Between conflict and reconciliation: Martin Buber on the Jewish settlement of Palestine. With the unpublished manuscript “Fragen und Antworten. Die jüdische Besiedlung Palästinas” (1947)

ABSTRACT

This paper presents Martin Buber’s unpublished manuscript ‘Fragen und Antworten. Die jüdische Besiedlung Palästinas’ in the original German with English translation and contextualizes it within the main stations of Buber’s Zionist thinking: cultural Zionism, religious Zionism, and Zionism of realization. It problematizes Buber’s reflection on Jewish settlements in Palestine with reference to the significance of Zionism for humanity as well as the possibility of reconciliation between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East. It also addresses the problem of Jewish terror, framing it in correlation with the restrictions on Jewish migration to Palestine and the catastrophe of the Shoah.

KEYWORDS:

• Jewish settlement
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Zionism
• Martin Buber
• reconciliation
• Shoah

Introduction

The issue of Jewish-Arab relations – between conflict and reconciliation – has enduringly accompanied Martin Buber’s life and thought, not only as an object of theoretical considerations but also as a leading thread at the core of his political praxis. While the Austrian-Jewish intellectual expressed his responsibility before the historical hour in a wide range of occasional writings,¹ Buber’s agency within the Zionist movement also reflected a dialogical attitude toward the given circumstances. Time and again, the philosopher supported a range of ‘subaltern’² positions in it, through which he repeatedly challenged the hegemonic discourse of leaders such as Theodor Herzl, Chaim Weizmann, and David Ben Gurion. Presenting the unpublished manuscript Fragen und Antworten. Die jüdische Besiedlung Palästinas [Questions and Answers. The Jewish Settlement of Palestine] therefore requires first of all tracing Buber’s stance on Zionism. Significant in this regard is the programmatic sketch Drei Stationen,³ in which Buber, as early as 1929, formulated a self-understanding of his engagement within the Zionist movement in terms of a development articulated in three distinct phases:

1. The first station is Buber’s cultural Zionism (Kulturzionismus). In the years spanning from the congresses led by Theodor Herzl (1897–1904) to the outbreak of World War I, Buber understood Zionism primarily as a vector for overcoming the estrangement from their Judaism suffered by diaspora Jews. The notion of ‘people’ (Volk) gained centrality in his writings, and it is as a ‘Volkserziehung’,⁴ i.e., as a political pedagogy, that one should read the editorial line that he promoted as editor in chief of the weekly newspaper Die Welt (September – December 1901) and the activities he encouraged within the Demokratische Fraktion he co-founded at the time of the 5^th Zionist Congress (December 1901). This included: organizing the visual art exhibition Jüdische Kunst, launching the publishing house Jüdischer Verlag, co-writing a prospectus for the establishment of a Jüdische Hochschule which would materialize, a quarter of a century later, in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.⁵ According to Buber, it made little sense to appeal to a ‘Jewish state’ if a ‘Jewish people’ had not first awakened. The Jüdische Renaissance (1901)⁶ he heralded, that is, the ‘rebirth of Judaism’ through a series of processes of rediscovery and appropriation of the creativity (art, culture, language) and religiosity of the Jewish people, thus had an overtly political purpose.

2. During World War I, Buber’s thinking underwent many paradigm shifts: not only did his fundamental turn from mysticism (and aestheticism) to dialogue take place,⁷ culminating in his masterpiece Ich und Du (1916–23), but also his stance toward Zionism was challenged, to the extent that he left aside the leading principle of ‘culture’ by reaching his second station, namely that of a ‘religious Zionism’ (religiöser Zionismus). Community, in antithesis to both the anonymity of mass society and the power excess of nation-state, became as early as 1919 the political ‘locus of realization’ (Ort der Verwirklichung)⁸ of Buber’s relational ontology, according to which every I – Thou encounter bears witness to the presence of the Eternal Thou in the here and now.⁹ This is also reflected in the specific character of his religious Zionism. Partly inspired by his dialogues with Gustav Landauer and Leonhard Ragaz,¹⁰ but also sharply perceivable in a dispute he had with Hermann Cohen,¹¹ from 1916 onward Buber formulated a plea for an anarcho-theocracy,¹² referring to the Old Testament covenant in terms of a pact of sole obedience of the Jewish people to God’s sovereignty (hence, ‘theocracy’), but also as a resource for radically contesting any power relations embodied by the European nation-state (hence, ‘anarcho-theocracy’).

