Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

Philosophy is not autobiography. How a man lives is no way to measure the worth of his philosophy. It is a genetic fallacy to evaluate the value or meaning of an idea by tracing it to its origin. Henry Bergson's interest in intuitionism may have been triggered by the deafness and muteness of his daughter, but his philosophy of intuitionism must be judged on its own merits. That Friedreich Nietzsche died in an insane asylum tells us nothing about the logic, lucidity and truthfulness of his philosophy.

Still, philosophy is written by human beings who are more than cerebral creatures. They have hearts and emotions, husbands and wives and parents.

I have in mind an autobiographic note by Martin Buber that may shed some light about his I-thou philosophy. He makes it known that when he was a child of three, his mother left his father, left their home and he never saw her again until he was himself a married man with a child of his own. He was raised by his grandparents in Austria and in that home, the name of his mother was never mentioned. The child never gave up the hope that she would return. One day, he recalls, on the balcony he was standing with an older girl who said to him simply "She will never return.” He knew that she was right. In another autobiographic note, he reveals that during one of his experiences with depression he wrote to his fiance, Paula Weakle "Your letters are the only thing. In them perhaps the thought that there was a mother in you. I have always looked for my mother."

When I re-read I And Thou and some of the introductions to his concern with Chasidism, I sensed this search for the mother, a yearning for intimacy, warmth, for relationships. It helped explain to me Buber's constant insistence that "All real living is meeting."

I found, moreover, in Buber and in his colleagues in this period an estrangement of sons from their fathers. I have in mind Franz Kafka, the great novelist, and Gershom Scholem, who laid the foundations of Jewish mysticism, and Franz Rosenzweig, Buber's comrade and Buber himself who resurrected Chasidism in our times.

The homes of these remarkable Jewish thinkers shared certain things -- a culture of materialism, a coldness and calculative intelligence and a denigration of Judaism itself. I read Kafka's 1919 letter to this father in which Franz Kafka's hope that somehow in Judaism there would be a sharing with his father that would possibly lead to a new and closer relationship between them. He is bitterly disappointed. He writes to his father that "Judaism for you was a mere nothing -- a joke. For days you went to the Synagogue where you were closer to the indifferent than those who took it seriously. At home Judaism was at most limited to the first Seder "which more and more developed into a farce with fits of hysterical laughter."

Coincidentally, Franz Rosenzweig remarks that the Passover Seder was abolished in his father's house because the uncles laughed in ridicule at the recitation of the Haggadah.

And Gershom Scholem, the genius who recovered Jewish mysticism from its denigration tells us in a painfully revealing letter how his father, Arthur, a successful German Jewish businessman of considerable wealth was embarrassed by his son's interest in Judaism, that he forbade his children from using Jewish expressions at home. His father would light a cigar from the Sabbath lights on the table and recite a mock Hebrew benediction on tobacco.

Martin Buber's father, a successful Jewish Austrian businessman, writes on February 6, 1908 to his son who is doing extensive work in retelling the tales of Chasidism and exploring the depths of Jewish mysticism "I would be happy with you if you were to give up this Chasidic and Zohar stuff, for they could have only a mentally debasing and pernicious effect. It is a pity to devote your talents to such a fruitless subject and to waste so much time and effort to something so utterly useless for you and the world." The atmospheres of homes of assimilated Jews were repressive, confining, conforming, bourgeois and dull.

Many Jewish young people of this generation and of this economic and cultural status were searching for a mother and a father. Buber was drawn to mysticism because like so many of his generation at the turn of the century, he was revolted by the cold, analytic, rationalistic, materialistic character of society and moved by the Romanticism of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedreich Nietzsche. They were repelled by the assimilationist attitudes of their parents and by the embourgeoisment of Jewish life -- the lack of authentic feeling, of conviction and the lack of idealism. Jewish youth found little in Judaism around them to warm their souls, to lift their spirits.

And they approached Buber to renew the Jewish spirit, to address Jewish youth who were members of the Bar Cochba Association. Buber accepted the challenge to address young people which is published in his Three Addresses on Judaism.  Buber knew the longings of their heart. Buber found very little in the Judaism surrounding him that inspired, that elevated or excited. He found a Protestantized Reform Judaism, anxious to remove all elements of orientalism. He found in the overintellectualized concerns of Wissenschaft des Judentums a weak apologetic stance toward the world. He found in Orthodoxy a heavy-handed legalism that weighed down upon Jewish creativity and called everything new heresy "No independent creative, imaginative thinking was allowed, only the brooding over the books of the law." But Buber was searching for what we today call "spirituality" and which he called "religiosity.” Not the stiff, formal, rigid orthopraxy of his day but the primordial Judaism, the "primal Jewish reality.” He found it in the much reviled tradition of Hasidism which was dismissed as primitive, superstition and fanaticism. And he became convinced "that there is no renewal of Judaism possible that does not bear the elements of Chasidism."

