to us, everything wants to come to us, everything wants to come to God through us. (“Symbolic Existence,” 181).

The proximity between the spirit element and the earthly element in Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism is likewise confirmed by the anal34 “Spirit and Body,” 119. And also: “One shall not murder the ‘evil urge,’ the passion in oneself, but serve God with it . . . (‘you have made the urge evil,’ God already says to man in the Midrash)” (ibid., 126). According to Buber, Hasidism says that “Nothing is in itself evil . . . It is ‘passion’—the very same power which, when it has been endowed with direction, the one direction, brings forth the good in truth, the true service, the hallowing” (“Spinoza,” 98).

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ogy Buber draws between the doctrine of sparks and the Baal Shem Tov’s interpretation of the saying about Enoch being a cobbler, who by every stitch united the Holy One blessed be He and the Shekhinah. Buber depicts it thus: First, all that man does he shall do with his whole being. . . . What is involved, therefore, is the whole spiritual-physical being, that comes to perfect unity through the diffusion of the spirit in all limbs . . . Second, it is incumbent upon man to do all that he does with his intention directed to the unification of the highest divine being with its Shekhinah, which dwells in the world. But nowhere here . . . is it intimated that the indwelling principle would draw itself out of the world; rather the unification of the separated means just the unification of God with the world, which continues to exist as world, only that it is now, just as world, redeemed. In each movement that he makes, in each word that he speaks, man shall direct his being to this unification . . . (“The Foundation Stone,” 85)

The expansion of the doctrine of sparks to include all states of life, combined with the Hasidic interpretation of the saying about Enoch being a cobbler, led Buber to present the Hasidic message as tending towards “the dedication of everything: no deed is condemned by its nature to remain ‘profane,’ each becomes service and influence on the divine if it is directed toward the unification, that means revealed in its inner dedication.”35 These words of Buber concerning direction and intention on the part of man, providing a basis for states of unification in which the spirit does not abandon matter, but raises it up, require us to briefly relate to Buber’s way of understanding the concept of kavanah (intention) in Hasidism and the unification-unity towards which it is directed. Direction, Intention and Unification The direction towards God that man must convey to all things is related in Buber to the oneness that man creates within himself and the direction that man gives to things in the world. He connects these things to the Kabbalistic-Hasidic term kavanah. According to Buber, Hasidism took exception to Kabbalah because of its “magicizing of the mystery.” That is, “the belief that there are certain transmittable and

35 Buber, “Spirit and Body,” 135. On this view within Hasidism, see Idel, “Enoch— The Mystical Cobbler,” 282.

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transmitted inner and outer actions and attitudes, through the execution of which the believed-in effect is obtained.”36 Man’s intention/direction towards God is tantamount to his direction towards a life of unity. Buber distinguished three meanings of the term “unity” ( yihud ) in Hasidism: (a) “the unity of God that embraces and carries all of its multiplicity and diversity of the real ”;37 (b) the human acknowledgment of this unity, in which man perceives the multiplicity in reality as the radiance and diffusion of the power of the One; (c) man’s unifying act. Unlike the case in Kabbalah, where the action is directed mainly towards the mating of the sefirot, in Hasidism this means: To draw all of man’s desires and longings towards a dynamic unity towards God, completely open to the world and sanctifying as unity all things that exist, including their refusal, and to offer this unity of sacramental being, connected with the world, to God for the redemptive project of unification: “for the sake of unifying the holy one blessed be He and the Shekhinah.” (from “Symbolic Existence” [Hebrew], 96)

Among these three forms of unity-unification, it was the last that was internalized in Buber’s thought. Buber did not recognize unity ab initio, but only that unity that man is meant to establish. This unity, as I have shown above, has two stages: the stage in which the totality of man’s powers are united, and that stage that is directed towards the world, connects with it, and joins it to God by means of the dialogic relationship.38 The stage of marshalling one’s forces involves giving an inner 36 Buber, “Symbolic Existence,” 179–180. And also: “Against the knowable kavanot—in such and such a way one is to meditate, on this and this one is to reflect— there arose the one life-embracing kavana of the man devoted to God and His work of redemption . . . Not by accompanying any action with an already known mystical method but by performing this action with the whole of his being directed toward God does a man practice kavana in truth” (ibid. pp. 180–181). This tendency to see kavana as transcending technique and turning towards a more spiritual and spontaneous attitude towards prayer, based upon the power of the soul, has its basis in Hasidic sources, although I do not think that this tendency always involved opposition to the schematization of the secret or its being turned into magic. It seems more likely that a number of reasons led to Hasidism distancing itself from the Lurianic doctrine of kavanot. On the change of direction in relation to the doctrine of kavanah in Hasidism, see Weiss, “Intentions of Prayer.” On the reaction against the doctrine of kavanot, stressing the individual path in Divine worship, see Halamish, “The duty of Kawwana,” 256. On various reasons for this departure from the path of Luranic kavanot, see Idel, Hasidism, 149–154. 37 “Symbolic Existence” [Hebrew], Be-pardes ha-Hasidut, 95. 38 See above, pp. 140–143, 151–153. On the dialogical relation as an expression of devekut against the typological background of devekut in Hasidism, see below, Chapter 8.

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direction, while the stage of communication with the world means turning outwards from the I. The reality of the world means that the concrete world and man’s thoughts are not a shell, but a garment for God that is likely to once again burn with His fire, while human activism means the establishment of inner unity and world-unity in the act of relationship. Buber’s thought thus constitutes a realistic and activist mysticism, that he attributed to the Baal Shem Tov. 4. The Mystery of the Earth and Life with the Secret What matters is not what can be learned, what matters is giving oneself to the unknown. (Buber, “Spirit and Body,” 137)

While the terms sparks and Shekhinah are predominant in Buber’s essays dealing with the Hasidism message, in his own thought these terms are only infrequently mentioned. As against this, one finds widespread use of the terms mystery, secret, and unknown in Buber’s later.39 These are mystical terms which were later, during the period of his dialogical writings explicitly incorporated within his thought, the establishment of the dialogical states being directed towards immediate contact with this sphere of the mystery. Buber distinguished between mystery that consists in “speculations detached from human experience, speculations, perhaps, about the relation between God and the world by means of divine emanations” and the mystery in Hasidic teaching “that is grounded in human experience and that is solely concerned with the happenings between man and God” (“The Foundation Stone,” 62). By this distinction, Buber returned to the criticism he made in his book The Tales of Rabbi Nachman of what he perceived as theosophical speculation, which he attributed to Sefer ha-Zohar.40 This distinction between two kinds of mystery is not only between theoretical mystery and experiential mystery, but also expresses his preference for earthly mystery with its multiplicity of colors over the undifferentiated heavenly mystery. Buber’s preference, from 1914, for “the other mystery,” in which the one comes into existence through

39 For example, in I and Thou, (56, 89, 116, 127, 150, 151, 159, 163); and see below, in the closing chapter of this book. 40 Buber, The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, 5, and above, pp. 56–57.

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a multiplicity of colors,41 later found expression in his interpretation of Hasidism: Man works on the unity of God, that is: through him takes place the unity of becoming, the divine unity of creation. By its nature, to be sure, yihud can always mean only unification of what has been separated. It is a unification, however, which overarches the enduring differences and finds its cosmic counterpart: the unity without multiplicity which dwells in the unification of multiplication. (“Spirit and Body,” 133; emphasis in the original)

The mystery of the earth is distinct from the mystery of the heavens, just as the undifferentiated unity of pre-creation is different from the inclusive unity of multiplicity created by means of man’s redemptive acts; and this unity is created by means of man’s contact with the sphere of earthly mystery. But Buber distinguished between true mystery and false mystery even in relation to the mystery of the earth. That is, Buber did not suffice with drawing direct attention to the spirit in concrete reality, but sought to fashion the proper manner of contact with the realm of the mystery while rejecting those paths which were not suitable to this purpose. I shall elaborate upon this point. As I stated earlier, in my discussion of the mystical aspects of Buber’s dialogical thought (pp. 179–183), for him, the world of the senses was an image of an illuminated vision. Let me now add that this vision within the world of the senses is a product of man’s contact with the realm of earthly mystery, and that there is no need to add anything to the actual sensory perception in order to establish contact with the secret. Already in his earlier essay, “With a Monist,” Buber criticized the mystic because he “manages, truly or apparently, to annihilate the entire world, or what he so names—all that his senses present to him in perception and in memory—in order, with new disembodied senses or a wholly supersensory power, to press forward to his God” (“With a Monist,” 28). Buber presented, not only a criticism of the abandonment of the world in favor of some figure of heavenly mystery, but also of the outlook postulating the need for special senses and for trans-sensory powers to encounter God. The contact with God within the world does not require any other senses or the addition of anything else to the object as it appears before man’s ordinary senses: the

41

Buber, “The Altar,” 18, and above, pp. 105–108.

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essential thing is the discovery of the face of the Thou in those things, that thereby embody their secret. That which awakens the sphere of the mystery is the I-Thou relation, in the sense of “face to face,” and not the addition of any other thing to that which exists in the sense of uncovering hidden, trans-sensory dimensions of existence. The sensory element incorporates all that man needs and all that God needs from man in the world. Such a stance is also articulated in his essay, “Myth in Judaism,” in which the vital element in religion is seen as inherent in the perception of God, embodied in nature and in history “described as corporeal reality” (ibid., 95). Historical events and works of nature, as perceived by the senses, are themselves the manifestation of God. They are signs of another world,42 and there is no need to add anything to them. This position appears in Buber’s book I and Thou, where it characterizes the state of relation with natural creatures: The tree is no impression, no play of my imagination, no aspect of a mood; it confronts me bodily and has to deal with me as I must deal with it43—only differently. One should not try to dilute the meaning of the relation:44 relation is reciprocity. Does the tree than have consciousness, similar to our own? I have no experience of that. But thinking that you have brought this off in your own case, must you again divide the indivisible? What I encounter is neither the soul of a tree nor a dryad, but the tree itself. (I and Thou, 58–59)

In these words, Buber opposed two different tendencies: the one, the reduction of the spiritual event through an intellectual analysis that brings man away from the realm of the secret;45 the other, the “In the signs of life which happen to us we are addressed” (Buber, “Dialogue,” 14). Note the similarity of this phrase to the verse, “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine” (Song of Songs 6:3), as an expression of relationship. 44 That is: to exhaust it with rational-intellectual and systematic explanations. 45 Cf. Buber, I and Thou, 56. The point is not to accumulate esoteric knowledge as one does exoteric knowledge, because both belong to the realm of the It. This view, that distinguishes between intellectual reflection, which is an intellectual reduction of the realm of the secret, and entering into the realm of the mystery by means that transcend the intellect, has a Hasidic basis. Thus, for example, in the words of R. Menahem Mendel of Peremyshlany: “True mystery, he says, is not what can be read and studied by anybody in the printed volumes of Kabbalistic teaching, which is a purely intellectual affair . . . The real mystery and esoteric wisdom is that of loving communion with God, devekut ha-ahavah ba-shem yitbarakh. It cannot be told or transmitted, and ‘everyone knows of it only what he has found out for himself, and no more’ ” (Scholem, “Devekut or Communion with God,” 218; quoting from Yosher Divrei Emet, 18c–d)). And compare Buber’s remarks quoted at the beginning of this section: “What matters is not what can be learned, what matters is giving oneself to the unknown” (Buber, “Spirit and Body,” 137). 42 43

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attribution of a metaphysical layer to the tree, beyond that perceived by the senses. That is, he opposes the claim that the tree is inhabited by a soul or a wood-spirit,46 an addition not visible to the sensory eye but which may be revealed to the spiritual eye. At first blush, Buber seems here to be attacking the realm of the mystery and the teaching of the mystery, but he was in fact elevating the sensory to the level of mystery.47 It is man’s I that actualizes the state of relation, while the tree, as a sensory-spiritual phenomenon, reacts to it with reciprocity. It was from this perspective that Buber was able to say: How beautiful and legitimate the full I of Goethe sounds! It is the I of pure intercourse with nature. Nature yields to it and speaks ceaselessly with it; she reveals her mysteries to it and yet does not betray her mystery. It believes in her and says to the rose: “So it is Thou”—and at once shares the same actuality with the rose. Hence, when it returns to itself, the spirit of actuality stays with it; the vision of the sun clings to the blessed eye that recalls its own likeness to the sun, and the friendship of the elements accompanies man into the calm of dying and rebirth. (I and Thou, 116).

One can live with the secret, but one cannot decipher it with the intellect. The deciphering of the secret is a betrayal, meaning that it is no longer a secret. If man attempts to conquer the secret for himself, he loses it; if he seeks to live with it, he merits to it. Contact with the realm of the mystery of the earth also includes contact with God: “Of course, God is ‘the wholly other’; but he is also the wholly same: the wholly present. Of course, he is the mysterium tremendum that appears and overwhelms; but he is also the mystery of the obvious that is closer to me than my own I” (I and Thou, 127). Speaking of God as the secret of the world is emphasized even further in Buber’s essay “The Prejudices of Youth” (1935).

46 This phrase refers to an elementary being that lives in the woods and is not revealed to the senses, in which the soul-life of the woods is concentrated; it is a personification of the attributes of the forest. Such entities, mentioned in myths, legends and in nature mysticism, are kind of “intermediate powers” between this world and the higher spiritual levels of reality. 47 “Whatever belongs to the tree is included: its form and its mechanics, its colors and its chemistry, its conversation with the elements and its conversation with the stars—all this in its entirety.” (I and Thou, 58)

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It [faith] means holding ourselves open to the unconditional mystery which we encounter in every sphere of our life and which cannot be comprised in any formula. It means that, from the very roots of our being, we should always be prepared to live with this mystery as one being lives with another. Real faith means the ability to endure life in face of the mystery. (“The Prejudices of Youth,” 49)

The realm of the mystery is connected with the appearance of unconditioned truth within man, a truth that “certainly is none we can pick up and put in our pocket” (ibid., 46). The reality of the secret thus breaks through to the human soul and to its earthly existence: But the strangest thing about us human beings is that our life is interspersed with volcanic hours in which all is topsy-turvy and an outburst takes place. We suddenly find it intolerable to be hedged about by the conditional; we break out and reach into the darkness with both hands in search of unconditional truth, of a truth which is not conditioned by our character and environment . . . Something unconditional has invaded our conditional state and pervaded it. Something which we were unable to think up to this point has become both thinkable and sayable, and this “something” belongs to that series of unpredictable things which renew the world. (“The Prejudices of Youth,” 45)

The mystery of the earth thus runs like a crimson thread from the essays “With a Monist,” “The Altar,” “Myth in Judaism,” through Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism, to his dialogical thought, where it finds its completion. The final establishment of the principle of the mystery of the earth (or of the secret of dialogue) is one of the reasons for my claim that major mystical elements in Buber were strengthened during his dialogical period. But here too, it does not suffice to simply note the internalization of the principle of revelation of the Shekhinah and the doctrine of sparks in Buber’s thought, just as it was insufficient to simply label Buber’s thought as extroverted mysticism (above, pp. 85–90). The uniqueness of Buber’s thought lies in this: that he established theoretical boundaries together with normative values in an uncompromising manner, by selecting and setting boundaries for his mysticism of life against the background of his understanding of the will of the spirit in his/ our age.

CHAPTER EIGHT

HASIDIC TYPOLOGIES OF DEVEKUT AND I-THOU RELATIONS 1. Devekut and the I-Thou Relation One of the central principles which Buber attributed to Hasidism and which he internalized in his dialogical thought was that of devekut— attachment to God (“Christ, Hasidism, Gnosis,” 252–254) or, as Scholem defined it, “intimate communion with God” (Scholem, “Devekut or Communion with God,” 203). Hence, I shall begin this chapter by presenting points of similarity between the ideal of devekut and that of the I-Thou. In subsequent sections I will discuss Buber’s typologies of devekut, in comparison to those found in Hasidism, in greater detail. Buber’s characterization of the difference between Kabbalah and Hasidism as analogous to that between Gnosticism and devekut,1 and his definition of the essence of Hasidism and its value in terms of the interrelationship between heaven and earth (“The Baal Shem Tov’s Instruction,” 180; Be-Pardes ha-Hasidut, “Introduction,” 6) indicate that Buber identified devekut with the I-Thou relation. This identification of the state of relation between the I-Thou and the state of devekut is also expressed in Buber’s statement that “Devotio means the unreduced service, practiced with the life of the mortal hours, to the divine made present as over against one . . .” (“Christ, Hasidism, Gnosis,” 244). The “tortuously dual” nature (I and Thou, 69) of the two forms of relationship, the I-Thou and the I-It, largely overlaps the two basic states in Hasidism, described as devekut and absence of devekut. Just as Hasidism turned the principle of devekut into the initial demand addressed to man,2

1 Oppenheim, “The Meaning of Hasidut,” 411; Bergman, “Buber and Mysticism,” 306–308. 2 Whether one is speaking of that type of devekut which is appropriate to a Zaddik (or to mystical virtuosi, anshei tzurah), or of devekut suitable to the masses of people who are bound to corporeality (anshei homer)—that is, attachment to God by means of attachment to the Zaddik.

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“a starting point and not the end,”3 so is dialogical relation the proper human situation that makes man into a human creature in the full sense of the word—and it was this challenge with which Buber wished to confront man. Moreover: just as the early Hasidic masters were aware of the difficulty involved in persisting in a state of devekut and the necessity to withdraw from it, an idea exemplified in the verse “and the creatures ran back and forth” (veha-hayot ratzo va-shov), so too did Buber acknowledge man’s inability to persist in an I-Thou state, and that every Thou must eventually become an It. His recognition of the transition to the I-It state as an inevitable reality, as “the sublime melancholy of our lot” (I and Thou, 68), and as a necessary evil, finds its Hasidic parallel in the homily of the Maggid R. Mendel of Barr: “ ‘Happy is the man in whom God finds no iniquity’ [Ps 32:2] . . . That is, in whom there is found no iniquity transgression other than that his thoughts are not attached to Him, may He be blessed” (quoted in Toldot Ya’akov Yosef, 114d). Constant persistence in devekut is beyond the capacity of any human being; happy is the person whose only “sin” is that he fell from the level of devekut to its absence. All this holds true in terms of the parallel between the basic paradigms. However, there is also a phenomenological resemblance between the two states. There is considerable similarity between Scholem’s description of devekut as intimate communion with God, located somewhere between the absence of devekut and unio mystica and Buber’s characterization of the I-Thou relationship as lying somewhere between the lack of I-Thou relation, and ecstasy or ultimate mystical unity. As has been noted by both Piekarz and Idel, the Hasidic concept of devekut is not unequivocal, and at times is connected to states that are not necessarily mystical, such as “emotion, enthusiasm, pouring out one’s soul, dedication, inner arousal, communion, etc.”4 As I have already shown (above, Chapter Five), in his I-Thou philosophy Buber chose to use the moderate mystical sense of devekut. The typology of devekut in the I-Thou

3 Scholem, “Devekut or Communion with God,” 208. Scholem characterization of devekut as “communion with God,” as in the full title of his paper about devekut, is consistent with Buber’s characterization of the I-Thou relationship as a state of intimate relation with the Thou. Buber and Scholem agree that in the state of devekut, the parties involved are not negated in one another through their attachment, because Scholem explicitly distinguished between devekut and Unio-mystica, just as Buber during his dialogical period distinguished between dialogue and mysticism that devours the participants in the encounter. 4 Piekarz, Between Ideology and Reality, 154; and cf. Idel, Hasidism, 18, 86–89.

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is one of moderate unity, and in that sense is related to the mystical phenomenon. Buber described the I-Thou relation as a state of communion and embracement, in which “man becomes an I through his Thou” (I and Thou, 80)—that is, in which man goes out towards the Thou and embraces it. Other, more “moderate” terms used by Buber represent the relationship as occurring in an intermediate state, that requires the I to go out towards the Thou and the establishment of a close connection with it. There is a remarkable resemblance between Buber’s statement that, in I-Thou relation with a tree, it “has to deal with me as I must deal with it” (I and Thou, 58), and the words of R. Menahem Mendel Barr, that in devekut there is an “to me” aspect in the sense of “Behold, you are sanctified to me.”5 It follows, as we have seen in the earlier chapters, that the I-Thou relation preserves the distinct existence of the I, on the one hand, while allowing the establishment of relation, on the other. This relation may even extend to the point of complete intermingling,6 but nevertheless does not involve “swallowing up” or “incorporation” of its partners. Moreover: just as entering into the unity of relationship requires a change in the ontic status of the I and a change in the nature of perception, so too in the case of devekut. This characterization of the state of the I in the I-Thou relationship fits with Buber’s view that Hasidic mysticism does not involve negation of selfhood, but activation of all the powers of the soul, and that in Hasidic devekut the autonomous-personal status of the human self is preserved even in his unifying contact with God. Thus far in terms of the general relation between the I-Thou philosophy and the principle of devekut in Hasidism: an analysis that is supported both in terms of the basic structure of devekut and its absence, in terms of the general phenomenological parallel between the two, and in terms of Buber’s own presentation of Hasidic devekut, using terminology taken from his own I-Thou philosophy. This connection places Buber’s thought within the framework and sequence of development of those tendencies within Jewish spirituality whose goal was to establish psychological states leading to direct connection with God.

5 Quoted in Toldot Ya’akov Yosef, 117b (Bamidbar). On Buber’s dialogical thought as “love mysticism,” see below, Chapter 10. 6 “But revelation does not pour into the world through its recipient as if he were a funnel: it confers itself upon him, it seizes his whole element in all of its suchness and fuses with it.” (Buber, I and Thou, 166).

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We shall now turn to a closer examination of Buber’s typology of devekut, as distinct from those which preceded him. Here, our discussion will focus on the internalization of Hasidic principles in Buber’s thought within the context of the polemic regarding his interpretation of Hasidism. 2. Typologies of Devekut in Hasidism The general identity between the I-Thou state and the Hasidic ideal of devekut, which I noted above, leads us to a typological examination of Buber’s devekut within the historical context of the idea of devekut in Judaism. Such a comparison enables us to determine the degree of continuity between Buber’s thought and the typologies of devekut in Hasidism, and the transformations which occurred in his thought in comparison with the ideal of devekut in Hasidism. Buber’s thought includes a number of typologies regarding attachment with God. Two of these are accomplished by means of the world of created things (human beings, nature, or events), one is placed into reality by man through his contact with spiritual beings (Die geistigen Wesenheiten), while another takes place through his contact with “the eternal Thou” (I and Thou, 57), as we have already seen.7 As Buber repeatedly emphasized the importance of attachment with God by means of connection with his creatures,8 and rejected any attachment with God that occurs outside of the concrete world and does not return to it, devekut is closely connected in his thought with the question of the status of this world. I shall therefore concentrate particularly on that typology of devekut in Buber that requires that one go through the living creatures, and contrast it with the typologies of devekut in Hasidism, characterized by a different relationship to the created things in the world of matter and the manner of contact with them. In order to present the various types of devekut within Hasidism, I shall utilize the typologies of devekut analyzed by Joseph Weiss in his article, “The Earliest Beginnings of the Hasidic Path,” although our analysis will differ from his on certain points. In describing Buber’s Chapter Five above; and see below, Chapter 9.8. In Buber’s language: “this very teaching of man’s being bound with the world in the sight of God” (Buber, “Spinoza,” 99). On Buber’s typology of devekut, see below, Chapter 8.3. 7 8

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typology of devekut, it will be appropriate to use Weiss’s definition of devekut as “the contemplative conduct of the ideal of attachment of the soul to its God, the ideal of vita contemplative.”9 However, as Buber has noted, contemplation and relation are not necessarily overlapping or synonymous states (“Dialogue,” 25–28); albeit, in Buber’s typology of devekut such a mixture of contemplation and devekut does indeed exist, as most of his descriptions of relation include contemplation of things in this world by means of the sense of sight. Weiss distinguished between two types of devekut, and further distinguished between two sub-categories within the second type (“The Earliest Beginnings,” 62). He referred to the first type of devekut as “contemplation outside of the world,” and the second as “contemplation within the world.” Contemplation within the world is further divided, according to Weiss, into devekut in which the realm of the holy (e.g., contemplation of the names of God) does not affect the mundane realm (e.g., engaging in business), and that type of devekut in which “contemplation and material deed are welded together” and in which “alienation between the contemplative and the secular level of consciousness is nullified” (ibid., 66). As Buber, from the early 1910’s on, rejected that form of devekut that was outside of the world—a rejection expressed inter alia in his ignoring the spiritualist dimension in Hasidism—I will focus particularly on the comparison between Buber’s typology of devekut (that is, of I-Thou relations) and the typologies of devekut within the world. The former typology, in which consciousness is split between a holy layer and a mundane one, already appears in the Middle Ages in Maimonides10 and Nahmanides,11 and continues in the thought of the

9 Weiss, 60. Or the characterization of mystical experience mentioned by Dupré, as “infused contemplation.” 10 “And there may be a human individual who, through his apprehension of the true realities and his joy in what he has apprehended, achieves a state in which he talks with people and is occupied with his bodily necessities while his intellect is wholly turned toward Him, may He be exalted, so that in his heart he is always in His presence, may He be exalted, while outwardly he is with people, in the sort of way described by the poetical parables that have been invented for these notions: ‘I sleep, but my heart waketh; it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh’ [Song of Songs 5:2], and so on. I do not say that this rank is that of all the prophets; but I do say that this is the rank of Moses our master . . .” (Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, III.51; English translation: Pines, 623). 11 See Ramban, Commentary to the Torah, at Deut 11:22.

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Besht’s contemporary, R. Nahman of Kossov.12 Regarding the latter’s typology of devekut, Weiss says: Evidently, R. Nahman of Kossov advises the division of consciousness into an external and an internal layer. The psycho-technique of constant contemplation therefore does not entail the setting aside of a particular time during the course of the day for contemplation (or not that alone), but uninterrupted engagement in contemplation throughout the day. The contemplative life, in principle, is not the product of separation from the world and asceticism. Rather, every hour of the day, including those times when one is engaged in “corporeal” activity, and even periods of social contact with other people, is its time. (Weiss, “The Earliest Beginnings,” 62).

This kind of devekut, in which man’s consciousness is split into two separate levels, the divine level (the inner layer) and the earthly level (the outer layer), was described by Weiss as “contemplative backgroundmusic” (ibid.) to one’s secular involvements. However, I think that the order of things ought to be reversed and that involvement in business and in trade (i.e., worldly activity) be seen as the background music and devekut is the melody itself. Using the terms of Maimonides’ interpretation of Song of Songs (5.2), “I am asleep and my heart is awake,” (see note 10) to explain the relationship between the two types of consciousness, the person in a state of attachment is sleeping in relation to this world but is awake in response to the voice of the lover, who is knocking at the door. Hence devekut is the melody, while activity in the world is the background music, to which man only devotes partial consciousness. It is worth noting that Weiss’s comment that this form of devekut, which constitutes avodah ba-gashmiut (“service in corporeality”) in the sense of serving God in material states as well, does not add any degree of sanctity to the secular activities as such and “does not leave

12 “I heard in the name of our teacher, R. Nahman of Kossov, that he criticized people who do not fulfill ‘I always place God before me’ [Ps 16:8] even while engaged in trade or business. And should you ask: How is such a thing possible? If, while he is in the synagogue and praying it is possible for him to engage in thought about all kinds of business deals and buying and selling, then the opposite is also possible. And the words of a sage are sweet. [Eccles 10:12].” (Toldot Yaakov Yosef, 17d; Vayera) In terms of our concern here: in this typology of devekut, it is not important to draw a distinction between the Kabbalistic path of attachment to God by means of His names and connection to Him while engaged in secular matters, as described above by Maimonides, since the discussion focuses on the relationship to the world of matter during the time of devekut.

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any impression upon those external things. Not a single ray of light falls upon them as a result of man’s persistent holy devekut within his own consciousness” (“The Earliest Beginnings,” 64). In this state, the realm of the holy does not illuminate the realm of the secular and is not connected with it, and the secular activity per se has no inner connection to contemplation or devekut.13 The I-Thou philosophy of devekut expresses, not only the total rejection of attachment to God outside of the world, but also of that form of attachment which involves a split of consciousness between a “higher,” primary realm and a “lower” realm, and which posits a gap between the devekut of one who contemplates God and contemplation of the world of activity. I shall exemplify this rejection by means of Buber’s own words concerning the state of a factory worker in a modern industrialized company. In his essay “On the Great Crisis” (1945), Buber described the dangers confronting man from the world of technology, which subjugates man, turning him into an organic adjunct of the machine and shaping his life with increasing cruelty. On the face of it, this essay seems to be concerned with the serious implications of the Industrial Revolution upon the image of the human being in the modern period; however, a closer reading of his words indicates that they also have bearing upon the issue discussed here—namely, a spiritual position in reference to the world, related to the development of this issue in the history of Jewish religion: And he [the worker] is also satisfied by this [division of consciousness] because, in the extreme assembly-line approach, while his hands are performing the same repetitious motion thousands of times, it is easy for his mind to think all sorts of thoughts, and this pleases him, for from the unified being that he had been until this time, he has become two units independent of one another—a laboring unit and a thinking unit. (“On the Great Crisis,” 77)

13 On the other hand, R. Nahman of Kossov acknowledged the importance of mundane activity per se, based on the verse “you shall know Him in all your ways” [Prov 3:6]—that is, imitation of God through one’s activities in the world. This cognition may be seen in the fact that R. Nahman loaded a large pile of straw on his wagon in order to fulfill the verse “and I shall place grass in your field” (Deut 11:15; Shivhei ha-Besht, ed. A. Rubinstein [ Jerusalem, 1992], 264). However, there remains here a split between attachment to God and imitation of God in the sense of “you shall walk in his ways” (based on Deut 28:9). This split is expressed in the fact that he hired for himself a man who would constantly remind him that he needs to place the Ineffable Name before his eyes (Etkes, The Besht, 116).

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Buber opposed the splitting of man into a working unit and a thinking unit, while recognizing the convenience of such a split for the person engaged in an area to which he is not connected in an inner manner, in that it enables him, at least, to preserve his inner world. This is similar to the manner in which a Hasid like R. Nahman of Kossov prefers to safeguard his spiritual world while engaged in physical activities.14 However, the similarity between the factory worker and R. Nahman of Kossov is only partial, as Buber did not claim that the split of consciousness in the factory derives from the fact that the worker engages in mental contemplation of Divine names or spiritual intellective beings. What is important for our purposes is that Buber directed his criticism towards the activity of the split consciousness per se that separates activity in this world from the psychological and spiritual life of the worker, thereby injuring man’s goal upon the earth, and is not directed against the contents of that consciousness per se. Buber would have been no happier about this situation had he known that the worker was meditating upon the names of God, because by that very split man foregoes activity within the world performed with full consciousness of its value and significance; activity that is worthy of being performed with all of man’s heart, soul and strength. Buber’s rejection of such a split derived from the fact that he thought God wished a different type of activity on the part of man, in which attachment to God and worldly activity are united. According to Buber, man’s main activity is imbedded in the feeling of the project—that is, in the establishment of an inner relationship to what man does and executes, and in the feeling of measure, that is, in “the ability to connect what man wants and does to perception of his own essence and to the proper attitude towards his environment” (“On the Great Crisis,” 77). These feelings cannot develop or be sustained even if man keeps in his mind the names of God, nor even if he only thinks to himself his own thoughts. What is demanded of man is not passivity towards that which occurs in the world, but greater involvement in the world and 14 I do not wish to claim that Buber’s words regarding work in a factory were intended as a direct response to R. Nahman of Kossov or to Maimonides. Nevertheless, his words do provide a certain answer to them. In this connection, it seems that Buber’s remarks on the answer given by the Baal Shem Tov to Spinoza, without even knowing him, are especially appropriate: “The Baal-Shem-Tov probably knew nothing of Spinoza; nevertheless he has given the reply to him. In the truth of history one can reply without having heard; he does not mean what he says as a reply, but it is one” (Buber, “Spinoza,” 93).

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responsibility towards it—and therefore it is impossible to leave only a secondary place for one’s everyday involvements. Weiss thought that the above doctrines of R. Nahman of Kossov were developed and expanded in those statements attributed to the Baal Shem Tov, according to which man may be attached to God in every single activity. As an example, he cited sayings which note the possibility of devekut occurring during mundane activity, such as mundane speech using the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.15 It is not a particular life situation nor its redemption that are the focus of this typology of devekut, but rather a more sophisticated sustaining of the state of devekut even while involved in corporeal matters. There is thus a substantial gap between Buber’s I-Thou philosophy and the idea of continuing one’s attachment to God by means of mundane speech using the twenty-two letters. This is so, because what establishes the relation of attachment to God is neither the intimate connection between the speakers nor the responsibility to the Thou, but rather the focus upon the sounds of the language and its letters in the sense of means of attachment to God. In such a state, a person is likely to be apathetic to the actual situation of the person with whom he is speaking.16 There still exist a layer of holiness and a layer of the mundane that are alien to one another.

15 “And this should be understood: ‘They saw her speaking with a certain person in the market place’—that even in the marketplace, where one is engaged in business of this world, in any event his speech is with the One by means of the unifications that he performs” (quoted in Weiss, “The Earliest Beginnings,” 64). Nevertheless, in my opinion, there is a distinct difference between the approach of R. Nahman, who visualizes God’s name before himself, and attachment to God via the light that is hidden in the letters, while making mundane use of them. In R. Nahman’s approach, there is a clear separation between the concentration upon God’s name and activity in the world, whereas in devekut by means of the letters there is an intermediary realm of letters, that are connected both to God in terms of their inner-hidden substance, and mundane speech. Devekut is performed by means of the same “materials” that are used for conducting everyday activity, albeit in this form of devekut a person is likely to remain alienated to the concrete side of reality, of the “here and now.” Certainly, in this case there are not I-Thou relationships. Regarding R. Nahman of Kossov’s typology of devekut, it is worthwhile mentioning Scholem’s remarks in his criticism of Buber, that: “devekut and yihudim are not connected so much with the concrete as such, but rather with emptying it of its concrete content . . .” (Scholem, “Devekut or Communion with God,” 216). 16 It follows from this that there is a great gap between this approach to devekut to God during mundane conversation by means of that which is hidden in the letters, and the approach of Buber, who said: “the word of him who wishes to speak with God without speaking with men goes astray” (“Dialogue,” 15).

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A clear example of “contemplation within the world” in which “contemplation and the physical act are attached to one another” and “the alienation between the contemplative layer and the mundane layer of consciousness is nullified” (“The Earliest Beginnings,” 66), was found by Weiss in the words of R. Menahem Mendel Barr and in other sayings attributed to the Baal Shem Tov. I will cite here a quotation attributed to the Baal Shem Tov: I heard from my teacher a parable of a prince who was sent on a distant journey to a certain village of lowly people. During the lengthy time he spent there, he received a letter from his father the king, and he wished to rejoice in it greatly, but he felt that the people of the village would make fun of him, asking, “What is different about this day from any other, and what is this joy about?” What did the prince do? He called the people of the village together and bought them wine and other intoxicating drinks until they rejoiced in the wine, and he found occasion to rejoice greatly in the joy of his father. “And the words of a sage are sweet” [Eccles 10:12].17

While this source, to which there are a number of parallels in the writings of R. Yakov Yosef, presents the possibility of service of God within the material realm, it is nevertheless quite distant from Buber’s feeling of life and from his approach towards the idea of service and activity in this world. The parable and its interpretation are far more pregnant with meaning than the general idea that preceded them, according to which a person must observe Shabbat on two levels: the spiritual and the mundane. These words describe a harsh reality, in which man is not only distant from God and in which the only possible connection between them is by means of the sacred letters, but in which the worldly environment is one that is thoroughly estranged from and even opposed to any possibility of establishing a relationship to the father. Hence the son must undertake all kinds of ruses, his rejoicing in the wine party being merely a pretense. This tactic, which it is impossible to avoid, was only intended to conceal his true intention within the world of matter, which is alien to the spirit. The prince is not really rejoicing in the wine, but in his father’s letter, and is not attached directly to God by means of the wine, but only with its indirect assistance. It is not attachment to wine that brings man to God;

Toldot Ya’akov Yosef, 195c (Ki Tavo). On the difficulty involved in determining who is the author of this parable, see Gries, “The Historical Image,” 431–432. 17

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rather, the attachment is hidden by means of the wine. The wine is a precondition of the very possibility of the existence of devekut, which has no inner connection to wine. Even if we say that “the soul cannot rejoice in the spiritual until the matter rejoices in the corporeal” (ibid.), we have not yet said that the joy in the material is a spiritual joy—only that it is a precondition for the only true joy, which is spiritual joy. The substantive gap between matter and spirit remains. To use the terminology of R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoyye, in this parable form (the spirit) and matter are “two opposites” (Torot Ba’al ha-Toldot, 36). Hence, I cannot agree with Weiss’s conclusion that this typology negates the alienation between the contemplative layer and the secular layer of consciousness. In my opinion, it would be more accurate to say that a relationship of dependence is created between material activity and attachment to God, allowing for the existence of devekut in the world, but that consciousness is nevertheless still split between the wine and the village folk, on the one hand, and the letter from the king, on the other. The wine is still, so to speak, background music to the letter, and the chorus of the village-people creates a certain dissonance. It would appear that, also with regard to devekut of this type to God, Buber would say: “What does all ‘enjoyment of God’ profit a life rent in two? If that extravagantly rich heavenly Moment has nothing to do with my poor earthly moment . . .?” (I and Thou, 135). Yet Buber also recognized the great difficulty placed by the world before the man who wishes to serve God within it (“The Holy Way,” 112), but his conclusion was different, in that he did not see the created beings as a means of distraction that allows for the service of God in the world, but as themselves a path leading to God. The fact that the sources concerning devekut brought by Weiss are so distant from Buber’s attitude to the service of God in the world of matter indicates that there is a reserved attitude towards the earthly material reality that stands out in the Hasidic sources, not only in the school of Mezherich, but also in the school of Polonnoye. I would therefore agree, up to this point, with Rivka Schatz’s words in her critique of Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism, that “man’s relationship to the concrete is a secondary problem in Hasidic teaching,” and that “the attempt to clarify this relationship grew out of the discussion of the main issue, that of devekuth—cleaving to God” (“Man’s Relation to God,” 405). Were we to stop our discussion at this point, we would indeed find it difficult to find a significant common denominator between the typology of devekut in Hasidism and that of Buber, who claims a direct

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relationship between the I-Thou and the idea of attachment to God specifically through the created world, and Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism would indeed seem forced. 3. Buber’s Typology of Devekut as Equating Devekut and Tikkun Buber’s dialogical teaching unites the ideal of devekut with that of avodah be-gashmiyut (“service in corporeality”) and tikkun (“mending the world”), drawing a certain parallel or even equivalence between them. That is: in Buber’s typology, neither factor—i.e., neither the ideal of devekut nor that of service in the world—is seen as primary and the other as secondary to it. In a situation where the ideal of service in corporeality is not derived from the wish to extend devekut to all situations of life, we encounter the ideal of tikkun, according to which redemptive contact with concrete reality is a value in its own right. Man acts in reality, not only in order to raise himself up, but because the world needs his activity. Such equivalency exists, as we have said, in Buber. The I-Thou relation, which has been characterized as a relationship of devekut and which for him always involved connection with “the Eternal Thou,” tends to strengthen the spiritual reality of the world and restore its own unity. We therefore need to seek Hasidic parallels reflecting a similar equivalence between the two principles of devekut and of tikkun. As a basis for the continuation of our discussion, we shall begin by noting one example of the typology of devekut in Buber that expresses his unique application of the ideal of service in corporeality—namely, a dialogic relation in a factory: No factory and no office is so abandoned by creation, that a creative glance could not fly up from one working-place to another, from desk to desk, a sober and brotherly glance which guarantees the reality of creation which is happening—quantum satis. And nothing is so valuable as service of dialogue between God and man, as such an unsentimental and unreserved exchange of glances, between two men in an alien place (“Dialogue,” 36–37).