3. In the same years in which Buber developed his religious Zionism, he also observed the intensifying of Jewish emigration to the Holy Land following the Balfour Declaration (November 1917) and the inception of the British mandate for Palestine, so that his Zionism reached its third station, namely that of ‘realization’ (Verwirklichungszionismus). Through the term ‘realization’, a significant legacy of his pre-dialogical writings,¹³ Buber assigned messianic significance to the Jewish settlement in Palestine, by defining the hard labor of the pioneers – carried out in the Kibbutz, agricultural cooperatives with a strongly communitarian structure – as the actualization and fulfilment of God’s sovereignty in this world, on which would depend not only the particular fate of the Jewish people, but also, in a universal sense, that of the whole humanity. Buber’s conception of Zion, accompanied by religious inspiration, was nonetheless driven by a ‘greater realism’,¹⁴ as the philosopher urged that the presence of a resident Arab population be taken seriously. At the core of Buber’s Zionism of realization lay, as early as 1919, the moral imperative to build right relationships between both peoples.¹⁵ His proposed resolution on the Arab question at the 12^th Zionist Congress in Karlsbad (September 1921) – in which Buber spoke as a delegate of the Hitachduth (‘unification’) – a political formation resulting from the merging of the non-Marxist socialist Zionist party Hapoel Hazair (‘the young worker’), founded by Aaron David Gordon in 1905, and the grouping of Zeire Zion (‘youth of Zion’) – constitutes a paradigmatic expression in this regard. Even today, Buber’s words still resonate as a mighty caveat: ‘The Jewish people, who have constituted a persecuted minority in all the countries of the world for two thousand years, reject with abhorrence the methods of nationalistic domination, under which they themselves have long suffered’.¹⁶ Through his critique of nationalism, militarism and imperialism, but also of mercantilism and colonialism,¹⁷ which went hand in hand with his advocacy of equal economic and cultural cooperation with the Arabs, Buber’s Zionism of realization thus differed radically from all the European chauvinism which spread out in the aftermath of World War I.

The document

Martin Buber’s text Fragen und Antworten. Die jüdische Besiedlung Palästinas [Questions and Answers. The Jewish Settlement of Palestine] is edited and published here for the first time in its original German version, accompanied by an English translation. It is an eight-page manuscript, preserved in the Buber Archives of the National Library of Israel (NLI), with no indication of title or date by the author (see Figure 1). It was therefore chosen to refer to the name of the record according to the NLI catalog: ‘Fragen und Antworten. Die jüdische Besiedlung Palästinas’ (ARC. Ms. Var. 350 06 81).¹⁸ A handwritten pencil annotation (not by Buber) presents on the first page of the manuscript the dating hypothesis: ‘1946–1947?’ Several elements within the text confirm that we are in the last phase of the Yishuv, in the relatively short period of time from the end of World War II to the Proclamation of the Independence of the State of Israel – hectic months spanning from the opening of the work of the Anglo-American Inquiry Committee, appointed to explore alternatives to the British Mandate in Palestine, before which Buber, Judah Magnes and Moshe Smilansky presented the binational position of the Ichud (‘union’) party in March 1946, to the promulgation of United Nations Resolution 181 on the partition of Palestine on 29 November 1947. References to the restrictions on Jewish migration to Mandate Palestine and land purchase enacted by the White Paper of 1939, particularly unpopular in the Yishuv, are accompanied in Fragen und Antworten by Buber’s explicit mention of the ‘catastrophe’ of the extermination of European Jews under National Socialist Germany, as well as by his taking a stance on the issue of ‘Jewish terror’, which intensified in 1946 and 1947. A precise indication of the 1946 ‘inaugurated’ Jewish settlement in the Negev desert (‘last year’) allows the manuscript to be definitively dated in 1947. Finally, the manuscript presented here should not be confused with another text by Buber, dating from 1922, with the almost identical title ‘Frage und Antwort’.¹⁹

Figure 1. First page of the manuscript in Buber’s handwriting.

1^st Question: the value of the Jewish settlement

Table

1. Frage: Kommt der jüdischen Siedlung in Palästina lediglich ein Wert für die Konsolidierung des jüdischen Volkes zu oder darüber hinaus auch für die Allgemeinheit? Antwort: Der Menschheitswert der jüdischen Siedlung in Palästina ist ein dreifacher.

1^st Question: Does the Jewish settlement in Palestine only hold value for the consolidation of the Jewish people or also for the general public? Answer: The Jewish settlement in Palestine has a threefold value for humanity.