In Chasidism Buber found "subterranean Judaism,” that which lies repressed beneath "official Judaism.” He found in Chasidism the significance that was denied by the rationalist and legalist mentality of his time. He found in this subterranean Judaism that which so many denied as belonging to Judaism: myth, fantasy, legend, poetry, the world of the Midrash and of Kabbalah. He found in Chasidism an inward turn, an internal life which lay beneath the external forms of Halachah. In addressing assimilated Jewish young people, he said that they must discover that which they have not been taught. They had thoughts that Judaism essentially meant submitting to the dogmas of the law. Buber called for a renewal of Judaism by turning away from the hard externalities and finding the soul of Judaism. That he found in Chasidism which for Buber was a spiritual heroism, a freedom from those whose road is not mapped out in books.

With rhetorical defiance Buber contests those who present Judaism as "once and for all" a set of doctrines and rituals, an orthopraxy which demands little but obedience. He offers in turn an heroic understanding of Judaism and of religion. He addresses the defenders of orthopraxy in these words: "All you who are safe and secure, you who take refuge behind the bulwark of the law in order to avoid looking into God's abyss. Yes, you have solid well trodden ground under your feet whereas we hang suspended over the infinite deep looking about us. Oh you heirs and heirs of heirs who have but to exchange the ancient golden coins into crisp new bills while we lonely beggars sit at the street corner. Yet, we would not want to exchange our giddy insecurity and our untrampled poverty for your confidence and your riches. For to you God is the one who created once and then no more. But to us He is the One of whom people profess that He renews the work of creation each day." Do not let religion bury religiosity. "Religion induces fathers to reduce their sons who will not let their fathers' God be forced upon them." "Religiosity induces sons who went to find their own God, to rebel against their fathers." Over and again, Buber refers to the renewal of Chasidism, to the interpretation of the Baal Shem Tov "Our God, and God of our fathers -- the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob." First, our God -- and then the God of our fathers. You cannot pray with your father's heart or believe with your father's faith. So it was always. Therefore, the repetition -- the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. You yourself must experience, you yourself must feel, you yourself must think, you yourself must hear. There is nothing vicarious in religiosity. It is personal, existential, unique to you.

It is not enough to simply read the text, to follow the code, to obey commandments. It is important to touch the inner life, to ask deep personal questions that cannot be found in anybody else's books except in your own experience and in your own relationship.

Buber's is a cry against a passionless Judaism, a cry for freedom from patriarchal authoritarianism, a cry for spontaneity, a cry to find the new in the buried treasure of the past. Chasidism for Buber is a folk spirituality.

That which the fathers mocked and found inferior and uncouth Buber raised and celebrated to high position. He found in the rejected "ost-Jude,” the East European Jew, a figure of inner dignity. He saw in their Yiddish, not a "jargon" -- a language without the discipline of formal grammar but expressiveness and wisdom. Buber would avail himself of every opportunity to exchange with Yiddish speakers "maiselach" -- stories that live by the unique inflections of east European Jewry. He saw in those tales deep wisdom, a profound philosophy, and a distinctive Jewish soul. Buber who at home was raised to speak Polish and German learned Yiddish. He would avail himself of every opportunity to speak Yiddish as he did with the great writer Agnon. He translated into German Yiddish drama. For Buber, Yiddish was warmer and less abstract than Hebrew. "Hebrew,” Bialik said, "was like kissing a bride through a veil. Yiddish was incomparably softer and more tender. Buber sought the mother. Buber's Chasidic celebration of the spiritual sensitivity of this folk movement helped rehabilitate the image of the despised "ost Jude.”

Martin Buber is the first Jewish thinker in modern times who saw in mysticism a basic feature and continuously operating tendency.

He saw in Chasidism a different kind of mysticism. This we learn from an autobiographic account of Buber's conversion from religious mysticism to Chasidic mysticism.

