Between Pharaohs and Nomads | 149- Buber cites Volz and von Rad as sharing his view that the passage is old and “genuinely
traditional,” rather than a late interpolation; MRC 101. “Der Adlerspruch” (The Eagle Speech)
is the single chapter specifically noted as found in German manuscript in the Nachlass. - Ibid., 102.
- Ibid., 105.
- Ibid., 106–107.
- Ibid., 108.
- Compare the distinction between Molechization and Baalization in KG.
- Ibid., 128.
- Ibid., 87–88.
- MRC 89.
- Cf. Genesis Rabbah 9: 7.
- Considerations include the strangeness of the plural “Elohim” in the late period, and
the retention of the theme of Aaron’s share of guilt in idolatry, which by the time of the divided
kingdom would have been highly inconvenient for the authorities of the Jerusalem Temple,
who presumably backed the writing of this anti-northern passage. - MRC 151.
- Ibid., 77.
- Buber’s claim that a riot took place in the camp derives from a number of textual con-
siderations but also mitigates the brutality of Moses’ response to the idolatry. If the rioters
already used violence against their fellow Israelites, Moses seems less bloody in reply. Riot
suppression as revolutionary means presents a problem from the standpoint of Buber’s general
theopolitics; however, it ultimately does not constitute Moses’ fundamental mistake for Bu-
ber. Cf. Buber’s 1913 treatment of this subject, in which he not only adheres to the traditional
picture of Moses exacting violent punishment on the idolatrous Israelites but also valorizes it
in the name of “unconditionality”; Buber, “Jewish Religiosity,” in On Judaism, ed. Nahum N.
Glatzer (New York: Schocken, 1995), 88. - Buber interprets the promise that God’s “face” will go before the people in light of the
immediately preceding statement that no one can see God’s face and live; it is a renewed prom-
ise of protection, since enemies along the way will be met by the “face” and die—enemies at-
tacking from the front, that is. The lasting infamy of Amalek is that they attacked from behind. - MRC 156–157. This claim is a near-exact parallel to what Buber says in Der Gesalbte
about YHVH granting the people a human monarch. - Ibid., 158. I have slightly altered the English wording, which renders both Königtum
(מלכות) and Bereich (רשות) (WZB 182; Moshe 142) as “kingdom.” I also translate verflüchtigt as
“dissipated” rather than “subtilized.” - Ibid., 184.
- MRC 187.
- Buber’s negative view of rabbinic halakha is well known from his correspondence con-
cerning Franz Rosenzweig, “The Builders: Concerning the Law,” in On Jewish Learning, ed.
Nahum N. Glatzer (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002), 72–92, 109–118. What he
says here about the category of “law,” using the Hebrew chok for German Gesetz, challenges the
usual understanding of his relationship to halakha. - MRC 187–88; WZB 215; Moshe, 169–170.
- Ibid., 188–189 (my italics).
- Hence Buber refused the common identification of the Zionist-Arab conflict as a trag-
edy. It is not because his worldview had no room for tragedy; it is because he understood the
conflict as remediable. - Moses Mendelssohn also stressed the uncategorizability of Moses’ polity: “But why do
you seek a generic term for an individual thing, which has no genus... which cannot be put