The opening question of Fragen und Antworten inquires if, according to Buber, the Jewish settlement in Palestine is only of particular value to the Jewish people or whether this undertaking has a universal significance instead. It is noteworthy that, in asserting that this issue expresses a general concern, the philosopher responds by replacing a faceless ‘general public’ (Allgemeinheit) with the term ‘humanity’ (Menschheit). In line with what he stated a few years earlier in his monograph Israel und Palästina. Zur Geschichte einer Idee (1945),²⁰ Buber affirms a direct connection between the realization of Judaism in Palestine and the fate of humanity. He then elaborates on his position:

Table

Zum ersten: Palästina, die Brücke zwischen Morgen- und Abendland, ist ein Weltproblem und eine Weltsorge. Die Menschenwelt hat ein Interesse daran, dass dieses Land, das in Lauf der Jahrtausende zu einem Aussenbezirk der Wüste geworden war, neu erschlossen und produktiviert werde. Dieses grosse Werk haben erst die jüdischen Siedler begonnen, mit einer Kraft der Hingabe und der Ausdauer, die von keinem andern Vorgang in der Siedlungsgeschichte der Menschheit überboten wird. Sie haben bereits Ungeheures zustande gebracht und ihre Arbeit schreitet, auch in Zeiten wo die Schwierigkeiten wachsen und wachsen, rastlos vorwärts. Im kritischen letzten Jahr ist die Besiedlung des ganz zur wasserlosen Wüsten geworden Südens, des „Negev“, inauguriert worden. Man lasse diese ganz an ihr Werk hingegebenen Menschen arbeiten, und das Land wird bald in seinem vollen Segen blühen wie einst.

Firstly: Palestine, the bridge between Orient and Occident, is a world problem and a world concern. The human world has an interest that this land, which over the millennia had become an outlying area of desert, will be newly developed and made productive. This great labor was first begun by the Jewish settlers, with a strength of dedication and perseverance unsurpassed by any other process in the history of human settlement. They have already accomplished enormous things, and their work continues tirelessly even in times when difficulties grow and grow. In the critical last year, the settlement of the completely waterless desert of the South, the “Negev”, was inaugurated. Let these people work, who are completely dedicated to their labor, and the land will soon flourish in its full blessing as it once did.

Palestine is characterized in the very first lines of Buber’s Fragen und Antworten as a ‘bridge between Orient and Occident’, not without a certain echo of that ‘oriental’ and mediating character toward the West that the philosopher assigned to Judaism in his Drei Reden über das Judentum (1911).²¹ This happens in the same paragraph in which Palestine is defined as a land of universal significance, a ‘world problem’ and a ‘world concern’. Buber’s cult of the ancestral homeland, which placed him in a position antithetical to Herzl’s territorialism as early as the beginning of the 20^th century, is tied here to statements reminiscent of his encounter with Gordon, so that Buber’s laudatory references to settlers and his celebration of the regenerative power of labor in Fragen und Antworten can actually be traced back to his addresses for the Hapoel Hazair in the period immediately following World War I (1919–1921).²²

Table

Zum zweiten: der entscheidende Teil der jüdischen Siedlungen ist auf kooperativen Prinzipien, auf einer mehr oder weniger weitgehenden Gemeinschaftlichkeit von Produktion und Konsum aufgebaut. Die sozialen Formen, in denen sie aufgebaut sind, sind mannigfaltige und werden immer neu von den äusseren und inneren Bedingungen bestimmt. Die Erprobung ihrer aller ergibt in Ihren Zusammenhang eine einzigartige soziale Versuchsstation, deren Ergebnisse, wie in steigendem Masse erkannt wird, der Menschheit zugute kommen müssen. Das hat z.B. ein Mann, der an verantwortlichster Stellung, als High Commissioner, das jüdische Siedlungswerk mehrere Jahre lang beobachten konnte, Sir Arthur Wauchope, in der nachdrücklichsten Weise anerkannt, als er die kooperativen Kolonien ihrer sozialen Struktur nach als vorbildlich für künftige Unternehmungen der Menschheit bezeichnete. In dieser Zeit der Gesamtkrisis, die von Tag zu Tag deutlicher wird[,] sind die Völker mehr und mehr [ge]nötigt, nach neuen Formen gemeinsamen Wirtschaftens, die auch neue Formen menschlichen Zusammenlebens sind, zu suchen, müssen diese auf Freiheit und weitgehender Autonomie aufgebauten Versuche immer wichtiger werden.

