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Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent
The first major biography in English in over thirty years of the seminal modern Jewish thinker Martin Buber An authority on the twentieth-century philosopher Martin Buber (1878–1965), Paul Mendes-Flohr offers the first major biography in English in thirty years of this seminal modern Jewish thinker. The book is organized around several key moments, such as his sudden abandonment by his mother when he was a child of three, a foundational trauma that, Mendes-Flohr shows, left an enduring mark on Buber’s inner life, attuning him to the fragility of human relations and the need to nurture them with what he would call a “dialogical attentiveness.” Buber’s philosophical and theological writings, most famously I and Thou, made significant contributions to religious and Jewish thought, philosophical anthropology, biblical studies, political theory, and Zionism. In this accessible new biography, Mendes-Flohr situates Buber’s life and legacy in the intellectual and cultural life of German Jewry as well as in the broader European intellectual life of the first half of the twentieth century.
438 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 26, 2019
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320 people want to read
About the author
Paul Mendes-Flohr
26 books9 followersPaul R. Mendes-Flohr was an American-Israeli scholar of modern Jewish thought. As an intellectual historian, Mendes-Flohr specialized in 19th and 20th-century Jewish thinkers, including Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Gershom Scholem, and Leo Strauss.
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June 28, 2019
Book Review
Martin Buber by Paul Mendes-Flohr
A comprehensive biography of one of the most influential philosophers and intellectuals of the 20th century.
Born in Vienna, Austria in 1878 to an observant Jewish family his life was interrupted when at 3 years of age his mother abandoned the family running away with a Russian Army officer. He was sent to his paternal grandparents living in Lvov, Poland. His grandfather was a well-to-do officer of a large bank and a highly regarded scholar of Midrash and the Jewish Enlightenment. As he entered University Buber broke away from Jewish observance to study philosophy.
In his early 20s he developed an interest in Jewish culture as the true source of Jewish values and spiritual growth. His first extensive study and writing was about the Hasidic community and mythology, followed by an intense involvement lecturing Jewish students in the Jewish tradition, culture and Zionism as an avenue to reviving this spirit. He took a strong stance against the political nationalistic trend in Zionism and became a lifelong advocate to make Palestine a home for both Jews and Arabs.
Blessed with a curiosity, intellect and open mindedness Buber interacted with other renowned figures from a wide range of fields of study. He spent time interacting with the famous Sinologist Richard Wilhelm who helped introduce the I Ching to western readers and amongst his group were also Hermann Hesse and Carl Jung. He interacted with other religious philosophers such as Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, the German cleric Romano Guardino, Albert Schweitzer, the Jewish mystic Gershom Scholem, and Joseph Campbell, the mythologist.
His best friend and early influence was Gustav Landauer, a leading anarchist whose murder at the hands of anti-revolutionaries (post WW I) left Buber with a great sense of sadness and trauma and as he processed his feelings developed his monumental theories related to dialogue culminating in his masterpiece I and Thou. It was during those years and the advent of Nazi Germany that Buber’s voice became better known and influential. An interesting sidebar is that the famous American film director, Mike Nichols, was the grandson of Landauer; in the 1950s, when Buber, now in his 70s, lecturing in the US, sought Nichols out for a meeting when he visited Chicago.
In the field of literature, he had significant contact/influence with Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka, Stefan Zweig, Walter Benjamin and Jorge Luis Borges. Mendes-Flohr relates how Kafka, struggling with understanding the themes in his work The Trial, took a train form Prague to Berlin to specifically consult with Buber. His inquiry regarded Buber’s comments on Psalm 82 in which the world is given over by God to judges who “judge unjustly and lift up the force of the wicked”. Buber later commented on Kafka’s work: “His unexpressed, ever present theme is the remoteness of the judge, the remoteness of the lord of the castle, the hiddenness, the eclipse”. Kafka’s theme of the meaningless government and a cold bureaucracy Buber states, “from the hopelessly strange Being who gave this world into their impure hands, no message of comfort or promise penetrates to us. He is, but he is not present”.
These very same themes were later amplified when following the Holocaust Buber wrote, “it is difficult for the individual, and [all] the more [so] for the people, to understand themselves as addressed by God; the experience of concrete answerability recedes more and more…in a seemingly God-forsaken space of history”. Buber had escaped Germany with his family intact in 1938 and lived out the rest of his life as a teacher and scholar, a self-described, philosophical anthropologist, in Jerusalem. While first avoiding travelling back to Germany in the early 1950s and along with lectures throughout Europe and the US he travelled to Germany to receive the prestigious Goethe Prize and in Netherland The Erasmus Prize. He was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature by the 1949 recipient Hermann Hesse and shortly before his death by Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary General of the United Nations who was moved after reading I and Thou. Unfortunately, Dag was killed in a plane accident before his nomination had been formally introduced.
