180 J o n at h a n C o h e n
fi gures in what he called a “movement of return”1 from the outside in.
Tragically, the cultural community that was to be the chief benefi ciary of
the philosophical and interpretive projects of Buber and Rosenzweig was
decimated by the Holocaust. Nonetheless, these two thinkers address the
“very great diffi culties”2 experienced by modern Jews who strive to reap-
propriate the Bible and its tradition in the contemporary world.
Buber and Rosenzweig did not share an identical theology, and they dif-
fered widely on signifi cant theological issues. Buber regarded the Jewish
people as a “history-making”3 nation and as a political entity. He was con-
cerned with the theological signifi cance of its historical way through time
and with the theological meaning of its renewed ingathering in a specifi c
place — the land of Israel. Although he was a maverick Zionist, one who
called for accommodation with the native Arab population of Palestine
and favored a binational state, he was a Zionist nonetheless. He believed
that the restoration of the Jewish people to an independent, “whole” na-
tional life was crucial for the spiritual renewal of a people called upon to
expose its “whole” life to the commanding voice of God. Although he saw
Jesus as an icon of the “underground Jew” (as he did the Chasidim and Spi-
noza), he believed that much of Christianity had developed into an objecti-
fi ed religion characterized by creed, dogma, and catechism (“belief that ” as
opposed to the “belief in” he thought was more characteristic of Judaism).4
Rosenzweig, although he occasionally expressed a certain sympathy for the
Zionist project, remained, theologically, a non-Zionist. For him, the Jewish
people should not be understood as a history-making nation but rather as
an ahistorical ethno-religious community existing under the aspect of eter-
nity. Its task was not to walk a “way” through historical time but to persist
outside of time as a holy people whose perennial intimacy with God could
be directly beheld in the repeated celebrations of the cyclical Jewish calen-
dar. It was the legitimate and divinely ordained task of Christianity to walk
the historical “way,” gradually bringing the pagan nations closer to God
through the mediation of Jesus and the Church.5
Perhaps the most famous disagreement between Buber and Rosenzweig
concerns their diff ering approaches to the issue of Jewish law and its claim
on the modern Jew.6 Both Buber and Rosenzweig gave privileged place to
the “command” of God heard directly by the individual, or the people, in
the “presentness” of a particular situation. Such a command, perceived as
coming down on one suddenly from the outside, oft en going against one’s
grain and running counter to what one would like to hear, engendering a
sense that “I cannot do otherwise,” is, in the moment, sensed as a genuine