On Judaism by Martin Buber

Author:Martin Buber [Buber, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-83408-9
Publisher: Random House Inc.
Published: 2013-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

I repeat: not truth as idea nor truth as shape or form but truth as deed is Judaism’s task; its goal is not the creation of a philosophical theorem or a work of art but the establishment of true community. Herein is grounded the grandeur, but also the paradox, of Jewish existence. For idea and shape or form are ends in themselves. Whoever has been endowed with the ability to create a perfect philosophical theorem or work of art has added a sublime structure to the colonnades of the spirit; he has known fulfillment, even though his restless soul may already, painfully, be attempting to carve out a new block. Pure and undefilable, the eidolon, form as truth, shines upon the world.

Not so the deed. It is its nature to point beyond itself. No matter how free its intention, how pure its manifestation, it is at the mercy of its own consequences; and even the most sublime deed, which does not waste so much as a glance at the lowlands of causality, is dragged into the mud as soon as it enters the world and becomes visible. And the deed concerned with the growth of true community especially has everything lined up against it: the rigorism of the habitual traditionalists and the indolence of the slaves of the moment, yet equally a rash doctrinairism and irresponsible disputatiousness; miserly egotism and untractable vanity, yet also hysterical self-effacement and disoriented flurry; the cult of the so-called pure idea, hand in hand with the cult of so-called Realpolitik. In addition, it is opposed by all the established forces that do not wish to be disturbed in the exercise of their power. All these forces rage in a clouded and beclouding whirlwind around the lonely and dedicated individual who boldly assumes the task of building a true community—and with what materials! There is no undefilable perfection here; everywhere the impure challenges the pure, dragging it down and distorting it; all about him gloating derision apprises the heroic victim of his futility, and the abyss pronounces its inexorable sentence on the dying to whom victory is denied.

The paradox of Judaism, as well as of those of its leaders in whom Judaism’s vigor and teaching were concentrated and manifested, is rooted in this fateful attempt to mold a community. The internal history of Judaism’s classical age is easily understood from this paradox: legislation that was never fully put into effect, and prophetic admonitions that were never wholly listened to; a people that repeatedly grumbled on its trek through the wilderness, and in its own land repeatedly retrogressed into the service of Baal; an internal struggle raging even at the hour of extreme danger and bitterest resistance against enemies; attempts at restoration, and deterioration; Messianic fervor, and a penchant for assimilation. All these manifestations, in their positive as well as negative aspects, are expressions of the paradox that, with tragic logic, resulted from the conflict between the dominant tendency toward realization of the Divine within the community and the natural resistance of the substance that was to be the instrument of this realization.

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