Martin Buber

"A clear and lucid analysis .... Friedman analyzes Buber's responses to the important events of the 20th century". -- Library Journal

"Definitive.... Particularly interesting are the details of Buber's last years". -- Booklist

Martin Buber (1878-1965) was born into a world of two cultures - his Jewish family and his Austrian fatherland. During his childhood with his grandparents in Galician Lvov, Jewish values and German aesthetics coexisted. But after Buber re-entered fin-de-siecle Viennese society, the world of his grandparents fell apart. Nothing was as it should have been: Jewish hopes for full social integration were disappointed, Yiddish culture seemingly caused modern Jewish youth to be impoverished, and the Jewish religion had become ossified. In his personal confusion, Buber clearly grasped the essence of the problem: emancipation had failed, German culture was dying, Jews were on their own, and tradition was no longer good enough. During the period from 1897 to 1909, Buber's keen sense of the crisis of humanity, his intimate knowledge of German culture and Jewish sources, and his fearlessness in the face of possible ridicule challenged him to behave in a manner so outrageous and so contrary to German-Jewish tradition that he actually achieved a transformation of himself and those close to him. Calling on spiritual giants of great historical periods in German, Christian, and Jewish history - such as Nicolas of Cusa, Jakob Bohme, Israel Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Nachman of Brazlav, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Friedrich Nietzsche - Buber proceeded to subvert the existing order by turning his upside-down world of slave morality right side up once more. If contemporary life was bankrupt, why lament? Did not God command humanity to act? Buber wholeheartedly immersed himself in the making of a new world, of Zionist culture, of Hasidic spirituality, of Romantic individuality, of unity from diversity. Byexamining the multitude of disparate sources that Buber turned to for inspiration, this book aims to elucidate Buber's creative genius and his contribution to turn-of-the-century Jewish renewal. Schmidt's timely and comprehensiv

Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue, the first study in any language to provide a complete overview of Buber's thought, remains the definitive guide to the full range of his work and the starting point for all modern Buber scholarship. Maurice S. Friedman reveals the implications of Buber's thought for theory of knowledge, education, philosophy, myth, history and Judaic and Christian belief.This fully revised and expanded fourth edition includes a new preface by the author, an expanded bibliography incorporating new Buber scholarship, and two new appendices in the form of essays on Buber's influence on Emmanuel Levinas and Mikhail Bakhtin.

Donald Moore, in this study of Buber's life and work, presents not a critical analysis or an historical development of Buber's thought; rather, he focuses in on Buber's central message about what it means to be a human being, a person of faith, a community of faith, and about what mankind can do to overcome the eclipse of God. Moore enters into a dialogue with Buber and explores Buber's belief that religion and community are as essentially interrelated as the Thou spoken to God and the Thou spoken to other human beings. This new edition, with a foreword by Maurice Friedman, contains a new preface by the author. The preface addresses the new generation of readers who will be introduced to Buber. In addition, textual changes represent an increased awareness of gender, a recognition of important Buber scholarship since the first edition, and a strengthening of the author's original thesis - that Buber, the critic of religion, was, in the mold of the biblical prophets, a man of profound religious faith.

Focuses on imaginative kosher recipes that are simple to prepare, low fat and health conscious: the recipes explore the wide range of possibilities in kosher cookery from simple lunches to elegant dinner menus. Features a section on Kosher wines. Helen Nash is an established and popular cookery writer. She has studied with famous chefs Michael Field and Lydie Marshall. She lives in New York City.

Moving the focus away from the exposition of one particular thinker, this unique book offers a constructive, postmodern approach to contemporary Jewish thinking combined with analysis of modern Jewish thought, reflections on Jewish law, mysticism, history, and theology. This exploration of postmodernism in Judaism and its relevance as a moral standard concentrates on three basic elements in postmodernism: attention to Other, using the text as a prism for generating alternate realities, and recognition of the impossibility of absolute knowledge. While guarding against Jewish dogmatism, this approach simultaneously stimulates Jewish creativity. Modern and postmodern approaches to Judaism that are examined include those of Leo Baeck, Martin Buber, Hermann Cohen, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, and Franz Rosenzweig. Recent contributions include thinkers such as Eugene B. Borowitz, J. David Bleich, David Novak, and Edith Wischograd.

Although it is customary to view Judaism as a legalistic faith leaving little room for free thought or individual expression, Kenneth Seeskin argues that this view is wrong. Looking at classic texts from Biblical, Rabbinic, and philosophical literature, Seeskin shows that Judaism has always respected freedom of conscience and assigned an important role to the power of human reason. Clear and concise, this book offers a refreshing alternative to the mysticism and dogmatism prevalent in much of the recent literature.