One fall morning Buber, then a professor, was visited by an unknown young man. Buber was friendly and attentive but without being there is spirit. After the conversation, Buber later learned that the young man who had come to see him had died. It is left unclear as to whether this was a natural death or perhaps a suicide but Buber is deeply affected by this news and asks of himself, "What do you 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." What was missing in his conversation with the young man was true and encounter. What was missing was a glimmer of an "I-thou" relationship, an authentic encounter with mutuality, a recognition of the uniqueness of this meeting that called for wholeness, for attention. It is at that moment that Buber gives up the notion of religious mysticism that deals with the exceptional, with the extraordinary. Buber concludes "I possess nothing but the everyday out of which I am never taken." Mystery must be found everywhere and everyday. It is Buber's interpretation of the Jewish notion "let atar panoui mineh" -- there is no place empty of God. True mystery is not out of this world. It is here and it is now. It is in this earthly moment.

We are commanded to be "humanly holy,” to the task of this worldly sanctification of life.

He himself tells a story that stresses his conviction that God can be met only through human beings. To attempt to commune with God without dialogue with one's human being is fatuous and pernicious.

He tells a story of a man inspired by God who goes out to preach God's reality to the world. Finally he comes to the Gates of Mystery. He knocks. He hears a voice that asks, "What do you want here?" He responds, "I have proclaimed your praise in the ears of mortals but they were deaf to me. So I come to You exalted One that You Yourself may hear me and reply." And the voice from within the Gates of Mystery responded "Turn back. Here is no ear for you. I have sunk My hearing in the deafness of mortals."

"Ye shall be holy for I the Lord am holy." Buber comments that man can only do this if he begins just as man and presumes to know super human holiness. The true hallowing of a man is the hallowing of the human in him. Therefore, the biblical command "Holy shall you be unto Me" has received Chasidic interpretation thus: "Humanly holy shall you be unto Me.”

Buber sifts through the legends and sayings of the Chasidic sages. One of them says "The peoples of the earth also believe that there are two worlds. But they understand the two worlds to be removed and cut off from each other. Israel however, believes that the two worlds are one in their ground and they shall become one in their reality."

What Buber finds of great importance in Chasidism, is the power to overcome the fundamental separation between the sacred and the profane. This separation has formed part of the foundation of every religion. Everywhere the sacred is removed and set apart from the fullness of the things. The consequence of this separation is that religion is thereby assured a firm province whose untouchableness is ever again guaranteed. In Judaism, the border between the two realms which appear at first glance to be drawn with utmost sharpness is overcome. From the outside one looks at the Havdalah spoken at the end of the Sabbath as telling us of the separation of the sacred from the profane. But if you note how many every day actions are introduced by a blessing one recognizes that hallowing is concrete, is this- worldly, is diurnal, is ordinary. A blessing when one has been allowed to awaken. A blessing over a new house, a blessing over a new piece of clothing or tool, a blessing over the ocean, a blessing over the rainbow, and a blessing over a piece of bread and a glass of water. How does Chasidism see the difference between Kodesh and Chol? Not the division between the holy and the profane but between the holy and the not yet hallowed.

When one Chasid is asked by another "What is the most holy thing that your rabbi does?" He answers "Whatever the rabbi is doing at that moment." It is in the interweaving of Chasidism with Buber's own existentialist proclivities that Buber has created a new insight into the character of Judaism. Buber has written extensively about the character of Chasidism: The significance of "hitlahavuth,” the inflaming of the soul, of "kavannah,” the deep intention of the deed, and of "yichud" the passionate yearning for communion, of the self, of the community and of God. But for this moment, I leave you with Buber's fascination with the sanctity of the ordinary, the transcendent mystery of the natural, the divine spark within the human and of this moment. The wise man is asked "What is the most important person that I can meet? What is the most important deed that I can perform? What is the most important time in life?" He receives an answer. The most important person is the one who comes to you, the one who is beside you. Do you know if you will ever have another opportunity to meet such a person. The most important deed you can perform is to stand for that man, for that person, to be with him, with her. For do you know if you will ever have another occasion to do such a deed? And the most important time is now. For do you know if you will ever have another time? It is this sense of presentness that Buber discovered in Chasidism and that was woven into this philosophy of existentialism.

It is difficult to speak of a philosopher such as Buber in one session. Woody Allen once boasted that he took a speed reading course by Evelyn Wood and he could read huge novels in a matter of minutes. He said he read Tolstoy's War and Peace in thirty minutes. When he was asked about the book he said "It's all about Russia." I have sought to introduce Buber and his first beginnings in the exploration of the inner world of Judaism. I hope you will have opportunity to read his Tales of Chasidism which are retold with exquisite simplicity and depth.

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