Secondly: The decisive part of the Jewish settlements is built on cooperative principles, on a more or less extensive communality of production and consumption. The social forms in which they are built are manifold and are always determined anew by external and internal conditions. The probing of all of them in their connection results in a unique social experimental station, the results of which, as is increasingly acknowledged, must benefit humanity. Sir Arthur Wauchope, for instance, a man who for several years was able to observe the Jewish settlement work as High Commissioner, a position of foremost responsibility, recognized this in the most emphatic way when he described the cooperative colonies in their social structure as exemplary for future undertakings of humanity. These experiments, based on freedom and extensive autonomy, must become more and more important in this time of overall crisis, that becomes clearer from day to day, in which peoples are more and more compelled to look for new forms of common economies, which are also new forms of human living-together.

Jewish settlements are defined by Buber as communities ‘of production and consumption’, structured according to ‘cooperative principles’ characteristic of the Kibbutz, as attested also by his reference to the term ‘social experiment[al]’.²³ In consonance with his theses in Pfade in Utopia (1947),²⁴ the indissoluble bond between new forms of ‘common economies’ and ‘living-together’ would make Jewish settlements a possible third way for a humanity entangled in a ‘overall crisis’, crushed as much by the individualism of Western capitalist societies as by the collectivism of the Soviet Union. The Kibbutz assumes a significance that is as distinctly Jewish as it is relevant to the entire humanity and would thus attest to the messianic value of Zion, which passes inescapably, according to Buber, through the direct and concrete experience of working the land. The philosopher counteracts the crisis with his confidence in the communities of settlements, which thus rise to guarantee of the mutuality and horizontality of the socially embodied I-Thou relationship. As always in his pages, all political and economic renewal stems from the rebirth of the interhuman, i.e., the repair of the human capacity to enter the I – Thou relationship. Buber’s ‘social principle’,²⁵ which emerges in sharp antithesis to the power excess of the surplus-state in the last season of his political thought, is expressed here in terms such as ‘freedom’ and ‘autonomy’, along with a plea for federalism and self-government. Buber then returns to a messianic and universalistic idea of Zionism he had already formulated in his dispute with Cohen toward the end of World War I, as he firmly sentenced: ‘We do not want Palestine for the Jews, we want it for humanity, for we want it for the realization of Judaism’.²⁶ In Fragen und Antworten he asserts again, three decades later, that the awakening of the Jewish people through its settlement in Palestine is not an end in itself but is rather placed at the humanity’s service:

Table

Zum dritten aber ist zu bemerken: Auch die Konsolidierung des jüdischen Volkes selbst ist kein bloss nationales, sondern ein Menschheitsinteresse. Wenn der Kern dieses Volkes aus der verhängnisvoll gewordenen Vermischung in die Substanz der Völker herausgelöst und auf eigenem Boden zu eigenem Leben und Schaffen erweckt wird, darf von ihm ein Beitrag zum Aufbau einer neuen Menschheit erhofft werden, der seiner Anfänge nicht unwert ist.

Thirdly: However, it must be noted that the consolidation of the Jewish people itself is not merely a national interest, but an interest of the humanity. If the core of this people is detached from that mixture which has become fatal to the substance of the peoples and is awakened to its own life and creativity on its own soil, one can hope that it will contribute to the construction of a new humanity, which is not unworthy of its beginnings.

In this section, it is possible to observe continuity with some of Nietzsche’s lexemes that are characteristic of Buber’s early Zionism too: ‘life’, ‘creativity’, ‘awakening’,²⁷ but also with his critical stance toward diaspora, which differentiated Buber, to take one example, from Stefan Zweig’s radical cosmopolitism.²⁸

2^nd Question: the conflict between Jews and Arabs

Table

2. Frage: Stehen sich hier aber nicht das Interesse des jüdischen und das des arabischen Volkes unversöhnlich entgegen? Antwort: Die faktischen Interessenunterschiede, wie sie ja fast immer zwischen Nachbarvölkern bestehen, sind erst durch die politische Propaganda zu Interessengegensätzen aufgebauscht worden. Man braucht nur auf die Realität zu schauen statt auf die politischen Postulate und man erkennt den grossen Nutzen, den die Urbarmachung verkarsteten Bodens, die mannigfachen Meliorierungen, die ungeahnte Intensivierung der Bewirtschaftungsmethoden der gesamten Bevölkerung gebracht haben und bringen. An allen Orten, die von der politischen Verhetzung nicht ergriffen worden sind, herrscht noch heute, wie vor nicht sehr langer Zeit fast überall, ein freundnachbarliches Einvernehmen zwischen jüdischen und arabischen Dörfern; die Bewässerung des jüdischen kommt dem arabischen zugute, die Methoden eines modernen Bodenbaus werden gelehrt und gelernt, gegenseitige Hilfe waltet und manches Fest wird gemeinsam gefeiert.

