Tag: Martin Buber
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Shabbat shalom
… I-Thou can only be spoken with the whole being. … I-It can never be spoken with the whole being. Martin Buber. I and Thou. Translated by Ronald Gregor Smith. Scribner Classics, 2000 (1958). 20. Image: From “The Tribe of Levi,” Marc Chagall, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Shabbat shalom
It is significant that [the Maggid of Mezritch’s] favorite simile is that of the father adjusting himself to his little son who is eager to learn. He regards the world as God’s self-adjustment to his little son: Man, whom he rears with tender care to enable him to grow up to his Father. Martin Buber,…
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Shabbat shalom
Whenever this union [of heavenly light and earthly fire, of spirit and nature] appears incarnate in human form, this person testifies – with the testimony of life – for the divine unity of spirit and nature, reveals this unity anew to the world of man which again and again becomes estranged from it, and evokes…
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Shabbat shalom
There are various versions of how the Baal Shem won [Rabbi Jacob Joseph of Polnoye] over, but they all have two traits in common: he does not reveal himself directly, but manifests himself through his particular manner of concealment, and he tells him stories (he always likes to tell stories) which stir the hearer just…
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Shabbat shalom
In a crisis of faith, when faith is renewed, the man who initiates and leads the renewal is frequently not a spiritual character in the ordinary sense of the world, but one who draws his strength from an extraordinary union between the spiritual and tellurian powers, between heavenly and earthly fire, but it is the…
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Shabbat shalom
The soul must not boast that it is more holy than the body, for only in that it has climbed down into the body and works through its limbs can the soul attain to its own perfection. The body, on the other hand, may not brag of supporting the soul, for when the soul leaves,…
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Shabbat shalom
Your personal joy will rise up when you want nothing but the joy of God – nothing but joy in itself. Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim, Schocken Books, 1947, 28. Image: James Garden Laing (1852-1915), “View of the Synagogue in Nürnberg,” Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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Shabbat shalom
The world in which you live, just as it is and not otherwise, affords you that association with God, which will redeem you and whatever divine aspect of the world you have been entrusted with. And your own character, the very qualities which make you what you are, constitutes your special approach to God, your…
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Shabbat shalom
[Hasidism] had nothing to do with pantheism which destroys or stunts the greatest of all values: the reciprocal relationship between the human and the divine, the reality of the I and the You which does not cease at the rim of eternity. Hasidism did, however, make manifest the reflection of the divine, the sparks of…
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Shabbat shalom
The hasidic movement did not weaken the hope in a Messiah, but it kindled both its simple and intellectual followers to joy in the world as it is, in life as it is, in every hour of life in this world, as that hour is. Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim, Schocken Books, 1947, 27.
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Shabbat shalom
The core of hasidic teachings is the concept of a life of fervor, of exalted joy. But this teaching is not a theory which can persist regardless of whether it is translated into reality. It is rather the theoretic supplement to a life which was actually lived by the zaddikim and hasidim … Martin Buber,…
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Shabbat shalom
[Accounts of legendary reality] go back to fervent human beings who set down their recollections of what they saw or thought they had seen, in their fervor, and this means that they included many things which took place, but were apparent only to the gaze of fervor, and others which cannot have happened and could…
Matters of Interpretation 