144 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
That Moses is not purely a prophet is a much stranger claim. Deuteronomy
concludes with the statement that “there has not since arisen in Israel a prophet
like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face” (Deuteronomy 34:10). Buber’s
own emphasis on Moses’ role as a historical actor who receives and conveys God’s
word also seems to cement Moses’ prophetic status. What separates Moses from
all the subsequent prophets, however, is his political function. Moses is “leader
of the people... legislator.” He is not comprehensible “within any exclusively
‘religious’ categories,” since every such category marks out a specific area of duty
from the rest of life, rendering it a specialization. Moses, however, is unspecial-
ized, uncategorizable; his whole work is a single unity:
What constitutes his idea and his task: the realization of the unity of religious
and social life in the community of Israel, the substantiation of a ruling by
God that shall not be culturally restricted but shall comprehend the entire ex-
istence of the nation, the theopolitical principle; all this has penetrated to the
deeps of his personality, it has raised his person above the compartmental sys-
tem of typology, it has mingled the elements of his soul into a most rare unity.
The historical Moses, as far as we are capable of perceiving him, does not
differentiate between the spheres of religion and politics; and in him they are
not separated.^68The fact that Buber crosses the line here into a romantic exegesis, mingling “the
historical Moses” with talk of the “elements of his soul,” tends to add to our un-
derstanding of Buber’s Moses. The normative cast of Buber’s description of Mo-
ses’ unification of religion and politics suggests that he finds a model here for
contemporary practice. And yet it is precisely by accepting this model that we are
left to deal with the tragedy of the Reichsdialektik, on the one hand, and of Moses
himself, on the other.
It may even be possible that two tragedies arise from the union of religion
and politics in Moses. The first emerges from his singularity, the fact that no one
is able to follow him who is “like” him. Moses contemplates Joshua as successor
and realizes that “Joshua lacks that which is the constituent element in the at-
titude and actions of Moses; he does not receive revelations.”^69 This gives rise to
an unprecedented thought: the necessity of the division of powers. The functions
that Moses had united, the oracular utterances and performance of communal
offerings, as well as the political and military leadership, must be divided. What
begins with Joshua eventually gives rise to the dual roles of priest and judge in
Israel, and the very existence of the separate, specialized functions has the effect
of splitting the religious from the political in the minds of the people, making it
easier for them to eventually demand the monarchy. Moses, like most revolution-
aries throughout history, eventually chooses means that are contrary to his ends:
Moses does something, for the sake of maintaining the work, as a consequence
of which a central part of the foundation of his work is broken down. The final