2^nd Question: Are not the interests of the Jewish people and those of the Arab people irreconcilably opposed here? Answer: The factual differences of interests, which almost always exist between neighboring peoples, have only been inflated into conflicts of interest by political propaganda. One only need to look at the reality instead of political postulates and will acknowledge the great advantages that the reclamation of karstified land, the manifold meliorations, the unexpected intensification of farming methods have brought and continue to bring to the entire population. In all places that have not been seized by the political incitement, there is still today, as there was not very long ago almost everywhere, a friendly and neighborly understanding between Jewish and Arab villages; the irrigation of the Jewish village benefits the Arab village, the methods of modern soil cultivation are taught and learned, mutual aid takes place and some feasts are celebrated together.

A reflection on Jewish settlements in Palestine cannot avoid questioning the relationships between the Kibbutz and the Arab population. According to Buber’s Fragen und Antworten, the factual interests of the two peoples are by no means irreconcilable. On the contrary: it is ‘political propaganda’ that tends to polarize the two groups and intentionally generate conflict.²⁹ In the antithesis he poses between concrete ‘reality’ on the one hand and the interests of politics on the other, Buber appeals for reconciliation in the name of a pragmatic approach, which starts from the acknowledgment of mutual interdependence and cooperation between two groups as a resource of mutual benefit.³⁰

Table

Freilich, die Verknüpfung der Araber mit der jüdischen Wirtschaft hätte weit umfassenden und tiefergreifenden erfolgen sollen als es geschehen ist; man hat die Hindernisse überschätzt und die Tragweite der Aufgabe unterschätzt. Aber noch ist es nicht zu spät, eine grosse gemeinsame palästinensische Wirtschaft aufzubauen, die sich recht wohl mit dem uneingeschränkten Sonderleben beider Kulturen verträgt, und ein binationales Gemeinwesen vorzubereiten. Man lasse nur die Vertreter beider Völker die Angelegenheit des gemeinsamen öffentlichen Lebens in dem heute möglichen Masse gemeinsam verwalten, und an Stelle des gegenseitigen Misstrauens, das alle Beziehungen vergiftet, wird allmählich jenes fruchtbare Vertrauen treten, ohne das kein gemeinsames Völkerwerk auf Erde wachsen kann.

Admittedly, the linkage of the Arabs with the Jewish economy should have been far more comprehensive and far-reaching than it has been; the obstacles have been overestimated and the extent of the task underestimated. Anyway, it is not yet too late to build a large common Palestinian economy, which is really compatible with the unrestricted specific lives of both cultures, and to prepare a binational common entity. Let only the representatives of the two peoples co-administer the affairs of common public life to the extent possible today, and the mutual mistrust that poisons all relations will gradually be replaced by that fruitful trust without which no common work of peoples can grow on earth.

According to Buber, peace and reconciliation between Jews and Arabs will be secured through the full deployment of interdependence between the two peoples. Concretely, this means an active involvement of the Arabs in a ‘common economy’, and it is in an equal cooperation that Buber poses as a necessary precondition for the success of a ‘bi-national common entity’. The philosopher writes in heartfelt agreement with the core values of the Ichud, which places at the center of its agenda the unfolding of just relations between Jews and Arabs, questioning also the goal of achieving a Jewish majority in Palestine, and even to move beyond the idea of a Jewish state. Just as Buber opposes an exploitative capitalist economy, he similarly rejects a state perceived as a top-down entity; therefore, he advocates a bottom-up administration, pro-actively involving both Jews and Arabs. Mistrust, be it between different peoples or between individuals and their representatives, Buber warns us, is the consequence of the power excess of the centralized surplus-state; yet, it can be overcome, as he will argue in later post-World War II writings such as Hoffnung für diese Stunde (1952),³¹ through the flourishing of horizontal I-Thou relationships in the public sphere.

Table

Es darf hier freilich in Bezug auf die vitalen Bedürfnisse der jüdischen Gemeinschaft, ohne deren Befriedigung ihr ihre Entwicklung und damit auch ihr Werk am Lande unterbunden würde, das Recht auf Einwanderung und das auf Bodenkauf, keine Möglichkeit der Majorisierung bestehen. Aber soll denn die Zukunft der Menschenvölker wirklich unabwendbar dem angeblichen Gesetz ausgeliefert sein, dass stets eine Mehrheit über eine Minderheit herrscht? Sollte nicht gerade hier, in diesem Land eines Weltproblems und einer Weltsorge, die Chance gegeben sein, eine andere Form des Zusammenlebens und Zusammenwirkens zweier Völker zu erproben?