Buber’s typology of devekut grants equal value to devekut to the Thou— which also means contact with God—and the ideal of corporeal service in various different life situations, so that devekut may even be realized in an ordinary factory and, through its means, integrating human perfection with the perfection of the world. Should we wish

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to claim that matters are different in relations between man and his fellow, note the following statement by Buber: Be clear what it means when a worker can experience even his relation to the machine as one of dialogue, when, for instance, a compositor tells that he has understood the machine’s humming as “a merry and grateful smile at me for helping it to set aside the difficulties and obstructions which disturbed and bruised and pained it, so that now it could run free.” (“Dialogue,” 37)

The intimate dialogical communication with a machine is connected to its tikkun, and God is not apathetic to such activity on the part of man, because from Buber’s viewpoint there is no place that cannot become God’s little acre. In light of what has been said here, the gap between Buber’s typology of devekut and the Hasidic teachings has been bridged, or at least significantly narrowed, albeit only with regard to that typology of devekut which is incorporated with the doctrine of tikkun, namely, the doctrine of uplifting the sparks.18 I will cite a quotation attributed to the Baal Shem Tov, mentioned in Weiss’s article: I heard from my teacher, of blessed memory, that there are unifications ( yihudim) accomplished through speech, whether in speech of Torah and prayer, or in speech with one’s fellow man in the market place. And he can join his fellow and lift him up according to his level—at times by means of speech of holiness and at times by means of mundane speech that has the twenty-two letters, etc.19

It is difficult to determine from this source whether one is speaking of uplifting speech (according to its level) or of uplifting man by means of holy or mundane speech, according to his level. However, from the combination of the phrase “one’s fellow man” (havero) with “he can join (le-habro) his fellow and lift him up according to his level,” one may infer that the sense is the latter. But however one interprets this passage, there is clearly a certain equivalence drawn between the value of attachment to God and that of worldly activity. The heart of this passage lies, not only in the drawing of devekut into situations of concrete material life, but also in the redemptive activity performed in the world in a state of devekut and with its help. Yet by means of speech 18 We will discuss the question as to whether Buber was correct in interpreting “uplifting the sparks” in a metaphorical manner below (Chapter 11). Here I only wish to characterize a state of value-equivalence between devekut and service in corporeality. 19 R. Ya’akov Yosef of Polonoyye, Tzofnat Paneah, edited with an Introduction, notes and indexes by Gedaliah Nigal ( Jerusalem, 1989), 60b.

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( yihudim be-dibbur) man connects himself to God while simultaneously lifting up a certain aspect of the earthly realm, albeit there he does not reach the level of attachment to his fellow.20 Weiss acknowledged that the integration of the doctrine of devekut and that of sparks (nitzozot) overcame the separation between action and devekut (“The Earliest Beginnings,” 65). However, he did not think that the doctrine of nitzotzot was necessary in order to understand this Hasidic insight regarding the subject of devekut, as there enough sources emphasizing devekut by corporeal means without resorting to the doctrine of nitzozot. Hence, Weiss thought that the doctrine of sparks is “merely a subsidiary teaching, not needed for the essential idea [of devekut]” (ibid., 68). According to this line of thought, in our case it would have been sufficient to state that man may attach himself to God by means of mundane speech, without relating to the question of lifting up his interlocutor or lifting up the letters of speech. However, I do not think that the doctrine of lifting up sparks is merely subsidiary to that of devekut. Rather, it is an additional typology of devekut, beyond those mentioned above, creating a certain opening for a point of contact between Buber and Hasidic thought specifically in the mixture of the doctrine of devekut and that of nitzotzot. By means of this mixture, the idea of service in corporeality is no longer exclusively dependent upon the principle of expanding devekut to all aspects of life; rather, the redemption of the soul is connected with the redemption of the world through its mending.21 When the ideal of devekut is connected to the ideal of redemption of the sparks, the two ideals appear as bearing independent value. The ideal of spiritual service via the corporeal world is a Divine need, no less so than that of attachment to God, and it requires full consciousness in order to be carried out in this world.

20 In the Hasidic passage mentioned here, standing face to face with one’s fellow man in an I-Thou relationship is not emphasized, but rather that the connection to him may serve to elevate him up from his low stage. See my discussion of directness of relationship below, Chapter 8.5. 21 Whereas, according to the previous quotations, we could argue, in wake of both Schatz and Scholem, that one attached to God was interested in the redemption of his soul or in the fulfillment of the Divine commandment “to cling to him” (Deut 30:20), and not with the mending of the world, in those places where the doctrine of tikkun is connected with the issue of devekut, one can no longer argue, as did Schatz, that in Hasidism the question of the concrete world is secondary to that of devekut. This is so, even before we have clarified the precise relationship between the nitzotzot (sparks) within matter, and matter itself. Schatz’s sweeping statement is no less one-sided than Buber’s sweeping statements about Hasidism in the other direction.

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It demands man’s powers and cannot exist as merely “background music” to devekut. The unification of these two values connects the level of the holy with that of the mundane, grants holy significance to the realm of the secular, and negates the approach that, “I am sleeping in the corporeal world and am awake in the world of the ‘spirit.’ ” Such an integrated approach is expressed in the following homily of R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoyye regarding the levels of the four Mishnaic sages who “entered into Pardes” (the realm of mystical existence): And this is what we mentioned above regarding different levels: “Four entered Pardes” (b. Hagigga 14b), etc. Ben Azzai, who died in a stated of attachment and yearning, as stated. In any event, greatest is the level of R. Akiva, who entered in peace and went out in peace. And we need to understand why the level of R. Akiva was greater than that of Ben Azzai, who died with the Divine kiss and with attachment of his spirit, which is the main purpose and perfection . . . It seems clear as to why the level of R. Akiva was higher than that of his fellow, for the main purpose and perfection of man, who was created of matter and form, is to subdue and transform matter into form, in particular and in general. Specifically, man should sanctify his body until he turns matter into form, and after he has adorned and sanctified himself in particular, he should sanctify and adorn others, the masses of people who are like extraneous matter to the perfectly faithful Jews, who are like the form that lifts the lower level up to the higher one. And this is what is written, “Draw me after you, we shall run” (Song of Songs 1:4)—that the lower level, which is the matter, is lifted up to that which draws it, to lift it to the higher level, to that of form . . . And this is what is written: R. Akiva entered in peace and left in peace. And this is analogous to the verse, “Behold, I give him my covenant of peace” (Num 25:12)—namely, Phinehas who is Elijah, the matter and the form, both of which are alive and exist . . . (Toldot Ya’akov Yosef, Aharei, 88a–c).

This homily emphasizes the Sage’s commitment to this world, while sustaining the ideal of devekut (i.e., the entry into Pardes, and the attachment to “men of matter”). While in the source in Tractate Hagiggah the verse “Draw me after you, I shall run; the king has brought me into his chambers” refers to R. Akiva’s attachment to God in the heavenly chambers and his ability to return thereafter to his regular existence, in this homily the man of form, who attaches himself to God by virtue of his being such, is attached to the man of matter and draws him up to the level of form—as understood from the verse “draw me after you, I shall run.” R. Akiva’s greatness is thus embodied in the fact that he acts within this world while remaining

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attached to God, and that he lifts the lowest level of corporeality to a spiritual one. In general, given that the doctrine of uplifting the sparks is a central idea in Hasidism, one which transcends the limited area of worship to realms that are considered mundane,22 wherever it appears one cannot say, as has been argued by Schatz, that the issue of the concrete is secondary in Hasidism. Moreover, the innovation involved in the Hasidic expansion of the principle of uplifting sparks does not allow us to say that, during the early years of Hasidism, devekut took the place of tikkun.23 The integration of the ideal of devekut with that of tikkun protects man from a situation of spiritual egotism, in which he is attached to God for his own pleasure. This danger, that man is likely to serve himself and his own apprehension of God in order to derive spiritual pleasure, and not in order to serve his Creator, was one of which Buber was particularly aware during his dialogical period. Such an awareness also exists in Hasidic writings.24 Buber gave decisive importance to this typology of devekut in his teachings, and even his understanding that revelation, which can be attained through direct connection with God and not via the created beings, refers exclusively to activity in the world.25

22 See the words of Louis Jacobs: “Hasidism utilizes the concept of the holy sparks to a far greater degree than the Lurianic Kabbalists themselves. But although on the surface nothing has changed, in effect the whole concept has undergone a radical transformation . . . In the essential Hasidic doctrine, God is to be worshiped not only by the study of the Torah, prayer, and the observance of the precepts but also and particularly, by engaging in worldly pursuits with God in mind. Little is made in the Lurianic Kabbalah of the holy sparks residing in food and drink and in other worldly things except when the discussion has to do with their rescue through the performance of the precepts—eating and drinking as sacred acts on the festivals, for example, or eating unleavened bread on Passover. Otherwise abstinence and holy leaving are the way in which the sparks are rescued. In Hasidism, on the other hand, the holy sparks clamor to be rescued by the Hasid fully engaged in the world” ( Jacobs, “The Uplifting of Sparks,” 115–116). And cf. Weiss, “The Hasidic Way of Habad,” 196–197. On the limited and more hesitant attitude towards the service of uplifting sparks in R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoyye, see Gellman, “Buber’s Blunder,” 28–29. 23 See Green, Tormented Master, 184–185. 24 “Even if he does a number of things and preparations so that he can serve with devekut and he derives pleasure from this service, he is serving for his own needs, and the important thing is that all of his service be for the sake of the Shekhinah” (“Kelalim Noraim,” printed at the end of R. Hayyim Haykl of Amdur, Sefer Hayyim va-Hesed ( Jerusalem, 1975 ), 79a). 25 I and Thou, 158–159. As demonstrated by Tishby, Ramhal (R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto) placed this level, that incorporated material things within the service of God with devekut and sanctifies them, as the highest level in the scale of man’s spiritual

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R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoyye recommended such integration only for a small number of people, those of the highest level, “men of form,” whereas for Buber this typology, as compared to the Hasidic typology of devekut, undergoes a “change of place” and becomes the “point of departure,” to use Scholem’s term regarding the position of devekut in Hasidism. Whereas in Hasidism devekut as such became the first demand imposed upon man, in Buber the first demand is for devekut that is involved in worldly matters and that acts for its mending, taking the place of other typologies which become not only secondary, but also improper. This typology, adopted by Buber, is considered by the Hasidic teachers as dangerous because of the possibility that man may suffer a decline from which he is unable to ascend. This is part of a general tendency in Buber to attribute to all people possibilities which, for earlier generations, were only possible for special individuals. For Buber, all human begins are potential “men of form.” 4. The Inner Relation between Devekut and World-Mending Buber’s typology of devekut not only brings devekut and tikkun to a state of equivalency, but also connects between them and even creates interdependence between them. This is so, because on the one hand devekut without tikkun harms the goal of creation and, on the other hand, only a state of I-Thou, that is, of actual contact between the I and the Thou, allows for tikkun. This inner connection between the two values appears, for example, in Buber’s introduction to his book Be-Pardes haHasidut, in which he describes Hasidism’s influence upon him: But I know no better image to describe what I believe, what Hasidism has taught me to believe: that the Divine reality is innately present in all things and objects, but that I am not allowed to feel this reality except through authentic contact with them, in the course of I-Thou contact, but in this contact I am also allowed to act upon it, I am permitted to perform a “redemptive” action with regard to it. (Be-Pardes ha-Hasidut, Introduction, 5–6)

The dependence Buber created between the ideal of devekut and that of tikkun returns us to the Hasidic sources and raises the question of the

ascent (Tishby, “Traces of Ramhal,” 974). However, this degree is considered by Ramhal as only possible for a limited number of people.

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inner connection within Hasidic sources between devekut and uplifting of the sparks, or between devekut and the transformation of matter into form. If, on the basis of the Hasidic typologies of devekut mentioned earlier, in which the two ideals are not mixed, we pose the question, “How is it possible to have devekut while engaged in worldly activity?,” one must now ask the question from the opposite direction, “What is the function of devekut in service of God through corporeality?” Is it possible, for example, to lift sparks through contact with the material world without devekut? In those Hasidic teachings in which the Hasidic teachers distanced themselves from the Lurianic doctrine of kavvanot directed towards uplifting sparks,26 and in which the demand to lift up the sparks was significantly expanded (see the above-mentioned paper by Jacobs), did not devekut replace the teaching of kavvanot as a pre-condition for uplifting the sparks? It seems to me that the answer to this question is a positive one, and that there are a number of tendencies or emphases in Hasidism regarding the inner dependence between devekut and the uplifting of sparks. This dependency is expressed in the fact that, in addition to the independent value of devekut, it supports the uplifting of the sparks in different ways. An example of such integration may already be found, for example, in the words of R. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto (Ramhal), who notes that, by means of attachment to God, “He [the one who is attached] ascends, and the world is lifted up with him, for it is a great elevation for all the creatures of the world, through their serving the complete man, who is sanctified by His holiness, may He be blessed.”27 It therefore follows that one attached to God exerts influence upon the world of matter, even if he is not attached to the created beings in a direct way. The man who is attached to God is like a perfume that casts its fragrance over all of spiritual and physical reality, even if he did not intend to affect material reality in a direct way.28

26 Buber said of this tendency that: “What Hasidism strives for as regards the Kabbala is the deschematization of the mystery” (Buber, “Spirit and Body,” 124). 27 R. Moses Hayym Luzzatto, Mesilat Yesharim ( Jerusalem, 1988), Chapter 1, p. 8. 28 A similar direction creating an inner dependency between devekut and redeeming the sparks appears in R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoyye: “For when he attaches himself to Him, may He be blessed, by means of Torah and prayer, then he lifts the sparks of the four worlds of Emanation, Creation, Formation and Action above, and if he remains in this supernal state—then what is left that he may correct tomorrow? Therefore, he must go back down, in order to lift up other aspects.” (Ketonet Passim, ed. with notes

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I will now present another tendency, according to which attachment to God is a kind of safety net that protects man in his worldly activity. This tendency is expressed in the following homily of R. Yaakov Yosef, regarding the spiritual level of Noah: And by this you may understand the verse: “These are the generations of Noah” [Genesis 6:9]. Noah, who was easy (a pun on his name: Noah) to the upper beings and easy to the lower beings. And this was so because he was not separated or aloof from the people, but mingled among the people, which causes love of others29. . . And should you say that, after being so much involved with the people his mind became distracted from attaching his thought to Him, may He be blessed, at that time; regarding this the Torah explains, saying that “he was a righteous man in his generation” (ibid.). Even when he came inside the city, among the people of his generation, he was righteous, fulfilling the verse “I have always placed God before me” [Ps 16:8] . . . And this caused him initially “and Noah walked with God” [Gen, ibid.)—that he meditated in order to connect himself and attach himself to Him, may He be blessed, before he went out into the city. And as I wrote in another place regarding the verse “and he also loved Rachel more than [or, homiletically: derives from] Leah” [Gen 29:30].30

In this homily, the principle “I have always placed God before me” is applied in a different manner than it was in R. Nahman of Kossov. Here, the splitting of consciousness is abandoned. Noah is completely involved with other people by virtue of his prior attachment to God (“and this caused him initially . . .”); since involvement with other people is likely to distract a person’s mind from the Creator, his descent to the city, to the human community, must be preceded by meditation in and indexes, by G. Nigal [ Jerusalem, 1988 ], 21a). However, this passage does not mention attachment to things in the created world per se. 29 One may understand the casual relationship in this homily between the words “which causes love of others,” and its beginning, in several different ways: (a) Noah’s mingling with the people led him to love of the people; (b) Noah’s love of the people led him to involvement with them; (c) the fact that a man who was “accepted by the supernal ones” was found among people and involved with them, led the people to love God; (d) one who dwells in the supernal spheres brings with him to the human reality the ability to love in practice, as a consequence of his having been in the upper realm. This fourth possibility returns us to the question of the relationship between mystical experience and ethical behavior in the world, which I discussed, in wake of Stace, at the end of Chapter 2. However, this latter interpretation of the homily requires “stretching” the casual connection to the beginning of the homily, making it sound like a homily on the homily. However, it may be consistent with the conclusion of the homily, that connects the love of (the supernal) Leah with that of Rachel (the sefirah of Malkhut, connected to the lower worlds), as we shall see below. 30 Quoted from Torot Ba’al ha-Toldot, 12–13.

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which he attaches himself to God, a process of strengthening himself within God. However, one may also say that he is involved with the people, not only by virtue of his prior devekut to God, but also by being attached to Him during the course of his being among the people (“and he also loved Rachel more than [homiletically: through] Leah”—see below). This homily thus involves two aspects: (a) the prior attachment to God hovers over the righteous man and allows him to preserve his attachment to God, even within the mundane world; (b) simultaneously, the Zaddik seeks to live with the generations, that is, to descend to the world and to come into close contact with the people by augmenting love there. We thus find here attachment to God, followed by attachment to the world (i.e., to other people). The relation between the upper attachment and the lower attachment to human beings is reflected in the homily by means of the verse, “And he also loved Rachel more than Leah” (Gen 29:30). It seems to me that this verse is to be explained as follows: Rachel, who represents the sefirah of malkhut, connected to this world or which is the Lower Mother, derives from Leah, who is the sefirah of Binah, or the Upper Mother. The love of Rachel derives from that of Leah and leads back to Leah. Nevertheless, from the point of view of our world, the love is directed first of all towards Rachel—that is to say, to the Divine element immanent within the world. The referent of the metaphor of Rachel and Leah is the attachment of the righteous man to other human beings, and his love for them that is wrapped up in a certain way, in the transcendent reality of Leah. It is interesting to compare this typology to the typology of devekut used by Buber, who sees man as connected to God through his I-Thou relation to other earthly creatures. Both the Hasidic source and Buber’s dialogical teaching emphasis here the principle of man’s responsibility for this world. In both, this responsibility is connected to a loving attachment to the world.31 However, there are two important differences between R. Yaakov Yosef’s typology of devekut and Buber’s typology of I-Thou. First, for

31 And indeed, in this Hasidic homily the aspect of “love of Rachel” does not allow one to argue against Buber, as was done by both Schatz and Scholem, that his excessive love for the world imposed itself upon all of the Hasidic sources. Noah, as is noted in the homily, was easy to both the upper and the lower realms.

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the author of the Toldot, the way begins with God and only thereafter devolves to attachment to earthly creatures, whereas in Buber attachment to worldly beings is the key and the high road to attachment to God. In other words, for R. Yaakov Yosef, attachment to God sustains devekut in this world and redeems it, while for Buber attachment within this world sustains attachment to God. Secondly, R. Yaakov Yosef’s homily strongly emphasizes that activity in this world involves a descent to the lower realms that requires protection, as contact with worldly beings is liable to harm one’s attachment to the upper world. In Buber, by contrast, engagement in this world is not seen in terms of descent, while contact with worldly beings is, as we mentioned, seen as a pre-condition for contact with God and not as a result of contact with Him. While Buber also recognized the difficulties involved in entering into activity in this world—the world of commotion and multiplicity—one does not overcome the given state of this world through attachment to a transcendent God, but rather by means of unifying one’s inner powers and giving a clear direction to the soul. The activity of unification as an inner unification within man is another change wrought by Buber in this Kabbalistic-Hasidic term. The two typologies, that of R. Yaakov Yosef and that of Buber, would have been closer to one another had the Hasidic homily specifically cited that the path to Leah (Binah) requires that one passes through Rachel (Malkhut), and not just the opposite. Hence, even though both typologies approach one another in terms of the love of worldly reality and the connection between devekut and tikkun, there remains a significant distance between them. Hence, one still needs to seek Hasidic sources in which attachment to God takes place through attachment to the world. Such a direction is likely to stem from the concept that “the whole world is filled with His glory” and “no place is empty of Him,” namely, worldly reality is a kind of peephole by which one can gain a glimpse of transcendent reality. This rule not only emphasizes the principle of God’s immanence in the world, but also creates an opening for attachment of God through His created beings. As Weiss notes in his article, “The Hasidic Way of Habad” (197), such a direction is to be found in the Maggid of Mezhirech, as in the following teaching: “And Rachel came with the flock” [Gen 29:6]. It states in the midrash, so that Jacob might be attached to her beauty. On the face of it, this

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chapter eight cannot be understood, but the true interpretation is that this refers to the Supernal Rachel: that by means of seeing this earthly Rachel, Jacob became attached to the Supernal Rachel, for all the beauty of this lower Rachel came from the upper One . . . For it is known that Potiphar’s wife would beautify herself 32 greatly before him [ Joseph] . . . in order to seduce him. And Joseph, the righteous man, did not desire this beautifying, but it made him to desire and become excited for the supernal beautifying, which was the image of his father, [the sefirah of ] Tiferet of Israel [a pun on hitpa’arut, “beautifying,” and Tiferet—trans]. And this is the meaning of, “and he fled and he went outside” [Gen 39:12]—that is, that he fled from this corporeal beatifying and was impassioned to flee outside of this world, and to attach himself to the supernal Tiferet . . . And this is what is written, “[go out] and see, O you daughters of Zion” [Song 3:11]—that is to say that, for example, a woman’s beauty, where the corporeality of such beauty is called “daughters of Zion” [ibid.] is only an indicator [tziyyun, pun on the word Zion] and sign of the supernal beauty, upon which there rests a spark of the beauty from the world of Tiferet, so to speak. And a person is not allowed to attach himself to this lower beauty, but if he confronts it suddenly, then he should attach himself by its means to the supernal beauty. And this is what is meant by “King Solomon” [ibid.]—that is to say the beauty of this woman is only an indicator and marker of that which is in King Solomon, that is to say, the Holy One blessed be He (Maggid Devarav le-Yaakov, 29–30).

This passage from the Maggid of Mezhirech adds to the previouslycited source from R. Yaakov Yosef in that it presents a way towards God that passes from below to above. Here Rachel appears as the earthly Rachel, who is the object of desire of Jacob, who seeks to reach her. It would appear that the Hasidic preacher was unable to accept the desire to attach oneself to the beauty of the earthly Rachel alone—albeit one cannot assume that he thought that Jacob did not truly attach himself to Rachel in his love for her, but only saw her as a means for his own ascent. It seems more likely that our author paved the way for a development from below to above, from the lower beauty to its source in the upper beauty (Malkhut). However, he did so with awe and trembling; that is to say, he saw this ascent as entailing dual and dangerous aspects for anyone who was not on the level that Joseph was in relation to Potiphar’s wife. The path from below to above can only be accomplished by overcoming the lower aspect and foregoing pleasure from it. Had Joseph given himself to Potiphar’s 32 In this primping, or beautification, as in her beauty per se, she is the earthly representative of the sefirah of Tiferet.

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wife, he would not have been able to attach himself to the attribute of his father Jacob (Tiferet).33 The ambivalent attitude towards the lower, limited reality is striking in this homily. One oughtn’t to belittle the degree of daring involved in this homily, expressed in its use of the verb db”q in relation to things of this world (“he should attach himself by its means to the supernal beauty”), although one is not allowed to become attached to lower beauty alone. This homily thus includes the opposed extremes of reality—the beauty of Rachel, on the one hand, and that of Potiphar’s wife, on the other. Its intent was not to emphasize the beauty of Rachel, but rather to combine the attachment to the lower Rachel (“he should attach himself by its means”) to the supernal Rachel (“to the supernal beauty”). What is common to all the Hasidic sources cited in this section and in the previous one, as well as in Buber, is the possibility of connecting oneself to God without bypassing the world of concrete things, together with an awareness of the danger involved in this path. The difference between them lies in the fact that there is a tendency in the Hasidic sources to attribute to the worldly reality the influence of the “Other [i.e., Demonic] Side,” and hence the Hasidic sources are more hesitant in relationship to the connection with the earthly dimension than is Buber. Unlike these sources, according to Buber the status of things is given to them by man’s intention alone. The scale of human relation to the created world lies somewhere between the extremes of devekut (attachment) and dibbuk (being possessed). Devekut signifies connection with things in order to meet God, while dibbuk means a person seizing hold of the things, or the things taking hold within man in a limited sense whereby it does not transcend the limited human sphere. If man sees the relative in an absolute way, and wishes to make use of it for himself in an absolute sense, then his devekut become dibbuk; but if he changes the nature of his movement so as not to make use of things in an absolute sense for himself, then the relative becomes absolute and the material become eternal:

33 Unlike Weiss, Scholem saw in the Maggid expression of a tendency that tended to alienate itself from the concrete realm, which was likely to prevent man from ascending to the realm of the spirit. See on this Scholem’s paper criticizing Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism and the words of the Maggid of Mezhirech quoted there by Scholem (“Buber’s Interpretation,” 241); and cf. below, Chapter 11.2.

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chapter eight If one serves a people in a fire kindled by immeasurable fate—if one is willing to devote oneself to it, one means God. But if the nation is for him an idol to which he desires to subjugate everything because in its image he extols his own—do you fancy that you only have to spoil the nation for him and he will then see the truth? (I and Thou, 154)

To summarize: Buber’s essential typology of devekut mixes the ideal of devekut with that of tikkun through service in corporeality, by attributing supreme value to spiritual work in the world. That which appears in Hasidic sources as only one out of many possibilities—namely, attachment in the world as a means of its mending and of attachment to God: a possibility that is itself quite hesitant, because the ambivalent attitude towards earthly reality repeatedly places limits upon it—becomes for Buber the preferred option. Among the numerous typologies of devekut in Hasidism, some ecstatic-transcendental and some connected to concrete reality, Buber chose as the dominant line in his own thought the typology of attachment within the world, which is simultaneously that of tikkun and geulah, of mending and redemption. For Buber, man’s “descent” into the limited is joined with his “ascent” to the absolute.34 To this model of devekut, Buber added the principle of directness of contact with concrete reality and with God, in which the directness in one field does not substitute for directness in the other realm, as we shall in the next section. 5. The Application of the Term “I And Thou” to States of Devekut We have seen how Buber selectively chose elements from the world of Hasidic devekut for his dialogical thought. Even though we have identified a certain resemblance between Buber’s typology of devekut and the Hasidic typology of devekut which leads the world to God, and which unites with the ideal of tikkun, Hasidic sources never use “I-Thou” terminology to signify devekut. Hence, it is worth raising the question: can one identify any specific element within Hasidic-Kabbalistic teachings that served as inspiration for Buber’s dialogical approach?35 Buber’s

Buber, “Spinoza,” 98. See on this also below, Chapter 9, where we discuss Buber’s dialogical interpretation of the doctrine of tzimtzum. 35 David Barzilai, as mentioned, identifies Hasidism as one of three factors leading to the appearance of dialogical thought in Buber (Homo Dialogicus, 39–40). However, 34

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typology of devekut particularly emphasizes the degree of directness between the I and the Thou, a type of directness that is not emphasized in the above-mentioned sources. Indeed, in the Hasidic description of psychological and spiritual support provided by the Zaddik to a person by means of mundane or holy speech (above, near note 19), no emphasis is placed on any directness of contact. Similarly, in the description of transforming matter into form, such directness is not emphasized. One source of inspiration for Buber’s view regarding the necessity of a degree of directness in devekut derives from the relations between the Zaddik and his disciples, as stated in his own autobiographical testimony.36 Another important source of inspiration would seem to be found in the Hasidic tale, in which contact and direct conversation among people serve as a cornerstone. But an additional source emphasizing the aspect of directness is rooted, in my opinion, in the Kabbalistic aspect of “face to face,” which Buber almost certainly received through the mediacy of Hasidism: an aspect which, in Kabbalah, expresses direct communication and union between the Divine partzufim (“faces” or “configurations”). This idiom is mentioned in Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism,37 and also appears in his book I and Thou in his discussion of the difference between the religious man and the ethical man: Whoever steps before the countenance has soared way beyond duty and obligation—but not because he has moved away from the world; rather because he has become truly close to it. Duties and obligations one has only towards the stranger: toward one’s intimates one is kind and loving. When a man steps before the countenance, the world becomes wholly present to him for the first time in the fullness of the presence, illuminated by eternity, and he can say You in one word to the being of all beings. There is no longer any tension between world and God but only the one actuality. He is not rid of responsibility: for the pains of the finite version that explores effects he has exchanged the momentum of

he did not identify the specific dialogical factor which Buber found in Hasidism, nor how he derived the dialogical principle from Hasidic sources. According to Michael Oppenheim, Buber found in Hasidism an approach stating that God is, on the one hand, the Creator, and on the other hand, a partner in dialogue (Oppenheim, “The Meaning of Hasidism,” 409–410), but neither did he indicate how the dialogical principle was derived from Hasidic sources. 36 Buber, “My Way to Hasidism,” 51–52. See on this at greater length above, in Chapter 7.1. 37 Buber, “Spinoza,” 91; idem, “Spirit and Body,” 120.

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chapter eight the infinite kind, the power of loving responsibility for the whole unexplorable course of the world, the deep inclusion in the world before the countenance of God.38

Just as in his typology of devekut Buber particularly emphasized the connection between the I and the Thou in the realm of earthly beings,39 so too did he copy the aspect of face to face to the realm of created beings. This aspect of “face to face,” generally used in Kabbalah to indicate the interrelationship among the Divine attributes, is understood by Buber in terms of man’s relationship to the Eternal Thou, from which it extends to the entire worldly reality that is present to it. The face-to-face relationship in relation to God is embodied in the face-to-face relationship towards all things in reality. The face-to-face aspect of love for God needs to exist in the quality of face-to-face love towards human beings. The unification of the religious man and the ethical man is not completed simply by the religious man’s ethical obligation towards the world through virtue of accepting the divine law, but is realized by him ascending from the realm of obligation to that of love, in the sense of standing face-to-face. There is then no longer any tension between the world and God, since everything is Divine service, in the sense of standing face-to-face. We may infer from this that the attribute of the It is face and back, while man’s focusing upon himself alone is perhaps the attribute of back and back, and the attribute of directness with worldly beings is the aspect of face-to-face, of connection, inclusion and mingling. Here, too, Buber “brought down” a transcendent Kabbalistic concept into the realm of the human. The proximity of his words regarding the attribute of face-to-face and the aspect of love involved therein indicates that his source of inspiration for these words is the tradition of Jewish love mysticism, namely, Kabbalah and Hasidism. In his conversion, Buber recognized within himself his own aspect of “back,” which he connected to his failure in the aspect of directness, and the correction of this failure is found in his words in the Afterword to I and Thou, in which he discusses the genuine psychotherapist, who “grasps with the profound eye of a physician the buried, latent unity of the 38 Buber, I and Thou, 156–157. On Buber’s thought as “love mysticism,” and on the relationship between love and the dialogical principle, see below, Chapter 10. 39 “We live in an unredeemed world. But out of each human life that is unarbitrary and bound to the world, a seed of redemption falls into the world, and the harvest is God’s” (Buber, “Spinoza,” 112).

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suffering soul, which can be done only if he enters as a partner into a person-to-person relationship, but never through the observation and investigation of an object” (I and Thou, 179). Here, too, a direct line may be drawn between Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism and his own thought. In his interpretation of the doctrine of tzimtzum, Buber noted that God created the world “on the reality of reciprocity, on the meeting” (“Spirit and Body,” 122). This directness, which God desired in his contact with man, extends into the realm of human relationships and to the relation to things in the world as a whole. In his thought, Buber honed the concept of devekut between the I and the Thou, the face-to-face encounter, in a manner which had not previously been done, by transferring it, as we said, into the concrete world. Every contact of attachment entails the aspect of face-to-face, whether one is speaking of a disciple or of a tree or of a bundle of hay. In Buber, the principal of face-to-face descended from the world of Sephirot into all states of life in a more emphatic and comprehensive way than it did in the Hasidic sources.

CHAPTER NINE

BUBER’S DIALOGIC INTERPRETATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF TZIMTZUM 1. Introduction The appearance of Martin Buber’s dialogic teaching towards the end of the 1910’s was affected both by personal and historical circumstances, and by the influence of Hasidic teachings and of dialogically oriented thinkers.1 This thought in turn influenced his own attitude towards Judaism and Hasidism and his manner of interpreting them.2 During his dialogic period, Buber characterized the close attachment of the Hasid with the world and with God as an I-Thou relationship (Be-Pardes ha-Hasidut, Introduction, 6); in general, he saw the greatness of the Jewish people as being based, not on the idea of monotheism, “but that it [i.e. Israel] pointed out that this God can be addressed by man in reality, that man can say Thou to Him . . .” (“Spinoza,” 91). The I-Thou relations between man and God serve likewise as the cornerstone of Buber’s interpretation of the Bible and of his doctrine of revelation. The Zaddik as True Helper There seems no doubt that the intimate and profound relationship between the Zaddik and his disciples was one of the important and early sources of inspiration for Buber’s dialogic thought. This relationship was not limited to the theoretical plane between teacher and student, but touched upon the very soul of the Hasid, and was directed

1 Barzilai, Homo Dialogicus, 39–40. On the fashioning of Buber’s dialogic thought during the second decade of the 20th century, see Horwitz, Buber’s Way. On the influence of Ferdinand Ebner and Franz Rosenzweig on Buber, see Horwitz, “Gnosticism,” 232–235. 2 Scholem, “Buber’s Conception of Judaism,” 390–392; Mendes-Flohr, “Buber’s Conception,” 266.

