286 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
- Biale, Gershom Scholem, 7. Contrast to Scholem’s portrayal of Zionism and messianism,
for both of which he employed the singular; Moshe Idel, “Messianic Scholars: On Early Israeli
Scholarship, Politics and Messianism,” Modern Judaism 32.1 (February 2012): 32. - Myers, “The Scholem-Kurzweil Debate and Modern Jewish Historiography,” Modern
Judaism 6.3 (October 1986): 261–286. - Scholem’s article appeared in response to a solicitation by Commentary editor Norman
Podhoretz for criticism of what he called “the Buber cult.” - Buber, “Prophecy, Apocalyptic, and the Historical Hour,” in PW 198.
- Ibid., 201. Cf. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1998), 9, 247. - Scholem, “Martin Buber’s Conception of Judaism,” 163–164.
- Scholem’s neglect of PU may reflect his reluctance to discuss his differences with Buber
on politics generally and Zionism in particular. - PU 10.
- Ibid., 7–8.
- Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memoirs of My Youth, trans. Harry Zohn (New
York: Schocken, 1980), 53–54. - Recall Buber’s sneering summation of the pro-monarchical refrain in Judges: “One sees
the shrugging of shoulders, hears the superior, regretful tone: ‘At that time they simply didn’t
have a king in Israel!’” KG 82. - Idel, “Messianic Scholars,” 22.
- Ibid., 40.
- Lazier, God Interrupted, 33.
- Ibid., 44–45.
- Buber, Two Types of Faith, trans. Norman Goldhawk (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse Univer-
sity Press, 2003) - He did write that Two Types of Faith was Buber’s “weakest book.” Scholem, “Martin
Buber’s Conception of Judaism,” 164. - Jacob Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul, trans. Dana Hollander, ed. Aleida Assmann
and Jan Assmann, in conjunction with Horst Folkers, Wolf-Daniel Hartwich, and Christoph
Schulte (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 48. - Jacob Taubes, “Buber and Philosophy of History,” in Philosophy of Martin Buber,
451–468. - By the 1980s, however, Taubes had come to see Hegel’s concept of world-spirit as ad-
vanced against Paul; Political Theology of Paul, 43. - Taubes points out that already in the generation of the Young Hegelians, Moses Hess,
whom Buber singles out in On Zion as his own forerunner, had criticized Hegel and Marx for
their historical determinism. “Buber and Philosophy of History,” 458. - Ibid., 460.
- Ibid., 462.
- Ibid., 467.
- Ibid., 460.
- Buber might respond that the energy and motivation imparted by apocalyptic convic-
tion are related to despair and the yearning for success: apocalypticism promises imminent
victory in a way that the prophetic cannot. Thus it creates an energy, which savvy politicians
can harness, but it cannot create the new world it desires. - Taubes, Political Theology of Paul, 50.
- Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1995), 287–324.
- Taubes, Political Theology of Paul, 5.