Admittedly, there should be no possibility of majorization with regard to the vital needs of the Jewish community, without the satisfaction of which its development and thus also its work on the land, the right to immigration and the right to purchase land, would be hindered. But should the future of human peoples really be inevitably at the mercy of the alleged law that a majority always rules over a minority? Should not there be a chance here, in this land of a world problem and a world concern, to try a different form of living-together and interacting-together between two peoples?

The so-called ‘majority issue’, that is, the goal of increasing Jewish migration to Palestine as much as possible, was strongly supported by almost the entire political spectrum of the Yishuv, from Ben Gurion’s Mapai (‘Workers’ Party of the Land of Israel’) to Jabotinsky’s revisionist Zionism. In contrast, according to the Ichud, ‘the rate of immigration should be regulated by the economic or “absorptive” capacity of the country so as not to exacerbate Arab fears of being inundated and excluded from the development of the country they share with the Jews’.³² Israel, which, at the time Buber writes Fragen und Antworten has not yet proclaimed its independence as a sovereign state, has, according to the philosopher, a specific duty: to be ‘not a state like the rest’.³³ This means: the political affirmation of Israel must go hand in hand, so Buber, with the moral imperative of the ‘tradition of justice’³⁴ in Judaism, which challenges the Realpolitik logics, including the hegemony it assigns to the majority.

3^rd Question: Jewish Terror

Table

3. Frage: Wie denken Sie über den jüdischen Terror? Antwort: Er ist nichts bloss an sich selbst verderblich – er kann auch nichts anderes als Verderben stiften. Aber Sie müssen diese so furchtbar irregeführten jungen Menschen verstehen oder doch die gar nicht so wenigen echten Idealisten, die in ihrer Mitte sind. Es gibt eine Verzweiflung, die keinen anderen Weg mehr sieht als den durch Tod und Verderben. Das ist die Seelenverfassung dieser unseligen Menschen.

3^rd question: What do you think about Jewish terror? Answer: It is not merely destructive in itself – It can also cause nothing but destruction. But you have to understand these young people who are so terribly misguided, or the not so few genuine idealists who are in their midst. There is a despair that sees no other path than [the one, which operates] through death and destruction. That is the state of mind of these miserable people.

The third and final question concerns the so-called ‘Jewish terror’.³⁵ I recall here, by way of example, the attack on the King David Hotel by the Irgun (‘National Military Organization’) on 22 July 1946, which, by blowing up the offices of the British Mandate government, resulted in the death of 91 people, including several civilians (British, Jews, Arabs). Buber’s firm condemnation of politically motivated violence in Fragen und Antworten is accompanied by a hermeneutical effort (to understand is not to justify!) that leads him to identify a strong connection between the most radical ‘despair’ and the enactment of terror attacks – a ‘despair’ that is directly related with British legislation, which severely limited the possibility of emigration to Palestine in the darkest hour of Jewish history.

Table

Die Katastrophe der europäischen Judenheit, ohne gleichen an Ausmass und Leidenstiefe in den Annalen der Menschheit, hat mit einer Kraft ohne gleichen die Sammlung des Restes in Palästina als die einzige Rettung aufgezeigt. Nun soll sie unmöglich gemacht werden. Da brechen sie aus: in Tod und Verderben hinein. Wie können sie vor sich selbst, vor den Folgen ihrer eigenen Verzweiflung gerettet werden? Ich glaube, es gibt nur noch eins, das hier helfen kann. Es ist das eine, durch das das Weltproblem Palästinas gelöscht und die Weltsorge Palästinas überwunden wird: wenn die Mächte, deren Macht-Spiel das Schicksal der heutigen Menschheit bestimmt, sich gemeinsam entschliessen, die palästinensische Frage ausschliesslich von ihr selbst aus, das heisst: von den vitalen Bedürfnissen des Landes selbst aus zu entscheiden.

The catastrophe of European Jewry, unequaled in scale and depth of suffering in the annals of humanity, has demonstrated with unequaled force the gathering of the remnant [ones] in Palestine as the only salvation. Now it is to be made impossible. Then they break out: into death and destruction. How can they be saved from themselves, from the consequences of their own despair? I believe there is only one thing that can help here. It is the one thing that will solve the world problem of Palestine and overcome the world concern of Palestine: If the powers whose power game determines the destiny of humanity today agree to settle the Palestinian question exclusively from its own perspective, that is, from the vital needs of the country itself.