Paul Mendes-Flohr nicely summarizes the concept of I and Thou:
“The human person, Buber believed, achieves the fullness of being by experiencing both modes of existence. Through the I-It mode, one enters the objective world, conditioned by the laws of nature. Modern epistemology and science account for the complex physical, historical, and sociological factors that structure objective reality; the knowledge and insights these disciplines provide help us navigate through the labyrinthine I-It world called ‘reality’. But to obtain the fullness of life, we must through I-Thou relationships relate to much of the world, chiefly our fellow human beings, not as It (an object) but as Thou, each an autonomous subject with a distinctive inner reality. It is our ‘sublime melancholy’ that we are always dwelling in both the realm of necessity (the I-It world) and that of freedom (the realm of I-Thou relations).”
Of affinity to Buber’s approach is his humility and gentleness. Regarding his role as teacher he states: “I only point to something…in reality that had not, or had too little been seen. I take him who listens to me by the hand and lead him to the window. I open the window and point to what is outside. I have no teaching but carry on a conversation”. As a psychotherapist myself I was particularly drawn to this quote for I have found that this approach is helpful in helping the other find their own answers. Indeed Buber himself had an interest in psychiatry, psychology and analysis as witnessed by his lectures to the William Allison White Institute of Psychoanalysis in 1957 and his dialogue, the same year, with Carl Rogers, the humanistic psychologist at the University of Michigan ( a dialogue whose transcript was published by SUNY in 1997).
Along this same line, humility and gentleness, Medes-Flohr relates how the
great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, “recalling a bon mot of Ralph waldo Emerson that ‘arguments convince nobody’, he remarked ‘when something is merely said or-better still-hinted at, there is a kind of hospitality in our imagination. We are ready to accept it. ‘I remember reading’, Borges continues, ‘the works of Martin Buber-I thought of them as being wonderful poems. Then, when I went to Buenos Aires, I read a book by a friend of mine, and found in its pages, much to my astonishment, that Martin Buber was a philosopher and that all his philosophy lay in the books because they came to me through poetry, through suggestion, through the music of poetry, and not as arguments’.”
Despite this Buber did not shy away from conflicts or disagreements. He articulated his beliefs and warnings when confronted with the aftermath of Nazism and with his fellow Zionists, aware of “the destructive potential of messianic political fantasies…alarmed by Ben Gurion’s view of Zionism as the fulfillment of the [Hebrew] prophet’s vison”. Though this was true he remained respected by all and at the time of death he was honored universally for his writings, teachings and lectures pointing to the need for people to seek dialogues of true understanding and mutual respect.
One could go on. This book is packed solid with numerous events in the miraculous life of Martin Buber. Unmentioned in the above review was the amazing love he and his wife, Paula, had for one another. Despite her not being Jewish, she supported fully his endeavors and in many ways was both his spiritual and intellectual equal. Eventually converting to Judaism, she died suddenly in 1958 following an extensive foreign lecture series and was hastily buried in the 12th century Jewish Cemetery on the Lido in Venice, Italy. Buber died 7 years later and is buried in Jerusalem.
This biography is a great work of scholarship and love and should be widely read as an inspiration to a very special human being.
Martin Buber by Paul Mendes-Flohr
A comprehensive biography of one of the most influential philosophers and intellectuals of the 20th century.
Born in Vienna, Austria in 1878 to an observant Jewish family his life was interrupted when at 3 years of age his mother abandoned the family running away with a Russian Army officer. He was sent to his paternal grandparents living in Lvov, Poland. His grandfather was a well-to-do officer of a large bank and a highly regarded scholar of Midrash and the Jewish Enlightenment. As he entered University Buber broke away from Jewish observance to study philosophy.
In his early 20s he developed an interest in Jewish culture as the true source of Jewish values and spiritual growth. His first extensive study and writing was about the Hasidic community and mythology, followed by an intense involvement lecturing Jewish students in the Jewish tradition, culture and Zionism as an avenue to reviving this spirit. He took a strong stance against the political nationalistic trend in Zionism and became a lifelong advocate to make Palestine a home for both Jews and Arabs.
Blessed with a curiosity, intellect and open mindedness Buber interacted with other renowned figures from a wide range of fields of study. He spent time interacting with the famous Sinologist Richard Wilhelm who helped introduce the I Ching to western readers and amongst his group were also Hermann Hesse and Carl Jung. He interacted with other religious philosophers such as Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, the German cleric Romano Guardino, Albert Schweitzer, the Jewish mystic Gershom Scholem, and Joseph Campbell, the mythologist.