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towards uplifting it and redeeming it.3 It is implied by Buber’s words that he became aware of this source of inspiration, not from study of written sources, but from events in his own life that were connected with Hasidism. In his essay, “My Way to Hasidism,” Buber describes his own childhood experiences of encounter with Hasidim in Sadigora. Through seeing and feeling, it became clear to him that “the world needs the perfected man and that the perfected man is none other than the true helper” (“My Way to Hasidism,” 52). Years later, in 1910 and 1911, before he had fully developed the IThou terminology, Buber engaged in informal conversation with some of his audience following a lecture he had given. This was meaningful to him because, in his words, in conversation as opposed to a lecture, “person acts on person and my view is set forth directly through going into objection and question” (ibid., 64). During the course of this conversation a certain person approached Buber and, after much hesitation, asked him for advice regarding questions that only a person of pneumatic ability, one who penetrates the inner secrets of a person’s destiny, would be able to answer. Buber was unable to answer these questions: namely, whether this man’s intended son-in-law was deserving of his daughter, and whether the intended husband should strive for the judicial bench or suffice with becoming a lawyer. When Buber answered that he did not know the young man in question, and that even if he did know him he would be unable to give advice in such a matter, the man thought that for some reason Buber simply did not want to answer him. Concerning this experience, Buber wrote in the essay: But now in the light of this droll event, I caught sight in my inner experience of the zaddik’s function as a leader. I, who am truly no zaddik, no one assured in God, rather a man endangered before God . . . when asked a trivial question and replying with a trivial answer, then experienced from within for the first time the true zaddik, questioned about revelations and replying in revelations. I experienced him in the fundamental relation of his soul to the world: in his responsibility. (“My Way to Hasidism,” 67)

In his contact with others Buber did not make use of pneumatic or magical powers, such as those that characterized the Seer of Lublin,

3 See Weiss, “The Earliest Beginnings,” 69–88. On R. Nahman, see Green, Tormented Master, 154–161.

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the Baal Shem Tov, or R. Isaac Luria. Nevertheless, the relations of Zaddik and Hasid were an important source of inspiration for his dialogic thought as expressed in the principle of man’s responsibility towards the world in general, and towards individual human beings in particular. Hence, in a later reaction (1932) to an event that occurred just a few years after the one described above (1914), known as his “conversion,”4 there again arose the ideal of the perfect man, who is the true helper: “I conversed attentively and openly with him [i.e., the person who had come for advice on a critical life decision—ik]—only I omitted to guess the questions which he did not put” (“Dialogue,” 14). Later on, in depicting the meeting between “a genuine psychotherapist” and a patient, Buber referred to the ideal of intimate contact with another person that penetrates beyond the external guise of the conversation, “the art of embracing” and a “person-to person relationship.”5 This existential position of being a “true helper,” which he attributed to Zaddikism, had implications for Buber’s educational thinking, both with regard to the function of the teacher and to the powers that need to be awakened in the student.6 However, he deliberates there, not only regarding the movement of drawing close and embrace, but also regarding the movement of distancing: “Healing, like educating, requires that one lives in confrontation and yet is removed” (I and Thou, 179). The one motion necessitates the other: movements of drawing near and of distancing are interrelated with one another. 2. The Doctrine of Tzimtzum and the I-Thou Relationship— The Framework for the Discussion Another Hasidic-Kabbalistic principle that constituted a major source for Buber’s dialogical world-view and that played a role in its molding concerns the doctrine of Tzimtzum in its various aspects.7 During the

Above, pp. 101–105. And cf. Shapira, Spirit in Reality, 93–117. “Afterword” (1957), I and Thou, 178–179. 6 Buber, I and Thou, 99; idem., “The Education of Character,” 115–117; idem., “Education,” 109–114. 7 Buber was not the only twentieth century Jewish thinker who turned to the concept of Tzimtzum as a source of inspiration and as a cornerstone of his thought. Others include Harav Kook (see J. Ben-Shlomo, “Ha-Ari and Harav Kook,” 450–453), Harav J. D. Soloveitchik (“Majesty and Humility,” Tradition 17:2 [1978], 25–37, at 35–36); and Harav Yehuda Ashlag (Talmud Eser Sefirot, I [ Jerusalem, 1997], 4–8, 20). In Buber, 4 5

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course of this chapter I wish to demonstrate how Buber’s reading of the doctrine of Tzimtzum led him towards its dialogic interpretation, and how he internalized it as a paradigm during various stages of his writings, in his book I and Thou and in his philosophical anthropology.8 I shall attempt to show how the Lurianic doctrine of Tzimtzum and the idea of Tzimtzum originating in classical Rabbinic thought, and its manifestation in R. Moshe Cordovero and the Maggid of Mezhirech, served as a theoretical model for the shaping of his dialogical teaching. And how likewise it provided a conceptual basis for his own thought on various levels, as in his philosophical characterization of the I-Thou relationship, in his description of human history from the viewpoint of the development of relationship, in his characterization of the development of the individual dialogical man from prenatal existence through maturity, and in his understanding of revelation. The discussion will be conducted by means of six moves. In the first of these I will show how Buber lent the Kabbalistic doctrine of Tzimtzum a dialogic interpretation. In the second, I will show how Buber made Tzimtzum a necessary condition for the very existence of an interrelation between man and God, by arguing that without Tzimtzum the very nature of Being would not allow for the establishment of such a relationship. In the third move I will show how Buber’s dialogical interpretation of the doctrine of Tzimtzum was transferred to the realm of interrelations between each person and his Thou, and how the processes of emanation and contraction were transferred to the stages of man’s dialogical growth. In the fourth move I will show how Soloveitchik, and Ashlag, there is also a striking tendency to move the doctrine of Tzimtzum from the theosophic dimension to its implications for human life. 8 Unlike Mordechai Rotenberg (Dialogue with Deviance, 7), I will not deal here with the behavioral model derived from the doctrine of Tzimtzum, but will rather focus upon the manner in which paradigms of Tzimtzum were internalized in Buber’s thought under the influence of Hasidic-Kabbalistic teachings. It is nevertheless worth noting the significant difference between the model of alter-centric salvation redemption derived from contraction of the ego, as characterized by Rothenberg, and my perception of the manner in which Buber internalized the paradigms of Tzimtzum. For Rotenberg, “alter-centered salvation is essentially featured by distraction from self but not destruction of self, or rather by contraction of self rather than construction of self.” Hence Rotenberg characterized I-Thou relations as relations of contraction-sacrifice, as compared to an egocentric philosophy, based entirely upon the ego (12). In Buber, as we shall explain below, I-Thou relations do not express limitation, but rather expansiveness and drawing near. For Buber, exaggerated and one-sided focus on the I is an expression of its contraction, while I-Thou relations are an expression of the authentic I, its expansion and realization. For Buber, the activity of Tzimtzum is a precondition to the possibility of establishing I-Thou relations.

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dialogic man takes the place of God and himself brings about Tzimtzum, in order to thereafter allow the establishment of relationship. In the fifth move I show how, in establishing an I-Thou relation, man imposes upon reality a contraction which is simultaneously an expansion, bringing about redemptive activity within reality. Finally, in the sixth move I show how Buber’s understanding of revelation, which is intertwined with his ethical viewpoint, may be understood against the background of the internalization of the doctrine of Tzimtzum within his thought. These six moves are not organized diachronically in the body of the chapter, for a methodological reason. The first, third, fifth and sixth moves are from the end of the 1910’s and from the early 1920s. The first move to be presented, a hermeneutic one, is from 1922, and appears in Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism in his essay “Spirit and Body of the Hasidic Movement,” in which Buber deals directly with the Kabbalistic doctrine of Tzimtzum,9 the emphasis being on Tzimtzum as leaving space for creation. The third, fifth and sixth moves, which are primarily theoretical or philosophical ones, appear in Buber’s book I and Thou, published during that same period, and are spread throughout all the years of Buber’s work. The second move, like the first, also relates to Buber’s Hasidic interpretation of Tzimtzum (in his essays “Spinoza, Sabbatai Zvi and the Baal-Shem” [1927] and “God and the Soul” [1945]). Even though these essays are chronologically later than the beginning of the third, philosophical move, from the methodological viewpoint I see it as a transitional unit between Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism, which may still be defined as belonging within the framework of hermeneutics, to their internalization-application within his own thought. The fourth move, which is also the last in terms of time, appears during the period of Buber’s philosophical and philosophical-anthropological work, as reflected in his books I and Thou, The Knowledge of Man and Eclipse of God. Buber’s dialogical interpretation of the doctrine of Tzimtzum and his manner of internalizing it within his I-Thou thought may serve as a test case by which to characterize Buber’s manner of reading Hasidic sources and their internalization within his thought.

9 Tzimtzum as leaving space for creation is also mentioned in Buber’s essay “God and the Soul,” 191–192.

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3. First Move: The Hermeneutic Move—Dialogical Interpretation of the Doctrine of Tzimtzum Buber’s book about the Maggid and his successors was published in 1922, close to the publication of I and Thou. A section from the Introduction to this book underlies the fourth chapter (“Spirit and Body of the Hasidic Movement”) of his book, Be-Pardes ha-Hasidut (1945). In this chapter Buber discusses those Kabbalistic traditions that were incorporated within Hasidism, and in the course of doing so discusses the doctrine of Tzimtzum, which he saw as part of the “basic contents” of Kabbalah10—this, without referring to the changes brought about by Hasidism within this doctrine. At the beginning of his discussion, Buber characterizes Tzimtzum as a Kabbalistic doctrine that provided an answer to the theosophic questions involved in the idea of creation: “How is the world possible? . . . Since God is infinite, how can anything exist outside Him? Since He is eternal, how can time endure? . . . Since He is unconditioned, why the conditioned?” (“Spirit and Body,” 118). The answer proposed to these questions by Buber went beyond the theosophic realm, and involves a clear transition to the dialogical realm: The Kabbala answers: God contracted Himself to world because He, nondual and relationless unity, wanted to allow relation to emerge; because He wanted to be known, loved, wanted; because He wanted to allow to arise from His primally one Being, in which thinking and thought are one, the otherness that strives to unity. (ibid., 119)

By posing the ideal of relationship, that for Buber always appears in a dialogical context, as the cause of Tzimtzum and as the reason for the creation, he gives a certain change or different slant to the Kabbalistic doctrine of Tzimtzum. This Buberian slant becomes sharper if we contrast it with the principle elements of the Kabbalistic doctrine of Tzimtzum without entering into its multitude of shades in a manner that will distance us from the subject of the chapter.

10 Buber, “Spirit and Body,” 120, footnote; idem., “God and the Soul,” 190: “The idea of a self-limitation of God in the primal act of creation is, as has been stated, a basic idea of the Kabbala.”

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I. The Kabbalistic Doctrine of Tzimtzum The interest of the Kabbalah in the idea of Tzimtzum involves two interrelated subjects: the essence of Tzimtzum—that is to say, its nature and cause; and the purpose of Creation. It is customary in Kabbalistic scholarship to distinguish between two kinds of Tzimtzum. The first is identified with Lurianic Kabbalah, according to which the act of Tzimtzum preceded Creation itself. Prior to Tzimtzum the Godhead was a perfect and infinite unity, and its contraction–withdrawal into the transcendent allowed for the creation of space (halal hapanuy, “the empty space”) in the center, in which the universe was thereafter created. In this model, the need for Tzimtzum was in a sense geometric: in the reality of an infinite God there is no place for the world; therefore, the Infinite must withdraw to the periphery, and thereafter return to the center with a certain degree of moderation: on the one hand, to allow for the separate existence of the world and, on the other, for its existence by virtue of the Divine forces that penetrate it.11 (I shall demonstrate below how this doctrine was internalized in Buber’s principle of distance and relation). Another kind of Tzimtzum, which originates in the words of the classical Rabbinic sages,12 was developed by R. Moses Cordovero (and also incorporated within Lurianic doctrine). Tzimtzum, according to this approach, is not a prior act of preparation for the Creation (i.e., withdrawal to the periphery), but is identified with the very act of Creation by its involvement with the process of emanation. Tzimtzum is an ongoing activity of adjusting the degree of Divine flow to the measure of the finite, created world.13 This doctrine focuses more on questions as to how an infinite being could create a reality having limit

11 “By this it is explained why the Infinite contracted Itself and removed that great light from that place entirely, thereafter restoring it in measure and proportion, via that line. And He could have left that line in its place and removed the rest of the great light alone, as he was to restore it in the future. But the reason was because of the above cause: that the vessels could not come into existence until the light had been removed entirely, and after the vessels came into existence He again drew down the light (via the line), in measure and proportion, in an amount that would suffice to illuminate them and to enliven them, so that they might bear it and be able to exist, and not that they be negated. And this shall suffice.” (Sefer ‘Etz Hayyim, Heikhal Adam Qadmon, I.3; p. 25). 12 On the concept of Tzimtzum prior to R. Moshe Cordovero, see Idel, “The Concept of Tzimtzum.” 13 On Cordovero’s concept of Tzimtzum, and its relation to Lurianic Tzimtzum, see Sack, “Torat ha-Tzimtzum.”

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and measure, opposed in its nature to the Infinite, and to reveal itself therein, and how a finite world could bear the light of the Infinite. The answer implied by this doctrine is that, in order for a limited world to come into existence outside of the infinite reality, the Infinite underwent a series of self-contractions during the process of creation. These self-contractions are expressed both in the creation of vessels, which by their nature possess limit and measure, and by the relative flow of light which they are capable of containing without being broken. As Tzimtzum allows God to be revealed within a finite reality, it also has epistemological significance.14 Man’s tools of cognition, as part of the world of measure and boundaries, cannot comprehend an infinite being; hence, it is only through contraction of the light of the Infinite that man can apprehend something of God.15 This epistemological aspect of the doctrine of Tzimtzum is emphasized particularly in Hasidic teaching.16 This model of Tzimtzum thus connotes contraction in the sense of making something smaller, centering, and diminishing the light in the process of descent through the universe, whereas Lurianic Tzimtzum signifies a process of withdrawal into the periphery. Nevertheless, the two understandings of Tzimtzum do not contradict one another, relating as they do to different stages in the process of creation and to different difficulties involved in understanding the relation between the infinite and the finite: the Lurianic doctrine of Tzimtzum relates to an earlier stage and to the fundamental question regarding the place of the world; therefore, it may be seen as logically preceding the basis of the Cordoverian doctrine of Tzimtzum.17

14 The Lurianic doctrine of Tzimtzum also has epistemological implications; they are expressed, for example, in R. Nahman of Braslav’s teachings on the “empty space” (halal hapanuy), and the encompassing and inner lights. 15 On this idea in Cordovero, see Sack, ibid., 223–224. 16 On Tzimtzum in the Maggid of Mezhirech, see Schatz, Hasidism as Mysticism, 207. On its overall place in Hasidism, see Idel, Hasidism, 89–91. This aspect of Tzimtzum is referred to by Buber as “pedagogical self-limitation” (Buber, “God and the Soul,” 194). It appears in the Maggid of Mezhirech in the parable of the father teaching his son, who makes himself small for the apprehension of the son (see, e.g., Maggid Devarav le-Ya’akov, 9), and then gradually guides him on the levels of the ladder of apprehension (ibid., 20–21). Buber gave a dialogic interpretation to this epistemological parable as well (see below, n. 28). 17

Jacobs, Seeker of Unity, 50.

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II. Buber’s Dialogic Twist on the Doctrine of Tzimtzum If we now turn from the comparison between the two Kabbalistic doctrines of Tzimtzum to Buber’s above-mentioned interpretation, we may easily identify the difference: in the Kabbalistic interpretations, the emphasis is primarily on clarifying the relation between the Infinite and the Finite,18 and on clarifying the difficulty that arises due to the gap between these two realities—i.e., the unlimited and the distinct— rather than on the question of the personal relation between man and God. The Kabbalistic discussion concerning man’s apprehension of the Godhead is part of the overall doctrine regarding the relationship between the Absolute and the Finite, and does not emphasize the personal dimension of the relationship between God and his creation. Hence the predominant concepts used therein are the Infinite, light and vessels—concepts that are extreme marginal for Buber.19 There is a greater resemblance between the Hasidic interpretation of the ideas of Tzimtzum that preceded it, and Buber’s dialogic interpretation of these doctrines. As Moshe Idel has observed, Hasidism removed the doctrine of Tzimtzum “from theosophy to anthroposophy.”20 This exegetical move also stands out strongly in Buber’s anthropological-dialogical interpretation of the doctrine of Tzimtzum. 18 Jacobs, ibid., 52. The relation between the Infinite and the Finite is one of the central topics of Neoplatonic thought (see on this Goodman, “Editor’s Introduction,” 2). Buber’s thought shuns these questions, and his interpretation of Hasidism is an intermediate stage that concludes by distancing itself from the vertical model, as I demonstrated above, pp. 207–216. 19 Albeit the concept of the vessel was internalized in Buber in a different manner, as we shall see below, pp. 304–314. 20 Idel, Hasidism, 90. In light of this, it is noteworthy that in his essay, “Spirit and Body of the Hasidic Movement,” Buber did not note this transference of the doctrine of Tzimtzum in Hasidism from the theosophic realm to the anthroposophic. He attributed the theory of Tzimtzum generally to Kabbalah, and noted that “its basic content… was decisive for Hasidism” (“Spirit and Body,” 119, note). Buber’s positive attitude towards the Kabbalistic doctrine of Tzimtzum, as expressed in his presentation thereof as a Kabbalistic doctrine that exerted a constant and decisive influence on Hasidism, indicates that the creation of an antagonistic relation between Kabbalah and Hasidism may not be ascribed to Buber in a sweeping way, as has been argued by Idel (ibid., 7), and as Scholem also thought. In the above-mentioned essay (117), Buber notes that “Hasidism took over and united two traditions without adding anything essentially different to them other than a new light and a new strength.” The one was “a tradition of religious law,” the second “a tradition of religious knowledge—inferior to gnosis in the power of its images, superior to it in its systematization—the Kabbala.” It would therefore appear that, once Buber realized that Kabbalistic doctrines do not contradict the dialogical principle and may even serve it, he did not reject them, but gave them an anthropological direction, by himself turning Kabbalah into ethos.

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It was only natural for Buber to initially pose theosophic questions in the name of the Kabbalah, and thereafter to provide an anthropological answer that went beyond the conventional Kabbalistic cause given for the Creation of the universe, viz. God’s will to benefit His creatures.21 Giving a dialogical interpretation to Tzimtzum reflects a closeness to the Hasidic hermeneutics also in terms of the tendency to see the processes of Creation as events that occur repeatedly in man’s psychological life, just as relationship is an event that repeats itself in a human life. The difference between Buber’s interpretation of Tzimtzum and the anthropological-Hasidic one that preceded it lies in the fact that Buber, as mentioned, did not focus upon the epistemological aspect of Tzimtzum, but turned it towards the dialogical dimension: that is, towards the realm of personal relationship between the Creator and the creature, as expressed in their mutual need for relation with one another. While the dialogical interpretation of Tzimtzum also entails an epistemological aspect, because for Buber apprehension is a natural consequence of relationship, in his dialogical interpretation of Tzimtzum Buber focused primarily upon the appearance of the independent I confronting the personal Godhead and the need for mutual connection as a reason and purpose for Creation. We shall now return in a more focused way to Buber’s discussion of the doctrine of Tzimtzum in his essay, “Spirit and Body of the Hasidic Movement.” One may say here that, on the basis of the anthropological-dialogical response offered by Buber (118 ff.) to the question posed by the theosophists in the name of the Kabbalah, the question

As I noted elsewhere, in his essay, “Christ, Hasidism, Gnosis” (1954) Buber characterized the transition from Kabbalah to ethos as “the true religious revolution that is only possible as the work of devotion” (ibid., 252). Gnosis as knowledge of God is therefore changed in an organic manner by the penetration of the ideal of devekut. In this sense it becomes positive, by providing a theological basis for the turbulent life of religion (ibid., 253). A parallel process may be identified in Buber’s general attitude towards gnosis: notwithstanding his generally reserved attitude towards gnosis, he gave it a positive place in the context of relationships (see on this Koren, “Buber and Steiner,” 111–114). When the gnosis moves in the direction of devekut, that is, towards I-Thou relations, it serves a positive function, for one may then characterize I-Thou relationships in a broader cosmic context. (On the way in which Buber used the doctrines of emanation and Tzimtzum to describe the stages of development of the child, see below, §5). 21 “When it arose in the Divine will to create the Universe so as to benefit his creatures, that they might recognize His greatness and merit to be a chariot above, to cling to Him, may He be blessed. . . .” (Sefer Etz Hayyim, Shaar ha-kellalim, 5.1).

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that needs to be asked in the name of Kabbalah is: how can a free I whom God addresses in a personal way, and whom He wishes to be connected to Him and to love Him, exist at all? The proper answer to this question lies in its dialogical interpretation of the doctrine of Tzimtzum: God contracted and distanced himself, thereby facilitating the existence of duality and allowing the existence of the independent otherness that strives for unity. The dialogical interpretation of the idea of Tzimtzum stands out further on in the discussion, where Buber relates to the emanation of the four Kabbalistic worlds of Emanation, Creation, Formation and Action. Buber again asks in the name of the Kabbalah, “But why was the primal will not satisfied by the pure spheres of separation, the world of ideas, where He who willed to be known could be known face to face?” (ibid., “Spirit and Body,” 120). He answers: God contracted Himself to world. And it is answered. God wanted to be known, loved, wanted, that is: God willed a freely existing, in freedom knowing, in freedom loving, in freedom willing otherness; he set it free. This means the concept of Tzimtzum, contradiction. (“Spirit and Body,” 120)

The separation of the World of Emanation sufficed to place mutuality opposite God, but in this aspect of the World of Emanation the association22 between God and man did not yet allow man sufficient distance from God to enable him to enter into the realm of freedom. God not only desires that man should stand before Him, but that this standing be undertaken out of freedom, as that alone indicates that the desire for connection derives from the creature as well, and not only from the Creator. True relationship cannot emerge from mechanical or coerced activity, but only when an independent being encounters another independent being and connects to it. A certain distance between the two is the condition for this independence; therefore, there is need for the ongoing activity of emanation. It follows from this that Buber understood Tzimtzum first and foremost as distance, in the sense of leaving space.23

22 I will make use of the Buberian term “association” (Verbundenheit) in presenting the internalization of the doctrine of Tzimtzum within the realm of interpersonal relations (see below, §5). 23 By contrast, in his essay “God and the Soul” Buber described Tzimtzum in the basis of the principle of limitation of the divine light for the sake of those that receive it (192).

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A more careful reading of Buber’s words reveals that he used both models of Tzimtzum mentioned earlier in order to explain the possibility of the emergence of relationship in the world. Buber first spoke of leaving space—that is, of God’s withdrawal into the transcendent in the spirit of the Lurianic model, a withdrawal that allowed for the appearance of otherness in the vacuum formed thereby (what Buber refers to as “the World of Emanation”). But, as we have seen, Buber observed that this space, created in the World of Emanation, did not suffice for the purpose of the Creation, and therefore God undertook the process of emanation of other worlds—that is, a series of additional contractions within the emanated worlds in the spirit of the Cordoverian model. These contractions removed man even further from God, allowing the coming about of mutual relationship between man and God. Thus, in his interpretation of the concept of Tzimtzum in “Spirit and Body of the Hasidic Movement,” Buber explained Tzimtzum as distancing and emergence into independence: first God distanced Himself (“and he left space for the world”), and thereafter He went on to distance man from Himself, having created worlds that were thick and distinct from His essence. This, as mentioned, was needed so as to give man the freedom required for the existence of a mutual relationship. In this exegesis Buber united both doctrines of Tzimtzum around the dialogic theme—a tendency that may also be observed in other contexts where one may distinguish in Buber the traces of the doctrines of Tzimtzum. To conclude our discussion of the first move, up to this point we have seen how Buber’s hermeneutics originated in a manner similar to the traditional hermeneutics. Buber’s interpretation is thus anchored within the historical continuity of Jewish hermeneutics, and constitutes an additional link in this continuity, expressed in the transition from theosophy to anthroposophy.24 It should also be noted that the proximity in time between the publication of I and Thou and that of the essay, “Spirit and Body of the Hasidic Movement,” is certainly not accidental; however, it does not in itself indicate that Buber was directly influenced by the doctrine of Tzimtzum, and that this idea necessarily served as an important

24 In the words of Gershom Scholem, “mystical anthropology” (“Devekut or Communion with God,” 216); cf. Jacobs, Seeker of Unity, 57–58. For an example of epistemological interpretation of Tzimtzum attributed to the Baal Shem Tov, see Keter Shem Tov, 3b.

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model in his dialogical thinking. Buber’s above-mentioned remarks about Tzimtzum are his specific interpretation of a Kabbalistic doctrine—but hermeneutics is not yet philosophy. In his interpretation of the doctrine of Tzimtzum, Buber wished first of all to explain the Kabbalistic-Hasidic doctrine of Tzimtzum as he understood it, and not his own thought. However, one ought not to reject the possibility that his dialogical thought, which matured during that same period (1922), influenced his understanding of the doctrine of Tzimtzum. Hence, one needs to examine other Buberian texts in which his thought is expressed more directly, or in which he conducts a polemic whose purpose is to stress the dialogical principle as opposed to other theoretical principles. Such texts, in which a connection is drawn between the theory of Tzimtzum and Buber’s own thought, may be found in his book I and Thou, and in the lectures that preceded this book, entitled “Religion as Presence,” as well as in the essay “Distance and Relation.” However, as up to this point we have been dealing with the coming into existence of the space allowed for the relationship between God and man without relating to the inter-personal space, I will continue along this line and turn to Buber’s essay, “Spinoza, Sabbatai Zvi and the Baal-Shem” (1927), that appeared in his book The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism.25 4. Second Move: God’s Embodiment in Personality In his essay “Spinoza, Sabbatai Zevi and the Baal-Shem” (1927), Buber polemicizes with Spinoza, answering him in the name of Judaism, particularly in the name of Hasidism and the Baal Shem Tov. There is nevertheless more than a trace of Buber’s own teaching in these words. This is so, both because of the presentation by Buber of the essence of Judaism and Hasidism (ibid., 91) in a manner that completely overlaps his dialogic outlook, and due to the polemical nature of the discussion, that reveals his own positions. This polemic with Spinoza links the issue of Tzimtzum with two other matters closely related to the possibility of creating a dialogical space within Buber’s thought: (a) Buber’s negative attitude towards mysticism, which he recognized,

25 The first version of this chapter appears as the introduction to the collection of Buber’s books on Hasidism: Die chassidischen Bücher (Berlin, 1927), 19–57.

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at the time of writing his essay on Hasidism, as the opposite of the dialogical principle; (b) his negative attitude towards pantheism which he likewise recognized as opposed to the dialogical principle. The model of Tzimtzum used by Buber in this essay is the Cordoverian one, although he gives it a different direction here than that which he gave it in “Spirit and Body of the Hasidic Movement.” Whereas in the former essay Buber concentrated upon the possibility of the existence of the other as an independent entity opposite God, in this one he raises the question of the appearance of the Infinite Godhead as a personality confronting man. Hence, in this essay Tzimtzum must be understood, not as a withdrawal into transcendence in the spirit of the Lurianic doctrine, and thereafter as a further distancing during the course of constructing the created universe, but rather—to use Kabbalistic terminology—as God’s embodiment in personality. I will turn to the substance of Buber’s polemic with Spinoza. According to Buber, Spinoza wished to purify God from “the stain of being open to address” (92), in order to protest against the diminution in the image of the Infinite Divinity this caused. Buber answered, in the name of Jewish teaching: But the truth of the Torah is26 that God is also a person, and this is, in contrast to all impersonal, unaddressable “purity” of God, an augmentation of divinity. Solomon, who built the temple, knew that the whole of the heavens do not reach God27 and that He nonetheless elects for Himself a dwelling in the midst of those who address Him, that He is therefore both, the boundless and nameless as well as the father who teaches His children to address Him.28 Spinoza knew only: person or not person. He 26 By the term “Torah,” Buber refers to the Bible, to Rabbinic teaching, and to Hasidic teachings, as follows from the sequel. 27 There is no doubt that Buber alludes here to midrashim that draw a connection between Solomon’s words in 1 Kings 8:27 and the contraction of the Shekhinah into the Sanctuary. See, for example, Num. Rab. 12.3: “At the moment that the Holy One blessed be He said to him [Moses]: ‘Let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell in their midst’ [Exod 25:8], Moses said, Who can make Him a dwelling place in which He can reside? ‘Behold, the heaven and the highest heavens cannot contain Thee . . .’ [1 Kgs 8:27]. And it says, ‘Do I not fill heaven and earth?’ [ Jer 23:24]. And it says ‘The heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool’ [Isa 66:1]. The Holy One blessed be He said: ‘I do not seek according to My strength [i.e., measure], but according to their strength. When I wish it so, the entire earth cannot contain My Glory, nor one of my suns. But I seek from your hand naught but twenty ells in the south, and twenty in the north, and eight in the west.’ ” 28 On “pedagogic” self-limitation in the teaching of the Maggid of Mezhirech, see above, n. 16. In his words, Buber united the Rabbinic midrash about God’s selfcontraction within the confined of the Sanctuary with the Maggid’s pedagogic Tzimtzum,

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overthrew person as an idol and proclaimed the substance existing from itself to whom it would be folly or bad poetry to say Thou.29

In this passage, as we stated earlier, Buber uses the model of Tzimtzum that appears in Rabbinic thought, in R. Moses Cordovero, and in the Maggid of Mezhirech, according to which the self-limitation of the Divine allows for its manifestation in a particular place in this world and to human cognition. Here too Buber gives Tzimtzum a dialogical interpretation, focused upon God’s appearance as a personality and as a father who teaches man to call upon Him and to say “Thou.”30 All this is in terms of the dialogic ideal of Jewish teaching, which connects God prior to Tzimtzum with the God who is embodied in personality. But in practice, Buber continues, Spinoza had encountered the degeneration of this doctrine. He was aware in his day of the dual process whereby the ritual-sacramental dimension had become separated from the sanctification of the everyday: on the one hand,

turning both sources in a dialogic direction. Neither the Rabbinic Midrash nor the Maggid’s words focused upon the contraction of the Godhead as creating the possibility to establish the call of the human being (the son) to God (the father), even though the dialogical idea may easily enough be derived from these sources, as Buber indeed did. The gap between the Maggid and Buber is like that between apprehension and calling, where the latter assumes in Buber an explicitly dialogical character. This finds expression in Buber’s description (in the name of the Maggid) of the first dialogue between Adam and God in the Book of Genesis (Gen 3:9), that began with the call “Where are you?” (see on this Buber “The Way of Man,” 132–134). 29 “Spinoza,” 92–93. See also Buber’s words in his essay, “God and the Soul”: Spinoza had to withhold all personality from God; the love of this God, in which His being of necessity culminated, could not be love for another but only the alllove of the Unlimited for itself. The Kabbala does not shrink from finding in the “Godhead” something that first attains its full effect only in the action of “God”; the kindness . . . But even thus “Godhead” becomes “God,” whereby in Hasidism, as already before it, just the former is designated by the Tetragrammaton, which is originally by far the more personal of the two names; ever more strongly there breaks through in Him pure “Being.” “One receives the light of the sun only through a curtain,” says the Maggid; “so one cannot receive the illuminating power of the ‘Being’ [HVYH] except through Elohim.” Even this is no new image; but it stands in a new connection that makes it new. The Godhead emanates a world in order to bring into operation that in itself which is person . . . and in order that this world might receive what It desires to give of itself, the Godhead becomes God for it altogether.” (“God and the Soul,” 191–192). 30 Further on in this same essay, Buber speaks in the name of the Baal Shem Tov regarding God who speaks to man through the various objects that man encounters throughout his life, and that he must respond to God through the acts that he carries out in these objects (ibid., 193). That is to say, Tzimtzum is not only expressed through God’s appearance as a personality, but also in His speaking to man through the limited reality of things and objects.

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he saw the “amputation,” the way in which “life in the world and the service of God run side by side without connection” (94)—that is, the limitation of the service of God to the realm of religious ritual. On the other hand, he was aware of the desire to engage in knowledge of God outside of the world, “in mystical and sacramental exaltation” (ibid., 95). According to Buber, Spinoza’s Jewish monistic impulse was incapable of accepting the creation of such duality on two separate levels: i.e., the separation of the cult from everyday reality, that is, setting apart a limited realm for God; and of Divine service that occurs outside of the world (i.e., mystical ecstasy), that likewise separates between a supernal realm devoted to God and a lower realm separated from His existence. The following words of Buber already explicitly articulate a relation of dependence between Tzimtzum and the possibility of a dialogic relationship, both on the semantic and the theoretical level: The insight that God cannot be addressed apart from the unreduced reality of life because just in it He speaks, was inverted for him [Spinoza] into the view that there is no speech between God and man. (95)

God—thus according to Buber—does not speak to man in a life-reality that is not limited; that is, He only speaks to man via His contraction as a personality, and only through the system of limitations of this world, that is, through things and objects. Spinoza, who was unable to accept anything less than an infinite God who also incorporates this world, saw in the attempt to serve a personal God outside of this world a double restriction of God: in terms of His transformation into a personality, and in terms of His isolation from the world. “But,” Buber continues, “his [Spinoza’s] attack swung beyond this legitimate object [i.e., the bifurcation of life]. Along with world-free intercourse, all personal intercourse with God became unworthy of belief for him” (“Spinoza,” 95). In other words: according to Buber, during the course of his struggle against those who diminish the image of God by separating Him from the world, Spinoza also incorrectly does battle against those who present God as a personality with whom one speaks. Spinoza’s exaggerated reaction expressed itself, according to Buber, in his rejection of the dialogic possibility and in his adoption of the pantheistic option, that preserves God’s absolute unity and infinity or, in Buber’s language, “From being the place of the meeting with God, the world becomes for him the place of God” (95–96).

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Buber’s polemic with Spinoza thus includes both agreement and criticism. On the one hand, Buber concurs with Spinoza that God is not to be found by man outside of the world, but, unlike Spinoza, Buber’s position does not derive from fear of placing a blemish upon or somehow diminishing God, but rather from a principled stance that God speaks with man only within the world—that is, through His self-limitation as personality and within the world. On the other hand, Buber disagrees with Spinoza’s pantheistic approach, which contradicts his dialogic view and is opposed to his own understanding of the purpose of Creation. Identification of the world-essence with the Divine essence is opposed to dialogue, as the Infinite God is then seen as identical with the attribute of expansion (i.e., the World of Matter), and therefore cannot appear as a personality. Moreover: pantheism is also opposed to dialogue, because total identification of the Infinite with the universe does not allow room for a free human personality that chooses relationship with God, as is shown by Spinoza’s deterministic stance on the issue of free-will. The line that guides Buber throughout this discussion is that the meeting between man and God can only occur within a limited reality, while Spinoza’s pantheism is in contradiction to Tzimtzum, and hence is also opposed to dialogue. For Buber, the dialogic realm is thus located somewhere between his definition of mysticism as spirituality that is outside of the world, and his characterization of Spinoza’s pantheism as total identification of the Divine substance and the world substance. He rejects ecstatic mysticism as an illusion, as for him one cannot find God outside of the world and one cannot conduct a relationship with him in a reality lacking in Tzimtzum. The result of such an effort is monologue rather than dialogue. Mystical man seeks connection with God outside of the world, but the true partner to this contact cannot be found. “The gestures of intercourse fall on the empty air” (94); that is, man then finds himself in the limited reality of an independent I within an empty, Godless vacuum. Buber rejected pantheism, by contrast, because it contradicts the dialogical purpose of creation as expressed in Buber’s interpretation of the doctrine of Tzimtzum: the existence of two entities, in the sense of personality, that seek contact and communion. Pantheism contradicts the dialogic purpose of creation because it does not allow the world to exist in an independent manner and therefore negates mans’ free personality, just as, in a different way, ecstatic mysticism

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contradicts the dialogic goal of Creation as it nullifies the dialogic personality of God and the existence of man as such in the heights of transcendence. At a later period, in the Afterword to his book I and Thou (1957), Buber continues his polemic with Spinoza, seeking to add a third attribute to the two attributes of God known to man—namely, the attribute of personality, God being an absolute persona (I and Thou, 182). In the process of God’s transformation into “the absolute person . . . Now we may say that God carries his absoluteness into his relationship with man” (182). Here, Buber no longer speaks in the name of Judaism and Hasidism regarding Tzimtzum and its necessity for the establishment of the dialogic life, but rather speaks in a direct way in the name of dialogical Torah. Similarly in another book by Buber, Eclipse of God (1952), connected to the anthropological-philosophical stage in his life, Buber presents the shaping of his anthropological teaching in the realms of religion and ethics. This teaching, like all of his philosophical anthropology, is not for him an abstract philosophical system, but a basic reality, “that it is important to contemporary man to see properly; if he opens his eyes without prejudice” (P’nei Adam, “Introduction”). In the chapter on “Religion and Ethics” in Eclipse of God, Buber presents this dialogical interpretation to the doctrine of Tzimtzum as his own teaching: We mean by the religious in this strict sense, on the other hand, the relation of the human person to the Absolute, when and insofar as the person enters and remains in this relation as a whole being. This presupposes the existence of a Being who, though in Himself unlimited and unconditioned, lets other beings, limited and conditioned indeed, exist outside Himself. He even allows them to enter into a relation with Him such as seemingly can only exist between limited and conditioned beings. Thus in my definition of the religious “the Absolute” does not mean something that the human being holds it to be, without anything being said about its existence, but the absolute reality itself, whatever the form in which it presents itself to the human person at this moment. In the reality of the religious relation the Absolute becomes in most cases personal . . . It is indeed legitimate to speak of the person of God within the religious relation and in its language; but in so doing we are making no statement about the Absolute which reduces it to the personal. We are rather saying that it enters into the relationship as the Absolute Person whom we call God. One may understand the personality of God as His act. It is, indeed, even permissible for the believer to believe that God became a person for love of him, because in our human mode of

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existence the only reciprocal relation with us that exists is a personal one. (96–97)

It seems to me that, from an analysis of the passages related to this second move, a definite line of development is drawn: the first stage involves Buber’s polemic with Spinoza and his presentation of Tzimtzum within personality as required for relationship in the name of Judaism and Hasidism; in the second stage, Buber sought (in I and Thou) to add to God‘s two known attributes (“spirit-likeness”—i.e., thought—and “nature-likeness”—i.e., expansion) that of personlikeness, which is a prerequisite of relationship. In the third stage, the dialogical form of the doctrine of Tzimtzum received its final impress in his philosophical anthropology, in the work Eclipse of God, where he noted that Absolute Being allowed limited entities to exist outside of Itself, and that it assumed a personal image for purposes of relationship to man. The polemic with Spinoza and the sections quoted from I and Thou and from Eclipse of God go beyond the question of the coming into being of the universe and relate to man’s existential states in relation to God, that is, Buber’s understanding of recurrent revelation. The initial world process of Tzimtzum repeats itself and is present in every encounter between God and man. 5. Third Move: The Application of the Doctrine of Tzimtzum and Emanation in the Interpersonal Realm Buber’s interpretation, in his essays on Hasidism, of the KabbalisticHasidic doctrine of Tzimtzum enables us to understand why and how this idea was internalized in his thought regarding the relation between God and man. Without observing his transition from hermeneutics to philosophy, it would have been difficult for us to understand the necessity for him to utilize the principle of tzimtzum in Eclipse of God, where it indicates a relationship between God and man from the anthropological-philosophical perspective. The transition from cosmogony, in the essays on Hasidism, to dialogic anthropology, which is not limited to processes of Creation, indicates a transition from a one-time event limited to the process of creation to states that appear repeatedly in the life of man and of the world. This transition is expressed in Buber’s words that “In the history

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of man the history of the world repeats itself” (“Spirit and Body,” 123).31 This transition in Buber’s thought from the history of the world to that of man may be identified with the parallel present in his thought between descriptions of the processes of Creation and Tzimtzum in Kabbalah and Hasidism and his characterization of human development along the axis of history, and that of man’s development, from prenatal life until maturation.32 As the earliest stages of development of the human race are unknown from the anthropological viewpoint, and we may only attempt to comprehend them through study of those tribes referred to as “primitive,” Buber preferred to focus, especially in “Religion as Presence”, on the stages of individual growth (66). Hence, I shall also focus upon Buber’s words concerning the stages of development of the individual. In what follows I shall utilize his descriptions from I and Thou, and as a background also refer to those lectures known as “Religion as Presence”. I will begin by presenting the stages of Creation and Tzimtzum as characterized by Buber in his essay, “Spirit and Body of the Hasidic Movement.” I shall then turn to examination of the degree of correspondence between them and the stages within the development of the individual.33 The stages of creation and contraction-limitation are (a) pre-creation: the unity that precedes creation, without duality and without relationship; God’s desire for relationship still only exists in potential; (b) withdrawal (the Lurianic model of Tzimtzum), leaving room for otherness; (c) emanation of the world (i.e., the World of Emanation) in which otherness already exists (that is to say, in which

31 Buber returned to this position at the end of his discussion of the stages of development of the child in I and Thou, noting that they ought to be understood against the background of “their cosmic-metacosmic origin” (79). See on this below, in this section. 32 On the relation between the two processes of development, Buber states in “Religion as Presence”: “How does the I of the human being begin, and how does it develop? We can grasp the question in two ways: in the development of the particular human being, and in the development of the human race” (65–66). 33 I do not wish to claim that there is a total overlap between the description of the stages of emanation in “Spirit and Body of the Hasidic Movement,” and the characterization of the development of the child in I and Thou. Nor need there be a complete overlap of this type to support my claim regarding the relation between the two descriptions. As I shall demonstrate, the resemblance between them is striking; to this, one may add the facts that the two descriptions were written in close proximity in time, that Buber noted that one ought to see the process of emanation as repeating itself in human history, and that the process of human development ought to be seen in its cosmic context, as noted above in note 31.

