Skip to content
You are not logged in |Login  
     
Record:   Prev Next
Resources
More Information
Bestseller
BestsellerE-book
Author Schmidt, Gilya Gerda.

Title Martin Buber's formative years : from German culture to Jewish renewal, 1897-1909 / Gilya Gerda Schmidt.

Publication Info. Tuscaloosa, Ala. : University of Alabama Press, [1995]
©1995

Item Status

Description 1 online resource (xiv, 177 pages) : illustrations.
Physical Medium polychrome
Description text file
Series Judaic studies series
Judaic studies series (Unnumbered)
Note Rev. version of the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pittsburgh, 1991.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 161-168) and index.
Summary During the period from 1897 to 1909, Buber's keen sense of the crisis of humanity, his intimate knowledge of German culture and Jewish sources, and his fearlessness in the face of possible ridicule challenged him to behave in a manner so outrageous and so contrary to German-Jewish tradition that he actually achieved a transformation of himself and those close to him. Calling on spiritual giants of great historical periods in German, Christian, and Jewish history - such as Nicolas of Cusa, Jakob Bohme, Israel Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Nachman of Brazlav, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Friedrich Nietzsche - Buber proceeded to subvert the existing order by turning his upside-down world of slave morality right side up once more.
If contemporary life was bankrupt, why lament? Did not God command humanity to act? Buber wholeheartedly immersed himself in the making of a new world, of Zionist culture, of Hasidic spirituality, of Romantic individuality, of unity from diversity. By examining the multitude of disparate sources that Buber turned to for inspiration, this book aims to elucidate Buber's creative genius and his contribution to turn-of-the-century Jewish renewal. Schmidt's timely and comprehensive study concludes that Buber was successful in creating the German-Jewish symbiosis that Emancipation was to have created for the two peoples, but that this synthesis was tragic because it came too late for practical application by Jews in Germany. Those listening to Buber were about to leave voluntarily for the ancestral Jewish homeland, and the Jews who were not interested then were later forced to leave - or to submit to worse fates. The opportunity for the realization of a German-Jewish symbiosis had passed.
Martin Buber (1878-1965) was born into a world of two cultures - his Jewish family and his Austrian fatherland. During his childhood with his grandparents in Galician Lvov, Jewish values and German aesthetics coexisted. But after Buber re-entered fin-de-siecle Viennese society, the world of his grandparents fell apart. Nothing was as it should have been: Jewish hopes for full social integration were disappointed, Yiddish culture seemingly caused modern Jewish youth to be impoverished, and the Jewish religion had become ossified. In his personal confusion, Buber clearly grasped the essence of the problem: emancipation had failed, German culture was dying, Jews were on their own, and tradition was no longer good enough.
Contents Prologue: the problem of individuation and community -- A time of crisis: contemporary cultural concerns, 1897-1901 -- Academic beginnings: apprenticeship in aesthetics, 1897-1904 -- Kadima! apprenticeship in Jewish culture, 1898-1905 -- Hasidism: apprenticeship in a life of the communal spirit, 1905-1908 -- Epilogue: toward a synthesis of all syntheses.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject Buber, Martin, 1878-1965 -- Childhood and youth.
Buber, Martin, 1878-1965.
Buber, Martin, 1878-1965.
Jews -- Germany -- Intellectual life.
Jews.
Germany.
Intellectual life.
Genre/Form Electronic books.
Biografieën (vorm)
Other Form: Print version: Schmidt, Gilya Gerda. Martin Buber's formative years. Tuscaloosa, Ala. : University of Alabama Press, ©1995 0817307699 (DLC) 94024877 (OCoLC)30624224
ISBN 0585225818 (electronic book)
9780585225814 (electronic book)
0817307699 (alkaline paper)