His best friend and early influence was Gustav Landauer, a leading anarchist whose murder at the hands of anti-revolutionaries (post WW I) left Buber with a great sense of sadness and trauma and as he processed his feelings developed his monumental theories related to dialogue culminating in his masterpiece I and Thou. It was during those years and the advent of Nazi Germany that Buber’s voice became better known and influential. An interesting sidebar is that the famous American film director, Mike Nichols, was the grandson of Landauer; in the 1950s, when Buber, now in his 70s, lecturing in the US, sought Nichols out for a meeting when he visited Chicago.
In the field of literature, he had significant contact/influence with Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka, Stefan Zweig, Walter Benjamin and Jorge Luis Borges. Mendes-Flohr relates how Kafka, struggling with understanding the themes in his work The Trial, took a train form Prague to Berlin to specifically consult with Buber. His inquiry regarded Buber’s comments on Psalm 82 in which the world is given over by God to judges who “judge unjustly and lift up the force of the wicked”. Buber later commented on Kafka’s work: “His unexpressed, ever present theme is the remoteness of the judge, the remoteness of the lord of the castle, the hiddenness, the eclipse”. Kafka’s theme of the meaningless government and a cold bureaucracy Buber states, “from the hopelessly strange Being who gave this world into their impure hands, no message of comfort or promise penetrates to us. He is, but he is not present”.
These very same themes were later amplified when following the Holocaust Buber wrote, “it is difficult for the individual, and [all] the more [so] for the people, to understand themselves as addressed by God; the experience of concrete answerability recedes more and more…in a seemingly God-forsaken space of history”. Buber had escaped Germany with his family intact in 1938 and lived out the rest of his life as a teacher and scholar, a self-described, philosophical anthropologist, in Jerusalem. While first avoiding travelling back to Germany in the early 1950s and along with lectures throughout Europe and the US he travelled to Germany to receive the prestigious Goethe Prize and in Netherland The Erasmus Prize. He was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature by the 1949 recipient Hermann Hesse and shortly before his death by Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary General of the United Nations who was moved after reading I and Thou. Unfortunately, Dag was killed in a plane accident before his nomination had been formally introduced.
Paul Mendes-Flohr nicely summarizes the concept of I and Thou:
“The human person, Buber believed, achieves the fullness of being by experiencing both modes of existence. Through the I-It mode, one enters the objective world, conditioned by the laws of nature. Modern epistemology and science account for the complex physical, historical, and sociological factors that structure objective reality; the knowledge and insights these disciplines provide help us navigate through the labyrinthine I-It world called ‘reality’. But to obtain the fullness of life, we must through I-Thou relationships relate to much of the world, chiefly our fellow human beings, not as It (an object) but as Thou, each an autonomous subject with a distinctive inner reality. It is our ‘sublime melancholy’ that we are always dwelling in both the realm of necessity (the I-It world) and that of freedom (the realm of I-Thou relations).”
Of affinity to Buber’s approach is his humility and gentleness. Regarding his role as teacher he states: “I only point to something…in reality that had not, or had too little been seen. I take him who listens to me by the hand and lead him to the window. I open the window and point to what is outside. I have no teaching but carry on a conversation”. As a psychotherapist myself I was particularly drawn to this quote for I have found that this approach is helpful in helping the other find their own answers. Indeed Buber himself had an interest in psychiatry, psychology and analysis as witnessed by his lectures to the William Allison White Institute of Psychoanalysis in 1957 and his dialogue, the same year, with Carl Rogers, the humanistic psychologist at the University of Michigan ( a dialogue whose transcript was published by SUNY in 1997).
Along this same line, humility and gentleness, Medes-Flohr relates how the
great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, “recalling a bon mot of Ralph waldo Emerson that ‘arguments convince nobody’, he remarked ‘when something is merely said or-better still-hinted at, there is a kind of hospitality in our imagination. We are ready to accept it. ‘I remember reading’, Borges continues, ‘the works of Martin Buber-I thought of them as being wonderful poems. Then, when I went to Buenos Aires, I read a book by a friend of mine, and found in its pages, much to my astonishment, that Martin Buber was a philosopher and that all his philosophy lay in the books because they came to me through poetry, through suggestion, through the music of poetry, and not as arguments’.”
Despite this Buber did not shy away from conflicts or disagreements. He articulated his beliefs and warnings when confronted with the aftermath of Nazism and with his fellow Zionists, aware of “the destructive potential of messianic political fantasies…alarmed by Ben Gurion’s view of Zionism as the fulfillment of the [Hebrew] prophet’s vison”. Though this was true he remained respected by all and at the time of death he was honored universally for his writings, teachings and lectures pointing to the need for people to seek dialogues of true understanding and mutual respect.