Fragen und Antworten thus ends with Buber’s reference to the Shoah, defined here by the term ‘catastrophe’ and by its being ‘unequaled in scale and depth of suffering in the annals of humanity’, in continuity with his words in Schweigen und Schreien (1944).³⁶ On the same wavelength of thinkers as such as Hannah Arendt or Theodor W. Adorno, Buber manifests an early understanding of the unprecedented character of the Jewish genocide. Interestingly, he also agrees partly with Ben Gurion’s thesis, according to which the ‘catastrophe’ meant migrating to Palestine as the only chance of salvation to not a few survivors. Yet, according to Buber, a moral act (rescuing the European Jewry) should not be merged with the political goal of building a Jewish majority in Palestine.³⁷

Conclusions

Reconciliation and a solid peace between Jews and Arabs can only take place, according to Buber’s Fragen und Antworten, by overcoming the political polarizations fomented by external political powers, and only by returning to the real, ‘vital needs’ of the two peoples, which are often more coincidental than divergent when it comes to concrete demands. Buber, who was one of the founding members of the Brit Shalom (‘Covenant of Peace’) association as early as 1925, soon raised attention to the issues of peace and reconciliation in the Near East, expressing the goal ‘to arrive at an understanding between Jews and Arabs as to the form of their mutual social relations in Palestine on the basis of absolute political equality of two culturally autonomous peoples, and to determine the lines of their cooperation for the development of the country’.³⁸ In the plurality of the three stations through which Buber engaged with and within the Zionist movement, he always spoke and acted from the standpoint of a ‘prophetic politics’,³⁹ arguing that religion, ethics and politics cannot be separated, but he also expressed himself in much more practical, even pragmatic terms than is usually acknowledged. In his stance toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Buber ultimately remained true to his relational ontology, according to which any social renewal requires first and foremost the healing of damaged (or even broken) relationships,⁴⁰ namely: the work of reconciliation.

Acknowledgments

This article would not have been possible without the kind cooperation of Prof. Dr Giuseppe Veltri and Dr Sebastian Schirrmeister, whom I herewith thank. I also express gratitude to Craig Dorsch, for his comments on my translation of Buber’s text from German to English.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Francesco Ferrari

Francesco Ferrari works on reconciliation from a philosophical perspective. He holds a PhD degree from the University of Genoa for a dissertation on Martin Buber’s pre-dialogical writings. Currently, he coordinates the Jena Center for Reconciliation Studies (Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena), is a post-doctoral researcher at the Chair for Jewish Philosophy of Religion (Goethe-University Frankfurt) and is an editor within the project “Buber-Korrespondenzen Digital” (Mainzer Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur). He published three monographies on Buber, devoted many papers (in English, German, and Italian) to the Jewish Philosophy of the 20^th Century, and translated several philosophical texts into Italian. He is co-editor of volume 11 of Martin Buber’s Werkausgabe: Schriften zur politischen Philosophie und zur Sozialphilosophie and is currently writing on the concept of reconciliation after Auschwitz, with a primary focus on philosophers such as: Adorno, Améry, Arendt, Buber, Derrida, and Jankélévitch.

Notes

1. Francesco Ferrari, Einleitung, in: Martin Buber, Schriften zur politischen Philosophie und zur Sozialphilosophie (MBW 11) (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2019), 15–22.

2. Stefan Vogt, ‘The Postcolonial Buber: Orientalism, Subalternity, and Identity Politics in Martin Buber’s Political Thought’, Jewish Social Studies, 22 (2016), 163.

3. Martin Buber, Drei Stationen, in: Id., Schriften zum Judentum (MBW 20) (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2018), 75.

4. Martin Buber, Die Congresstribüne, in: Id., Frühe jüdische Schriften, 1900–1922 (MBW 3) (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2007), 89.

5. See Asher Biemann, Inventing New Beginnings: On the Idea of Renaissance in Modern Judaism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009); Gilya Gerda Schmidt, The Art and the Artists of the Fifth Zionist Congress, 1901 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003).

6. Martin Buber, Jüdische Renaissance, in: Id., MBW 3, 143–147.

7. Paul Mendes-Flohr, Von der Mystik zum Dialog. Martin Bubers geistige Entwicklung bis hin zu ‘Ich und Du’ (Königstein/Ts: Jüdischer Verlag, 1978).

8. Martin Buber, Der Heilige Weg, in: Id., Schriften zur politischen Philosophie und zur Sozialphilosophie (MBW 11.1) (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2019), 130.

9. See Francesco Ferrari, ‘Relation as Presence: On Martin Buber’s Lectures “Religion als Gegenwart”’, Journal of the Interdisciplinary Study of Monotheistic Religions, 18 (2022), 3–15.

