Hasidism and Modern Man - Softcover

Buber, Martin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691165416 ISBN 13: 9780691165417

Verlag: Princeton Univers. Press, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

First published in 1958, Hasidism and Modern Man examines the life and religious experiences of Hasidic Jews, as well as Bubers personal response to them. From the autobiographical "My Way to Hasidism," to "Hasidism and Modern Man," and "Love of God and Love of Neighbor," the essays span nearly a half a century and reflect the evolution of Bubers religious philosophy in relation to the Hasidic movement. Hasidism and Modern Man remains prescient in its portrayal of a spiritual movement that brings God down to earth and makes possible a modern philosophy in which the human being becomes sacred.

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Martin Buber (1878–1965) is known for many influential works in the fields of philosophy of religion and biblical interpretation. His ideas and intellect were globally esteemed, propelled interfaith alliances, and inspired luminaries such as Paul Tillich and Martin Luther King Jr. His books included I and Thou and The Legend of Baal-Shem (Princeton). David Biale is the Emanuel Ringeblum Distinguished Professor of Jewish History at the University of California, Davis, and the author of Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought (Princeton).

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Hasidism & Modern Man

By Martin Buber, Maurice Friedman

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2016 Martin Buber Literary Estate
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-691-16541-7

Contents

Introduction to the 2016 Edition, ix, 
Editor's Introduction, xxiii, 
Book I HASIDISM AND MODERN MAN, 1, 
Part I, 1, 
Part II, 5, 
Part III, 12, 
Part IV, 14, 
Book II MY WAY TO HASIDISM, 16, 
Book III THE LIFE OF THE HASIDIM, 31, 
Hitlahavut: Ecstasy, 31, 
Avoda: Service, 37, 
Kavana: Intention, 44, 
Shiflut: Humility, 51, 
Book IV THE WAY OF MAN, ACCORDING TO THE TEACHINGS OF HASIDISM, 60, 
Introduction, 60, 
I. Heart-Searching, 61, 
II. The Particular Way, 65, 
III. Resolution, 69, 
IV. Beginning with Oneself, 73, 
V. Not to Be Preoccupied with Oneself, 77, 
VI. Here Where One Stands, 80, 
Book V THE BAAL-SHEM-TOV'S INSTRUCTION IN INTERCOURSE WITH GOD, 85, 
Introduction, 85, 
Of Knowledge, 86, 
Of Fervor and of Work, 88, 
Of the Holy Sparks and Their Redemption, 89, 
How One Should Serve, 90, 
Of Distance and Nearness, 91, 
Of Secrecy, 92, 
A Parable of Prayer, 93, 
Of True Intention, 94, 
Of the Might of Words, 95, 
Of Devotion, 96, 
Of Binding, 96, 
Of Distracting Thoughts, 97, 
Of Good and Evil, 98, 
Of Pride and Humility, 99, 
Of the Twofold Movement, 101, 
Explanatory Notes, 101, 
Book VI LOVE OF GOD AND LOVE OF NEIGHBOR, 108, 
Part I, 108, 
Part II, 113, 
Part III, 120, 
Part IV, 128, 

CHAPTER 1

Book I

* * *

HASIDISM AND MODERN MAN

I

It is more than fifty years since I began to acquaint the West with that religious movement known as Hasidism, which arose in the eighteenth century but extends into our time. If today, reporting and clarifying, I wish to speak of that work as a whole, this is not — I think I can say this with confidence — for the sake of my personal work. In performing this work I never had anything else in mind than an honest artisan has when he carries out a commission to the best of his ability. I speak, rather, for the sake of that to which my work wished and wishes to point. Much in it has at times been misunderstood and needs clarification.