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Tzimtzum exists according to the Cordoverian model), and stands face to face opposite God, but lacking in freedom because of its excessive closeness to God; (d) emanation of the worlds of Creation, Formation and Action, removing the world and mankind further from the Divine reality, in a manner allowing the sphere of freedom for man to come into existence; (e) the breaking of the vessels, in which, as Buber puts it, “that which has become free overreaches itself ” (“Spirit and Body,” 123)—that is, acts against the goal of creation. While the purpose of creation is to establish otherness that strives towards unity (ibid., 119), that which goes free and seeks to break boundaries seeks to remove itself from this goal; (f) the World of Mending (Olam ha-Tikkun) which depends upon the free dialogical man (ibid., 123).34 Comparison of this cosmic process with that of the development of the individual human being requires that we relate first of all to Buber’s axiomatic statement in I and Thou that “In the beginning is the relation” (I and Thou, 69, 78). This statement is likely to mislead, for if “In the beginning is the relation,” than Buber has no need for the Kabbalistic-Hasidic model, a model incorporating a type of unity that is on the order of pre-duality, and a system of self-limitations, involving distancing and the embodiment in form, that allow for the emergence of human and divine personality. In order to determine the proper place for this axiomatic statement regarding the primacy of relation, we need to examine it very carefully in light of a precise examination of the process of human development in Buber. In practice, it follows from Buber’s description that the life of the fetus is not primarily a life of relationship, but: a pure natural association35. . . This association is so cosmic that it seems like the imperfect deciphering of a primeval inscription when we are told in the language of Jewish myth that in his mother’s womb man knows the universe and forgets it at birth. And as the secret image of a wish, this association remains to us.36 But this longing ought not to be taken

34

123).

“Now fate rests on its freedom. That is the mystery of man.” (“Spirit and Body,”

In the original: Verbundenheit. In mentioning the midrash, Seder Yetzirat ha-Velad (Jellinek, Beit Midrasch [ Jerusalem, 1967 ], Pt. I, 153–154), Buber did not mention the soul’s refusal to cut itself off from its supernal source in order to live in this world. Did he not cut himself off from this refusal when he said of himself: “I early had a premonition, indeed, no matter how I resisted it, that I was inescapably destined to love the world” (“Spinoza,” 99). 35 36

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chapter nine for a craving to go back, as those suppose who consider the spirit37… What this longing aims for is the cosmic association of the being that has burst into spirit with its true You. Every developing human child rests, like all developing beings, in the womb of the great mother—the undifferentiated, not yet formed primal world. (I and Thou, 76)

This being so, it follows that, for Buber, the “primal world” is not the world of relation in the dialogic sense, as we might think in light of the above-mentioned axiomatic statement of Buber, but rather the “primal world” signifies life “in the womb of the great mother,” in a world as yet undifferentiated, while the process of the shaping of the child is analogous to the shaping of the world in the bosom of the great mother in its pre-creation state.38 Birth involves man’s separation-distancing from his natural association and entering thereafter into another, less close type of bonding, which allows for the existence of a separate I. It follows from this that the statement, “In the beginning is relation,” is not to be understood in the sense of primordial time, of the starting point and the “first datum of human reality,”39 but Buber’s words directed against those who see in the spirit and who think that man desires to return to the primal state of natural and total bonding, at first seem unrelated to his discussion of the development of man; however, they are better understood against the background of the above words condemning mystics (whom he called here “those who consider the spirit”), who wish to return man to an unlimited world of total bonding. Thereby, the direct connection between his description of human development and the dialogic contexts of the doctrine of Tzimtzum also become clear. Total bonding is not man’s healthy wish, opposed as it is to the purpose or goal of creation. The unspoiled longings are those towards “its true Thou” (I and Thou, 76)—that is, to a relation based on distance and independence, and not on complete union (“Religion as Presence,” 80). Therefore, in I and Thou the relationships are located between total ecstatic union, opposed to dialogue, and the world of It. 38 In Kabbalistic cosmogonic terms, one might say that the emanated is first found within the emanator; the creation is still hidden in the recesses of the infinite; or, alternatively, Zeir Anpin is in the state of fetus and of smallness in the bosom of the supernal mother. The lower faces (partzufim) have not yet been cut off from those that are above Binah. 39 See Sagi, “The ‘Other’ in Buber’s Philpsophy,” 99. If we understand in this way Buber’s words that “In the beginning was the relation”—as follows, in my opinion, from textual analysis of the stages of human development in I and Thou—then the (seeming) contradiction between Buber’s position in I and Thou regarding the primacy of relation, and his claim in the essay “Distance and Relation,” that the basic element or state is not relation, but distance, will be nullified. One likewise needs to distinguish between the child’s interaction with the world and that of the adult. Hence the order of things, in my opinion, is as follows: human life initially starts as a state of natural, pre-dialogic bonding (union with the mother-world). During the stages of the child’s growth the element of relation is the dominant one, but this is not yet “spiritual association” in the full sense, as the child’s separate consciousness has not yet matured 37

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rather in the sense of it being the basic principle in the world and in the soul, and the purpose of human existence—that is, the principle of relation is initially a principle in potentia. This basic principle existed in the principle of Creation and is imprinted upon the human soul in potentia, because even before the soul knows what relationship is, the Thou is already implanted therein. Upon birth, there emerges in the infant the memory of the natural association that existed in the womb of the universal mother as longings for the Thou, and these continue throughout a person’s life: The human child is granted some time to exchange the natural association with the world that is slipping away for a spiritual association—a relationship. From the glowing darkness of the chaos he has stepped into the cool and light creation . . . (I and Thou, 77)

The transition from the natural association, which is a kind of “primal world,” the “glowing darkness of the chaos” (I and Thou, 76–77) and the “undifferentiatedness of the world” (“Religion as Presence”, 80), for a spiritual association, which is a relationship, sets the framework for human development, within which one may identify a number of stages. The stage following birth is that of the infant: The innateness of the longing for relation is apparent even in the earliest and dimmest stages. Before any particulars can be perceived, dull glances push into the unclear space toward the indefinite; and at times when there is obviously no desire for nourishment, soft projections of the hands reach, aimlessly to all appearances, into the empty air toward the indefinite. . . . For precisely these glances will eventually, after many trials, come to rest upon a red wallpaper arabesque and not leave it until the soul of red has opened up to them. Precisely this motion will gain its sensuous form and definiteness in contact with a shaggy toy bear and eventually apprehend lovingly and unforgettably a complete body. . . . Little inarticulate sounds still ring out senselessly and persistently into the nothing, but one day they will have turned imperceptibly into a conversation. . . . It is not as if a child first saw an object and then

(I and Thou, 80). Only at a later stage is the I cut off from the Thou, and the Thou becomes for him “the It of an I” (ibid., 80–82). At that point there begins the duality of I-Thou and I-It. The principle of distance and otherness belongs to the final stage of development, in which man knows others through his own separateness and against the possibility of perceiving the other as an It. It is here, as opposed to the stages of growth of the child, that distance may serve as an introduction to the possibility of establishing spiritual association.

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chapter nine entered into some relationship with that. Rather, the longing for relation is primary . . .40

The infant enters the external world through the event of birth, which involves distancing him from his world bonding.41 The longing for relationship is a basic impulse of the infant already in his primal, most enclosed state, even before he can identify individuals.42 This, because he is conscious in a reflexive way of his distance from his natural cosmic association. In “Religion as Presence,” Buber identified this state particularly with the first year of the child’s life (66), in which one cannot yet speak of the birth of the person’s I in the sense of full consciousness. The desire to attribute everything to the Thou is still a reflex of the Thou inborn within man. The infant wishes to stand face to face with the Thou, but he is not free to seek this situation nor is he free to reject it. He still needs the birth of the conscious I in order to ground his feeling of distancing and in order to seek relationship through consciousness and choice—or, alternatively, to turn away from it. Hence, the situation during the infant’s first year is parallel to that mentioned by Buber in “Spirit and Body of the Hasidic Movement”—namely, the standing face to face with the World of Emanation, a situation in which there

40 I and Thou, 77–78. And compare “Religion as Presence”: “The Thou is inborn in the human being, and it is not so, it cannot be so, that the Thou-relation begins when some piece of the external world approaches the human being. Rather, this Thourelation is somehow inherent in the human being himself, the Thou is inborn in him and develops in the Thou-relationships” (“Religion as Presence,” 68). 41 As we have seen earlier, in the first move in Buber’s dialogic interpretation of the idea of Tzimtzum, the terms Tzimtzum and distancing overlap: at times God distanced Himself in order to leave space for the world, and at times he distanced the world from Himself by means of an act of emanation, so that a free I might come into existence. Here, by contrast, one can say that the distancing is mutual, between the mother-world and the newborn. 42 This primary stage of the I, in which the person’s glance goes astray without distinguishing details, is parallel to Buber’s description of the ecstatic mystical Hasid who returns to the world and wears glasses in order to distinguish the details existing in the world (Buber, Legend of the Baal Shem, 20). During the period in which Buber wrote his book on the Baal Shem Tov, he was still tolerant regarding such psychological states, while during his dialogic period he was only prepared to accept it as the first stage of the infant. This, because such a state is analogous to man’s indistinct state in the World of Emanation, while Buber tended towards the existence of relation in the World of Action. The maturation of relation requires that one not stop at the first stage of the infant, that one not remain in the first stage of the World of Emanation, but rather rejection of the ideal of ecstasy, which is in fact the wish to return to the natural bonding that precedes Creation. This desire, as we have seen, is posed against the purpose of the creation, which involves mutual standing of two independent entities.

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is already a certain element of distance, but one which requires further distancing in order to realize the plan of the Creation. Buber was well aware of the kinship between the cosmic process and that of human growth, and thought that it was only through the cosmic context that we can completely comprehend the full compass of the phenomenon of human growth: Any real understanding of these phenomena is compromised by all attempts to reduce them to narrower spheres and can be promoted only when in contemplating and discussing them we recall their cosmicmetacosmic origin. We must remember the reach beyond that undifferentiated, not yet formed primal world from which the corporeal individual that was born into the world has emerged completely, but not yet the bodily, the actualized being that has to evolve from it gradually through entering into relationships. (I and Thou, 79)

Thus, just as the worlds of Creation, Formation and Action continued to “peel off ” from the World of Emanation, so does the I “peel off ”43 and become separated from the natural reflexive relationship (after being removed from the natural association), gradually being transformed into the self-conscious I. The I pole of relationships becomes aware of its separate existence, but this separate existence of the I “for a long time appears only woven into the relation to a Thou, discernible as that which reaches for but is not a Thou.”44 While in the 43 Buber used the term kelipah (shell) to describe the emanation of the worlds from one another in “Spirit and Body” (120), although in the German original of I and Thou he does not make use of the term Schale (shell) to indicate the separation of the world of creation, but rather the verb herauswickeln, meaning to peel / to cover / to enwrap. On Buber’s tendency to interpret the Kabbalistic-Hasidic term kelipah as the “cover and clasp of the more perfect” (119), see above, 235–238. 44 I and Thou, 80. The parallel in “Religion as Presence” clarifies Buber’s intention: Buber does not agree with the widespread anthropological view that the awakening self-awareness within the infant at first creates a distancing that may be characterized as subject-object relations. Rather, he thinks that at the time of dawning of the self-consciousness of the I and of his awareness of the lack of the Thou, the movement towards the Thou occurs as the first movement of the conscious I, whereas the It (the object poised opposite the subject) emerges only at a later stage of development (“Religion as Presence,” 66). This stage, in which the I become conscious, “appears only woven into a relation to a Thou” (I and Thou, 80), overlaps, according to Buber, to that in which “The former word splits into I and Thou, but it did not originate as their aggregate, it antedates any I” (74). The relation already exists in potential before the emergence of a distinct and separate I that exists in its own right as a self-contained monad. Buber’s intention is that it is not the attachment of the I alone and the Thou alone that brought about the first appearance of relation, but that their bonding is a-priori, just as God and man were still bonded together in the World of Emanation and were only separated in the World of Action. It was only after the I

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first stage of the infant’s life the I was ensconced in a life of relation without identifying the pole of itself, in the next stage it increasingly identifies the stage of its selfhood; or, in other words, increasingly separates itself from its source “until one day the bonds are broken and the I confronts its detached self for a moment like a Thou” (80). This movement, from an undefined, indistinct I to an I that is separate and distinct is accompanied by alternating states in which the Thou is perceived as something pale and is manifested as an It that “never became the It of an I” (ibid.). Only upon the full maturation of the I, parallel, in the model of emanation described in “Body and Spirit of the Movement,” to the World of Action, does man enter into the sphere of selfhood and freedom, because man has acquired a degree of distance and selfstrengthening by whose means he “henceforth enters into relations in full consciousness” (I and Thou, 80). Only now does man confront the possibility of realization of “spiritual association” in its full sense, as was the original intent of Creation according to Buber’s characterization in his interpretation of Hasidism. Hence, it is only at this stage of development that there begin to exist the two basic states depicted in the opening of I and Thou: “One basic word is the word pair I-Thou. The other basic word pair is the word pair I-It ” (53). Man can now raise up the relationship, by his own strength, through means of deliberate action,45 just as he may choose to focus upon the world of It, or—perhaps worst of all from Buber’s viewpoint—to limit himself within his own world. He thereby distances himself from the goal of creation, and in this sense “overreaches itself” (“Spirit and Body,” 123). This overreaching, through which man bursts out against dialogical life, is seen by Buber as analogous to the breaking of the vessels, to the primal sin, and to the history

and Thou were separated during the course of development of man (and of the world) that there is need to bond them and to bring them together again, out of “election and electing” (I and Thou, 62). 45 As it is only in an advanced stage of development that man’s intentionality in the establishing of mutual relations appear, there is no contradiction between the problem of the primacy of relation and relation requiring “intentionality,” since the “intentionality” (kavannah) appears as a later stage, after the I is separate, while the primacy of relation is, as noted, a basic principle—a cornerstone—with a number of stages of development and progressing from potential to actual.

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of the refusal of the Jewish people to realize dialogic life with God (ibid.) By contrast, the choice to realize the purpose of creation is expressed through the establishment of dialogic life, which effects a redemptive and corrective action upon man, the world and God. For Buber, this is, in Kabbalistic-Hasidic terms, man’s activity of raising up the sparks (Be-Pardes ha-Hasidut, “Introduction,” 6). Dialogue, in the sense of mending the world, is the filling of the empty space or void between those that are separated (the I and the Thou, as well as the We). We have seen earlier that Buber uses the term empty space or void (halal ha-panuy) a number of times in order to express a situation of lack of relation, whether in the mystic’s quest for God outside of the world, or the infant’s quest for touch. It follows from this that the empty void is the space between the I and the Thou before they enter into relation. In the primal world this void is created by means of withdrawal of the Infinite into transcendence, while this reality continues to exist within the world. Through the act of tikkun, man is meant to fill the empty void by means of I-Thou relations. The void is not only a reality in the upper worlds or in the vacuum that appears in man’s consciousness at times of “smallness,” as in Kabbalah and Hasidism, but is the space that always exists between the I and the Thou. It seems to me that it is thus that we ought to understand Buber’s words in his essay, “The Holy Way” (1918): God may be seen seminally within all things, but He must be realized between them. . . . It glows dimly in all human beings, every one of them; but it does not shine in its full brightness within them—only between them. . . . The Divine may come to life in individual man, may reveal itself from within individual man; but it attains its earthly fullness only where, having awakened to an awareness of their universal being, individual beings open themselves to one another, disclose themselves to one another, help one another; where immediacy is established between one human being and another; where the sublime stronghold of the individual is unbolted, and man break free to meet other man. Where this takes place, where the eternal rises in the Between, the seemingly empty space or void: that true place of realization is community, and true community is that relationship in which the Divine comes to its realization between man and man. (“The Holy Way,” 109–110)

God’s appearance within the void occurs by filling it with dialogue. And man’s great task is the filling of the void even in those places where it is extremely difficult to do so, such as in a factory: “And nothing is so valuable a service of dialogue between God and man as

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such an unsentimental and unreserved exchange of glances between two men in an alien place” (“Dialogue,” 37). 6. The Fourth Move: Man Imposes Distance upon the Things Existing Man, as created in the image of God, carries within himself longings for the Thou and the desire to establish relation with it, just as God desired relation as the goal of creation. Moreover, it follows from Buber’s words that man, as created in the Divine image, follows in God’s path not only in terms of the impulse that exists within him for relation to a Thou, but also in terms of his creating, like God, a reality of distancing that allows for the emergence of a world and of separate beings opposite him. By this, man is turned to a kind of “creator,” who first places things against himself and thereafter establishes contact with them: In this way we reach the insight that the principle of human life is not simple but twofold, being built up in a twofold movement which is of such kind that the one movement is the presupposition of the other. I propose to call the first movement “the primal setting at a distance”46 and the second “entering into relation.” That the first movement is the presupposition of the other is plain from the fact that one can enter into relation only with being which as been set at a distance, more precisely, has become an independent opposite. And it is only for man that an independent opposite exists. (“Distance and Relation,” 4).

Just as God creates the world, so does man “create” a world,47 for “Only when a structure of being is independently over against a living being (Seiende), an independent opposite, does a world exist” (ibid., 6), and it is man who poses a world opposite himself by means of the act of distancing. In the human realm, this act of man is expressed in the fact that he recognizes a member of his own species as an independent other. Recognition of the other as other involves a certain distance and granting of independence, and it is also expressed when he “unreservedly accepts and confirms him in his being this man and in his being made 46 Thus, just as in the creation of the world Creation came about by means of contraction-distancing and only thereafter did there emerge the possibility of establishing relation, and just as in the child his distancing himself from natural association allows him to develop the independence that establishes relation. 47 The Hasidic context of man’s creative activism is clearly recognizable in Buber’s words in his essay, “The Foundation Stone,” pp. 70–71.

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in this particular way” (ibid., 12). In the confirmation given by man to the otherness of the other he also gives independence to his otherness and thereby strengthens his being. Man’s soul needs confirmation, for “It is different with man: sent forth from the natural domain of species into the hazard of the solitary category, surrounded by the air of a chaos which came into being with him, secretly and bashfully he watches for a Yes which allows him to be and which can come to him only from one human person to another” (ibid., 16). But it is not only in posing this confirmation that man “creates” the other: The desire to influence the other then does not mean the effort to change the other, to inject one’s own “rightness” into him; but it means the effort to let that which is recognized as right, as just, as true (and for that very reason must also be established there, in the substance of the other) through one’s influence take seed and grow in the form suited to individuation. (ibid., 13)

The true contact-relationship that occurs between human beings is parallel to the creation of relations between man and God following the Creation and Tzimtzum. As in relations with God, so too on the inter-personal plane, relation does not nullify the uniqueness and independence of the one standing opposite: There man learns not merely that he is limited by man, cast upon his own finitude, partialness, need of completion, but his own relation to truth is heightened by the other’s different relation to the same truth. (ibid., 14)

The circle of creation is completed through contact between human beings based upon true kindness and grace, and the inter-personal relation is better understood, according to Buber, if man sees it both in its cosmic and in its personal context: He who, with his eyes on the twofold principle of human life, attempts to trace the spirit’s course in history, must note that the great phenomena on the side of acts of distance are preponderantly universal, and those on the side of acts of relation preponderantly personal… The facts of the movement of distance yield the essential answer to the question: How is man possible? The facts of the movement of relation yield the essential answer to the question, How is human life realized? (ibid., 8)

Thus, in his essay, “Distance and Relation,” Buber also saw before him the “facts of the movement of distance” that first appeared in the self-limitation brought about by God in the act of creation, as described by Buber in his essays on Hasidism.

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7. The Fifth Move: Tzimtzum on Man’s Part is a Redemptive Activity Buber’s activist approach towards man, as creating within reality and as possessing an “originator instinct”48 is a thoroughgoing rejection of the Kabbalistic doctrine of the vessels (kelim) as being purely receptive; here, it is perceived as an essence (atzmut)—albeit limited—acting freely in reality. In his essay “God and the Soul” (191–192), Buber rightfully connected the doctrine of Tzimtzum with that of the lights and the vessels, while in ”Spinoza, Sabbatai Zvi and the Baal-Shem,” he drew a connection between the status of the vessel within Kabbalah with that of man’s status in reality: Late Kabbalistic teaching, within the framework of which Hasidism developed, removes the penetration of evil back into the event of creation itself. The fire-stream of creative grace pours itself out in its fullness over the first-created primal shapes, the “vessels”; but they do not withstand it, they “break in pieces”—the stream showers an infinity of “sparks”. . . If the Kabbala does not say so explicitly, still it unmistakably includes in this teaching the conception that already these primal vessels, like the first men, were accorded a movement of their own, an independence and freedom, if it was only the freedom to stand firm in the face of the stream of grace or not to stand firm. The sin of the first men is also, in fact, represented as a not standing firm: all is granted to them, the whole fullness of grace, even the tree of life is not forbidden them; only just the knowledge of limitation . . . only just the mystery of the primal lack, the mystery of “good and evil” God has reserved for Himself. But they did not stand firm before the fullness; they followed the promptings of the element of limitation. It is not as if they revolted against God; they do not decide against Him, only they just do not decide for Him. It is no rebellious movement; it is a perplexed, directionless, “weak-minded,” indolent movement, this “stretching out of the hand.” They do not do it, they have done it. One sees in them the directionless storming and plunging of the sparks in need of redemption—temptation, turmoil, and undecided deed. And so they “know” the limited, of course, just as man, as men know, as Adam later “knew” his wife; they know the limited, mixing themselves with it, knowing “good-and-evil,” taking this goodand-evil into themselves, like plucked and eaten fruit. A not standing firm, therefore—we know it, we for whom day after day the situation of the first men ever against recurs for the first time; we know this suffering action that is nothing but a reaching out from the directionless whirl; we know about the storming and plunging and

48

On “the originator instinct,” see Buber, “Education,” 85.

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self-entangling of the sparks, we know that what moves them is our badness, our need and desire for redemption. And perhaps we know too the other, those mysterious, inconceivable moments, that gentlest breakthrough, the receiving of direction, the decision, the turning of the swirling world-movement to God. Here we experience directly that self-movement, independence, freedom is accorded us. Whatever may be the case with the rest of creation apart from man, we know of man that in being created he has been set in life as one who, in reality and not in fleeting moments of self-deception, can do two things: choose God and reject God. His ability to fall signifies his ability to ascend; that he can bring ruin to the world signifies that he can work for its redemption. (“Spinoza,” 101–103)

The vessels, whose function is to contain the light that is gradually diminishing as it is manifested in the descending chain of being, are subject by their very nature to the principle of limitation imposed at the time of creation. This principle of limitation is the root of evil, in the sense of it being a necessary evil, since Tzimtzum is a necessary facet of creation. As we shall see below, Buber was aware of the dispute within Kabbalah concerning the question as to whether the sefirot are Divine in their very substance, or are merely vessels. Until this point, Buber’s description corresponds to actual Kabbalistic doctrine; but from here on a certain change occurs in his manner of describing the vessels, as Buber ascribed to the vessels freedom of motion and autonomy, rather than seeing them merely as vessels for containing light. The hesitant behavior of the vessels introduced a further limiting element into reality—one that is not only a necessary source of evil, but the principle of evil itself. The autonomous limiting principle of the vessels was strengthened to the extent that they limited themselves further through their helplessness before the stream of loving-kindness that it was in their power to receive and to incorporate. This helplessness of the vessels led to their breaking and the scattering of their sparks throughout the universe. The first man, Adam, was made in the image of the vessels: that is, by the very nature of his creation he enjoyed freedom of action, as well as being subject to limitation and contraction by virtue of his being a distinct persona. Like the vessels, Adam also increased the power of the limiting principle within himself by passivity and failure to take a stand. His eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was, according to Buber, not an active act of rebellion, but rather an expression of a “’weak-minded,’ indolent movement”; one that involved taking a position neither against nor in favor. In other words, the sin of Adam lay

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in the fact that he was not focused, and therefore allowed himself to be dissipated within the multiplicity. The chaos of creation, expressed in the falling of the sparks and their scattering as a result of the scatteredmindedness of the primeval vessels, found an echo in his own inner chaos, the “directionless storming and plunging of the sparks.” Lack of direction and weak-mindedness are typical terms used to indicate It reality which, in relation to the supreme goal of man and the purpose for which he was placed in the world, is a further contraction of his already shrunken image. True, the reality of the Thou is also a reality of limitation, for the Thou entails a contraction in the personality, allowing for the establishment of relation. Man, in establishing a relation with the Thou, brings about a contraction in reality—albeit this act of limitation is one of mending and perfecting (tikkun) the world. This point demands clarification. One ought to turn one’s attention to Buber’s words in his essay, “With a Monist” (1914), in which he posed against one another those elements that were prior in his thought to the existence of both the It and the Thou. As against man’s passive attitude towards reality, he presents an active attitude, in which man embraces certain things in the world and “knows” them, just “as man, as men know, as Adam later ’knew,’ his wife.” And through this embrace-knowledge man knows, through that which he embraces, the entire world (“With a Monist,” 27). Note: that same example which served in “With a Monist” to describe the expansion of a person’s horizon, his unifying realization in reality and its tremendous nature, serves in the essay, “Spinoza, Sabbatai Zvi and the Baal-Shem,” to indicate the fact that after eating from the Tree of Knowledge Adam entered deeply into the sphere of limitation, in which he “knows” the limited, just “as Adam later knew his wife,” knew “the limited, mixing . . . with it.” Nevertheless, I do not think there is any contradiction between these two sources. It seems to me that Buber wished to say that man, as a finite personality, confronts three kinds of limitation. By his very nature as a personality subject to limitation, man is connected in a limited way to things, albeit here he has a choice: he may deepen his limitation by refusing the grace found within the creation. He then sinks into the aspect of “It-ness”; of the multiplicity of directionless sparks in the world; he assumes the aspect of the vessels that were broken while scattering their sparks. However, he also has the capability to “know” reality in a manner analogous to the “knowledge” of a woman—and this is the suitable path for him to follow within the given reality because,

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despite the fact of its limitation, it also entails expansion. This expansion within contraction derives from the fact that the apprehension of everything in the world through its contraction in one thing, by means of man’s intense focusing upon one thing, is the only path available to him to overcome the vortex of multiplicity and lack of direction in reality, so as to obtain unification. Man cannot possibly embrace the multiplicity of the world in its state of scattering over the entire world, just as he cannot take a thousand women in order to transcend the limitation of “knowledge” of one woman. Man’s focusing upon one thing is nevertheless on the level of intimate “knowledge” and connection, through which all of reality is funneled and radiated. If we remember Buber’s earlier words regarding the uniqueness of the new thought, which discovers the infinite divine potential lying within limited and distinct things, then by means of his contact with reality man can so-to-speak draw down the expanded ray of divine light that had been focused at its end upon one thing, to expand and restore it to its place in the “Eternal Thou.”49 Man’s ability to fall, says Buber, is also his ability to ascend (“Spinoza,” 103). Through the very fact of his self-contraction and limitation, he focuses upon one limited thing with great concentration, and thus includes everything therein, notwithstanding the limited nature of his own activity.50 In this manner he mends the scattering of the sparks therein and strengthens the reality of the Thou with which he connects. This limitation is not a weakening, but strengthens that which exists within the limits of the possible. This approach on Buber’s part has a basis in Hasidic sources. The understanding of Tzimtzum as an integrated act of concentration, focusing, intensification, and creation, is implied in the teachings of R. Baruch of Kossov (ca. 1725–1780), as described by Esther Liebes: Tzimtzum is the development and creation of a direction, and not the obscuring of things. God contracts his Presence (Pesikta de-Rav Kahana, §4), giving it a unique direction. As opposed to the Neo-Platonic approach of immanence, a dialectical element is introduced here. R. Baruch rejects the Neoplatonic approach. Tzimtzum is creation: Tzimtzum, not in the sense of limitation and weakening, but as unifying all the powers of the

On inclusion, see above, Chapter 5.5. See Buber, “With a Monist,” 29. In the original German: “Da ihm ja zu dieser Stunde kein andres lebt als dieses, dieses geliebte allein in der Welt, die Welt ausfüllend, es und die Welt einander ununterscheidbar deckend” (Frühe Schriften, Werkausgabe, 1. 256). 49 50

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chapter nine soul. His entire self and his soul are united, concentrated and present in that creation, in that love. Creation raises its creator to heights which it did not have previously. Tzimtzum is both tikkun and redemption. It is the focusing of human ability and talent, and not its weakening. This is an optimistic approach, giving man the hope of arriving at places which his ancestors could not imagine. This is not an approach of becoming progressively smaller but, on the contrary, it is a point of departure. By means of contraction and concentration, we can go far. Creation is the impetus. (Liebes, “Love and Creativity,” 61)

Where Tzimtzum also involves concentration and strengthening, there occurs in reality a counter-movement of return to the source. In this way man erases the Divine act that imposed restriction upon creation—only now man acts in a new direction. His focusing upon one point is simultaneously an act of contraction and of expansion, as the entire breadth of the world is funneled to and gathered in the one thing upon which he concentrates, (I and Thou, 59). This gathering is also the realization of the Divine in the world. The scattering of the sparks throughout the world is, for Buber, a symbol and expression of the unstable nature of the weakened creation, and of the weakness of the created beings. But concentrated contact with created beings means their ingathering—elevation and their lifting up towards incorporation in God. The dialogical relation acts upon the sparks and, in practice, creates anew a limited vessel for limited light—which is nevertheless the light of the Infinite. Man is the penultimate vessel in the chain of being; he is the vessel that he himself must perfect for himself, and thereafter create with it the next link in the chain of vessels connecting heaven and earth. This tendency appears in I and Thou in a section passage with which I have already dealt in a different context: . . . a human being confronts a form that wants to become a work through him. . . . [he] speaks with his being the basic word to the form that appears, then the creative power is released and the work come into being. The deed involves a sacrifice and a risk. The sacrifice: infinite possibility is surrendered on the altar of the form; all that but a moment ago floated playfully through one’s perspective has to be exterminated . . . The form that confronts me . . . I can only actualize it. And yet as I see it, radiant in the splendor of the confrontation . . . not as a figment of the “imagination,” but as what is present . . . Such work is creation, invention is finding. Forming is discovery. As I actualize, I uncover. I lead the form across—into the world of It. The created work is a thing among things and can be experienced and described as an aggregate of qualities. But the receptive beholder may be bodily confronted now and again. (I and Thou, 60–61)

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This form confronting man, radiating brilliant light and seeking realization from him, is perhaps one of those “primal shapes” or primal vessels51 that refused to accept the inclusion of the light within them in the act of creation (“Spinoza,” 101–102). This form-vessel, that now seeks to continue the process of creation, asks of man a further manifestation of vessel and of light within concrete reality, seeks from him an act of sacrifice, of concentration within one thing. The copying of the form, by contrast, is already a limitation of a limitation and a contraction of a contraction, an act of smallness, since copying means distancing oneself from the form-vessel that seeks realization. Thus, “imitation of God” on the part of man is not merely the imposition of distance upon the created beings and establishing relation to them in strict measure alone; rather, man’s creative-limiting action in fact expands the field within which God becomes presence. This activity is, as stated, a redemptive one, and the combination of such acts is on the order of “a rising moon in a clear starry night” (I and Thou, 163). The reality of limitation and its overcoming from within itself also occurs in discourse between two people, to which each one brings his own limited world-view: . . . the experience of being limited is included in what I refer to; but so too is the experience of overcoming it together. This cannot be completed on the level of Weltanschauung but on that of reality. Neither needs to give up his point of view; only, in that unexpectedly they do something and unexpectedly something happens to them which is called a covenant, they enter a realm where the law of the point of view no longer holds. (“Dialogue,” 6)

The contraction of the world also occurs on the plane of time. The abundance of the world appears in “each concrete hour allotted to the person, with its content drawn from the world and from destiny” (“Dialogue,” 16). The true connection with God takes place in the particular moment and in the particular situation, which are by their nature unique. The uniqueness and contribution of an authentic religious movement does not lie, according to Buber, in making itself into a law valid to every age and every time, but “only light for the seeing eye, strength for the working hand, appearing ever anew” (“Spirit and Body,”

In the German original of the above-mentioned essay on Spinoza, Buber used the term Urgestaltungen (in Hebrew, ‫ )דמויות קמאיות‬to indicate the vessels, while in the German of I and Thou he used the term Gestalt (in Hebrew: ‫ )דמות‬to indicate the presence that demands of man its realization in the world. 51

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116). The moment is the place of God’s revelation, his embodiment (“Symbolic and Sacramental Existence, 181”)—but man’s intentional activity within the moment transforms it to “the infinite ethos of the moment” (“Spirit and Body,” 117). Divine speech is not revealed to us as a fixed legal codex; rather, “the waves of the aether roar on always, but for most of the time we have turned off our receivers” (“Dialogue,” 11). The silence of the receiver is the limitation that is beyond limitation, while opening the receiver and listening to the voice that bursts forth from it is, as noted, an expansion of the boundary of a limited receiver. The revelation within the moment will bring us to a more systematic discussion of Buber’s doctrine of revelation from the viewpoint of the internalization of the doctrine of Tzimtzum within his thought. 8. The Sixth Move: Buber’s Understanding of Revelation and the Ethical Act . . . the word of God crosses my vision like a falling star to whose fire the meteorite will bear witness without making it light up for me, and I myself can only bear witness to the light but not produce the stone and say “This is it.”—(“Dialogue,” 7)

The discussion of Buber’s understanding of revelation could have found its appropriate place in the first part of this book, dealing with the role of mysticism in his thought, but I preferred to place it in the chapter on Tzimtzum, given that a direct line may be drawn between Buber’s discussion of the doctrine of Tzimtzum, light and vessels to his interpretation of the Hasidic doctrine of revelation, and from there to his own understanding of this concept as implied in I and Thou. A discussion of Buber’s doctrine of revelation in this context is therefore likely to shed new light upon the theoretical background of Buber’s ethical individualism: that is, to explain why Buber’s ethical thought, in which revelation is always connected with deed, is solely connected with the here and now, with the particular situation;52 and why it is

52 See, for example: “One must rather penetrate into that area within which sphere [i.e., the ethical and the religious—ik] where they become solidified in a concrete, personal situation. Thus it is the factual moral decision of the individual on the one hand and his factual relationship to the Absolute on the other that concerns us.” (Eclipse of God, 97).

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impossible to expand it into an overall ethical doctrine in the sense of being applicable to every time and every place. In other words: the analogy that Buber draws between the “powerful revelations that stand at the beginnings of great communities at the turning-points of human time” (I and Thou, 166) and “the quiet one that occurs everywhere and all times” (I and Thou, 165–166) may be better understood against the background of the internalization within his thought of the doctrine of Tzimtzum. This approach sees even the great, foundational revelations as events occurring within a specific context, rather than as eternally valid, all-inclusive laws; hence it does not prefer them in principle to the private revelation liable to happen to every person and in every time. Similarly in Buber’s understanding of revelation, as described in the third part of his book I and Thou, Buber explicitly rejected the view of the vessel as merely passive, endowing it with a life of its own as part of the Divine essence.53 He thereby placed his own discussion of revelation within the framework of the KabbalisticHasidic approach to it. In his previously-mentioned essay, “God and the Soul,” Buber discusses the Hasidic doctrine of revelation within the context of its doctrine of Tzimtzum. Revelation, says Buber, is not merely contraction, since “… here works the God that has not entered into the world, the unlimited God, the bearer of the limitless light, the Godhead, the pure Being; and just It, the absolute Godhead, works as Person” (“God and the Soul,” 193). That is to say, the conception of the Divine Name YHWH, of Absolute Person, provides an opening for His limitation—but in terms of its being absolute unity, bearing the light of the Infinite, no limitation occurs within it. God’s descent on Mount Sinai is thus literally the light of the Infinite, notwithstanding the act of Divine descent. The weakness of Israel, similar to that of the primal vessels and of Adam, hides the light away until the one receiving it can come: For this reason God practices in each generation not a real but only an apparent and temporary limitation of illuminating power. He acts,

53 “But revelation does not pour into the world through its recipient as if he were a funnel: it confers itself upon him . . . Even the man who is ‘mouth’ is precisely that and not a mouthpiece—not an instrument but an organ, an autonomous, sounding organ; and to sound means to modify sound” (I and Thou, 166). Buber’s unwillingness to see man as merely a vessel also derives from his rejection of the via passiva, that likewise contradicts the dialogic principle.

