Wrestling with Buber

Round 1

The sacred is here and now. The only God worth keeping is a God that cannot be kept. The only God worth talking about is a God that cannot be talked about. God is no object of discourse, knowledge, or even experience. He cannot be spoken of, but he can be spoken to; he cannot be seen, but he can be listened to. The only possible relationship with God is to address him and be addressed by him, here and now-or, as Buber puts it, in the present.

I and Thou, Prologue by Walter Kaufmann, pp.25-26.

We must learn to feel addressed by a book, by the human being behind it, as if a person spoke directly to us. A good book or essay or poem is not primarily an object to be put to use, or an object of experience: it is the voice of You speaking to me, requiring a response.

Prologue, p. 39

Who cares about Buber?

Like many today Martin Buber longed to release religion from institutionalism, to free God from theologians.

He stood apart from other Zionist leaders of his day by advocating an Arab state in Palestine.

Because he wrote prolifically about many subjects, people viewed him as a representative Jew in the 20^th century. His ideas about dialogue continue to wield a huge influence.

From wordslinger to I-YOUniverse

When I began this blog as “wordslinger,” an image from a poem I wrote in  college, I discovered there are dozens, perhaps 100s of “wordslingers” out there. So I tried “wordsLinger” which puts a different spin on it, the lovely sense of words leaving an afterimage like the flash of a camera does. It didn’t make that much difference, however. I wanted something unique.

I wrote something about speaking my words into the ether and stumbled on the idea of “e-thou” a play on “I-Thou” of course. Being a 60s child, I had taken part in encounter groups and sensitivity training, so “e-thou encounter” came easily to mind. I liked the assonance of thou and -coun-.

But people stumbled over it. I had to spell it, spell it again, then explain it. Although I liked it, I decided it might be dated. In a post on suffering I coined the word “YOUniverse” to celebrate God’s presence in the cosmos.

From there it was a short hop to “I-YOUniverse.” In the new translation of I and Thou, except in the title, I-You has replaced the older form.

Absorbing I and Thou

For a buck I had picked up a used paperback copy  of I and Thou, 2nd ed., translated by Ronald Gregor Smith (NY: Scribner’s, 1958). The brittle binding and stiff paper suit it.

The first owner underlined the first 34 pages copiously but left not a mark on the remaining 100 pages. I assume she gave up, having read more than I did.

When I started e-thou encounter, though, I felt an obligation to get past the jargon stage of I-It or I-Thou. If I named my blog for Buber’s thought, I ought at least to know it.

Encouraged by reviews of the new translation as being superior to the first, I ordered my copy from Amazon and, when it arrived, dug in. I was going to master this book!

It’s not a book you master, though. It masters you.

Wrestling at the Jabbok

 I read it half a dozen times, baffled by some passages. Kaufmann generously footnotes the German vocabulary, which helps you appreciate the verbal fog. Buber, like Shakespeare, could not pass up a good play on words, no matter what the context.

 Then, I caught myself striving to manhandle the book. Damn it! I was going to know this book inside and out.

I understand how to use knowledge as power. Except for writing a dissertation, I completed work on a Ph.D. in Hebrew and Old Testament.

Buber, like the wrestler at the fords of the Jabbok, refuses to be mastered.

Round 2 coming up!