Commission, I said — but is this comparison permissible? Was there someone who commissions? No, that there certainly was not; no one told me that he needed what I then made. And yet, it has also not been a literary project. There was something that commanded me, yes, which even took hold of me as an instrument at its disposal. What was that? Perhaps just Hasidism itself? It certainly was not this. Hasidism wishes to work exclusively within the boundaries of Jewish tradition and to concern no one outside of them. It was — so I might even venture to express it — something that hid itself in Hasidism and would, or rather should, go out into the world. To help it do this I was not unsuited.

Now I was still at that time, to be sure, an immature man; the so-called Zeitgeist still had power over me. To my readiness to make an adequate testimony to the great reality of faith disclosed to me through books and men was joined something of the widespread tendency of that time to display the contents of foreign religions to readers who wavered between desire for information and sheer curiosity. Besides, I did not yet know how to hold in check my inner inclination to transform poetically the narrative material. I did not, to be sure, bring in any alien motifs; still I did not listen attentively enough to the crude and ungainly but living folk-tone which could be heard from this material. At work in me here, too, was a natural reaction against the attitude of most Jewish historians of the nineteenth century toward Hasidism, in which they found nothing but wild superstition. The need, in the face of this misunderstanding, to point out the purity and loftiness of Hasidism led me to pay all too little attention to its popular vitality. Thus I can today to some extent still affirm these early attempts as a piece of work; as fulfillment of the task placed upon me, however, they have long since ceased to satisfy me. The representation of the Hasidic teaching that I gave in them was essentially faithful; but where I retold the legendary tradition, I still did so just as the Western author that I was.

Only in the course of the decade that followed the first publications did my authorship become a service, even though its independence could naturally only grow, and not lessen.

In the year before the first World War, the approach of the first stage of a catastrophe in the most exact sense of the term became evident to me. At that time, I gradually began to realize what later, after the end of the War, fulminated within me to certainty: that the human spirit is either bound to existence or, even though it be of the most astonishing caliber, it is nothing before the decisive judgment. Note well, this was no question of a philosophical conviction; it was not a question of what is usually described as existentialism. It was a question, rather, of the claim of existence itself, which had grown irresistible. The realization that at that time grew in me, that of human life as the possibility of a dialogue with being, was only the intellectual expression of just this certainty or just this claim.

At the same time, but in a special osmosis with it, my relationship to Hasidism was ever more basically transformed. To be sure, I knew from the beginning that Hasidism was not a teaching which was realized by its adherents in this or that measure, but a way of life, to which the teaching provided the indispensable commentary. But now it became overpoweringly clear that this life was involved in a mysterious manner in the task that had claimed me. I could not become a Hasid. It would have been an impermissible masquerading had I taken on the Hasidic manner of life — I who had a wholly other relation to Jewish tradition, since I must distinguish in my innermost being between what is commanded me and what is not commanded me. It was necessary, rather, to take into my own existence as much as I actually could of what had been truly exemplified for me there, that is to say, of the realization of that dialogue with being whose possibility my thought had shown me. I say, to be sure, "task," and I say, "It needed to be done." But in truth there was never anything like an intention or a project — it happened only as it happened.

That is what I sought to indicate when in the spring of 1924 in the Foreword to one of my Hasidic books I wrote: "Since I began my work on Hasidic literature, I have done this work for the sake of the teaching and the way. But at that time I believed that one might relate to them merely as an observer. Since then I have realized that the teaching is there that one may learn it and the way that one may walk on it. The deeper I realized this, so much the more this work, against which my life measured and ventured itself, became for me question, suffering, and also even consolation."

Out of these transformations the work has taken shape in the special form in which I have now for the most part retold the crude and shapeless traditional material. It is, in my opinion, a valid form of literature, which I call legendary anecdote. It has not developed out of literary presuppositions on the path of literary attempts, but out of the simple necessity to create a verbal expression adequate to an overpowering...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Princeton Univers. Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0691165416
• ISBN 13: 9780691165417
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchbär; info@buchbaer.de; ; Weberstr. 67; Osnabrück; 49084; Deutschland