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chapter nine in so doing, like a father who, in order that his small son may learn to understand him more and more . . . begins by seemingly limiting his own understanding and making himself a child for the sake of the child. . . . And God’s intention succeeds: the zaddik arises. He presses forward through all the worlds to God, receives his light, enters into the unity of His being. As a man the zaddik is what every man as such is, dam, blood, but because he cleaves to Him who is alufo-shel-olam, the prince of the world, and the divine principle is thus united with his blood, there comes from the letter aleph and the word dam for the first time truly Adam: the true man, the receiver of the limitless light, has arisen.54

The concealment of the light of the Infinite, “not a real but only an apparent and temporary limitation,” makes it possible for man to receive the limited light of Divine revelation according to his own measure that, in its contraction is as-if hidden. Since Buber’s dialogic thought doesn’t lead towards the idea of man’s self-negation in the unity of Being, the measure of man who is not negated within reality is by its very nature limited. True, in revelation man receives presence and power, “the whole abundance of actual reciprocity, of being admitted, of being associated . . .” (I and Thou, 158); true, “The eternal source of strength flows, the eternal touch is waiting, the eternal voice sounds” (160)—that is, revelation is more certain than the perceptions of the senses. Nevertheless, there is a certain limitation of the revelation, for man asks, “What could it intend with us, what does it desire from us, being revealed and surreptitious?” (I and Thou, 159). True, “we have ‘known’ it [God],” but we are “no closer to an unriddling, unveiling of being” (ibid., 160). While man is “not an instrument, but an organ, an autonomous, sounding organ; and to sound means to modify sound” (I and Thou, 166), he is still a vessel of essence; thus, even though revelation “confers itself upon him, it seizes his whole element in all of its suchness and fuses with it,” he is still by his very nature a limited creature. Therefore, man cannot receive the infinite message except through unifying with the finite “vessel.” It follows from this that what is revealed: cannot be transferred or expressed as a universally valid and generally acceptable piece of knowledge . . . cannot be handed on as a valid ought; it is not prescribed, not inscribed on a table [sic! should read: tablet—jc] that could be out up over everybody’s head. The meaning we receive 54 Buber, “God and the Soul,” 193–194. The source of the homily is Maggid Devarav le-Ya’akov, 38–39.

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can be put to the proof in action only by each person in the uniqueness of his being and in the uniqueness of his life. (I and Thou, 159)

Man is “condemned” to receive the revelation in its limited form, thereby allowing him to realize it as a demand addressed to him only in the changing situations of the “here and now.” The conversion of revelation to a general law, valid at all times and in all situations, brings revelation into the realm of imitation, of copying and of frozenness: The revelation that then appears seizes the whole ready element in all its suchness, recasts it and produces a form, a new form of God in the world. . . . Ever new spheres become the place of a theophany. . . . Form is a mixture of You and It, too. In faith and cult it can freeze into an object; but from the gist of the relation that survives in it, it turns ever again into presence. . . . God is close to His forms when man does not remove them from him. But when the spreading movement of religion holds down the movement of return and removes the form from God, then the countenance of the form is extinguished, its lip are dead, its hands hang down, God does not know it any more, and the house of the world built around its altar, the human cosmos, crumbles. The decomposition of the word has occurred. (I and Thou, 166–168)

Buber’s doctrine of revelation is closely connected with his ethical outlook. It is in the nature of the world for the universal to appear in limited form in the sense of the eternal within the moment: To return to the concept of biblical truth means to learn: that above your heads there is ensconced the truth, and there is one truth for all—but it does not enter into your world except when you make it, each one of you, your own truth. . . . “Conscience” is the living knowledge that knows when there is a correspondence between the seal and us, and when there is not. When man separates himself from the sealing hand, it removes itself, the light departs from our world. (“Crisis and Truth,” 80–81)

The capturing, both of the universal Divine truth and of the particular human truth, involves both limitation and expansion. The capturing of the absolute and of the temporal-transient in the transient is also the expansion of the transient to the eternal. Every separation between them is a kind of deviation from the fence placed before man, because the universal needs to be embodied in the particular in order for God to appear in the world. This outlook is expressed in Buber’s understanding of prophecy as well. The difference between a false prophet and a true prophet, as reflected in the encounter between Jeremiah and Hananiah, is not that the false prophet intends to lie, but

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that Hananiah “parrots Isaiah” (“False Prophets,” 115). He applies God’s words to Isaiah regarding the kingdom of Ashur to the events of his own time, which were connected with Babylonia. Jeremiah, by contrast, goes in order to listen to the word of God. . . . . True, God spoke to him at that particular hour. But now it is a different hour. History occurs continually, and history means that no hour is like any other. . . . We cannot rely upon our knowledge. We must go and incline our ears anew. (Ibid., 119–120)

In this chapter I have attempted to show how the doctrine of Tzimtzum was internalized within the depths of Buber’s dialogic teaching by becoming essential for his dialogic thought, for his philosophical anthropology, and for his understanding of revelation. Buber repeatedly emphasized the profound relation between the states of man’s life and the cosmic foundational events of limitation—distancing, and those of contraction and expansion.

CHAPTER TEN

I AND THOU AS LOVE MYSTICISM I knew nothing of books when I came forth from the womb of my mother, and I shall die without books, with another human hand in my own. I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human being looking at me. (“Books and Men,” 4)

1. Introduction For Buber, the impulse towards establishing an I-Thou relationship involves, not only the responsibility of the I to the Thou in the moral sense, but encompasses longings, yearnings and desire towards the Thou1—that is, the perception of the Thou as a reality lacking to man, based on innate knowledge of the prior substantial closeness with it2— since for him the Thou is “a primary Thou” (Eclipse of God, 23). This proximity between the dialogical principle and personal yearnings led Buber to discuss the nature of love3 and of Eros4 in order to locate them in relation to the dialogical principle. The centrality of God’s love for man, of man’s love for God, and of the love for one’s fellow man entailed therein, also stand out in Buber’s essays concerning Hasidism.5 Buber used the language of love many times For example, I and Thou, 63, 76, 77, 79, 113; “Education,” 88, 94; “Dialogue,” 36–37, 39; “God and the Soul,” 186. 2 I and Thou, 76–77. Thus also in Buber’s words concerning the overall nature of the Bible as a dialogical document: “If this book transmits cries of doubt, it is the doubt which is the destiny of man who, after having tasted nearness, must experience and learn from distance what it alone can teach.” (Buber, “The Man of Today and the Jewish Bible,” 89). 3 I and Thou, 66–68, 95, 154, 157; Eclipse of God, 24–25, 68–69. 4 I and Thou, 95, 150; “Dialogue,” 28–30. 5 On love of man in Kabbalah and Hasidism, and on the possible relation between that and the Platonic erotic myth, and particularly the myth of the division of the unified primordial man by the gods, see Gries, “From Myth to Ethos”; idem, Sifrut ha-Hanhagah, 128 n. 96, in which Gries brings bibliography and additional references concerning the development of this myth in Kabbalistic literature, and regarding love of one’s fellow in R. Moshe Cordovero and in Hasidism. 1

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in his interpretation of Hasidism in order to indicate the relationship between God and his world,6 to indicate the appropriate relationship among people (“Spirit and Body,” 141), to indicate the link between the direct relationship to God and to human beings,7 as well as to indicate his relation to the world (“Spinoza,” 96). Buber devoted an entire essay, entitled “Love of God and Love of Neighbor,” to the relation between love of God and love of one’s fellow man in Hasidism, which he associated with the relation between the religious element and the ethical element—a central point in his thought. The relationship that Kabbalah and Hasidism created between the earthly union of man and woman and the heavenly union, and between both of these and the processes of birth involved in these relationships, were also known to Buber.8 In his essay, “Spirit and Body of the Hasidic Movement” (126), he cites an anecdote according to which the Baal Shem Tov mourned after the death of his wife, saying “I had hoped to journey to Heaven in a thunderstorm like Elijah, but now it has been taken from me, for I am now only half of a body.”9 The Heavenly ascent can only be undertaken out of a state of wholeness of both body and soul, and the relationship between a See, e.g., “Spirit and Body,” 119–120; “God and the Soul,” 196, 198. “He [God] is the great lover who has set man in the world in order to be able to love him—but there is no perfect love without reciprocity, and He, the original God, accordingly longs that man should love Him. Everything follows from this, all teaching, all ‘morality,’ for in the innermost core nothing is wanted and nothing is demanded from above but love of God. Everything follows from this; for man cannot love God in truth without loving the world in which He has set His strength and over which His Shekina rests. People who love each other in holy love bring each other toward the love with which God loves His world” (“God and the Soul,” 198). 8 “A man is united with his wife in consecration, and the Shekina rests over them. The love between man and woman is a high principle of existence in the Kabbala, as is well known, not merely because the Kabbala represents by this image the uniting of the sefirot, the spheres that emanated, and also the decisive union between God and the Shekina, but also because it is held to be of basic importance for the sake of redemption that the holy souls that have not yet completed their earthly wandering be embodied through conception and birth and drawn into the terrestrial world.” (“The Beginnings,” 56) That is, the holy earthly union brings about the union of the holy souls with this world, thereby creating relations between the different realms. As implied by the story which Buber brings further on in the same essay, these holy souls are not necessarily realized literally in the body. 9 The quotation from the Baal Shem Tov, complaining that he is “half of a body,” alludes to a widespread Zoharic saying emphasizing the value of married life (see on this Liebes, “Messiah of the Zohar,” 202–203). It is also found in other languages and cultures, which see man and woman as two halves of the same body (See on this at length in Y. Liebes, “Chapters in the Lexicon of the Zohar” [Hebrew] Doctoral Dissertation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1977, 277–279). 6 7

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man and his wife is a wholeness of this type; only through the lower unity between man and wife can one be connected to the upper unity. In his interpretation of Hasidism, Buber connected the act of love on the part of man to the mending of the world: The love of man is not the fulfillment of an otherworldly commandment; it is the work on the completion, it helps the shape of the Shekhina to step forth out of the hiddenness, it works on the “wagon”: on the cosmic bearer of liberated glory. Therefore it is written, “Love your fellow as one like yourself: I am the Lord.” The kingdom is founded on love. Therefore Rabbi Raphael of Bershad, Rabbi Pinhas’ favorite disciple, always used to warn against being “moderate” in one’s dealings with one’s fellowmen: Excess of love is necessary in order to make up for the lack in the world. (“Spirit and Body,” 141)

The act of love moves the Shekhinah from a state of exile and hiddenness to one of being revealed, and connects earthly reality with “the kingdom [that] is founded upon love” (ibid.). Our world, the world of weight and measure, becomes filled with the excess of love that it is lacking. The act of mending the world through love takes place through relation between people. This relation is successful when it occurs through the attribute of “as in water face to face, so the heart of man to man” (“Love of God,” 249; quoting Prov 27:19). This quality of face to face, which in Jewish love mysticism indicates the union of the Sefirot with one another and the resultant birth of the plenum, was already moved to the human plane in the Hasidic source quoted here by Buber, and internalized by him within his own thought in order to indicate the direct nature of the relation among those who live in the world.10 The power of this direct relation is expressed in the embrace—by encompassing and attachment to created beings, and in the ethical area by the discovery of responsibility towards the creation and the realization of the ideal of mending. This transfer of the face-to-face aspect to the realm of human relationships also closes the initial gap between the I and the Thou which Buber refers to as a place “abandoned by creation” (“Dialogue,” 36). In my opinion, this alludes to the doctrine of the Void as it appears in Lurianic teaching and as it reappears in Hasidic teachings, further concretized in Buber’s thought in the image of the anti-dialogical

10

Cf. above, Chapter 8.5.

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space, in that of the void, empty of dialogue and of love. The void is required by the creation in order to create the necessary distance between God and the creation, but it is also needed for mending, through its becoming filled with the attachment of relation. Standing face to face opposite God and opposite the creation entails “the power of loving responsibility” (I and Thou, 157)—and this loving responsibility fills the vacuum in the world. In light of what has been said thus far, it would seem that Buber’s thought may be discussed in the framework of love philosophy or love mysticism. In this chapter, I will therefore attempt to clarify what Buber meant by love. What is the relation between an I-Thou relationship and one of love? What place did Buber allot to bodily and to emotional– spiritual eros within the framework of his dialogical thought, and how did he perceive the relation between eros and love? In practice, this chapter unites a variety of elements that have been discussed in earlier chapters: unification, attachment (devekut), concentration, a different perception of reality, Buber’s attitude towards the earthly realm, and the relationship between it and the spirit. Insofar as these elements are mystical in Buber, his love philosophy is also mystical. 2. Love as an Epistemological Force In Buber’s essay “With a Monist” (mentioned earlier, pp. 147–149, 306), which preceded his dialogical period, Buber contrasted two different kinds of contact with reality—passive and active; these subsequently appeared in his dialogical thought. The world does not remain apathetic to man’s active touch, which sets forth to encounter things in the world, but also approaches him, to embrace him; through this mutual embrace man “knows” the world in a different way, as the world then yields up to him its secret (“With a Monist,” 27). The person who connects himself with things in the world in this way is, for Buber, the loving man: The loving man is one who grasps non-relatively each thing he grasps . . . At the moment of experience nothing else exists, nothing save this beloved thing, filling out the world and indistinguishably coinciding with it . . . The loving man’s dream-powerful and primally-awake heart beholds the noncommon. . . . What you extract and combine is always only the passivity of things. But their activity, their effective reality, reveals itself only to the loving man who knows them. And thus he knows the world. In the

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features of the beloved, whose self he realizes, he discerns the enigmatic countenance of the universe. True art is a loving art . . . True science is a loving science. . . . True philosophy is a loving philosophy. . . . Every true deed is a loving deed. All true deeds arise from contact with a beloved thing and flow into the universe. Any true deed brings, out of lived unity, unity into the world. Unity is not a property of the world but its task. To form unity out of the world is our never-ending work. (“With a Monist,” 28–30)

The direct and intimate contact with things in the world is the uniting touch of love that apprehends things in a different way. This love is not described by Buber as feeling, but as an all-embracing and unifying reality. Love is both the unifying bond and the apprehending form, and the beloved one can only respond to such contact with an answering loving embrace. A certain similarity to Buber’s description of this other kind of “knowing” is found in the following words of R. Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev: And the attribute of knowing refers to attachment, as is written, “and the man knew [his wife]” [Gen. 4:25]11—that is to say, that which it is impossible to see or to understand. And this only exists in the attribute of knowledge, that is, in that of attachment and uniting, which is above the letters, as said above, for in that place there is no seeing or understanding but only the aspect of attachment, in the sense of nullification of reality—and understand this. And these attributes are those of the level of the prophets, who were as if crazy, for they apprehended the aspect of knowledge which is beyond the apprehension of sight and intellectual understanding, and therefore were pained even by the catastrophes that befell the nations of the world, for they were purely good and did not have the attribute of evil at all, for they were on the level of knowledge that is above the intellect, as stated.12

The difference between Buber’s description in “With a Monist” and that of R. Levi Yitzhak lies in the fact that Buber’s descriptions refer to the extroverted type, in which seeing participates together with the bonding contact. Moreover, in the case of Buber there is no negation of reality at all, but rather a strengthening of reality with a tendency towards unification. 11 In his essay, “With a Monist,” Buber makes use of Gen. 4:1, according to which Adam knew Eve, his wife, in order to express the meaning of attached relation to created beings, evidently under the influence of the interpretation of this verse attributed to the Baal Shem Tov (“Interpreting Hasidism,” 222). 12 Kedushat Levi, 98.

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chapter ten 3. The Relation between the Dialogic Principle and Love

In his book I and Thou, Buber did not unequivocally identify the unique psychological state that created the apprehension of the Other as Thou with love,13 but distinguished between dialogic relation and dialogic love. This distinction is most clearly described in his essay “Dialogue” (1932), and is further refined in his later book Eclipse of God. I shall thus begin with citations from both of these, thereafter turning to his book, I and Thou. Nor is dialogic to be identified with love. I know no one in any time who has succeeded in loving every man he met. Even Jesus obviously loved of “sinners” only the loose, lovable sinners, sinners again the Law; not those who were settled and loyal to their inheritance and sinned against him and his message. Yet to the latter as to the former he stood in a direct relation. Dialogic is not to be identified with love. But love without dialogic, without real outgoing to the other, reaching to the other, and companying with the other, the love remaining with itself—this is called Lucifer. (“Dialogue,” 20–21)

Here the dialogic relation is the unmediated one, while love involves a certain addition to that relation, which is not to be demanded or expected in all life-situations nor in relation to every Thou. Buber based this claim upon the life of Jesus, whom he evidently saw as the perfect, archetypal human figure, who was able to establish direct relation to everything and everyone. Even he was unable to love all, and when he did love, he did so in different ways.14 In this essay, nevertheless, Buber did not define the unique feature of love, but simply drew a distinction between it and the dialogic relation, which is not love. We must therefore turn to his later book Eclipse of God. In Eclipse of God, Buber based himself upon the traditional interpretation of the verse, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18), to support the earlier distinction made between dialogic relation and actual love. According to this exegesis, the absence in this phrase of the Hebrew preposition et signifies that the Biblical demand of love for one’s neighbor implies manifestation of love alone—that is, to direct one’s love towards the neighbor objectively, not necessarily

13 In his “Afterword” to I and Thou, Buber notes that the view closest to his heart is that of “the close association of the relation to God with the relation to one’s fellowmen” (I and Thou, 171). We may therefore say that love is only part of the bundle of relations, just as Eros is only part of the bundle of relation, as we shall see below. 14 I and Thou, 66, and see below.

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to love him subjectively;15 that is, to love means that he may be the beneficiary of the good in his own way.16 As against the “manifestation of love” to one’s fellow, which might be characterized as caring for the other and manifestation of responsibility towards him through a sense of his presence as a Thou,17 in Eclipse of God Buber posed the “emotional love” which a human being is commanded with regard to God (Deut 6:5; 10:12; 11:1) and in relation to the stranger (Deut 10:19). The change that occurred in Buber’s definition of love during the course of his dialogic period therefore lies in the fact that he introduced the principle of feeling into his earlier approach to love, as expressed in “With a Monist,” by acknowledging that a person cannot feel a sense of love towards all, but only towards some human beings, and towards God. This is so, because such a demand is beyond his ability. But all this is true regarding the emotional aspect of man. On another level, Buber did not abandon his earlier view regarding the cognitive nature of love: . . . even the idealized person remains a person, and has not been transformed into an idea. It is only because the person whom I idealize actually exists that I can love the idealized one. . . . But does not this motive force which enables and empowers us to idealize a beloved person arise from the deepest substance of that beloved person? Is not the true idealization in the deepest sense a discovery of the essential self meant by God in creating the person whom I love? (Eclipse of God, 59, italics in original )

Love—thus Buber argued in his polemic with Hermann Cohen—is elicited towards a personality and not towards an idea of a personality. The power of love directed towards the beloved soul leads to his or her idealization: that is, the lofty essence of the beloved personality is thereby revealed. It may thus be the case that dialogic love discovers more in the Thou than is discovered by the ordinary dialogic relation, as it grasps not only the image of the unified personality, but also the beloved’s ideal personality.

“The Bible knows that it is impossible to command the love of man. I am incapable of feeling love toward every man, though God Himself command me” (Eclipse of God, 57). 16 For an interpretation in this spirit, see Maimonides, Hilkhot De’ot 6.3; Ibn Ezra on Lev 19:18; Ramban on Lev. 19:17. 17 In the above-mentioned essay, “Dialogue,” Buber disagrees with Martin Luther, who “changed the Hebrew ‘companion’ (out of which the Seventy [i.e., Septuagint] had already made into one who is near, a neighbor) into ‘nearest’ ” (Ibid., 21). This, because in Buber’s opinion dialogical closeness obligates man regarding every other person and not only the one closest to him, whereas love is likely to be felt only towards those who are closest to him. 15

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In my opinion, this later distinction made by Buber between emotional love and love based upon an apprehension of the other, which is likewise manifested in expressions of caring and responsibility towards him, should be seen in the context of the more overall distinction he makes between two aspects of “inner experience” (Erlebnis): that which focuses upon man’s own life (i.e., that which he feels within himself ), as opposed to that which is turned outwards and connects to the Thou (see above, pp. 112–126). It is only the conjunction of the emotion of love with the movement of the I towards the Thou that may be called dialogical love.18 The exclusive or exaggerated focus upon the inner emotional aspect is connected to the realm of inner experience alone and is not at all dialogical: “a lovers’ talk in which both partners alike enjoy their own glorious soul and their precious experience—what an underworld of faceless specters of dialogue!” (“Dialogue,” 20). True love must encompass both feeling and the dialogic relation, which perceives the other in his concrete presence. 4. The Emotional and Ontological Dimensions of Love In his book I and Thou, Buber for the first time presented his distinction among different planes and kinds of love. True, as we have seen, the dialogic relation can also exist without love; however, love can combine with the dialogic relation and lend it further fullness. It is possible, on the other hand, to have a blind love which does not join with the dialogical dimension: “As long as love is ‘blind’—that is, as long as it does not see a whole being—it does not yet truly stand under the basic word of relation” (I and Thou, 67–68). Blind love does not conjoin with the dialogic relation because, as opposed to it, it does not see a “whole being”; however, when it appears in the necessary dialogical quality it conjoins with the relation, adding to it the above-mentioned emotional 18 Compare the words of R. Yehoshua Heshel of Apt, as cited by Buber in his book Tales of the Hasidim: “There are two kinds of love. The first attaches itself to the loved object and returns to the lover . . . But the second, the love for one’s true mate [i.e., friend], does not return to the lover. So it does not matter whether he lives one or a thousand miles away from the beloved. That is why we read: ‘And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her’ [Gen 29:20]. It was her he loved; his love clung to her and did not return to him. He was not concerned with himself and his desire. His was the true love.” (Tales of the Hasidim; The Later Masters, 117)

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dimension. As he states in Eclipse of God, it then apprehends not only the totality of the personality, but does so on the highest ideal level. It is clear that in I and Thou Buber sought to draw a distinction between the emotional dimension of love and its cognitive dimension, due to what he saw as an exaggerated tendency to view individual emotion as the essence of huxman relationships. To this distinction Buber added the ontological dimension of love. We shall quote his words in full: Less clear is the element of action in the relation to a human Thou. The essential act that here establishes directness is usually understood as a feeling, and thus misunderstood. Feelings accompany the metaphysical and metapsychical fact of love, but they do not constitute it; and the feelings that accompany it can be very different. Jesus’ feeling for the possessed man is different from his feelings for the beloved disciple; but the love is one. Feelings one “has”; love occurs. Feelings dwell in man, but man dwells in his love. This is no metaphor but actuality; love does not cling to an I, as if the Thou were merely its “content” or object; it is between I and Thou. Whoever does not know this, know this with his being, does not know love, even if he should ascribe to it the feelings that he lives through, experiences, enjoys, and expresses. Love is a cosmic force. For those who stand in it and behold in it, men emerge from their entanglement in busy-ness; and the good and the evil, the clever and the foolish, the beautiful and the ugly, one after another become actual and a Thou for them; that is, liberated, emerging into a unique confrontation. Exclusiveness comes into being miraculously again and again—and now one can act, help, heal, educate, raise, redeem. Love is responsibility of an I for a Thou: in this consists what cannot consist in any feeling—the equality of all lovers, from the smallest to the greatest and from the blissfully secure whose life is circumscribed by the life of one beloved human being to him that is nailed his life long to the cross of the world, capable of what is immense and bold enough to risk it: to love man. (I and Thou, 66–67, emphasis in the original)

The essence of the fact of love is not the personal feeling, but its ontological occurrence. Feelings of love may vary, but the substance of love is one, and takes place at the moment that the Thou becomes its contents. Similar to the realm of the spirit, which dwells outside the I (I and Thou, 89), so too is love located in the place between the I and the Thou. Feeling dwells within man’s heart and is his own, while man dwells in his love, which is not his own, but something in which he takes part. One ought not to deal flippantly with the fact that Buber spoke of the metaphysical and metapsychical dimension of love, given that the use of these terms is very rare in his thinking. The source of

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inspiration for this ontological view on his part may possibly be found in the words of the Maggid of Mezhirech: When he thinks about the love of God, may He be blessed, he then resides in the world of love . . . And man must not remove his thought from God, may He be blessed, for even a moment, and by this the Holy One, blessed be He, resides therein [in the different worlds]. Therefore the wells were written in the Torah [Gen 26:15–22], for the Holy One, blessed be He, was made to dwell therein. (Maggid Devarav le-Ya’akov, 10)

It would appear that in Buber, dialogical love brings about the indwelling of the World of Love within the dialogical “wells.” Here, again, one sees the “bringing down” of Hasidic principles into the concrete dialogical realm, just as was the case regarding the principles of face to face and that of the Void. Returning to Buber’s words in I and Thou, his continued description of the exclusiveness of the love relationship and the healing element therein connects it to the dialogic relation as a whole. Thus it seems to me that the relationship between it and the emotions, on the one hand, and between it and the dialogic principle, on the other hand, may be described as follows: in terms of the personal-emotional dimension, love is always unique and different, in accordance with the unique nature of each person and in keeping with the different objects of love; from the ontological aspect, love is always one, and all lovers are equal therein. As, according to Buber, the emotions are no more than accompaniments to love—that is, they do not create it but react to it—and as there is a similarity between the manner in which the love relation perceives the Thou and the manner in which the dialogic relation perceives the Thou, it is possible, in my opinion, to say that the metaphysical and metapsychical concreteness of dialogical love is the concreteness of relation; that is, the dialogic relation is in practice synonymous with the love relation, albeit lacking in the personal feeling of love from the subjective viewpoint, and lacking the perception of an “idealized person” from the epistemological viewpoint. In such a state of “mere” relation, love exists in terms of the substance and not in terms of feeling.19 Only when love as a concrete reality takes hold

19 This close connection between the dialogical relation and dialogical love is expressed in the following words of Buber: “Love itself cannot abide in a direct relation; it endures, but in the alteration of actuality and latency. Every Thou in the world is compelled by its nature to become a thing for us or at least to enter again and again into thinghood.” (I and Thou, 147)

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of the participants in the relationship, takes hold of the I from within in a manner to which he responds with personal feeling, while grasping an “idealized person,” may one speak of love in the full sense of the word. Just as it is impossible to have authentic love—that is, love which is not blind and which is not self-love—without it extending to the realm between the I and the Thou—so is it impossible to have full love without personal feeling: Even institutions of so-called personal life cannot be reformed by a free feeling (although this is also required). Marriage can never be renewed except by that which is always the source of all true marriage: that two human beings reveal the Thou to one another. It is of this that the Thou that is I for neither of them builds a marriage. This is the metaphysical and metapsychical fact of love which is merely accompanied by feelings of love. Whoever wishes to renew a marriage on another basis is not essentially different from those who want to abolish it: both declare that they no longer know the fact . . . True public and true personal life are two forms of association. For them to originate and endure, feelings are required as a changing content, and institutions are required as a constant form; but even the combination of both still does not create human life which is created only by a third element: the central presence of the Thou, or rather, to speak more truthfully, the central Thou that is received in the present. (I and Thou, 95)

Is not the third, creative element in human life, “the central presence of the Thou,” the grace found in relation? Is it not the revealed Shekhinah that is hidden and dwells between man and woman? Is it not the Kingship (Malkhut) based upon love that is mentioned in Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism (“Spirit and Body,” 141)? Indeed, in his remarks concerning the nature of eros, Buber reveals who it is that dwells between lovers: “Only when two say to one another with all that they are, ‘It is Thou,’ is the indwelling of the Present Being between them” (“Dialogue,” 30). Like Spinoza, Buber thought that from the ontological viewpoint love is one; however, one must distinguish between the one love that Buber attributed to Spinoza’s thought and his own understanding of the one love: He [Spinoza] conceived of their [human being’s] love of God as God’s love of Himself, actualized by His creation, and encompassing man’s love of God as well as God’s love of man. Thus God—the very God among the infinity of whose attributes nature and spirit are only two— loves, and since his love becomes manifest in our love of Him the Divine Love must be of the same essence as human love. (Eclipse of God, 16)

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Buber could not agree with Spinoza’s pantheism, according to which God loves Himself through man’s love of Him—that is, that which appears to be the love of human beings is in fact God’s self-love. In Buber’s description of the relation between the love of God and the love of man, one senses repeatedly the same crossing of the boundary between the I and the Thou as we have encountered in various places in this book. This mixture within love follows from Buber’s remarks about the relationship between the human and the Divine in the love songs found in the Bible: When we find love songs in the Bible, we must understand that the love of God for his world is revealed through the depths of love human beings can feel for one another. (Buber, “The Man of Today and the Jewish Bible,” 89)

Buber was clearly referring to Song of Songs and the manner in which it was understood by contemporary scholars, who thought that the Rabbinic midrashim projected this earthly love poetry into the Divine sphere so that this epic of love might find its way into the Bible. As against that, Buber thought that these midrashim are not an allegorical addition superimposed upon the literal meaning of Scripture, but that Biblical thought assumed from the outset that there is a relation between the love of human lovers and the love of God. This relationship is not only one on the order of “walking in all His ways” (Deut 11:22)—that is, of imitation of God by people within the human realm—but it also belongs to the realm of “to cleave to him” (ibid.). This attachment is substantial, as it carries with it, in a manner that transcends the intellectual, an infusion of the human and the Divine.20 In the secret of human love, the source of that love by which God loves His world is opened; human love is equated with God’s love of His world, while nevertheless remaining a personal and human love. According to Buber, one finds God, not only by imitating His attributes, but also in the realm of the secret:

20 In the Hebrew version, translated from the original German of Buber’s essay “Education” (1925), the word ‫ערוי‬, “infusion,” is used to indicate the erotic relationship (p. 253), but in the English translation thereof, the word appears as “transfusion” (97), meaning pouring out in the sense of mixing (e.g., fluids). On the use of the word ‫ ערוי‬in the sense of mixing or pouring, cf. 1 Kgs 7:36 and the midrash on this verse in b. Yoma 54a.

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God does not behave towards us with mercy and grace alone; He is also terrible when his hand falls on us. What happens to us then does not somehow find a place beside mercy and grace, it does not belong to the same category as these. . . . It is indeed the secret, and it is not for us to enquire into it. But just in this quality of God’s is his “handiwork” manifested to us. . . . (“Imitatio Dei,” in Israel and the World, 76–77)

Here, too, one may ask the question which emerges against the background of the paradoxical mixture of human and Divine (above, Ch. 5.6): Where does human love end and where does Divine love begin? But as this mixture takes place on the level of the secret, it is not subject to intellectual understanding but to intimate “knowing” of another kind. 5. The Whispering of the Secret in Love In this section we shall discuss that which is “hidden from the eyes of the world but revealed to us,” (“Imitatio Dei,” 76–77). According to Buber, one must come into contact with the secret in the World of Action, where man acts in things and events that come his way, and less in the exegetic realm, even though according to him one may also hear the voice calling from Scripture, and thereby draw near to the source of power from which they derived (“Hebrew Humanism,” 246). In his interpretations of Hasidism, too, Buber emphasized his view that the essence of Hasidism lies, not in the teachings which it contains, but rather in the life situations which thereafter became teachings for the broad public (“Interpreting Hasidism” pp. 218–219). These situations came into existence around the encounters between the master (Zaddik) and his disciples (Hasidim). These masters—Zaddikim were perceived by their disciples as walking Torahs,21 for which reason the Hasidim saw it necessary to imitate even their most trivial actions. Jewish teaching as 21 “But the highest praise that could be bestowed on a zaddik was that he was a Torah, that is, that in his make-up, in his every-day gestures, in his unemphatic, unarbitrary, unintentional actions and attitudes, ‘in the way he tied and untied his sandals,’ was represented that in the Torah which is inexpressible but which can be transmitted through human existence. These men mediated between God and man, but they pointed men with great seriousness to that immediate relationship to God that no mediation can replace.” (“The Beginnings,” 43) In the printer’s introduction to Shivhei ha-Besht, it states that “the Baal Shem Tov said that one who praises the righteous is as if he were engaged in the Work of the Merkabah.” It would seem that by this he wished to express the idea that Zaddikim are like walking Torahs.

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a whole is for Buber a written testimony to a dialogue which took place between heaven and earth, a testimony that ought to arouse man to realize the dialogue in different life situations. This transference by Buber into the sphere of life is not only on the order of “action that is more important than midrash,” but the action is itself of the order of midrash, since man is thereby connected to and relates to the secret of being. The tendency found by Buber in Hasidism—a tendency that imposes the Torah upon life situations, that in turn become Torah— was strengthened in his own writings.22 For Buber, the study of Torah became a living Torah within life. In light of Buber’s preference for study within actual life situations, I wish to note a certain line of similarity between this outlook on his part and the Zoharic parable of the beautiful maiden mentioned earlier (pp. 211–212) in another context. In his study, “Zohar and Eros,” Yehuda Liebes noted that the Zoharic homilies were created within actual life situations between people, in which the preacher did not know what novellum he would say until he had said it, given that the homily arose out of a unique situation and derived from it.23 Without ignoring the difference between homilies created out of living situations and situations that are understood as Torah without their being intended to expound any verses, I shall try to note a certain connection between Buber’s outlook and the contact of the sage with the Torah that was hidden within its sanctuary-garment. The parable of the beautiful maiden (i.e., the Torah) is also connected to a life situation, as the revelation of the different levels of the Torah to the Sage take place through his walking to the palace of the maiden. This maiden reveals her secrets to him alone:24 one may 22 On the attitude to Torah study in early Hasidism, see Weiss, Jewish Mysticism and Hasidism, 56–58. 23 In Liebes’ words: “Because the ‘frame story,’ the relationships among the Sages, the love and Eros involved in studying Torah, are the essence of the Zohar” (“Zohar and Eros,” 90–91). 24 I will bring this parable almost in full, especially emphasizing those elements relevant for purposes of comparison to Buber: All those hidden things that the Holy One, blessed be He, does are found within the Torah. And when that hidden thing is revealed in the Torah, it immediately assumes another garment, and is concealed therein and not revealed. But the Sages, who are filled with eyes, see it even though it is hidden in a garment, and during the moment that thing is revealed, before it once again assumes its garment, they gaze with open eyes, so that even though it is immediately disappears it is no longer lost to their sight. Human beings are so confused in their minds. They do not see the way of truth in Torah. Torah calls out to them every day, in love, but they do not want to turn their heads. Even

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therefore see this parable, as well as the descriptions and homilies that preceded it, as an expression for dialogical life that creates Torah. Thus, in Buber too the secret is revealed to the man who walks in the path of his life, “Only when the secret no longer stands over our tent, but breaks it, do we learn to know God’s intercourse with us.” The secret is revealed in a unique situation to a particular man, without

though I have said that Torah removes a word from her sheath, is seen for a moment, then quickly hides away—that is certainly true—but when she reveals herself from her sheath and hides herself right way, she does so only for those who know her intimately. A parable. To what can this be compared? To a lovely princess, beautiful in every way and hidden deep within her palace. She has one lover, unknown to anyone; he is hidden too. Out of his love for her, this lover passes by her gate constantly, lifting his eyes to every side. She knows that her lover is hovering about her gate constantly. What does she do? She opens a little window in her hidden palace and reveals her face to her lover, then swiftly withdraws, concealing herself. No one near the lover sees or reflects, only the lover, and his heart and his soul and everything within him flow out to her. And he knows that out of love for him she revealed herself for that one moment to awaken love in him. So it is with a word of Torah: She reveals herself to no one but her lover. Torah knows that he who is wise of heart hovers about her gate very day. What does she do? She reveals her face to him from the palace and beckons him with a hint, then swiftly withdraws to her hiding place. No one who is there knows or reflects; he alone does, and his heart and his soul and everything within him flows out to her. That is why Torah reveals and conceals herself. With love she approaches her lover to arouse love within him. Come and see! This is the way of Torah: At first, when she begins to reveal herself to a human she beckons him with a hint. If he knows, good; if not, she sends him a message, calling him a fool. Torah says to her messenger: ‘Tell that fool to come closer, so I can talk with him!’ As it is written: ‘Who is the fool without a heart? Have him turn in here!’ (Prvb 9:4). He approaches. She begins to speak with him from behind a curtain she has drawn, words he can follow, until he reflects a little at a time. This is de rash a. Then she converses with him through a veil, words riddled with allegory. This is haggadah. Once he has grown accustomed to her, she reveals herself face to face and tells him all her hidden secrets, all the hidden ways, since primordial days secreted in her heart. Now he is a perfect human being, husband of Torah, master of the house. All her secrets she has revealed to him, withholding nothing, concealing nothing. She says to him, ‘Do you see that word, that hint with which I beckoned you at first? So many secrets there! This one and that one!’ Now he sees that nothing should be added to those words and nothing taken away. Now the peshat of the verse, just like it is! Not even a single letter should be added or deleted. Human beings must become aware! They must pursue Torah to become her lovers! . . . .” —Zohar (Mishpatim), II.98b–99b. English translation: Daniel C. Matt, Zohar: The Book of Enlightenment (New York-Ramsey-Toronto, 1983), 123–125; first paragraph my translation [ JC] (my emphases).

