40 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
state” refers not to the existing state but rather to an ideal by which to critique
the existing state.^135 Buber may have been eager to demonstrate his about-face
through a rapid public commitment to a Landauerian position. In response to a
comment of Cohen’s on “the viable ethnic group’s need for power,” Buber wrote,
“I have seen and heard too much of the results of empty needs for power.”^136 In
his early cultural-Zionist work Buber had dismissed the diplomatic route to the
achievement of a state in favor of work in the present, Gegenwartsarbeit. We find
him now dismissing the goal of political Zionism: “[Our argument]... does not
concern the Jewish state, that, yes, were it to be founded today would be built
upon the same principles as any other modern state. It does not concern the ad-
dition of one more trifling power structure.... Zion restored will become the
house of the Lord for all peoples and the center of the new world... in which
‘the blood-stained garment of war is burned’ and ‘the swords are turned into
plowshares.’”
This political shift toward Landauer is accompanied by a theological shift,
also already in the 1916 debate with Cohen. For example, in his prewar writings,
Buber frequently mentioned the idea of “realizing God,” a provocative claim that
implies that God depends on human beings to become fully actual.^137 In his reply
to Cohen, however, Buber speaks more often of “realizing Judaism.” God, then,
is served, not realized: “Not to acknowledge God with our words while betraying
God with our lives, but to serve God faithfully through the establishment of a hu-
man community according to his will.” The still-transitional nature of this mo-
ment is made clear from his conclusion, that when we live a true human life, we
show “how God lives in us[;]... we realize both ourselves and God within us.”^138
The theme of service to God comes with a traditional, conservative- sounding
corollary: rebellion is negative. Buber’s lecture Der Heilige Weg: Ein Wort an die
Juden und an die Völker (The Holy Way: A Word to the Jews and to the Nations,
May 1918) explored this theme more fully.^139 Here Buber announced, “We Jews
are all renegades [Abtrünnige].”^140 Buber means by this that rebellion against God
manifests itself through service to the nations and their states, and so service to
God becomes rebellion against such powers—not through civil war and strife in
each nation, however, but by leaving the Exile to form a new divine community
in Palestine. Buber gave this lecture, originally entitled “Das Judentum und die
wahre Gemeinschaft” (Judaism and True Community), at least three times in
1918: in May, in Vienna; in October, in Berlin; and in December, in Munich.^141
In December 1918, however, Munich was not just one more city in which to give
a lecture. It was undergoing revolutionary upheaval. Kurt Eisner had declared
Bavaria a republic on November 7, two days before the general proclamation of
the German Republic in Berlin, and on November 14 he had invited Landauer to
Munich “to advance the transformation of souls as a speaker.”^142 The following
day, Landauer wrote to Buber: “You should come too; there is enough work to do.
I will write once I have found a suitable task for you.... I wish I might be sent to