282 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
conversation today is generally hospitable to claims that the more religious one
is, the more maximalist and uncompromising one must be. Buber’s Zionism at-
tempts to transcend this binary. As Marc Ellis has written, Buber’s view of renew-
al and regeneration “occurs in relation to history, to the land, and to the people
who inherited the land”; he does not seek to overcome all three by abolishing
history in an immanent eschaton. Regeneration “represents the rebirth of Jewish
witness and values: survival without witness can only be seen as failure.”^164 But
this “witness” that Buber can provide cannot mean insisting on coexistence while
also allowing every possibility for coexistence to be attacked and destroyed:
Addressing conciliatory words to others and occupying oneself with humane
projects is not the way to make peace. We make peace... wherever we are des-
tined and summoned to do so: in the active life of our own community and in
that aspect of it which can actively help determine its relationship to another
community. The prophecy of peace addressed to Israel is not valid only for the
days of the coming of the Messiah. It holds for the day when the people will
again be summoned to take part in shaping the destiny of its earliest home; it
holds for today. “And if not now, when?” (Ethics of the Fathers, 1:14). Fulfill-
ment in a Then is inextricably bound up with fulfillment in the Now.^165Conclusion: On Being Late Born
In the introduction to Legend of the Baal-Shem, Buber said that he interpreted
Hasidic stories as one Nachgeborenen, or late born. Despite his active role in Zi-
onism from its beginning, however, a sense of too-lateness attends his Zionist ca-
reer as well. Gustav Landauer’s criticism induced his profound philosophical and
political about-face in 1916, when Buber was already famous for his Hasidic tales
and his Prague lectures. The Balfour Declaration was issued just a year later, and
one year after that Buber wrote that the argument “we must create by all means
a majority [of Jews in Palestine] as soon as possible” caused his heart to “stand
still.” In 1919, while Buber was attempting to interest Landauer in the potential
of cooperative settlement in Palestine, David Ben-Gurion and Berl Katznelson
were founding the Achdut Haavoda (United Labor), the core of what would soon
become the Histadrut; meanwhile, the newly formed Muslim-Christian Associa-
tion was voicing Arab demands for sovereignty, the unity of Palestine with Syria,
and the rejection of the Balfour Declaration. The third text in Mendes-Flohr’s
collection of Buber’s writings on Jews and Arabs was already entitled “At this
Late Hour.”^166 In 1925, when Brit Shalom was formed, mainstream Zionists had
already given up on dialogue with Arabs; the British Mandate was in full swing,
and the left wing of the Gedud Haavoda (Labor Battalion) had already lost out to
the Achdut-dominated Histadrut in its effort to hold its kibbutzim to the values
of decentralization and Arab solidarity.^167 By the time Buber arrived in Palestine,
in 1938, the hour truly was late. The countryside was in the throes of the Arab
Revolt; the battle lines were drawn and his own message had less traction than