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others discerning it: “at that same time it is in the level of revelation to us and it is hidden from the eyes of the world. And we learn to imitate God.”25 In this context I would like to once again mention Buber’s autobiographical description of his youthful contact with a horse (above, 122), a contact that involved mutual feelings: [the horse] let me approach, confided itself to me, placed itself elementally in the relationship of Thou and Thou with me. The horse, even when I had not begun by pouring oats for him into the manger, very gently raised his massive head, ears flicking, then snorted quietly, as a conspirator gives a signal meant to be only recognizable by his fellow conspirators; and I was approved. (“Dialogue,” 23)

This covert event, belonging to members of a group or to those who speak in secret alone, this intimate dialogue, is similar, in my opinion, to the secret and intimate contact of the Sage and the Torah, as described in the parable in Sefer ha-Zohar. I don’t know whether Buber recognized it, but there is a closeness between these sources that I would describe as spiritual proximity, one that does not require direct or conscious influence. And if the revelation of this secret between Buber and the horse is a kind of “giving of the Torah,” we may perhaps speak of Buber’s “betrayal” of the horse in turning his back on the love relationship in favor of his own pleasure derived from contact with him, as a counterpart to the Rabbinic epigram, “Woe to the bride who is unfaithful during her nuptial days”?26 6. Between the Earthly Woman and the “Eternal Thou” The problematics involved in attachment with the earthly world, which I discussed earlier (pp. 265–270)—an attachment likely to sever the connection between man and God and draw man back towards corporeality and the temptations involved in the earthly realm—is expressed particularly strongly in relations with woman, who for the male Sages represented the pinnacle of allure and seductiveness. On the one hand, we encountered in Hasidism the view that there is a path leading from

25 Buber, “Imitatio Dei,” 210; and also, “What could it intend with us, what does it desire from us, being revealed and surreptitious?” (I and Thou, 159). 26 Based upon b. Shabbat 88b.

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the earthly to the spiritual, which is indeed represented by contact with the woman. On the other hand, there is a keen awareness of the danger, lest man not see this contact as a stage in the path towards God, but rather seek to drink to the full of his contact with the earthly realm and the emotional realm associated with it. This ambivalence in relation to the more earthly aspects of love appears both in Plato’s Symposium27 and in the Hasidic sources, as noted above. One of the most eloquent sources that influenced Hasidic thought and expresses this ambivalence is to be found in R. Elijah de Vidas’s Reshit Hokhmah. A comparison between it and Buber’s attitude towards the woman and the relationship between her and the Eternal Thou will highlight both the similarities and differences between the Kabbalistic-Hasidic doctrine and Buber’s own thought: And we may learn from an incident which was recorded by R. Isaac of Acre of blessed memory. He said that on a certain day, the princess left the bathhouse and one of the idle people saw her and gave a great groan and said: Would that I could do with her as I wish! And the princess answered and said: That will only happen in the cemetery and not here. When he heard these things, he rejoiced, for he thought she was telling him to go to the cemetery and sit there and that she would meet him there and do whatever he wished. But this was not her intention; rather, she meant to say that there, specifically, small and great, young and old, despised and respected . . . are all equal, but not here, where it is inconceivable that a princess would draw close to one of the masses of the people. And that person rose and went to the cemetery and sat there, and all the thoughts of his mind were connected with her, and he always thought about her form. And through his great desire for her, he detached his thoughts from every sensory thing, and placed all his thoughts on the form of that woman and her beauty. Day and night, he sat there constantly in the cemetery, and there he ate and drank and slept, for he said: If she doesn’t come today, she’ll come tomorrow. And he did this for many days, until through his great withdrawal from every sensory thing, and through connecting his thought with one thing always, and his remaining alone and his complete desire, his soul became disconnected from the sensory plane and became attached to the intellectibles, to the extent that he became detached from every sensory thing, including that woman herself, and was attached to God alone, may He be blessed. And after a few days he cast off all physical and sensory things, and he only desired

27 “If he is to make beauty of outward form the object of his quest, it is great folly not to acknowledge that the beauty exhibited in all bodies is one and the same.” (Plato, The Symposium, trans. W. Hamilton (London: Penguin Books, 1951), 92 [209e].

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chapter ten the Divine Intellect, and he became a total servant, a holy man of God. So that his prayer was heard and his blessings were effective for all those who passed by there—merchants and horsemen and those walking on foot—all turned to him and received his blessing, until his fame spread far and wide. This is the end of the story, for our purposes. And he continued to celebrate the high level of this ascetic. And R. Isaac of Acre wrote there, concerning the acts of the ascetic people, that one who has not desired a woman is like a donkey, or even less so— the reason being that, via the sensible, one may distinguish the Divine Service.28

One may learn from this story of the existence of a certain intimate connection between the physical and the spiritual. Such connection occurs on two different levels: on the ontological level and on the psychological level. The unifying element is that the path towards the Heavenly (i.e., to the supernal source of beauty, and thereafter to God) passes through the earthly (the lower beauty).29 On the psychological level, it may be seen that contact with the physical world serves as a catalyst and a necessary psychological pre-condition for contact with the spiritual world, as articulated in the words of R. Isaac of Acre that close the quotation from Reshit Hokhmah. On the ontological level, we have here a Jewish expression of the neo-Platonic view regarding the ontological relation among the different levels of existence: that is, the view that a substantive connection exists between the woman’s beauty and her form (i.e., that aspect which pertains to her essence, of which her external beauty is the lower reflection), and between her form and the Divine Intellect. These three levels are interconnected with one another, and by his rising up to the highest level a man may become a man of God, whose prayer is heard and whose blessings are effective—that is, he participates in God’s activity in bringing abundance down into the world. But in the present story the idler drew close to God “thanks to” his inability to realize his earthly love.30 As it was imposed upon him not to halt with the lower beauty, his loss became his gain, and he ascended heavenwards. In Kabbalistic and Hasidic sources, the perception of the earthly dimension as ontologically connected to evil

R. Elijah de Vidas, Reshit Hokhmah: Sha’ar ha-Ahavah ( Jerusalem, 1984), 426. Idel, Hasidism, 62–64; Gries, Sifrut ha-Hanhagot, 206–207. 30 Compare, for example, Maggid Devarav le-Ya’akov, 29 (§15): “A person is not allowed to attach himself to this lower beauty . . . ”; cf. Tzava’at ha-Ribash, in Sefer Shivheiha- Ba’al Shem Tov im Hosafot, ed. Mintz ( Jerusalem, 1969), 229–230. 28 29

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distinguishes them from that of Buber, as for Buber the material reality is not evil per se; rather, “extended, the lines of relationships intersect in the eternal Thou” (I and Thou, 123), without relative relationships being negated as such: “When a man loves a woman so that her life is present in his own, the Thou of her eyes allow him to gaze into a ray of the eternal Thou” (ibid., 154). Here the person need not sacrifice his earthly love in order to enter the Kingdom of God; rather, his proper standing within life connects between the two loves. But in Kabbalistic sources there is also room for seeing the lower union as reflection of a higher reality (Sulam ha-Aliyah, 72), and even as an activity carrying ritual meaning due to the organic relation between the different world systems. However, things were not described as they were in Buber: A man caresses a woman, who lets herself be caressed. Then let us assume that he feels the contact from two sides—with the palm of his hand still, and also with the woman’s skin. The twofold nature of the gesture, as one that takes place between two persons, thrills through the depth of enjoyment in his heart and stirs it. If he does not deafen his heart he will have—not to renounce the enjoyment but—to love. (“Education,” 124)

Buber’s unequivocal position—i.e., that the love of God must pass through love of man, and in this case through love of woman—is expressed in his criticism of the Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, for his “renunciation of Regina Olsen as representing woman and the world” (“The Question to the Single One,” 40). Kierkegaard posited the category of the single one who stands in relation to God as an absolute value, which “in virtue of its unique, essential life expels all other relation into the realm of the unessential” (ibid., 50). In order to achieve love of God, Kierkegaard thought that he needed to renounce love of woman, “in defiance of the whole nineteenth century” (ibid., 53). Buber commented on this that: That is sublimely to misunderstand God. Creation is not a hurdle on the road to God, it is the road itself. We are created along with one another and directed to a life with one another. Creatures are placed in my way so that I, their fellow-creature, by means of them and with them find the way to God. A God reached by their exclusion would not be the God of all lives in whom all life is fulfilled. A God in whom only the parallel lines of single approaches intersect is more akin to the “God of the philosophers” than to the “God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.”

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chapter ten God wants us to come to him by means of the Reginas he has created and not by renunciation of them . . . But the real God lets no shorter line reach him than each man’s longest, which is the line embracing the world that is accessible to this man. (“The Question to the Single One,” 52)

This sort of attitude towards the world of created things is referred to by Buber as “acosmic relation to God” (ibid.), comparable to the view of Marcion,31 for whom the Creator God stands in opposition to the Redeemer God—that is, he identified Creation with the element of evil from which one needs to distance oneself, and redemption from the world was identified with the element of good. This discussion of the relationship between love of created beings and love of God brings us to a discussion of Buber’s attitude towards eros. 7. Eros and Dialogical Relationship There is eros for him only when beings become for him images of the eternal, and community with them becomes revelation. (Buber, I and Thou, 150)

Buber devoted an entire section of his essay “Dialogue” to the subject of eros, because he disagreed with the position of the Greeks, who “distinguished between a powerful, world-begetting Eros and one which was light and whose sphere was the soul,” or “between a heavenly and a profane Eros” (“Dialogue,” 28). Buber, as against that, thought that eros was one: For the primal god Desire from whom the world is derived, is the very one who in the form of a “tender elfin spirit” ( Jacob Grimm) enters into the sphere of souls and in an arbitrary daimonic way carries out here, as mediator of the pollination of being, his cosmogonic work: he is the great pollen-bearing butterfly of psychogenesis. And the Pandemos32 (assuming it is a genuine Eros and not a Priapos impudently pretending to be the higher one) needs only to stir his wings to let the primal fire be revealed in the body’s games. (“Dialogue,” 28)

One of the great Christian thinkers of the 2nd century CE. As Buber comments in a footnote there, Aphrodite Pandemos appears in the Symposium as the goddess of love in its lowly, mass form. 31 32

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The powerful world-creating eros and the psychological eros within the individual are one, just as the Heavenly eros and bodily eros are one. Faithful to his own propensity not to make a substantive distinction between above and below or between higher and lower, in the sense of Plato’s doctrine of ideals. Buber attributed to eros a different kind of duality—one related to the distinction between the I-Thou relation and the I-It relation. He saw a duality between, on the one hand, those who are “loyal to the strong-winged Eros of dialogue [who] know the beloved being. . . . The two . . . who love one another, receive the common event from the other’s side as well, that is, they receive it from the two sides, and thus for the first time understand in a bodily way what an event is” (ibid., 29). As against that, there is an eros “which has . . . forfeited the power of flight and is now condemned to live among tough mortals and govern their mortality’s paltry gestures of love” (ibid., 28). The nothingness and lowliness of “lame-winged Eros” derives from the fact that those who take part therein have lost the dialogical wings with which they were able to fly towards one another. The lowliness of eros is not a result of the bodily aspect which embodies it, but rather of the way that man behaves with eros: the primordial erotic fire can also be embodied in bodily play and still be true eros, or it can be a strange fire found within the realm of the individual alone, even if it does not assume a bodily garb. “There a lover stamps around and is in love only with his passion. . . . There one is preening himself with borrowed vitality. . . . There one is warming himself at the blaze of what has fallen to his lot” (“Dialogue,” 29–30). It would seem that Buber attributed to eros a dual character within its one essence. On the one hand, eros has the power to fly, a fullness that moves one person towards the other; on the other, Buber attributed to it qualities of demonic arbitrariness, of savagery, and of a complexity that turns away from “the simplicity of fullness” (ibid., 29). Hence, it would appear that Buber’s attitude towards eros is ambivalent. Two aspects of eros that are embodied in the two different human positions are expressed in the following words of Buber: Rather do I know no other realm where, as in this one [i.e., in the realm of eros—IK] . . . dialogue and monologue are so mixed and opposed. Many celebrated ecstasies of love are nothing but the lover’s delight in the possibilities of his own person which are actualized in unexpected fullness. (“Dialogue,” 4–5)

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The possibility of deceit—both self-deceit and of deceiving the other— particularly stands out in the erotic realm, in which there is a mixture of different tendencies, since there in particular the desire for pleasure and self-love, on the one hand, and true love for the other, on the other hand, struggle with one another.33 Nevertheless, one who has experienced dialogical eros carries this experience within himself as a memory that prevents him from falling completely into the hands of lame-winged eros: I do not in the least mean that the man who has had such an experience [i.e., of dialogical Eros—IK] would from then on have this twosided sensation in every such meeting—that would perhaps destroy his instinct. But the one extreme experience makes the other person present to him for all time. A transfusion has taken place after which a mere elaboration of subjectivity is never again possible or tolerable to him. (“Education,” 96–97)

Man cannot avoid falling into the realm of monologic eros on occasion. Were he to nullify it for once and for all, he would also nullify his lust entirely, as he would be feel the other more than himself, and would thereby, so to speak, forget his own lust in the other. One might say that man’s lust initially belongs more to the realm of the monologic eros, more to man’s being found within himself, while simultaneously entering into the realm of dialogical eros allows him to serve his Creator “with both his impulses”—albeit in this realm as well a deep duality is decreed upon him, as he finds himself in a constant battle between the two tendencies: that of “running” (towards the other) and of returning (“to himself ”). 8. Between Dialogical Eros and Dialogical Love Buber also referred to dialogical Eros as “inclusive Eros,” about which he said that “Only an inclusive Eros is love. Inclusiveness is the complete realization of the submissive person, the desired person, the ‘partner’ . . .” (“Education,” 97). In this light, one might raise the question: what is the relationship between dialogical eros and dialogi-

33 Buber, “Dialogue,” 28–29. Bergman related that Buber once said to him in a conversation that “Sexuality is none other than the most coarse expression of the interpersonal.” (Bergman, “Conversations with Buber,” 144).

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cal love? It is not possible for there to be a complete identity between them, as Buber devoted a separate discussion to eros and another to love, and only in the above-mentioned saying did he counterpoise the two with one another. The answer to this question may be found in an essay by Buber entitled “Education.” “Eros is choice, choice made from an inclination. This is precisely what education is not. The man who is loving in Eros chooses the beloved” (94). The educator, by contrast, does not act out of attraction, but is “a representative of the true God. For if God ‘forms the light and creates darkness,’ man is able to love both—to love light in itself, and darkness towards the light” (ibid.). The educator may allow Eros to visit him as much as it may and to excite him, but if “he obeys him [Eros—IK] in the course of his educating then he stifles the growth of his blessings. It must be one or the other: either he takes on himself the tragedy of the person, and offers an unblemished daily sacrifice, or the fire enters his work and consumes it” (ibid.). In this respect, Buber conceived of the educational act as a kind of “lofty asceticism” (95), a joyous monasticism. This asceticism is not removed from eros, but the educator must examine the measure of erotic power he is permitted to introduce into his project without it swallowing it up. This measure distances itself from any element of compulsion and emphasizes “the responsibility for a realm of life which is entrusted to us for our influence” (ibid.). What is demanded is not the negation of the erotic impulse, of the attraction, but “a reversal of the single instinct takes place, which does not eliminate it but reverses its system of direction” (96). This turning or sublimation of Instinct is caused by what Buber calls “experiencing the other side” (ibid.). It is now possible to define the difference between eros and love. We saw earlier that the emotions of love differ from one another and are a psychological or personal echo of the events that occur between the I and the Thou. It follows from this that love occurs from without to within; the initial basis of love lies, not in the tendencies of the heart, but in the arousal of the heart as a personal response to the existence of a Thou, understood as a dialogical recognition within the ontological, dialogical space. Although Buber did not indicate why a feeling of love is elicited in one case and not in another, we may say that an occurrence in the dialogical realm brought about a conscious and sober feeling of love with a Thou, expressed in the emotion of love. Eros, on the other hand, is rooted in the inclination of the personal instinct and in the desire to realize it periodically also in its bodily

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dimension. The unique problematic of eros is that, even though it involves a reaching out towards the other, it is also liable to involve a reaching out only for its own self. However, when it reaches out to the other also for the sake of inclusion of the other, it becomes dialogical eros, that may be realized in the spirit, in the soul, and in the body. There then occurs an act of mingling or, to use Buber’s earlier mentioned words from the “Introduction” to Ecstatic Confessions: one does not know where the lover ends and the beloved begins. “A tong can only be made by another tong”; nevertheless, each tong is one in its own right. It seems that “identity in difference” is also the mending, the tikkun, of Eros.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE DEBATE OVER BUBER’S INTERPRETATION OF HASIDISM 1. Introduction The debate over Martin Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism revolved around three main issues: a) Buber’s use of the Hasidic tale rather than Hasidic exegetical writings;1 b) the question of the reality of this world, and within that context the significance of “service in corporeality” and the “raising up of sparks” in Hasidism; c) the nature of man’s contact with God in Hasidic mysticism—is it passive or active? I would like to begin this chapter by relating to the critiques of Gershom Scholem and Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer (or, as below: Schatz) regarding the general contours with which Buber chose to present Hasidism, and thereafter turn to the question of the reality of this world in Hasidic sources, and from there to the significance of “service in corporeality” in Hasidic thought. All this will be considered in light of the solutions offered to these issues by Hasidism, as understood by Buber and by his critics. This is also, in my opinion, one of the most significant questions to be considered in discussing the degree of intellectual integrity with which Buber approached Hasidic sources—as well as being one of the most important issues for understanding the message of Hasidism. 1 Here I would like to mention in particular Buber’s earlier books, mentioned above: The Tales of Rabbi Nachman and The Legend of the Baal-Shem, which are reworked collections of stories and anecdotes from the lives of R. Nahman and of the Baal Shem Tov; and Buber’s influential book, Tales of the Hasidim, consisting of tales and anecdotes of the various Hasidic teachers. This book was first published in German in 1924, was incorporated in Buber’s 1927 collection of writings on Hasidism entitled Die chassidischen Bücher, appeared in Hebrew in 1946 under the title Or ha-Ganuz, [and in English in 1947–48 (two volumes) as Tales of the Hasidim.] I should also mention Buber’s booklet, The Way of Man According to the Teachings of Hasidism, published in Hebrew in 1957 and included in the collection Hasidism and Modern Man (123–176), and his Hasidic novel, Gog and Magog, published in Hebrew in 1955, and in English under the title For the Sake of Heaven. Buber’s preference for the Hasidic story, as conserving the power and vitality embodied in Hasidism (above, pp. 195, 198–205), is also expressed in his theoretical essays on Hasidism.

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This issue also relates to the two other subjects which I have mentioned. Regarding the relation between the Hasidic tale and the more formal teachings of Hasidic homilies, it seems to me that, if we are convinced that Buber’s interpretation of the Hasidic outlook regarding the status of this world has a basis in Hasidic homilies, this will constitute an answer to Gershom Scholem’s claim that Buber derived existentialist conclusions from Hasidic sources because he concentrated upon the Hasidic tale as opposed to the Hasidic homily. The third matter, relating to the nature of Hasidic mysticism, also relates to the status of this world in Hasidism. As stated earlier (pp. 258–270), Schatz’s claim that the relationship of Hasidism to this world, including service in corporeality, is secondary to that of attachment to God (i.e., the issue of mysticism)—that is, that it enables an additional space to the possibility of attachment to God2—is suitable to some typologies of devekut in Hasidism, but is not necessarily appropriate to that one which combines devekut with the ideal of raising the sparks and of turning matter into form.3 The inclusion of the latter does not allow us to present Hasidic mysticism as hostile to the concrete level of reality and as having “an internal connection to quietistic concerns” as suggested by Schatz (Hasidism as Mysticism, 55–64, esp. 63).4 The sources I have brought from the Baal Shem Tov’s disciple, R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoyye,5 as well as the description of the life of the Baal Shem Tov in Shivhei ha-Besht, the teachings attributed to him (such as the doctrine of alien thoughts), and the mystical experiences of the Baal Shem Tov (‘aliyat neshama), are all indicative of great activity. Even if we agree with Scholem’s claim that the Hasidic doctrine of sparks referred to the redemption of the sparks and not to that of the concrete world (see below, §3), extended activity in the realm of sparks per se indicates that it is impossible to identify Hasidic mysticism exclusively with passivity or with an all-inclusive desire to arrive at a state of annihilation. The perception of mystical experience as one thing and its practical derivatives as another, as suggested by Schatz, is artificial and has no real basis. It does not take into consideration the

2 In the words of Schatz-Uffenheimer: “Man’s relationship to the concrete is a secondary problem in Hasidic teaching” (in her “Man’s Relation to God,” 405). 3 On the transformation of matter into form, see below, §3. 4 On the understanding of mysticism in its Hasidic context in Schatz, see Margolin, The Inner Temple, 45–46. 5 Above, Chapter 2.4, and also in Chapter 8, and further Hasidic sources brought below.

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different fields in which the mystic acts, as from the outset she defined mysticism in a narrow way, and thereafter assumes her conclusions on the basis of this narrow definition. But if there is in fact a certain tension in the soul of the Zaddik between his spiritual enterprise and his earthly activity, or between times of greater consciousness (gadlut) during prayer and times of more limited spiritual awareness (katnut) when he is among people in the marketplace, this tension is itself a basic component of his spiritual enterprise, and there is no reason to see one as secondary to the other, or to designate the one as mystical and the other as external to the definition of mysticism. An artificial separation of this type characterized Buber himself during certain periods of his life although, as I have shown earlier (Chapter 7.1), he recognized the activist and concrete component of Hasidic mysticism in his essay, “The Baal Shem Tov’s Instruction” (1927). Contact with the concrete dimension of reality (“the lower unification”) is an inseparable part of Hasidic mysticism, just as is contact with the spiritual realm (“the upper unification”). Buber’s attempt to deemphasize “upper unification” by representing it as secondary in Hasidism is no different in principle from Schatz’s attempt to limit the importance of the “lower unification” and to portray it as secondary to the mystical idea in Hasidism. 2. The Garment that Buber Wove from Hasidic Sources Gershom Scholem correctly observed that: Buber, to whom no one denies possession of an exact knowledge of Hasidic literature, does not write as a scholar who gives clear references to support his contentions. Buber combines facts and quotations to suit his purpose. . .6 6 Scholem, “Buber’s Interpretation,” 230. One ought by right to turn one’s attention to the element of duality in Scholem’s critique of Buber, which may be indicative of the mood within which this critique was written. On the one hand, Buber is presented as one with comprehensive knowledge of Hasidism—that is to say, not a charlatan or an ignoramus, but one who has studied its writings in depth; on the other hand, the charge is brought that Buber did not support his claims with “clear references to support his contentions,” suggesting that such texts are not to be found at all, for were this not the case, Scholem would not have argued that in the final analysis “Buber’s work is an interpretation and that there might be a problem in relating the interpretation to the phenomenon itself ” (ibid., 230). And on the third hand, “Buber combines facts and quotations to suit his purpose”—that is, the facts are facts and the quotations are quotations, but Buber’s intention redirects them to another place. It is

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A similar claim appears in the remarks of Rivka Schatz, that preceded those of Scholem, that “his [Buber’s] synthetic tapestry is woven of selected strands, and that it is he who determines the hue of the cloth” (“Man’s Relation to God,” 404). The ferocity of her criticism of Buber prevented her from seeing how his interpretation of Hasidism was woven from elements taken from the world of Hasidism itself. Buber’s intention was, indeed, the guiding principle of his Hasidic project, and it was that which created the “synthetic tapestry” and the hue of the cloth. But as against Scholem and Schatz, one may reply that it is not easy to find any principles which Buber attributed to Hasidism that do not have some actual basis; that is, that the selective threads are taken from the world of Hasidism and not from anyplace else, so that, without Hasidic sources, Buber’s weave is not a weave. Nevertheless, these principles are not found in any single Hasidic thinker in quite the same manner that Buber chose to present them. Hence, one reading Hasidic sources will not find Buber’s essays on Hasidism therein, without finding something lacking in one place, and added in another. Buber’s Hasidic project is a kind of ingathering of the sparks of his own soul from the totality of the enormous enterprise that appears under the overall heading of Hasidism. In the paper in which he responds to his critics, Buber openly admits that his choice was selective (“Interpreting Hasidism,” 221)—for which there is no reason to criticize him. In attempting to heal the break between the heavenly and the earthly, and between the absolute and the transient (the world of time and space), Buber was permitted to follow those elements within Hasidism which, in his opinion, were likely to serve as a source of inspiration and as a force for this healing. Nevertheless, Buber’s selectivity in his Hasidic project raises a number of difficulties or puzzles. The first puzzle relates to the lack of consistency on the part of Buber, a lack expressed in the gap between his earlier presentation of Hasidism and its presentation after Scholem and Schatz’s criticism. I wish to elaborate upon this point. In the Introduction to his book Be-Pardes ha-Hasidut (1945), Buber noted that he had refrained in his book from “examining, within the overall approach described, the relationship of the different approaches to one difficult to free oneself from the feeling that Scholem’s criticism of Buber involved a mixture of “sparks” and “shells”—that is, that it ought not to be viewed as an entirely objective, dispassionate polemic based on the quest for truth, but that it may also have entailed an element of inter-personal rivalry.

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another” (7), his aim being to show that which was common to them all; that is to say, he identified within Hasidism a homogeneous ground that encompasses all of the different approaches. In his responses to his critics,7 on the other hand, he no longer spoke of a single, overall Hasidic approach with a variety of different schools and emphases, but of two tendencies—a spiritualizing tendency and a concretizing tendency—which were generally speaking opposed to one another, and only one of which—the concretizing one—expressed, according to him, the kernel of the Hasidic life of faith. He saw the other, spiritualizing tendency as expressing a return towards the ascetic and gnostic tendencies which characterized pre-Hasidic Kabbalah. If we compare Buber’s later remarks in response to his critics as to the selective approach he took in his Hasidic project with his earlier statements, found in his essays on Hasidism, in which he presents what he calls the “overall outlook” of Hasidism, we notice a certain problematic aspect to his words. His earlier comments regarding the nature of this overall outlook are inconsistent with his later claim as to the selectivity involved in his choice. Moreover, why did not Buber declare the selective nature of his earlier choice from the outset? How is it possible that a learned person such as Buber, who was expert in Hasidic sources, did not from the very beginning discern the nonhomogeneous nature of Hasidism? It seems to me that Buber did not recant of his earlier homogeneous stance and that in practice the selectivity he exercised in his Hasidic project was a double one.8 His earlier statements describing the “overall outlook” of Hasidism, which he identified with its concretizing tendency, is itself a selective statement which he represented as an objective statement of the essence of Hasidism. This joins with his later admission that his choice was selective from the outset. All this may be better understood by noting the dichotomy that Buber created between Kabbalah, which he identified with Gnosticism and with the negative mysticism that negates the idea of realization, and Hasidism, which he identified with the tendency toward realization See Buber, “Interpreting Hasidism”; idem, “Replies to My Critics,” 731–741. In my article, “The Internalization of Hasidism,” I raised the possibility that Buber was not aware of the existence of these two tendencies or that he chose to ignore their existence. However, further examination of his words indicates, in my opinion, that for him true Hasidism is always connected with the tendency of realization, whether he states that there are in fact two opposing tendencies within Hasidism, or whether he claims that Hasidism has one essence. 7 8

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(i.e., service in corporeality through attachment to created beings). From the very beginning, Buber thought that Kabbalah is not connected to the essence of Hasidism; hence he presented Hasidism as homogeneous, for all those aspects concerned with the doctrine of sefirot and kavanot are not Hasidism at all, but rather an external, peripheral garment. In the reply to his critics, Buber argued that there are two tendencies within Hasidism; but in fact, for him the Kabbalistic tendency within Hasidism is not really Hasidism at all, but simply a return to an older modality of spirituality, which he sees as a retreat by comparison to the new message. This double selectivity on Buber’s part derives from the fact that he not only chose selectively those sources which offered a remedy to the eclipse of God that he felt in his own period, but also determined what he saw as the single essence of Hasidism. This decision was preceded by a basic subjective assumption, claiming a diametrically-opposed relation between Kabbalah and Hasidism, or between Gnosticism and devekut. These are, in effect, two different levels of selectivity. The one surrounds itself with a guise of objectivity in presenting the essence of Hasidism, and therefore one may debate it in a scholarly manner, whereas the second admits its own selectivity from the outset. In the next section, I shall present my own criticism of the opposing relation between Kabbalah and Hasidism (or between Gnosticism and devekut) as posited by Buber. At this point, I wish to note an additional difficulty that follows from the identification of Hasidism with its realizing tendency. This difficulty is expressed in the change in Buber’s thought regarding the place of the Maggid of Mezerich in the history of Hasidism. Whereas in the introduction to his book about the Maggid of Mezerich (1922)9 Buber characterized Hasidism (including the Maggid’s doctrine) in terms of the model that he called “world pietism” and the realizing tendency in Hasidism, in his responses to his critics, he acknowledged that the Maggid belonged to the spiritualizing tendency within Hasidism (“Interpreting Hasidism,” 222, 224), which clashed with that which he preferred.10 If Buber was aware during 9 Der Grosse Maggid und seine Nachfolge (Berlin, 1922); and see his essay, “The Beginnings,” 24–29, 41–42. 10 Scholem also presented the teachings of the Maggid thus in his critical article about Buber (“Buber’s Interpretation,” 241). Weiss, on the other hand, saw the Maggid as giving expression to a tendency that sees in earthly reality the possibility for spiritual ascent, which he referred to as “contemplation within the world” (“The Hasidic Way of Habad,” 197). Weiss’s distinction bears a certain similarity to Buber’s

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the years 1922–1945 that the Maggid belonged to the spiritualizing school, he ought to have chosen other Hasidic figures to support his own interpretation of Hasidism, and to have selected other figures as a source of inspiration for his book I and Thou (1922).11 In his essay “The Beginnings” (1940), Buber described the “conversion” that took place in the Maggid as a result of his contact with the Baal Shem Tov as a fact which is “one of the strongest fusions of intercourse with God and intercourse with man that is known to the history of religions” (“The Beginnings,” 42)—that is, according to the ideal of service in corporeality as Buber understood it. The transformation regarding his attitude towards the Maggid indicates not only a selective choice of sources (which is, to my mind, legitimate when declared from the outset), but also a selective reading therein. After Gershom Scholem argued against Buber that the Maggid’s doctrine cannot be interpreted in the way in which Buber presented the message of Hasidism, Buber turned to other figures (such as R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoyye) to stress the realizing tendencies within Hasidism.12 The Baal Shem Tov, R. Yehiel Michel of Zlotchov, R. Pinhas of Koretz, R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoyye, and R. Moshe of Kobrin represented for Buber, in the response to his critics, the realizing tendency in Hasidism that was directed towards the sanctification of everyday life—which was, for him, the true innovation of this movement. Even if there is a degree of truth in Buber’s claim that these personalities represented the realizing tendency in Hasidism, there is still a significant early attitude towards the Maggid. The source from the Maggid upon which Weiss relies is quoted above, pp. 267–268. 11 I would remind the reader that Buber noted that, during the years in which he crystallized his dialogical outlook and wrote his book I and Thou, his reading was limited primarily to Hasidic sources. 12 It is worth noting in this context that R. Nahman of Breslav, who was the outstanding representative of the world-affirming tendency in Buber’s first book, The Tales of Rabbi Nachman (1906), is not mentioned at all in Buber’s response to his critics, and is barely mentioned in his essays on Hasidism. It seems to me that R. Nahman is not the best example of world-affirming mysticism. In his thought this world appears as a hell, caught in captivity to a maze of demonic forces that present obstacles. R. Nahman’s attitude to this world is also expressed in his understanding of evil, which is hardly consistent with the view Buber attributed to Hasidism; namely, that “What we call ‘evil’ is not merely in man; it is in the world as the bad; it is the uncleanness of Creation. But this uncleanness is not a nature, not an existent property of things. It is only its not standing firm, not finding direction, not deciding” (“Spinoza,” 100). Again, we have here not only a selective choice of sources on Buber’s part, but also a selective reading therein, that adopts certain components of a given thinker and rejects others.

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gap between them and Buber’s interpretation of their spiritual worldview. This gap does not derive, in my opinion, from a falsification of their words or from an incorrect understanding of their thought (as has been argued by Katz and by Gellman), but from the fact that Buber rejected significant components of their worldview, as a result of what he saw as a supposed opposition between gnosis (in the sense of knowledge of the supernal worlds) and devekut (understood as intimate, responsible contact with both created beings and with God). This rejection of significant elements in the worldview of the founding fathers of Hasidism is also expressed in the manner in which he describes the Baal Shem Tov. Even if one agrees that the Baal Shem Tov carried a message regarding the service of God similar in spirit to Buber’s words,13 the mystical and magical aspects were an inseparable part of his way of life14 and cannot be seen as merely a peripheral element, so that their combination with the realizing tendency in his thought cannot be explained away in dialectical fashion. Gnosis vs. Devekut in Buber’s Thought I observed earlier (Chapter 6.4) that Buber’s view—namely, that Hasidism is Kabbalah or mysticism become ethos, meaning, that theosophy or gnosis were transformed into statements about man and his path towards God—is a cornerstone of his understanding of the very heart of Hasidism. However, one ought to take note of the change which occurred in Buber’s thought regarding the relation between gnosis (Kabbalistic theosophy) and ethos and devekut in Hasidism.15 Discussion about mysticism or Kabbalah become ethos can be interpreted in two different ways. One way is to say that mysticism itself becomes ethos—that is, that mysticism becomes integrated into the way of life. In my opinion, this is the sense of Buber’s remarks on the relation between mysticism and ethos in Hasidism in his book, The Tales of Rabbi Nahman. In the second sense, mysticism becomes 13 Etkes saw the innovation in Baal Shem Tov’s approach to the service of God as based upon principles similar to those attributed to him by Buber (The Besht, 150–151); cf. Idel, Hasidism, 75–81. 14 On magical and mystical aspects in the Baal Shem Tov, see ibid., Chs. 1–4. 15 Scholem, “Buber’s Interpretation,” 231–233. I connect devekut with ethos, as Buber drew a connection between the two. “One must really understand what that means when a gnosis becomes ethos: it is the true religious revolution that is only possible as the work of devotio.” (“Christ, Hasidism, Gnosis,” 252).

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ethos in the sense that it becomes nullified in statements having to do with ordinary life—and this is what Buber meant in his essay, “Christ, Hasidism, Gnosis.”16 In Gershom Scholem’s critique of Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism, he acknowledges that this tendency, transforming theosophic statements “from the sphere of divine mysteries to the world of man and his encounter with God,” is indeed the dominant one in Hasidism, and Hasidism gave a “new direction” to old Kabbalistic ideas.17 Scholem likewise agreed that Kabbalistic gnosis “was not . . . a really creative element in Hasidism” (“Buber’s Interpretation,” 232). Moreover, I would agree with Scholem that Buber’s tendency to claim the existence of an opposition in Hasidism between the doctrine of sefirot (“Kabbalistic gnosis”) and that of Kabbalah became ethos, was the result of “an extraordinary mixture of truth, error and over-simplification” (233). Buber’s perception of the Kabbalistic theosophy in Hasidism as a tangential element or as one antagonistic to devekut is simplistic, in light of the organic mingling in Hasidic sources of the upper and lower reality. Whereas in Hasidic sources the upper and lower dimensions of reality reflect and support one another, and ideas of an anthropological nature are understood on a deeper level through theosophic contexts, Buber chose to reduce the significance of the theosophic ideas, whether by rejecting them or by giving them a new direction.18 The creation of an antagonistic relation between gnosis, on the one hand, and ethos and devekut, on the other, in which one is seen as essential and the other as marginal, is problematical19— not only when it is imposed upon Hasidic sources, such as those of R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoyye and R. Nahman of Breslav, but also because its understanding of Kabbalah is in itself problematic and gives a one-sided picture of the role of Kabbalah within Hasidism. Kabbalistic gnosis not only sketches “a map of the primal mysteries” (“Symbolic Existence,” 178), but also applies this map to human life. The map of the sefirot and of the Divine configurations ( partzufim), 16 “In Hasidism devotio has absorbed and overcome gnosis. This must happen ever again if the bridge over the chasm of being is not to fall in.” Ibid., 254. 17 Scholem, “Buber’s Interpretation,” 236, emphasis in the original. 18 See above (Chapter 6.3) for Buber’s interpretation of the Maggid’s words. This tendency in Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism set the tone for the manner in which he internalized Hasidic principles in his teaching, as I demonstrate in the second half of this book. 19 As noted by Bergman in his paper, “Buber and Mysticism.”