One could go on. This book is packed solid with numerous events in the miraculous life of Martin Buber. Unmentioned in the above review was the amazing love he and his wife, Paula, had for one another. Despite her not being Jewish, she supported fully his endeavors and in many ways was both his spiritual and intellectual equal. Eventually converting to Judaism, she died suddenly in 1958 following an extensive foreign lecture series and was hastily buried in the 12th century Jewish Cemetery on the Lido in Venice, Italy. Buber died 7 years later and is buried in Jerusalem.
This biography is a great work of scholarship and love and should be widely read as an inspiration to a very special human being.
April 22, 2019
Buber did not believe in ideas; he believed in encounters, both human and divine. What I took away was that our divinity lies in our humanity, and that if we want to have a spiritual experience, we should get busy in the world. I only wish the author did not assume we all knew Buber’s tenets, and spent a little more time explaining the content of his works, for those of us who came to the biography knowing nothing.
September 14, 2019
Encountering the biography and lived tensions of a person whose writing, ideas, and vision I find so inspiring raises a lot of questions.
How much can I pick and choose what I like from Buber. How appropriate is it to try to reconcile on one hand, his vision of living as being present and seeking spiritual renewal, with on the other hand, one’s openness to religious “orthodoxy” or tradition or rhythms when so much of Buber’s life was a willingness to dissent from orthodoxy. (Though an answer is likely found in Buber’s continued friendship with Frank Rosenzweig in the midst of their disagreement).
Of course, for Buber an ethic of universal openness was inseparable from his particular commitment to Jewish identity and community.
(This is a powerful lesson for my context: I can seek to live with an ethic of basic respect and humility toward all people not despite being Christian, but precisely because of a particular identification with Christianity).
It must be important to stay reminded that Buber lived through the Holocaust, to know of his impassioned open letter to Gandhi that nonviolence could not save Jews and his defending a form of Zionism, and to know his definition of “mismeetings” as failed dialogue without mutual respect.
Then, does the relative lack of success Buber had at shifting the ethics of the state of Israel’s behavior, compared to the popularity of his writing among non-Jews, mean that “I and Thou” has a tempered power to spark concrete change.
Or, does it simply highlight that an I-Thou vision of relationality is immensely challenging in our entrenched political and materialistic realities, but is no less a call to continued striving for structural change.
If anything, Buber’s life was certainly infused with striving.
How much can I pick and choose what I like from Buber. How appropriate is it to try to reconcile on one hand, his vision of living as being present and seeking spiritual renewal, with on the other hand, one’s openness to religious “orthodoxy” or tradition or rhythms when so much of Buber’s life was a willingness to dissent from orthodoxy. (Though an answer is likely found in Buber’s continued friendship with Frank Rosenzweig in the midst of their disagreement).
Of course, for Buber an ethic of universal openness was inseparable from his particular commitment to Jewish identity and community.
(This is a powerful lesson for my context: I can seek to live with an ethic of basic respect and humility toward all people not despite being Christian, but precisely because of a particular identification with Christianity).
It must be important to stay reminded that Buber lived through the Holocaust, to know of his impassioned open letter to Gandhi that nonviolence could not save Jews and his defending a form of Zionism, and to know his definition of “mismeetings” as failed dialogue without mutual respect.
Then, does the relative lack of success Buber had at shifting the ethics of the state of Israel’s behavior, compared to the popularity of his writing among non-Jews, mean that “I and Thou” has a tempered power to spark concrete change.
Or, does it simply highlight that an I-Thou vision of relationality is immensely challenging in our entrenched political and materialistic realities, but is no less a call to continued striving for structural change.
If anything, Buber’s life was certainly infused with striving.
March 30, 2025
After reviewing his colleague Franz Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption, and waiting for a library copy of Buber's I and Thou, I readied myself with background on this once-prominent philosopher. His complicated ambiguity towards the Zionist movement, deepened as he fled the Reich after Kristallnacht to take a position, an underpaid sinecure, in Hebrew at the U in Jerusalem, comprises nearly as much of this critical biography than his thinking about faith, dialogue, and Hasidism.
Buber never wowed audiences, being a poor speaker, but his pronouncements gained him attention in even his teens. While why his reputation soared among the Gentiles (his own distance from a Torque true devotion to ritual observance, his support for the Arabs, and his distrust of both "religion" and the conventional academic and Israeli political systems numbering among the causes he championed) never got, for me, a sufficient answer in Paul Mendes-Flohr's presentation, I did gain a wide-ranging survey of Buber's publishing and lecturing career. It's heavy on the intellectual and light on personal details, as the subject tended to channel his energy into study, being in his native land lucky enough to afford to raise a family and amass a library without having to teach, thanks to annuities and family wealth. So, unlike many of his peers, perhaps he was less afraid to take up controversy and esoterica.