10. See, for instance: Letter Gustav Landauer – Martin Buber (May 12, 1916), in: Martin Buber, Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten (Vol. I) (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1972), 433–438; Letter Leonhard Ragaz – Martin Buber (November 6, 1916), in: Martin Buber, Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten (Vol. I), 457–458.

11. See Martin Buber, Völker, Staaten und Zion, in: Id., MBW 3, 293–320.

12. See Samuel Hayim Brody, Martin Buber’s Theopolitics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018).

13. See Martin Buber, Daniel. Gespräche von der Verwirklichung, 1913, in: Id., Frühe kulturkritische und philosophische Schriften, 1891–1924 (MBW 1) (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2001), 183–245.

14. Paul Mendes-Flohr, Einleitung, in: Martin Buber, Schriften zur zionistischen Politik und zur jüdisch-arabischen Frage (MBW 21) (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2020), 31.

15. Martin Buber, Vor der Entscheidung, in: Id., MBW 21, 51–58.

16. Samuel Hayim Brody, Paul Mendes-Flohr, Kommentar, in: Martin Buber, ([Rede auf dem XII. Zionistenkongress in Karlsbad (1.–14. 09. 1921), MBW 21, 531.

17. Letter Martin Buber – Stefan Zweig (February 4, 1918), in: Martin Buber, Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten (Vol. I), 525–526; Letter Martin Buber – Hugo Bergmann (February 3–4, 1918), Martin Buber, Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten (Vol. I), 526–527.

18. The digitized document is available here: https://www.nli.org.il/en/archives/NNL_ARCHIVE_AL990027252260205171, accessed January 4, 2024.

19. Martin Buber, Frage und Antwort, in: Id., MBW 21, 106.

20. Martin Buber, Israel und Palästina. Zur Geschichte einer Idee, in: Id., MBW 20, 171–316.

21. Judaism is defined here as „apostle of the Orient before humanity“(Martin Buber, Drei Reden über das Judentum, in: Id., MBW 3, 237.

22. See, for instance: Martin Buber, Über Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, in: Id., MBW 21, 357–362.

23. See Martin Buber, Social Experiments in Jewish Palestine, in: Id., MBW 21, 416–419.

24. Martin Buber, Pfade in Utopia, in: Id., Schriften zur politischen Philosophie und zur Sozialphilosophie (MBW 11.2) (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2019), 117–259.

25. Martin Buber, Zwischen Gesellschaft und Staat, in: Id., MBW 11.2, 261–274; Martin Buber, Geltung und Grenze des politischen Prinzips, in: Id., MBW 11.2, 297–306.

26. See Martin Buber, Völker, Staaten und Zion, 303.

27. See Gershom Scholem, Martin Bubers Auffassung des Judentums, in: Id., Judaica 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), 133–192.

28. See, for instance: Letter Stefan Zweig – Martin Buber (January 24, 1917), in: Martin Buber, Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten (Vol. I), 462–464.

29. See Martin Buber, [Ein tragischer Konflikt?] [Rede bei einer Tagung des Ichud], in: Id., MBW 21, 248–250.

30. Cf. Fanie Du Toit, When Political Transition Works: Reconciliation as Interdependence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

31. Martin Buber, Hoffnung für diese Stunde, in: Id., MBW 11.2, 275–282.

32. Paul Mendes Flohr, Editor’s Prefatory Note, in: Martin Buber, Do not Believe it!, In: Id., A Land of two Peoples: Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 152.

33. Martin Buber, Schriftstellergespräche in der vom Premierminister einberufenen Sitzung am 27. März 1949, in: Id., MBW 11.2, 102.

34. Martin Buber, Oral Testimony before the Anglo-American Committee on Palestine, in: Id., MBW 21, 215.

35. See also: Martin Buber, Pseudo-Simsonismus, in: Id., MBW 21, 167–171; Martin Buber, Nein, es ist nicht genug, in: Id., MBW 21, 251–252.

36. Martin Buber, Schweigen und Schreien, in: Id., MBW 11.2, 346–349.

37. See Martin Buber, Mehrheit oder so viele wie möglich?, in: Id., MBW 21, 192–195.

38. Brith Shalom: Statutes, in: Martin Buber, MBW 21, 107.

39. Paul Mendes-Flohr, Einleitung, in: Martin Buber, MBW 21, 31.

40. Lawrence J. Silberstein, ‘Martin Buber: The Social Paradigm in Modern Jewish Thought’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2 (1981), 211–229.