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of essence and vessels (atzmut ve-kelim), are closely connected to the doctrines of gestation (ibbur), nurturing ( yenikah), and greatness of the mind ( gadlut de-mohin), which are in turn closely related to the issue of devekut.20 Man’s receiving of Divine intellect is tantamount to receiving the Divine light within the vessels of human cognition, signifying man’s attachment to the Divine light. This receiving of the Divine intellect brings about a transformation in the structure of the human being and hence of man’s outlook, and therefore has implications for man’s conduct in everyday reality. The separation of this doctrine of mohin from the issue of devekut is excessive oversimplification on the part of Buber. Even if there is some justice in Buber’s claim that Hasidism is aligned against “the schematization of the mystery” (ibid., 178) and “that man influences eternity, and he does this not through special works, but through the intention behind all of his work” (“Spirit and Body,” 127), these tendencies within Hasidism do not imply the negation of the element of devekut involved in the doctrine of mohin, but precisely their expansion. This rejection of the Gnostic-theosophic element in Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism is thus a neo-Hasidic innovation.21 His rejection of gnosis must be seen in the broader context of Buber’s relation to the realm of knowledge. This, since one of the characteristics of gnosis in Buber is his declaration of knowledge of the secrets of creation. To use Buber’s words in his critique of Spinoza, “his attack swung beyond this legitimate object.”22 Buber’s reserved attitude to the place of knowledge23 assumes a particularly one-sided aspect when he relates to gnostic knowledge. To clarify this point, I will make use of a homily by R. Nahman of Breslav:

20 On the concepts of gadlut and katnut in Lurianic Kabbalah and in Hasidism, see Pechter, “Katnut ve-Gadlut.” On R. Nahman, see Mark, “On States of ‘Smallness’ and ‘Greatness’.” 21 This innovation is present in Buber’s thought in his rejection of the axis from above to below (see above, pp. 207–216), as expressed, for example, in the substitution of the principle of Divine abundance for that of “the flowering fullness of fate of the here and now” (“Spirit and Body,” 130) and “the infinite ethos of the moment” (ibid., 117). 22 “Spinoza,” 95. This refers to Buber’s contention that Spinoza criticized the possibility of establishing a personal relationship to God against the background of his overall critique of the diminution of the image of the Infinite Divine. See above, Chapter 9.4. 23 On Buber’s attitude towards knowledge in general, and to the role of knowledge in the I-Thou relation in particular, see my paper, “Buber and Steiner,” 111–114.

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It is written, “You have created me fore and aft” (Ps 139:5). For there is intellect that a man acquires as a result of many preliminaries, and this type of intellect is referred to by the term “aft”; and there is intellect which a person acquires without any preliminary, but simply by means of the Divine fullness—and this is referred to by the term “fore,” as if named for the face. And the burning of the heart is born from the movement of intellect, for it is the nature of movement to create warmth, and in accordance with the speed of the movement of the intellect, so too is there created warmth in the heart. Hence, as a result of the Divine abundance, by which the intellect flows rapidly into man, there is no need to make use of any preliminary, for by means of this speed the flame of the heart always rises up by itself. (Likkutei Muharan [Pt. I] [ Jerusalem, 1990], §21.1)

It seems to me that Buber would concur with R. Nahman’s position that man’s practical intellect relates to the attribute of “aft”—or, in Buber’s language, the world of the It. He would not agree with R. Nahman, however, on the possibility of the existence of another intellect, one that “flows into man rapidly,” whose being received in the vessels of consciousness implies devekut. That is, the exclusion of the principle of receiving the Divine Flow—and the resultant “conversion” of man—outside of the realm of devekut is problematic, both in relation to Hasidism and in terms of the understanding of Kabbalah. The complex relationship of Hasidism to the kavanot of R. Issac Luria is not a rejection of Kabbalistic gnosis, and the Kabbalistic doctrines are not at all nullified by the new direction given them by Hasidism. There is nevertheless some truth to Buber’s later words, that there are Hasidic thinkers among whom the tendency of realization stands out particularly (e.g., the Baal Shem Tov and R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoyye), while there are others among whom the spiritualistic tendency is more striking (for example, the Maggid of Mezherich). 3. The Polemic Concerning the Attitude towards the Material World in Hasidism One of the main arguments directed against Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism relates to his understanding of the relationship of Hasidic teachers to the world of matter. Both Rivka Schatz and Gershom Scholem claim that Buber interpreted Hasidic sources in a distorted way as a result of his modernist point-of-view, because of which he attributed to them an existentialist and a realistic outlook which they

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did not have, imposing upon them his own “enthusiasm for the concrete”24—that is, his positive outlook on this world. By an existentialist and realistic viewpoint, Schatz and Scholem referred to his attribution of unique value to the concrete world and to its individuals (“the sanctified profane”—Schatz, Hasidism as Mysticism, 57)—that is, his perception of concrete reality as the realm in which God is revealed, and his view that it is possible to bring about a transformation in concrete reality towards God. In their opinion, this type of positive attitude towards the world does not exist in Hasidism, or is at most secondary. This view is expressed in Schatz’s words that the relationship to the concrete is “the great problem of Hasidism, not its great answer” (“Man’s Relation to God,” 406). One must distinguish here between two separate issues that only partially overlap. The one pertains to the question of the reality of the concrete world, while the second relates to the attitude of Hasidic thinkers to the material dimension of reality. Regarding the first issue, one may distinguish between two possibilities: a) an acosmic viewpoint, according to which the world does not exist at all: that is, one in which only God exists, from which it follows that the existence of the world is not real; b) a pantheistic (the unity of God and nature, and its identification with Him) or panentheistic view (God is united with reality, but also transcends it). The latter relates to the doctrine of emanation, according to which God is revealed in the lower levels of reality—that is, the existence of the world is real. The second issue relates, in effect, to Hasidism’s doctrine of evil—that is, the issue of the attitude towards the material world in light of the doctrine of sparks and shells. I will first address the issue of the reality of the world. I. The Parable of the Partition and the Reality of the World The question of Hasidism’s attitude towards the status of the concrete world (i.e., its reality or non-reality) is related in scholarship to the “Parable of the Partitions,” attributed to the Baal Shem Tov, which appears in a number of different versions and interpretations. I will first quote the parable and its explanation in the version given by one

24 Schatz, “Man’s Relation to God,” 406. For a position opposed to that of Schatz, see Ron Margolin. On the differing approaches of Hasidic personalities towards the material world, see his book, The Human Temple, Chs. 3–6.

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of the grandsons of the Baal Shem Tov, R. Moshe Hayyim Efraim of Sudylkow: “And I shall surely hide My face” [Deut 31:18]. Offhand, this is an astonishing thing: How is it possible for the Holy One blessed be He to hide His face from Israel, Heaven forbid, and how then can they have any vitality or be able to stand, for this is the source of all the vitality of Israel, who are near to him and are called “sons of the Omnipresent” (b. Shabbat 31a)? But this may be likened to a king who made a number of partitions in front of his palace by means of illusion, so that people would not be able to enter, and he hid there and made walls and fire and rivers, all by means of optical illusions, before his sons. And he who was wise paid heed to the thing and said, “How is it possible that our compassionate father would not want to show his face to his beloved sons? This is naught but an optical illusion, for the father wants to test whether the son will attempt to come to him, but in truth there is no hiddenness at all.” And indeed, as soon as he dares [lit., risks his soul] to enter into the river, the illusion disappeared and he is able to cross over—and likewise with all the other partitions and separations, until he arrives at the king’s palace. And there is a fool, who is afraid to even begin to pass through these obstacles, and there is another one who goes over the water but is deterred by the walls or the fire—and the meaning of the parable is well known. Now behold: one who risks his very soul, and passes over all the obstacles, and pushes himself forward until he comes to the king, will arrive at an even higher level than previously. And this is, “I shall go down with you” [Gen 46:4]—that is, when you take heart and understand that even in the descent there is also the “I” [anokhi: i.e., God]; that is, that the hiddenness in which I have hid Myself from you is also for your benefit. Then, “I shall also surely raise you up” (ibid.)—that is, you shall merit to a higher level, and that is “I shall also raise you up.” And understand this. And this is God, who goes with you always, in both descent and ascent. Then, “He shall not let you weaken or abandon you” [Deut 31: 6, 8), which is translated “He will not abandon you nor make you distant.” That is, even when at times He is hidden, in any event it is not in order to distance Himself from you. And this is alluded to here in the words, “And I shall surely hide”—that is, when you take heart to understand that “I” is in hiddenness, then the “hiding” (astir) shall become like “Hadassah, she was Esther” [Est 2:7]. And the name hadas [part of the name Hadassah] is the same numerical value as Hayyim (life), counting the kollel [i.e., adding an extra number for the word itself]. That is, then you will be able to see the light of the face of the living King—and this is, “I shall hide (astir) My face.” And this is the secret of Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot: at the beginning it is in hiddenness [i.e., the lunar phase in which the moon is hidden], that is, there is hiddenness, and thereafter in the Sukkah, in the etrog, and in life. For the lulav and the hadas, each add

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Gershom Scholem discerned two different understandings of the Parable of the Partitions in Hasidism. The one tends towards an acosmic world-view, to a perception of the world and its individual beings and objects as an illusion—that is, as things that do not really exist, God alone truly existing. The second is closer to a pantheistic or panentheistic worldview, according to which God is revealed in the concrete world. According to the second interpretation, the illusion lies, not in the fact that the world is not real, but rather that man’s clouded vision prevents him from seeing how God is hidden and revealed within the garments of concrete reality. The first, acosmic interpretation, was identified by Scholem with the approach of Degel Mahaneh Efraim, the author of the above passage, while the immanent interpretation was identified with R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoyye. I have cited the Parable of the Partitions and its interpretation in the version of R. Moshe Hayyim Efraim because, unlike Scholem’s claim, it does not seem to express an acosmic interpretation at all. The various obstacles—the walls, the rivers, the fire—are real, and man must pass through them in order to come to God. The element of illusion lies in the fact that man, in approaching the palace of the king, is likely not to distinguish God hidden within its partitions. The essence of the parable lies in the imagined hiddenness of the God within the world, and its meaning being found in the words of encouragement which God gives to Jacob when he descends to Egypt: “Fear not to descend to Egypt . . . I will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also surely come up with you” (Gen 46:3–4). According to this parable, the ascent depends upon the motivation of the one walking on the path, which requires the identification of God’s activity in a reality which is seemingly bereft of God (as it was during the descent to Egypt). The Parable of the Partitions is thus a metaphorical expression of the principle which became dominant in Hasidism—“the entire universe is filled with His glory” and “There is no place that is empty of Him.”26

25 R. Moshe Hayyim Efraim of Sudylkow, Degel Mahane Efrayim al ha-Torah ( Jerusalem, 1986), 229; the punctuation is mine (IK). 26 The restriction of the Parable of the Partitions to the area of alien thoughts, as suggested by Weiss (“The Earliest Beginnings,” 97–100) is incorrect, in my opinion. While the Parable of the Partitions was told before blowing the shofar on Rosh Hashanah and therefore one can draw a connection between the domain of prayer and alien thoughts and the parable, it seems more likely—as follows from the homily—that

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II. The Doctrine of Sparks and the Doctrine of Matter and Form As Scholem was aware of a Hasidic interpretation of the Parable of the Partitions that is not acosmic, he refrained from criticizing Buber for his realistic interpretation of Hasidic texts. His criticism was directed, rather, towards Buber’s stance that one can find manifestations in Hasidic texts of a positive attitude towards concrete reality, and that such a positive attitude is expressed in the Kabbalistic-Hasidic doctrine of sparks, nitzotzot. Scholem, who was well aware of the large place taken by the doctrine of sparks in Hasidic sources, held that it ought not to be seen as an expression of a positive attitude towards the world of matter, but rather to the contrary. His criticism of Buber on this issue stemmed from his overall position that Kabbalistic spirituality, including Hasidic spirituality, expressed a certain alienation towards the material world.27 Let us note his words: The teaching of the uplifting of the sparks through human activity does in fact mean that there is an element in reality with which man could and should establish a positive connection, but the exposure or realization of this element simultaneously annihilates reality, insofar as “reality” signifies, as it does for Buber, the here and now.28

It follows that Scholem assumed the existence of a substantive alienation between the sparks found in matter and matter itself.29 For him, the sparks found in matter are a kind of a “guest who came to stay,”

there is described here a process leading from concealment to revelation, overlapping the period of time from Rosh Hashanah (kese; from language of covering up) until Sukkot (which is a time of revelation, of uncovering, in which one merits to “enjoy light in the light of the living king”). Therefore, the “illuminated person” needs to understand and to remember on Rosh Hashanah that even though the world is immersed in a state of hiddenness of the presence of God, everything is from God and “the entire world is filled with His Glory.” 27 Margolin, The Human Temple, 26–33. 28 Scholem, “Buber’s Interpretation,” 240. Also: “Devekut and yihudim are not concerned so much with the concrete as such, but rather with emptying it of its concrete content and discovering in it an ideal aspect that opens a vista into the hidden life which flows everywhere. Devekut was not preached as an active realization of the concrete, but as a contemplative realization of the immanence of God in the concrete.” (“Devekut,” 216) 29 See also Gellman, “Buber’s Blunder,” 29. In a later article by Scholem (“Buber’s Conception of Judaism”) he admits that the tendency noted by Buber in his interpretation of Hasidism does in fact have a basis in Hebrew literature and particularly in Hasidic literature, and that it “gives Buber’s conception its specific tone,” even though Buber “bought this particular conception at a high price, namely, by a resolute disregard of those features in which an encounter with the concrete . . . loses the character of its concreteness” (169). See also Margolin, The Human Temple, 29–30.

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and not a spiritual element substantively connected to the object in which it resides. Man’s activity frees the spiritual element from the material object, which is the subject of man’s concerns only insofar as the Divine spark is found therein. This view on Scholem’s part emerges from the Kabbalistic myth of the breaking of the vessels and the falling of the holy sparks, which are the lights of the vessels, into the captivity of the material shells. Scholem’s understanding is that the world of matter is the shell, and that the sparks give life to the shell so long as they have not been redeemed. After the redemption of the sparks, there is no longer any need for matter as such; after the uncovering of the Divine, the value of the world of matter is nullified. As against the position of Scholem and Schatz, there are other Hasidic sources that do not display a sense of alienation between the spiritual and the material, to which Buber related in his response (“Interpreting Hasidism,” 223–224). For example, the identification of the taste of a given food with the Divine element therein and the freeing of the Divine Element in the food by attention to its taste, do not allow for an ontological alienation between the two elements, the spiritual and the material.30 So too the words of R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoyye, that “by means of the spirituality within the bread man shall live, for it [the bread] includes both material and spiritual . . . And through this we may understand, ‘Go and I shall show you where heaven and earth touch one another,’ ”31 indicate a basic connection between the spiritual and the material levels. Unlike Scholem, Buber thought that the realistic tendency within Hasidism, characteristic both of the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov and of his disciple R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoyye, rejected the spiritualistic outlook which assumes an alienation between the sparks and matter—that is, between God, or the Divine Element, and the world.32 According to him, the sparks were not understood by that tendency

30 Regarding this view see R. Elimelech of Lezhinsk, No’am Elimelekh, ed. G. Nigal ( Jerusalem, 1978), 617 (§15). 31 Tzofnat Pane’ah (op. cit., Ch. 8, n. 19), 72–73. 32 In comparing Hasidism and Zen Buddhism, Sufism and Franciscanism, Buber said: “But none of these movements was empowered by so enduring, vital, and intimate a connection to everyday life. One must immediately add that—in contrast to these other movements—the spiritual leaders of Hasidism were not monks: they were the leaders of communities composed of families . . . Hasidism firmly extends this hallowing to the natural and the social life. Here alone does the whole man, as God has created him, enter into the hallowing of the everyday” (Buber, “Interpreting Hasidism,” 221).

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as a spiritual element captive within matter, but as hidden therein.33 The raising up of the sparks, according to this approach, does not signify their being lifted along a vertical axis, leaving, so to speak, matter behind, but rather contact with them, through which they are elevated and strengthened, elevates matter as well. This position on Buber’s part stands out in the introduction to his book Be-Pardes ha-Hasidut,34 in which he notes that he is “unable to believe with simple, literal faith that which Hasidism teaches in wake of the late Kabbalah: namely, that in all things and in all objects there are captive sparks of the primeval Divine Essence.” He is able, however, to believe in what Hasidism taught him to believe; namely, “that Divine Being is concealed in things and objects, and that I am not allowed to feel this being save by true contact with them.” In my opinion, these remarks imply Buber’s tendency to reject the spiritualistic interpretation of raising up the sparks. Hence, the split between Scholem and Buber in their understanding of the Hasidic doctrine of sparks is tantamount to that between the words captive and concealed, and by extension between elevation and being lifted up. It follows that Scholem’s criticism, namely, that Buber is interested in the concrete for itself, is inexact, for Buber is interested in the material world only insofar as the Divine reality is concealed therein, and only insofar as man acts in the corporeal realm with a transformative tendency. For Buber, the redemption of the sparks is not simply “the enthusiasm for the concrete,” but rather an act that gives a new direction to the world with its materiality, enabling it to overcome the distance between the spheres of the secular and the holy, between matter and spirit. Against Buber’s metaphorical interpretation of the ”raising up of the sparks,” one needs to state that the predominant tendency in those 33 And he writes in “The Holy Way” (1918) as follows: “God may be seen seminally in all things . . . . the ineffable’s glory . . . glows dimly in all human beings” (109). Rather surprisingly, in her edition of Maggid Devarav le-Ya’akov, Rivka Schatz comments regarding the Maggid’s statement that Isaac made God present through the wells: “that is: through concentration upon the Divine element concealed in the wells, he raised up the Divinity—generally speaking found in them only in a latent sense—to activity and to spiritualization of the concrete” (11). In my opinion, it would be rather exaggerated to assume that the spiritualization of the concrete is intended to nullify it. It would be better to say that the intention was to draw upon it abundance from above to below, and that the realization of this abundance is not without a certain resemblance to Buber’s ideal of man’s realization of the Divine within the world (see I and Thou, 60–61; and my discussion above, Chapter 9.7). 34 Cf. above, Chapter 7.2.

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Hasidic sources that mention the sparks is to emphasize their captivity in the material world and their ascent to their source along a vertical axis, as Gellman claims with regard to the appearance of this doctrine in R. Yaakov Yosef (“Buber’s Blunder,” 27–30). But other typologies of tikkun in Hasidic sources also include the material dimension in the process of tikkun, entailing an attempt to incorporate the concrete world within the process of tikkun and the unification of the worlds. Hence, Gellman’s reading in the sources of R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoyye ignored a basic element in his doctrine—namely, the “transformation of matter into form”: And the supreme intention was that man make form out of matter, and become unified. There was thus need for all the mitzvot, even the material ones, such as tallit and tefillin and sukkah and lulav, in order to make corporeal matter into spiritual form. For at the time of the breaking of the vessels of the seven kings who died in the land of Edom, they fell and there was made from them the attribute of “shells,” and they needed to be mended and sifted out, and all the holiness within them to be whitened, and the dross, which were the shells, remained below . . . And thus ought one to intend whenever he performs any corporeal mitzvah, to uplift the sparks of holiness that are in the wool of the tallit and to make them spiritual; and similarly with the leather of the tefillin, and the house in which he studies [Torah]—he should intend to lift up the matter of the four elements. And regarding this it is said, “in all your ways shall you know Him” [Prov 3:6]. (Toldot Ya’akov Yosef, Introduction, 2d–3a)

How does the uplifting of the sparks from the tallit or the tefillin negate their concrete existence? Does one need to exchange ritual articles after the sparks therein have been raised up, since they have ceased to exist? Or is it possible to use them again? And does the uplifting of the four elements of matter in a home imply the negation of the house’s very existence in the concrete sense and its becoming divested of corporeality, or does one who studies Torah in his house perhaps lift the material nature of the house to a spiritual level—that is, convert matter to form—and unite the concrete house as it is with the spirit that rests therein as a result of study? It seems to me that this passage, dealing with the uplifting of the sparks of the house and the transformation of matter to form, ought to be understood as a change which occurs in the ontological state of the house, transforming it into a kind of sanctuary of the spirit. Yet, it seem to me that R. Yaakov Yosef mixed in his homily two typologies of Tikkun, which are related to two distinct and different states in reality, namely uplifting of the Sparks in the sense that Scholem

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understood it, and transforming matter to form, as Buber understood the doctrine of the uplifting of the sparks. The doctrine of the uplifting of the sparks is related directly to the issue of the breaking of the vessels, as a result of which lights and shells (kelipot), or good and evil, do not just co-exist, but are intertwined. This is the ontological state of our world, standing under the influence of the tree of good and evil. The nature of our world is not only dual in its character, but also contains the confusion between its dual members. To redeem the world from this state implies first and foremost to differentiate between its opposed components, that is, between good and evil, or more specifically between lights and shells. In this case the shells that are emptied from their source of life are nullified and destined to die. It should be emphasized that matter as such is not widely believed to be necessarily identified with shells, although some Kabbalistic and Hasidic homilies—as well as Gershom Scholem in his interpretation to the doctrine of the sparks—tend to believe so. This mistake is probably because matter is more likely to be associated with the shells due to its “thickness”, as opposed to the spirit. In fact, matter is essentially not a shell, but a manifestation or consolidation of the spirit. To split it from its spiritual origin means to drag it to the “kingdom of the shells”, whereas to grasp it in a spiritual context means to elevate it and transform it into form. In this respect I think that Buber was absolutely right in claiming that in Hasidism (and to my opinion, this is also the overall view in Kabbalah) matter in itself is not evil. Yet, he ignored the ontological state of the shells, which caused Kabbalists and Hasidim to be ambivalent in their relation to the concrete. The lurianic doctrine of Emanation clearly emphasizes, that shells exist in the spiritual worlds as well as in matter, though in diverse states of aggregation, just as evil in the Kabbalistic tradition exists in the spiritual worlds and not only in the concrete and underneath it. This is also made very clear in Sefer Hemdat Yamim, where it is stated, that eating different sorts of fruit in the Jewish festival Tu Bishvat (Fifteenth of Shvat) corresponds to the diverse relations between moah (brain, i.e., essence or light) and shells in the worlds beneath the supreme world of Atzilut; reflected in the world of nature. Shells, therefore, could be identified with matter, but they also transcend it from above and from below. Regarding the other doctrine of Tikkun presented in R. Yaakov Yosef’s homily, I would claim that it refers to a different doctrine of Emanation and mending, which may be called the mobility of the worlds,

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including the concrete. Here, worlds are ascending and descending in accordance with the phases of the day and year. For example, in the Lurianic tradition the worlds, including Olam Asiyah, are ascending in Kabalat Shabbat (the welcoming of the Shabbat) and in Shabbat, and are descending on Saturday night. Thus the Sekhinah too is ascending and descending in particular phases during the day, and so forth. In projecting this doctrine of Emanation (of the ascending and the descending of the worlds) on that of mending, it would seem that transforming matter into form has to be located in its framework. With a certain human approach, matter could be spiritualized to a certain degree, thereby elevating it towards the spirit. Equally, it can be pulled too much in its material aspect, thereby dragging it to the realm of the shells. In my opinion, both Scholem and Buber, have mixed the two doctrines, each in the opposite direction, creating by that onesidedness and confusion regarding the Hasidic attitude towards the concrete and its redemption. When R. Moshe Hayyim Efraim of Sudylkow, author of Degel Mahaneh Efraim, mentions the doctrine of sparks, he speaks of uplifting the sparks from their captivity in the Kabbalistic sense, as Scholem and Gellman understood it; but in the following homily, concerning the wood used in the Sanctuary, he cites in the name of the Baal Shem Tov an identical outlook to that of Buber concerning the unification of heaven and earth: “And you shall make the boards into a sanctuary, acacia trees standing up” [Exod 26:15]. In order to understand this, how it is applicable in the present time, very briefly: I received from my master, my grandfather of blessed memory for the life of the World to Come [i.e., the Baal Shem Tov], that the board is equivalent to a person. And to understand this, note that the letters of the word keresh (board) are the same as the letters of kesher (combination), and this alludes to man, who combines all worlds and unites them with one another. Therefore man must constantly connect himself and his thought to his Creator, and by this means the Holy One blessed be He and His Shekhinah and all the worlds are combined, and they combine and unite with one another.35 35 Degel Mahaneh Efraim (above, n. 25), 105; and compare Buber, “The Foundation Stone,” 85: “It is incumbent upon man to do all that he does with his intention directed to the unification of the highest divine being with its Shekina, which dwells in the world. But nowhere here, in contrast to all ascetic teaching that strives to surmount reality, is it intimated that the indwelling principle would draw itself out of the world; rather the unification of the separated means just the unification of God with the world, which continues to exist as world, only that it is now, just as world, redeemed.” Cf. Margolin, “Internalization of Religious Life,” 324–328.

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The analogy drawn here between the boards of the Sanctuary in the desert and the sanctuary that man builds by means of the combinations which he makes, indicates that R. Moshe Hayyim Efraim of Sudylkow’s intention was to unite the lower world with the upper world. This is so, because the earthy Sanctuary is the earthly dwelling place of the upper world. The building of the Sanctuary involves activity in the lower world combining all of the worlds to it in a single unity. Hence this Hasidic homily ought not to be interpreted in an allegorical way, referring to a transfer of events to the upper worlds alone. This is indicated by the continuation of this homily: And if, Heaven forbid, he connects and binds himself to foolishness and to vain things of this world that have no substance, and they are things which have an end and a limit, it is connected to falsehood [sheker, a third permutation of the letters of keresh and kesher], Heaven forbid, which is also composed from the letters of keresh.

Just as attaching oneself to words of foolishness and to the vanities of this world expresses a life of falsehood, as opposed to a life based on the principle of combination, similarly another type of behavior within this world, which has no connection to matters of foolishness and vanity, supports the principle of combination. The nature of man’s activity in the world determines whether we are dealing with the principle of kesher, combination, or that of sheker, falsehood. If a person chooses the attribute of inclusion, the Sanctuary is built, connecting above and below, heaven and earth. This homily expresses the opposite of the tendency to abandon the world, and is consistent with Buber’s words that “above and below are bound to one another.”36 The uniting, in R. Yaakov Yosef and in R. Moshe Hayyim Efraim, of that tendency which is somehow more alienated to the world of matter, as expressed in the doctrine of uplifting the sparks, together with the tendency to unite the upper and the lower, indicates the extent to which Hasidic sources are not internally consistent.37 The tension between the more realistic, world-affirming tendency, and the more spiritualistic

36 “Dialogue,” 15. On descriptions of inclusiveness in Buber’s dialogical thought, see above, Chapter 5.5. 37 On the lack of consistency among the Kabbalists and the existence of two different kinds of thinking alongside one another in one Kabbalist, see Idel, Hasidism, 51. Idel emphasized the lack of consistency in order to note especially the Hasidic tendency to gather ideas from many places, while here I wish to emphasize the internal struggle in relation to the attitude towards the world. It would seem that two voices struggled within the soul of R. Yaakov Yosef, and not only one, as thought by Gellman.

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one exists at times in the same thinker and not only, as Buber said, in distinct branches of Hasidism. Thus, while Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism does have some basis in the Hasidic sources, the raising of the ideas which he wished to emphasize amounts to a kind of a difficult birth within the Hasidic sources. In our case, which pertains to the issue of the attitude of Hasidim to the world of matter and to man’s mission therein, the birth of the ideas ascribing positive value to the material world is a particularly difficult one, and the Hasidic texts speak in several different voices.38 Another example of such a complex relationship appears in the homily of R. Baruch of Mezhibozh about the son of the hated wife.39 This homily expresses the complexity of the attitude to the material world in a unique way: And he [i.e., R. Baruch] interpreted this as referring to two aspects of Divine service. There is one who serves God through prayer and studying Torah alone, and this is the aspect of “the beloved one” . . . And there are Zaddikim who do so also in earthly matters, such as eating and drinking . . . and this is the attribute of “the hated one”. . . For the service of this zaddik in corporeal matters is considered in God’s eyes as being worth twice the service of the “beloved one.”40

This homily, on the one hand, expresses particular closeness to Buber’s position, in which unconditional preference is given to man’s spiritual project within this world (service in corporeality). The homily connects “service in corporeality” with the first-born son who is of the hated wife, thereby giving precedence to service in the corporeal world. This service is even deserving of double reward in comparison to Divine service through prayer. However, this type of service is perceived as “hated” in comparison to that service performed by the spirit alone. What is expressed in this homily is not love of the world, but rather a lofty obligation that leads to a double reward.

38 Perhaps this was what was meant by Gershon Scholem when he noted that “the Hasidic attitude was much more dialectical than it appears in Buber” (“Buber’s Conception of Judaism,” 169). 39 “If a man has two wives, one beloved and the other unloved, and both the beloved and the unloved have borne him sons, but the first-born is the son of the unloved—when he wills his property to his sons, he may not treat as first-born the son of the beloved one in disregard of the son of the unloved, who is the first-born. But he must accept the first-born, the son of the unloved one, and allot to him a double portion of all he possesses; since he is the first fruit of his vigor, the birthright is his due.” (Deut 21:15–17) 40 R. Baruch of Mezhibozh, Butzina de-Nehora ( Jerusalem, 1991), 24.

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III. The Place of the Doctrine of Matter and Form—Between “The Entire World is Filled With His Glory” and the Doctrine of Sparks The doctrine of sparks (nitzotzot) was greatly expanded in Hasidic sources. Offhand, one might derive from this an increasingly negative attitude towards the world, requiring augmented activity in the field of the Holy Sparks. However, this extension may be explained in a different way. The complex attitude of Hasidic thinkers towards the world of matter is a point of meeting between two extremes pulling in opposite directions. On the one pole is the ideal of raising up the sparks, expressing a more negative attitude towards the world of matter, as a result of a certain proximity between shells and matter, as noted before, while on the other extreme is the ideal of “the entire world is filled with His glory” [Isa 6:3], which is also very widespread in Hasidic sources. The principle that “the whole world is full of His glory” is an expression of astonishment at the appearance of the Godhead in the lower world and its expansion into its individual components,41 as well as astonishment at the Divine Wisdom and Providence as they are revealed in the world. The principle that “the whole world is full of His glory” confutes the negation of material existence, as it is impossible that amazement at God’s presence in the world be limited to amazement at the sparks alone. The principle, “the entire world is full of His glory,” implies a perception of the world as a garment for the Godhead and not merely a shell that comes to undermine the Divine intention in Creation. The concept of excitement from God’s presence in the world leaves no room for dichotomy between the Divine Element and matter itself, for matter as such bears witness to the fact that “no place is empty of Him.” It seems to me that the doctrine of matter and form, which is a different ideal than that of the doctrine of the sparks, is to be located somewhere between the doctrine of hitpa’alut (amazement at God’s presence in the world) and that of the doctrine of sparks. The distinction between both doctrines—that of amazement and that of matter and form—

41 See the remarks of the Rabbi of Liady, quoted in Elior’s paper, “Between Renewal and Change,” 35: “It is known that He, may He be blessed, fills all worlds and surrounds all worlds and extends over all worlds like the soul within the body, that extends into all the organs of the body. And everything which there is in the world, there is within them the life-force of the Creator, blessed be He, and all the worlds are His bodies, may He be blessed . . . and one should turn his attention to this, that the world is the body, and within it is the Shekhinah, like a soul to the body.” (R. Shneur Zalman of Liady, Ma’amrei Admor ha-Zaken ha-Ketzarim [Brooklyn, 1986], 146–148).

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and the doctrine of sparks lies in the fact that in amazement at God’s presence and in transformation of matter to form matter is elevated, whereas in raising or lifting up of the sparks the sparks are elevated. And the difference between the amazement at God’s presence in the world and the doctrine of transformation of matter to form is that the first is somehow a-priori, while the second has to be created by man. Returning to the homily of R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoyye, the fact that both doctrines—of the sparks and of matter and form—appear in a single homily without any separation between them indicates the extent to which the Hasidic worldview is a complex one. The fact that both doctrines appear in R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoyye in a single homily without any separation between them indicates the extent to which the Hasidic worldview was a complex one. I claim that, in practice, Buber interpreted the doctrine of sparks from within that of matter and form. As I observed earlier (pp. 234–239), Buber posited a relationship between the doctrine of sparks and the ideal of uniting heaven and earth as reflected in his understanding of the saying about Enoch as cobbler, who with every stitch united the Holy One blessed be He and His Shekhinah. This relation led him to state that: Everything wants to be hallowed, to be brought into the holy, everything worldly in its worldliness . . . everything wants to become a sacrament. The creature, the things seek us out on our paths; what comes to meet us on our way needs us for its way. “With the floor and the bench” shall one pray; they want to come to us, everything wants to come to us, everything wants to come to God through us. (“Symbolic Existence,” 181)

The contrast between the ideal of the sparks and that of “the whole world is full of His glory” is the contrast between captive in matter, as Scholem argued, and concealed in matter, whereas the ideal of transformation of matter into form does not suffice with declaring the revelation of the Godhead within the earthly world, but seeks to turn the raw material of reality, that is likely to be manifested as evil, into a spiritual form without negating its existence.

AFTERWORD My goal in this book has been to examine the mystical elements in Martin Buber’s thought as a whole, and in so doing to identify the direction of development of his mystical thought: namely, from that which emphasizes the experience of the individual and his unifying activity in the ground of the soul, to mysticism which is also ethos. By “mysticism which is also ethos,” I refer to a mystical life that combines inner unity with close attachment with the others, and the behavioral implications of this attachment. This direction in Buber may be described as transition from a mysticism that leaves the given situation of life, bound by space and time (introverted mysticism) to one that takes place within them (extroverted mysticism). I referred to this mysticism of Buber’s as mysticism of life, and the realm within which it takes place as the mystery of the earth. Compared with the descriptions of mystics from the pre-modern period, Buber’s mysticism is easier to comprehend: Buber lived in a critical age, and therefore sought to describe his personal experiences and his world-view with the greatest possible exactitude, without saying too much.1 This was in contradistinction to mystics of earlier times, whose enthusiastic descriptions make it difficult to engage in a precise phenomenological exploration of their words. Moreover, the experience of these earlier mystics was mixed with theosophical reflections, making it difficulty to distinguish between theoretical views which were inherited as part of a received tradition and their own personal experiences. Buber’s a priori lack of commitment to traditional sources, his modernity, and his wish to be precise in his descriptions, facilitates a more exact examination of the experiential element in his thought. I examined Buber’s mysticism in terms of several models, from which it followed that Buber’s outlook is transformatory, and relates to the creation of states of unity, both within the soul, between man and others, and between heaven and earth. In the second part of the book I examined the path leading from Hasidic sources to Buber’s thought. The unity of the two parts of the

1

Bergman, “Conversations with Buber,” 143.

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book lies in the fact that what I attempted to show in the first part in a phenomenological way (i.e., Buber’s mysticism), is a direct consequence of the paths by which he internalized Hasidic principles, as described in the second half of the book. Buber’s thought may be seen as the sequel to an existing tendency in Hasidism to impose the essence of Kabbalah (that is, of theosophic and transcendent mysticism) on man’s life and his path towards God. Such mysticism, referred to by Buber as realistic and active mysticism, tends towards the establishing of contact with God within the given states of life. In this sense, Buber’s thought constitutes an additional stage in the growth and extension of Jewish mystical spirituality. His innovation lies in drawing a distinction between ecstatic, other-worldly mysticism and mysticism which occurs in the concrete states of life; a distinction between the mystery of the heavens and the mystery of the “here and now”—and this, in an uncompromising way not found in Hasidic sources. The distinction drawn by Buber was a result of his “conversion” during the early 1910’s (above, Chapter 4). This led him to give up on the quest for ecstatic states outside of the known world, as well as to forego the possibility of enjoying the spirit and moods of the soul which emerged during the course of his spiritual experiments. Buber’s thought extends between these two poles—of transcendent reality and of psychological reality. His system expresses a path of self-realization based upon altruistic psychological states that are inherent in the potential of the human I (the “innate Thou” in I and Thou, 78), and which one is meant to realize in his contact with others. These states were articulated by Buber in a structured way, and he characterized them repeatedly in his later writings from various points of view and contexts. Buber’s dialogical thought unites with his outlook regarding the mystery of the earth in such a way that the entry into the dialogical field is also the entry into the realm of mystery in which space is more than space and time is more than time (Daniel, 53); a field in which the laws of the given reality withdraw to the margins of the occurrence. This is the field of the secret of dialogue, which one is not to enter without dialogue, and in which dialogue implies contact with the mystery. In this field, the I, the Thou, the Eternal Thou, and Divine Grace are

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united,2 and the given world so to speak melts away in this unification (I and Thou, 82). Throughout the course of the history of Jewish spirituality, the realm of the mystery of the earth has never been fashioned in such a profound and detailed way as it was by Buber. As I have stated, I see Buber’s dialogical thought as transferring the Kabbalistic notion of “face to face,” with all its ethical implications, into the earthly realm.3 Any spiritual experience—whether mystical or philosophical—that does not realize the direct, earthly dimension of face to face is, according to Buber, a perpetuation of the imperfection embedded in Creation—a fault that Buber saw embedded in the chasm that exists between things in the world, and between them and God. Any mysticism or philosophy that does not make this distinction is barren, as it does not touch upon the very heart of the meaning of human life and of life in the world. By rooting the attribute of face to face (I and Thou) in concrete states of life, through means of the common activity of man and of the Divine Grace, expression is given to supreme activism on the part of man (I and Thou, 58–62) through which, similar to the Kabbalistic sources, it gives birth—that is, it brings about a new spiritual creation within the concrete realm (ibid., 60–61). Buber continues that attitude in Hasidism that criticizes those who study esoteric teachings, on the basis of the view that the realm of the secret is not subject to intellectual or theoretical reduction, but is based upon personal experience that occurs on another plane.4 That is, there is a profound gap between speaking, reading and having knowledge of the secrets, and entering into the realm in which the event itself takes place.5 Knowledge of this type, both within the realm of the revealed

2 “Relationship is reciprocity. My Thou acts on me as I act on it. Our students teach us, our works form us. The ‘wicked’ become a revelation when they are touched by the sacred basic word. How are we educated by children, by animals! Inscrutably involved, we live in the currents of universal reciprocity.” (I and Thou, 67). 3 Above, Ch. 8.5 & 10.1. 4 Scholem, “Devekut or Communion with God,” 218. 5 See his interpretation of Hasidism: “This holds particularly for that sphere of religious life within which Hasidism is one of the great historic manifestations. One is accustomed to call this sphere mysticism; but for the sake of clarity it must be pointed out that what is in question here is not speculations detached from human experience, speculations, perhaps, about the relation between God and the world by means of divine maintains, but a teaching that is grounded in human experience and that is solely concerned with the happenings between man and God” (“The Foundation

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and within that realm referred to as “secret,” belongs to the realm of the It—that is, they do not contain the element of directness of face to face, and hence do not bring man into this realm of mystery. The descriptions of mixing and inclusion of the I and the Thou in the sense of face to face, and life lived in the realm of the mystery of the earth, are what transforms Buber’s thought into mysticism. The assertion that mysticism is a central pillar in Buber’s dialogical world-view in no sense detracts from the dialogical principle or from its great contribution to modern thought, which places man as its starting point and in its center. Nor does this assertion contradict the fact that man occupies the central place in Buber’s dialogical thought. To the contrary: it gives far broader and deeper significance to Buber’s religious humanism by granting the seal of the hidden to the dialogical principle, and by joining the secret with secular life. The joining of the mystical component with the dialogical principle is one way of interpreting the verse, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord” (Lev 19:18). From this position Buber can say, “Above and below are bound to one another. The word of him who wishes to speak with men without speaking with God is not fulfilled; but the word of him who wishes to speak with God without speaking with men goes astray” (“Dialogue,” 15). Buber’s dialogical thought is a mysticism of life experienced within the concrete life. It draws upon the flowing of two streams into one ingathering of water, and from the rejection of two other streams. The ingathering is based, on the one hand, on Jewish mysticism in its Hasidic garb, as Buber understood its message, and on the other hand on modern Western thought, which places man in the center, and in particular on the anti-rationalistic tendencies therein. The synthesis of these components creates a genre of mystical life which resides within life. This is a mysticism that is “sweetened,” softened, a mysticism of the integrated personality, without abnegation of the self nor of that which exists, but rather of its affirmation. Even though it rejected the conclusions of rationalism and limited its influence, it internalized it in its rejection of magic, in its rejection of the type of extreme psychological states which might perhaps be referred to as “mystical insanity,” and in respond-

Stone,” 62). And cf. his remarks in I and Thou: “But it is not experiences alone that bring the world to man. . . . And all this is not changed by adding ‘mysterious’ experiences to ‘manifest’ ones, self-confident in the wisdom that recognizes a secret compartment in things, reserved for the initiated, and holds the key. O mysteriousness without mystery, O piling up of information! It, it, it!” (I and Thou, 55–56).