Such as a fascinating debate in January, the 11th of 1933, two weeks before the Leader took control of the Chancellor's office in Berlin. Mendes-Flohr provides the gist of an Interfaith dialogue with Karl Ludwig (not Carl, an important distinction) Schmidt, a Protestant, who promoted supersessionism.
Also worthwhile are his letter to Gandhi, days after Kristallnacht, who chided the Jews of Germany to embrace Zionism, which would impose themselves on the Palestinian inhabitants unjustly. Rather, to embody satyagraha, non-violent protest, within their Mitteleuropean homelands, and stay at home. Or Buber's difficulty with a postwar Heidegger, a repentant Fr. Romano Guardini, or even a daughter-in-law of Edward Said's grandfather. In the 1930s he'd built a villa where the Buber couple had soon moved. But the pair were evicted when the daughter and her children came from Cairo to Jerusalem...
Buber never wowed audiences, being a poor speaker, but his pronouncements gained him attention in even his teens. While why his reputation soared among the Gentiles (his own distance from a Torque true devotion to ritual observance, his support for the Arabs, and his distrust of both "religion" and the conventional academic and Israeli political systems numbering among the causes he championed) never got, for me, a sufficient answer in Paul Mendes-Flohr's presentation, I did gain a wide-ranging survey of Buber's publishing and lecturing career. It's heavy on the intellectual and light on personal details, as the subject tended to channel his energy into study, being in his native land lucky enough to afford to raise a family and amass a library without having to teach, thanks to annuities and family wealth. So, unlike many of his peers, perhaps he was less afraid to take up controversy and esoterica.
Such as a fascinating debate in January, the 11th of 1933, two weeks before the Leader took control of the Chancellor's office in Berlin. Mendes-Flohr provides the gist of an Interfaith dialogue with Karl Ludwig (not Carl, an important distinction) Schmidt, a Protestant, who promoted supersessionism.
Also worthwhile are his letter to Gandhi, days after Kristallnacht, who chided the Jews of Germany to embrace Zionism, which would impose themselves on the Palestinian inhabitants unjustly. Rather, to embody satyagraha, non-violent protest, within their Mitteleuropean homelands, and stay at home. Or Buber's difficulty with a postwar Heidegger, a repentant Fr. Romano Guardini, or even a daughter-in-law of Edward Said's grandfather. In the 1930s he'd built a villa where the Buber couple had soon moved. But the pair were evicted when the daughter and her children came from Cairo to Jerusalem...
May 12, 2020
An easily readily and well-constructed biography of Martin Buber. Rather than dwell too deeply on his philosophy it gives just enough of his teachings to be easily understood. Moreover, it traces his life, early experiences, struggles with his understanding of Judaism, and his devotion to the cultural brand of Zionism that he advocated. The book depicts his relationships with the many greats he encountered.
July 29, 2019
A New Biography of Martin Buber Explores a Life of Wrestling With Faith. I have been transformed by this reading to look toward the Spirit of the church. And to determine who am I becoming because of my beliefs. Mendes-Flohr gives us an inside look into one who understood that learning and reading give one the most freedom allowed to any one person. #inspirational, #lifelessons
July 5, 2019
One of the most thought provoking and challenging books I have read in a very long time. Full of direct relevance to the issues facing most of us today. Buber may not have had the answers, but he was unafraid to grapple with them. Outstanding, a must read.
May 17, 2019
Well written. More about his life than a detailed study of his philosophy.
September 9, 2019
An eminently readable biography
August 9, 2019
Brilliant biography of a very completed and complex man. I was fascinated by his thoughts and philosophies as well as his life and interactions with prominent peoples of the mid-20th century. I would not recommend this book to everyone, but anyone with a interest in Judaism and a look at it from a very different perspective I highly recommend this book. Buber Judaism come as much for the Asia as it does from Europe and his world view put at odds with his fellow Zionists from the start. His ideas of what Israel should have been echo the ideas and feeling of many liberal Jews today....
November 29, 2025
As an author of two books on Martin Buber, God in Our Relationships and A Year with Martin Buber, I heartily recommend this book. What a wonderful retelling of a remarkable life! Mendes-Flohr gifts us a detailed, engaging and thought-provoking narrative. As much as any biographer would hope, a reader is drawn into Buber's presence.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews