Martin Buber's Theopolitics

Between Pharaohs and Nomads | 137

and the revolt of Korach are indications of deep errors.^47 Moses wages “the pri-
mal fight from which everything subsequent, including the great protests of the
prophets against a cult emptied of intention, can find only its starting-point....
The people wish for a tangible security, they wish to ‘have’ the God, they wish to
have Him at their disposal through a sacral system; and it is this security which
Moses cannot and must not grant them.”^48
The biblical narrative singles out the desert generation as particularly wick-
ed, a great irony given its status as the generation of the Exodus, which witnessed
the miracles and was privileged to receive the Torah. Yet these miracles seem to
make little impression on them; scarcely days after YHVH performs wonders
for them, they begin to “murmur” against Moses and to indulge in nostalgia for
Egypt. This unrest has a special theopolitical status that distinguishes it from
the sins of later generations, which place the people in opposition to the later
prophets. According to Buber, the prophet arises first and foremost to chastise
the monarch, the wielder of power, and only secondarily to chastise the people
for going astray. The prophets are powerless and officeless spokesmen of the spir-
it, standing against institutional power. Moses, however, wields power himself,
“though his power is a doubtful one. He is the leader who demands no dominion
for himself.” Buber traces this attitude to Moses’ Midianite background, which
stresses the nomadic rather than the settled approach to leadership. But Moses
adds his own great mission, “the passionate wish to make a serious political issue
of the faith in the earthly dominion of the god.” As in Kingship of God, this wish
gives rise to the noninstitutional institution of charismatic leadership, in which
the leader led by God resists the temptation of dynastic power. But the charis-
matic idea is easily misunderstood, and Buber makes it more explicit in Moses
than in Kingship of God that the cause of this misunderstanding is the people’s
longing for visible signs of victory and success, which Moses opposes in a “never-
interrupted, never-despairing struggle”:

Only as long as the leader is successful is he regarded as equipped with the

authority of Heaven. As soon as something goes wrong, or unsatisfactory cir-

cumstances ensue, people are swift to detect a rift between him and the God,

to whom appeal is made against his unworthy because unlucky representative;

if indeed they do not prefer to draw the conclusion from the mishap that it is

impossible to depend on the favor of YHVH....

Always and everywhere in the history of religion the fact that God is identi-

fied with success is the greatest obstacle to a steadfast religious life.^49

In their impatience, the “murmurers” assume at the slightest negative turn
that Moses, and by extension they themselves, have lost divine favor. The “stiff-
neckedness” of Israel, for Buber, is nothing other than the “permanent passion
for success.” The tragedy is that this passion emerges from the very same “un-
bridled craving for independence” that refuses to submit to any man.