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ing to rationalism and to philosophy with their own tools. It likewise rejected Indian mysticism and medieval Christian mysticism, insofar as they were world-rejecting, in favor of the mysticism of “service in corporeality.” Just as modern philosophy, from Descartes on, was innovative in that it placed the question of man at the center of its thought, making it its point of departure; just as secularism emerged to protest against the conflict between religion and life; just as modern Hebrew poetry and literature turned their gaze towards man’s authentic life in this world; and just as the accomplishments of modern science derived from man’s turning his face towards this world—so too did mysticism develop in the form of the mysticism of life. Buber is one representative of it and one of the heralds of a new Jewish spirituality. A life of faith with the mystery (“The Prejudices of Youth,” 49) and “giving oneself to the unknown” (“Spirit and Body”) are thus an inseparable part of Buber’s thought. I would like to conclude with a quotation from Buber that unites the theme of responsibility for the world with the inner unity of the soul, and both of these with the principle of this mystery of the earth. These remarks were made by Buber in a lecture given at a conference of teachers in Tel Aviv in 1939, from which it follows that the realm of the secret is not a matter for adults alone, but that awareness of its existence and life based upon it are an important component in the education of the “great character” of an adolescent: In spite of all similarities every living situation has, like a new-born child, a new face, that has never been before and will never come again. It demands of you a reaction . . . It demands presence, responsibility; it demands you. I call a great character one who by his actions and attitudes satisfies the claim of situations out of deep readiness to respond with his whole life, and in such a way that the sum of his actions and attitudes expresses at the same time the unity of his being in its willingness to accept responsibility. As his being is unity, the unity of accepted responsibility, his active life, too, coheres into unity. (“The Education of Character,” 114) He who knows inner unity, the innermost life of which is mystery, learns to honour the mystery in all its forms. In an understandable reaction against the former domination of a false, fictitious mystery, the present generations are obsessed with the desire to rob life of all its mystery. The fictitious mystery will disappear, the genuine one will rise again. A generation which honours the mystery in all its forms will no longer be deserted by eternity. Its light seems darkened only because the eye suffers from a cataract; the receiver has been turned off, but the resounding ether has not ceased to vibrate.” (ibid., 116–117)

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INDEX OF NAMES

Abraham Yehoshua Heshel of Apt 322 Abulafia, Aabraham 15 Agnon, Shmuel Yosef 132, 141, 182 Akiva Ben Yosef 261 Al-Ghazali 21 Ashlag Yehudah Leib 25, 211, 217, 277, 278 Augustine 21 Baeck, Leo 14 Barth, Karl 6 Baruch of Kossov 307 Baruch of Mezhibozh 360 Barzilai, David 4, 9, 10, 42–44, 99, 100, 133, 194, 199, 270, 275 Ben Azzai 261 Bergman, Samuel Hugo 9, 14, 16–20, 33, 85, 110, 130, 148, 149, 161, 164, 208, 228, 247, 336, 347, 363 The Besht (R, Israel Baal Shem Tov) 1, 5, 18, 36, 40, 41, 70, 93, 95, 105, 107, 109, 148, 149, 168, 173, 178, 179, 188, 195, 202, 206, 207, 210, 221, 223–227, 239, 241, 247, 252–256, 259, 277, 279, 286, 287, 289, 298, 304, 306, 316, 219, 327, 339, 340, 345, 346, 349–351, 354, 358 Boehme, Jacob 2, 15, 35, 37, 38 Bouyer, Louis 13, 44–46 Buddha 8 Cohen, Hermann 6, 321 David ibn Zimra 96 Descartes, René 367 Dilthey, Wilhelm 2, 26, 37, 40, 50, 112, 113 Dionysus 46, 77, 166, 167 Dov Baer of Mezhirech (Maggid of Mezhirech) 95, 324, 344, 345, 347, 349 Dupré, Louis 4, 13, 21, 45, 50, 82, 87, 157, 174, 182, 197, 251 Ebner, Ferdinand 275 Eckhart, Meister 15, 37, 69, 79, 84, 153, 157, 167

Elijah de Vidas 331, 332 Elimelech of Lezhinsk 354 Elior Rachel 202, 204, 231, 361 Etkes, Immanuel 253, 346 Feuerbach, Ludwig 50, 89, 100, 177 Friedman, Maurice 70, 83, 91, 117, 118, 127–129, 131, 133, 134, 141, 187, 191 Gellman, Yehuda 189, 205, 215, 262, 346, 353, 356, 358, 359 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von- 207, 244 Gottlieb, Ephraim 156, 158 Götzinger, Catarina 74 Green, Arthur 74, 262, 276 Gries, Zeev 95, 96, 97, 108, 199, 210, 256, 315, 332 Hai Gaon 65, 66 Hart Heinrich 2 Hart Julius 2 Hayyim Haykl of Amdur 262 Hayyim of Sanz 217, 218 Heraclitus 39 Heschel Abraham Yehoshua 22 Holzman, Gitit 26 Horowitz Isaiah 108 Horwitz, Rivka 19, 37, 130, 225, 275 Idel, Moshe 21, 25, 26, 161, 166, 173, 189, 190, 204, 226, 231, 234, 239, 240, 248, 281–283, 346, 359 Inge, William R. 26, 44 Isaac of Acre 156, 158, 331, 322 Jacoby, Friedrich 100 Jesus 96, 105, 106, 107, 320, 323 Jung, Carl 64 Kant, Immanuel 2, 37, 63, 66, 94, 114, 215 Katz, Steven 7, 8, 189, 346 Kaufmann, Walter xiii, 9, 39, 132, 134, 135, 148, 149, 155, 158, 159, 182 Kierkegaard, Søren 333 Kook, Abraham Isaac 7, 277

388

index of names

Kosman Admiel 227 Kurzweil, Zvi 132 Landauer, Gustav 72, 99, 100 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 38 Levi, Isaac from Berdichev 319 Liebes, Esther 307, 308 Liebes, Yehuda 96, 172, 201, 316, 328 Luria, Issac (the Ari) 15, 58, 62, 70, 71, 96, 211, 212, 240, 262, 264, 277, 278, 281, 282, 286, 288, 294, 317, 348, 357, 358 Luther, Martin 321 Luzzatto, Moshe Hayyim (Ramhal) 262–264 Maeterlinck, Maurice 54 Maimonides (Moses Ben Maimon) 15, 25, 58, 66, 107, 251, 252, 254, 322 Marcion 334 Maréchal, Joseph 23, 24, 44, 69, 130, 148, 170 Margolin Ron 340, 350, 353, 358 Mauthner, Fritz 19 McGinn, Bernard 21, 44 Menahem Mendel Barr 248, 249, 256 Menahem Mendel of Peremyshlany 243 Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk 228 Mendes-Flohr, Paul 2, 9, 12, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 52–54, 60, 70, 72, 99–101, 111–113 115, 117, 123, 127, 196, 198, 199, 222, 275 Moor, Peter 21 Mordecai of Neshiz 218 Moshe Cordovero 278, 281, 282, 289, 315 Moshe of Kobrin 345 Moshe Hayyim Efraim of Sudylkow 173, 223, 351, 352, 358, 359 Nahman of Breslav 74, 76, 84, 89, 93, 109, 128, 206, 276, 282, 339, 345, 347–349 Nahman of Kossov 252–255, 265 Nahmanides (Moshe Ben Nachman) 251 Nicholas of Cusa 3, 15, 35, 38, 39 Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm 2, 16, 37, 39, 40, 83 Olsen, Regina 333 Oppenheim, Michael Origen 46

247, 271

Orpheus 77, 83, 105, 167 Otto, Görke 96 Otto, Rudolf 45, 48, 55 Pachter, Mordechai 210, 216 Paracelsus 140 Paul (Saul of Tarsus) 65, 66 Pedaya, Haviva 45 Philo 20, 172 Piekarz, Mendel 25, 74, 248 Pinhas of Koretz 317, 345 Plato 91, 104, 109, 315, 331, 335 Plotinus 48, 89, 130, 180 Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite 39, 45, 62, 174 Ramakrishna 81, 86, 90 Raphael of Bershad 317 Rosenzweig, Franz 6, 275 Rotenberg, Mordechai 278 Rotenstreich, Nathan 159 Ruysbroeck, John of- 54–56, 60, 83, 103, 104 Sack, Bracha 281, 282 Schaeder, Grete 15, 187, 195, 203, 204, 206, 207 Schatz (Uffenheimer), Rivka 74, 200, 215, 257, 260, 262, 266, 283, 339, 340–342, 349, 350, 354, 355 Scholem, Gershom xii, 2, 9, 10, 11, 14–19, 21, 22, 25, 37, 41, 43, 51, 74, 97, 108, 128, 134, 135, 164, 189, 191, 192, 199, 200–205, 208, 215, 216, 223, 234, 247, 248, 255, 260, 263, 266, 269, 275, 283, 286, 339–342, 344–347, 349, 350, 352–358, 360, 362, 365 Schweid, Eliezer 21 Shapira, Avraham 18, 41, 42, 72, 99, 100, 116, 129, 130, 136, 278 Sharabi, Shalom 96 Shneur Zalman of Liady 361 Silesius, Angelus 79 Simon, Ernst 10, 14, 15, 74, 134, 135, 136, 196 Socrates 26, 93 Soloveitchik, Joseph Dov Ber 277, 278 Spinoza 254, 287–293, 325, 326, 348 Stace, Walter T. 8, 12, 14, 16, 22, 24, 45, 47–49, 51, 62, 67, 69, 80, 81, 84, 86–89, 90, 92–95, 101, 103, 125, 135, 150, 155, 174, 182, 183, 265 Steiner, Rudolf 75, 164, 205, 284

index of names Tishny, Isaiah

262, 263

Uffenheimer, Binyamin 22, 46, 47, 66, 74, 77, 81, 90–92, 167, 168 Underhill, Evelyn 7, 16, 24, 48, 49, 69, 80, 89, 94, 130, 162, 180 Weiss, Joseph 74, 96, 240, 250–252, 255–257, 259, 260, 262, 267, 269, 276, 328, 344, 345, 352 Wolfson, Elliot 9, 20, 33, 34, 35

389

Yaakov Yitzchak from P’shischa (“the holy Yehudi”) 231 Yaakov Yitzchak “the seer” of Lublin Yaakov Yosef of Polonoyye 58, 95, 215, 223, 252, 257, 261, 262, 264–268, 340, 345, 347, 349, 352, 354, 356, 357, 359, 362 Yassour Avraham 196, 199 Yehiel Michel of Zlotchov 345 Zaehner, Robert Charles 48, 157, 183

21, 22, 24,

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Above and below 58, 105, 137, 209, 216–218, 335, 357, 359, 366 Abundance 61, 79, 106, 219, 226, 236, 309, 312, 332, 348, 349, 355 Acosmism (acosmic) 352, 353

21, 223, 334, 350,

Active (activity) xii, 2, 13, 15, 16, 17, 26, 34, 38–40, 58, 74, 76, 81–84, 91, 93, 94, 99, 104, 109–113, 117, 150, 154, 156, 161, 162, 165, 169, 175, 180, 196, 199, 212, 216, 217, 219, 223–227, 230, 231, 233, 241, 249, 252–255, 257, 258, 259, 262, 264, 265, 267–279, 281, 285, 301, 304–307, 309, 310, 318, 332, 333, 340, 341, 352–355, 358, 360, 363, 365, 367 Active and passive 40, 176, 318, 339 Activistic mysticism 18–20, 85, 93, 148, 149, 179, 223, 224, 226, 227, 241, 302, 364 Via Aactiva 74, 132 Amazement

362

Attachment (cleaving, communion, devekut) 49, 90, 97, 142, 210, 247, 248, 249, 252, 253, 256, 257, 261, 265–267, 269, 270, 273, 275, 291, 299, 317–319, 330, 344, 364 To God 25, 96, 97, 125, 188, 232, 243, 247, 248, 250–255, 257–261, 264, 265, 266, 267, 270, 275, 326, 340, 348 To ones fellow 96, 102, 260, 261, 330 Buber, biography “Conversion” 17, 18, 41, 42, 72, 101–107, 111, 112, 114, 116, 124, 161, 172, 221, 272, 277, 345, 349 The dialogical period 1, 9, 11, 14, 17, 19, 23, 31, 34, 35, 38, 55, 63, 64, 72, 80, 86, 97, 112, 114, 115, 124, 133, 142, 144, 149–151, 158,

241, 245, 262, 275, 279, 299, 318, 321 The existentialist period 9, 34, 35, 55, 133 The mystical period 9–11, 15, 18, 24, 31, 33, 34, 37, 38, 40–42, 44, 47, 52, 54–56, 60, 62–65, 78, 85, 97, 99, 107, 111, 128, 129, 133 Three periods 9, 19, 32, 34, 35 Concentration 46, 132, 139–141, 153, 162, 163, 167, 168, 176, 182, 183, 199, 255, 307–309, 318, 355 Contraction (limitation, Tzimtzum) 17, 170, 188, 229, 278, 279, 281, 282, 286, 288–290, 294, 303, 305–309, 311, 312, 314 Dialogue xii, 4, 12, 13, 33, 34, 102, 124–126, 136, 138, 139, 141, 142, 197, 225, 230, 233, 258, 301, 322, 328, 330, 364 between heaven and earth 151, 328 between God and man 217, 227, 231, 289, 301 Dialogue and love 318, 335, 336 Dialogue and mysticism 10, 11, 13, 14, 18, 42, 112, 116, 126–128, 132, 134, 151, 152, 158, 159, 168, 245, 248, 258, 291, 296 The secret (mystery) of dialogue x, 12, 43, 104, 245, 364 direction 42, 55, 67, 75, 77, 82, 83, 87, 88, 106, 129, 132, 142, 234, 236, 238–241, 267, 305, 307, 308, 337 directionless 82, 236, 237, 304, 306, 307, 345 Vortex (confusion) – direction 33, 42, 69, 72, 73, 99, 129 Duality 20, 33, 34, 36, 38–42, 54, 71, 73–76, 78, 84, 86, 123, 131, 135, 140, 147, 150, 157, 159, 160, 163, 166, 167, 169, 170, 180, 194, 236,

index of subjects 285, 290, 294, 295, 298, 335, 336, 341 Ecstasy 22, 23, 25, 31, 34, 37, 41, 46, 47, 52, 53, 56–65, 69–71, 76, 77–79, 83, 88, 90, 92, 102, 104, 105, 112, 125, 128, 135, 150, 152, 153, 159, 160, 167, 168, 226, 248, 290, 298 apathetic ecstasy 81 destructive ecstasy 46, 47, 61, 66, 71, 77, 124, 167 Integrative ecstasy 91 Internalized ecstasy 46, 47, 91 moderate ecstasy 158, 164, 165, 168 Ecstasy of the integrated personality 46, 47, 90 embrace (encompassing) 24, 31, 61, 62, 67, 107, 129, 131, 135, 141, 143, 144, 148, 155–161, 167, 172, 174, 176–178, 234, 235, 237, 240, 249, 277, 282, 306, 307, 317–319, 325, 334 Empty space (void, vacuum, Halal hapanuy) 25, 76, 188, 281, 282, 301, 317, 318, 324 Enthusiasm (hitlahavut) 25, 31 45, 102, 126, 134, 248, 350, 355 Exile

106, 222, 228–232, 234, 317

Eros 139, 155–157, 169, 201, 315, 318, 320, 325, 326, 328, 334–338 Face to face xi, 66, 188, 243, 260, 271–273, 285, 295, 298, 317, 318, 324, 329, 365, 366 Form (matter and form) 25, 225, 226, 261, 264, 271, 308, 313, 340, 356, 357, 360, 361, 453 Fusion

176, 221, 326, 345

Gnosticism (gnosis) 16, 56, 93, 110, 149, 187, 207, 208, 227, 247, 283, 284, 343, 344, 346, 347, 348, 349 Godhead 36, 38, 39, 79, 92, 129, 153, 229, 281, 283, 284, 288, 289, 311, 360, 361 Elohim 229, 231, 289

391

Grace 45, 49, 80, 86, 175, 176, 183, 226, 231–233, 303, 304, 306, 325, 327, 365, 366 “Greatness and Smallness” 58, 74, 188, 189, 216 “Greatness” 217, 348 “Smallness” 217, 296, 301, 309 Hasid (Hasidim) 3, 4, 6, 59, 196, 198, 199, 218, 221, 224, 254, 262, 275277, 298, 327, 357, 360 Hasidic master (Zaddik) 58, 74, 83, 95, 96, 104, 196, 216, 218, 247, 266, 271, 275, 276, 277, 312, 327, 341, 360 Individuation

35, 36, 38, 40, 152, 303

Identity 25, 48, 67, 78, 81, 87, 94, 115, 157, 160, 250, 336 Identity in difference 87, 89, 94, 127, 142, 150, 174, 176, 226, 338 The I 12, 38, 40, 44, 50, 53, 58, 61–63, 65–67, 76, 80, 85, 87, 89, 90, 105, 107, 114–116, 120, 122, 125, 128, 129, 135–142, 144, 145, 149–152, 158–163, 165, 166, 167, 170, 173, 175, 176, 178, 179, 183, 194, 198, 217, 226, 228, 233, 241, 244, 249, 294, 298, 299, 300, 323, 325 The I’s negation 24, 39, 77, 81, 128, 157, 164, 170 The self 22, 31, 57, 61, 64, 66, 120, 123, 128, 129, 140, 152, 165, 166, 199, 229, 289, 299, 303 The self ’s (ab) negation 57, 92, 124, 128, 366 The self ’s extension 137, 138, 163 I-It 40, 104, 119, 120, 160, 162, 163, 166, 174, 189, 214, 216, 217, 236, 247, 248, 297, 300, 335 I-Thou relation 35, 86, 90, 113–115, 119–121, 131, 137, 141, 142, 155, 158–160, 165, 167–170, 172–175, 181, 188, 194, 226, 235, 243, 247–249, 251, 255, 258, 260, 263, 266, 271–273, 275, 277–279, 284, 297, 299, 301, 315, 317, 318, 322, 323, 325, 326, 335, 337, 348, 364

392

index of subjects

The eternal Thou 49, 87, 90, 116, 150, 151, 167, 170, 171, 173–177, 181, 213, 214, 228, 231–233, 250, 272, 307, 330, 331, 333, 364 The Thou 35, 54, 87, 111, 114, 115, 121, 122, 131, 137, 141, 144, 150, 151, 155, 157, 164–175, 181, 182, 194, 213–215, 219, 226, 232, 243, 249, 255, 258, 263, 271–273, 297–302, 306, 307, 315, 317, 321–326, 333, 337, 364, 366 immersion

58, 84, 141, 167

inclusivensess (inclusive) 6, 87, 137, 171, 172, 173, 214, 242, 336, 340, 359 The indwelling of God (the Shekhinah) 71, 72, 79, 93, 199, 212, 222, 227–235, 239, 240, 241, 245, 262, 288, 317, 325, 358, 361, 362 infinite

54, 64, 76, 80, 209, 229

243, 254, 283–285, 290, 304–307, 312, 313–315, 319, 327, 341, 346, 348, 365 Light 41, 57, 79, 88, 101, 104, 106, 115, 138, 169, 174, 177, 179–182, 196, 203, 215, 217, 230, 237, 253, 255, 281–283, 285, 289, 297, 304, 305, 307–313, 337, 348, 351–354, 357, 367 Enlighten 84, 104, 156, 162, 168 Illumination 23, 46, 48, 49, 77, 102, 179, 180–182, 242, 253, 271, 281, 289, 311, 353 Light and vessel 283, 310 Love (beloved, lover) xiii, 4, 6, 15, 17, 40, 55, 58, 61–63, 67, 70, 80, 81, 93–97, 103, 107, 108, 112, 124, 139, 157, 178, 181, 195, 199, 202, 212, 213, 215, 224, 233, 243, 249, 251, 252, 265–268, 272, 280, 285, 289, 292, 295, 308, 315–338, 351, 360, 366

inner experience (Erlibniss) 12, 17, 24, 26, 40, 44, 50, 52–57, 60, 61, 78, 79, 100, 111–127, 131, 141, 151, 152, 276, 322

mending (tikkun) 41, 226, 236, 237, 258–260, 262, 263, 267, 270, 295, 301, 306, 308, 317, 318, 338, 356, 357, 358

intention (kavanah) 125, 163, 188, 208, 216, 219, 239, 240, 256, 269, 300, 310, 312, 327, 348, 355–357, 360

Mystery (secret) x, 4, 9, 12, 19, 34, 45, 65, 75, 79, 86, 88, 101, 102, 104, 106, 107, 110, 140, 142, 145, 153, 156, 160, 163, 178, 182, 203, 212, 227, 229, 234, 239–245, 264, 276, 295, 303, 304, 318, 326–330, 348, 351, 364–367 Of the earth (lower mystery) 20, 104, 107, 110, 111, 179, 210, 228, 241, 242, 244, 245, 363–367 Of the heaven (upper mystery) 104, 106, 107, 111, 241, 242, 364

Kabbalah xi, xii 3, 11, 17, 25, 54, 56, 79, 173, 190, 198, 203, 207, 209, 226, 229, 234, 271, 272, 281, 284, 285, 304, 305, 349, 355, 357 Lurianic Kabbalah 58, 211, 212, 213, 262, 281, 348, 349 Kabbalah and Ethos 57, 93, 208, 283, 284, 346, 347 Kabbalah and Gnosis 187, 343, 344, 349 Kabbalah and Hasidism 21, 187, 189, 190, 209, 212, 239, 240, 247, 272, 280, 283, 294, 301, 315, 316, 344, 347–349 Theosophic Kabbalah 20, 56, 208, 284, 364 Knowledge (knowing) 4, 16, 44, 45, 49, 69, 77, 80, 83, 89, 110, 111, 113, 130, 145, 148, 149, 152, 153, 156, 161, 174, 181, 191, 200, 201, 206,

Mysticism Buber’s attitude towards mysticism xi, 17, 18, 72, 73, 101, 147, 168, 225, 287 Buber’s mysticism 1, 11, 12, 15–22, 24, 31–33, 37, 39, 42, 43, 50, 65, 77, 78, 85, 127, 128, 130–132, 136, 143, 150, 179, 183, 205, 363, 364, 365, 366, 367 Ecstatic mysticism 9, 54, 75, 291 Extroverted mysticism 47, 49, 86, 92, 93, 95, 127, 135, 150, 245, 364

index of subjects Introverted mysticism 47, 62, 86, 87, 94, 95, 101 Jewish mysticism xi, 14, 17, 21, 37, 56, 57, 71, 72, 75, 366 Love mysticism xiii, 157, 249, 272, 317 Mysticism and dialogue 11, 12, 18, 101, 126, 127, 166, 168, 169, 248 Mysticism and ethics 92, 144, 233, 346, 347, 364 Mysticism and inner experience 17, 27, 100, 112, 115, 125 Mysticism of life xiii, 20, 179, 245, 364, 365, 367 Mysticism and prophecy 22, 23, 44, 50, 168 Nature mysticism 48, 244 Negative mysticism 53, 60, 61, 90, 147–149, 248, 344, 366 Positive mysticism 53, 59, 60, 147, 148, 345 Realistic and activistic mysticism 18–20, 85, 93, 148, 149, 223–227, 241 World mysticism 21, 79, 143, 170, 364, 367 Myth xi, 1, 36, 108, 109, 111, 198, 199, 235, 244, 295, 315, 354 Myth and mysticism 73, 74, 108–110, 145 “The new society” 39, 40 The One (oneness) 48, 61, 69, 86, 87, 106, 130, 150, 170, 239, 240, 241, 255 The Other (otherness) 122, 123, 280, 303, 320–322, 335, 336–338 Pantheism 25, 90, 207, 214, 223, 290, 291, 326, 350, 352 Partzufim (devine faces or configurations) 206, 209, 211, 271, 296, 348 Passive 40, 74, 80, 156, 179, 176, 254, 306, 311, 318, 339, 340 Via Passiva 74, 311 Power(s) 4, 5, 17, 25, 46, 47, 57, 58, 60, 61, 64, 73–75, 77, 79, 80–83, 88, 102, 107, 111, 114, 115, 121, 132, 140, 142, 156, 157, 165, 178, 197–205, 225, 221, 230, 234, 236–238, 240, 242–244, 249, 261,

393

267, 272, 276, 277, 283, 289, 305, 307, 311, 312, 317, 318, 321, 327, 334, 335, 337, 339, 354 Creative power 225, 226, 228, 229, 308 Powerless 34, 210 Presence 6, 69, 86, 102, 111, 116, 120, 121, 128, 130–132, 143, 166, 177, 179, 180, 196, 214, 225, 271, 313, 321, 322, 325, 361, 367 God’s (Divine) presence 4, 7, 23, 44, 159, 172, 176, 207, 212, 214, 218, 224, 226, 228, 230, 231, 251, 307, 309, 312, 353, 360, 361, 362 Prophecy 22, 23, 44, 46, 47, 50, 66, 91, 132, 158, 168, 225, 313 Prophetic ecstasy (visions, revelation, trance) 22, 46, 47, 50, 65, 92 Quietism

57, 74, 79, 340

Redemption 2, 41, 58, 71, 84, 108, 212, 222, 230–238, 240, 255, 260, 270, 272, 278, 304, 305, 308, 316, 334, 340, 354, 355, 358 Revelation 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 17, 19, 22, 23, 38, 39, 44, 49, 50, 54, 61, 65, 89, 110, 157, 158, 169, 170, 179, 183, 197, 198, 224, 226–232, 234, 237, 245, 249, 262, 275, 276, 278, 279, 293, 310–314, 328, 329, 330, 334, 353, 362, 365 Sefira/Sefirot 63, 97, 207–211, 219, 240 Service in corporality (avodah ba-gashmiut) 2, 31, 58, 59, 85, 154, 154, 188, 193, 214, 216, 217, 247, 252, 256–260, 262, 264, 270, 272, 290, 301, 302, 339, 340, 344–346, 360, 367 Shell/s (kelipah/kelipot) 188, 208, 209, 234, 235, 237, 238, 241, 299, 342, 350, 354, 356–358, 361 Space and time 18, 26, 31, 34, 36, 37, 41, 49, 59, 69, 70, 83, 86, 89, 92, 98, 107, 181–183 215, 219, 342, 363, 364 spark/s (nitzotz/ot) 222, 223, 227, 228, 230, 231, 234–239, 241, 245, 260,

394

index of subjects

262, 268, 304–308, 339, 340, 343, 350, 353–358, 361, 362 lifting up (elevating, redemption of) the sparks 215, 228, 238, 259, 260, 262, 264, 301, 340, 342, 353–359, 361, 362 Transformation (transformative) 12, 18, 23, 42–44, 50, 51, 57, 71, 87–90, 99, 132, 133, 141, 142, 144, 150, 152, 153, 158–162, 182, 201, 216, 217, 221, 237, 262, 264, 290, 292, 341, 345, 348, 350, 355, 356, 362, 363 Unio mystica 21, 22, 24, 44, 53, 81, 127, 131, 132, 144, 152, 154, 156–158, 166, 180, 227, 248 undifferentiated (absolute) unity 23, 24, 92, 94, 127, 154, 290, 311 unification ( yihud ) 33, 46, 50, 53, 61, 63, 64, 74, 80, 81, 83, 87–89, 188, 212, 224, 239, 240, 242 union (unity) 3, 10, 12, 15, 19–22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 32–43, 47–67, 69, 71–81, 84–92, 94–96, 100, 101, 103, 106, 107, 110, 111, 112, 115, 116, 120, 124, 126–132, 135, 136, 137, 138, 140–144, 147, 149, 150, 152–156, 158, 159, 161, 162, 168–170, 172–174, 177, 178, 180–182, 196, 212, 216, 224, 233,

236, 237, 239–242, 249, 258, 271, 272, 280, 281, 285, 290, 294–298, 311, 312, 316, 317, 319, 333, 350, 359, 363, 367, 368 union, mystical (ecstatic) 8, 9, 11, 25, 47, 49–51, 53, 66, 78, 90, 94, 96, 124, 125, 128–130, 134, 138, 142, 154–156, 158, 164, 168, 179, 180, 248 unity, dialogical (in relation) 135, 143, 157–159, 226 Unity and multiplicity 19, 24, 27, 32–39, 41, 42, 48, 53, 54, 61, 62, 69, 70, 74, 78, 79, 92, 93, 106, 107, 129, 149, 224, 240–242, 267, 307 Vessel/s (keli/m) 17, 164, 235, 281–283, 295, 300, 304–306, 308–312, 348, 349, 354, 356, 357 vision 34, 48, 49, 54, 64–66, 74, 86–88, 91, 92, 109, 110, 169, 179, 180, 182, 183, 204, 226, 231, 242, 244, 310, 352 vitality (hayut) 87, 122, 202, 229, 335, 339, 351 divine vitality (hayut elohit) 227–231 worlds (cosmic, four, higher, upper, spiritual, supernal) ix, 58, 97, 193, 207–213, 216, 218, 227, 234, 264, 265, 285, 286, 295, 299, 301, 312, 324, 346, 356–359, 361

INDEX OF BUBER’S WRITINGS

“The altar” 9, 11, 19, 32, 105, 106, 111, 242, 245 “The Baal-Shem-Tov’s Instruction in the Intercourse with God” 148, 149, 168, 224–226, 247, 341 “The Beginnings” 221, 237, 316, 327, 344, 345 Be-Pardes ha-Hasidut 5, 112, 168, 187, 203, 234, 235, 240, 247, 263, 263, 275, 280, 342, 355 “Books and Men” 103, 315 Die Chassidischen Bücher 287, 339 “Christ, Hasidism, Gnosis” 110, 188, 247, 284, 346, 347 “Crisis and Truth” 4, 313 Daniel xiii, 9, 10, 12, 14, 17–21, 25, 32, 33, 35, 40, 42, 43, 47, 55, 60, 70, 72–91, 99–101, 105, 106, 114, 116–122, 125, 127–145, 149, 150, 159, 160, 163, 167, 174, 183, 195, 199, 216, 223, 236, 364 “Dialogue” 10, 18, 65, 69, 72, 73, 80, 99, 101, 102, 122, 123, 125, 139, 171, 180, 213, 217, 221, 227, 233, 243, 251, 255, 258, 259, 277, 302, 309. 310, 315, 317, 320–322, 325, 330, 334–336, 359, 366 “Distance and Relation” 287, 298, 302, 303 Eclipse of God 118, 120, 182, 233, 279, 292, 293, 310, 315, 320–323, 325 Ecstatic Confessions 19, 32, 34–37, 41, 43, 47, 51, 52, 59, 60, 61, 63–65, 70, 77–82, 88, 140, 152, 157, 169, 173, 174, 178, 180, 338 “Education” 181, 277, 304, 315, 326, 333, 336, 337 “The Education of Character” 153, 196, 277, 367 For the Sake of Heaven 339 “Foreword,” in Pointing the Way 10, 63, 73

“The Foundation Stone” 195, 221, 234–237, 239, 241, 302, 358 “God and the Soul” 48, 93, 94, 106, 147, 156, 168, 169, 170, 180, 229–235, 279, 280, 282, 285, 289, 304, 311, 312, 315, 316 Der Grosse Maggid und seine Nachfolge 344 “Guilt and Guilt Feelings” 64 “Hasidism and Modern Man” 93, 196, 197, 198, 201, 202 Hasidism and Modern Man 339 “Hebrew Humanism” 327 “Herut: On Youth and Religion” 111, 120, 161 “The History of the Dialogical Principle” 4, 6, 50, 90, 100, 119, 121, 179, 194, 221 “The Holy Way” 257, 301, 355 I and Thou xiii, 5, 6, 8, 9, 17, 18, 19, 31, 38, 43, 48 49, 55, 73, 81, 84, 87, 90, 100, 110, 112, 114, 115, 118, 119, 121, 124, 125, 127, 129–145, 147–163, 165–169, 171–176, 178, 179, 181–183, 195, 197, 199, 206, 207, 209, 213–215, 217, 221, 223–228, 232, 236, 241, 243, 244, 247–250, 257, 262, 270–273, 277, 278–280, 286, 287, 292–300, 308, 308–313, 315, 318, 320, 322–325, 330, 333, 334, 345, 355, 364–366 Ich und Du 154, 155, 177, 181, 224, 225 “Imitatio Dei” 327, 330 “Interpreting Hasidism” 190, 191, 193, 197, 200–202, 207, 319, 327, 342–344, 354, 355 “In the Midst of Crisis” 196 “Interrogation of Martin Buber” 7, 198 “Jewish Religiosity” 111 “Judaism and Mankind” 40, 41, 71, 109, 111, 199, 223, 230 “Judaism and the Jews” 41, 72, 199

396

index of buber’s writings

The legend of the Baal-Shem 1, 31, 34, 36, 37, 59, 70, 105, 109, 206, 298, 340 “The Life of the Hasidim” 59 “Love of God and Love of Neighbour” 4, 218, 219, 316, 317 “The Man of Today and the Jewish Bible” 315, 326 “Myth in Judaism” xi, 32, 105, 108, 109, 114, 199, 224, 230, 231, 243, 245 “My Way To Hasidism” 40, 196, 197, 201, 272, 276 “On the Great Crisis” 253, 254 “An Open Letter to Mahatma Gandhi” 100 Or ha-Ganuz: Sippurei Hasidim 339 P’nei Adam 292 “Preface to the 1923 Edition,” On Judaism 212, 123, 230 “The Prejudices of Youth” 224, 245, 367 “The Question to the Single One” 77, 333, 334

73,

“Redemption” 84, 212, 222, 231, 232, 234 “Religion as Presence” 120, 122–124, 130, 150, 154, 155, 287, 294, 296–299 “Renewal of Judaism” 40, 41

Replies to my Critics” 7, 117, 118, 119, 121, 149, 208, 343 “Spinoza, Sabbatai Zvi, and the Baal-Shem” 4, 107, 108, 110, 125, 172, 178, 179, 208, 230, 233, 234, 236, 238, 250, 254, 270–272, 275, 279, 287, 289–291, 295, 304, 305–307, 309, 316, 345, 348 “Spirit and Body of the Hasidic Movement” 86, 104, 187, 202, 208, 217, 218, 238, 239, 241, 242, 244, 264, 271, 273, 279, 280, 283–286, 288, 294, 295, 298–300, 310, 316, 317, 325, 348 “The Spirit of the Orient and Judaism” 41 “Symbolic and Sacramental Existence” 238, 240, 310, 347, 348, 361 Tales of the Hasidim 196, 322, 339 The Tales of Rabbi Nachman 36, 56, 70, 74, 93, 109, 128, 206, 207, 241, 340, 345, 347 “What is Man?” 36, 79 “The Way of Man According to the Teachings of Hasidism” 289, 339 “With a Monist” 9, 11, 19, 32, 85, 105, 108, 129, 147–149, 152, 235, 24–245, 306, 307, 318, 319, 321 Werkausgabe. 1: Frühe Kulturkritische und philosophische Schriften, 1891–1924 307