Martin Buber

Martin Buber was born in Vienna on February 8, 1878, and died in Jerusalem in 1965. It was through his grandfather, Salomon Buber, a Talmudist residing in Galicia (in present-day Ukraine), that he became acquainted with Hasidism. Contact with Hasidic wisdom and the deepening of its teachings caused him such a profound and spiritual upheaval that it ultimately determined his future life paths and all his subsequent philosophical reflection, as is evident from his earliest works: The Stories of Rabbi Nachman and The Legend of Baal Shem. After finishing his university studies, he also embraced the Zionist cause, of which he was a sympathizer, collaborating as an editor for the newspaper Die Welt, the movement's organ. In this context, Buber advocated for the creation of a "binational, Israeli-Palestinian" Jewish state; in his opinion, a state solely for Jews would lead to "the great modern deception." From 1924 to 1933, in Frankfurt, he dedicated himself to teaching, along with the study of the thought of several philosophers, with particular emphasis on Kierkegaard (1813-1855). In 1938, he left Europe to settle in Palestine, where he began teaching Jewish Religious Studies and Ethics at the University of Jerusalem.