To the Editor:
If Gershom Scholem’s uninspired intellectualizations [“Martin Buber’s Hasidism,” October 1961] do, as he says, reflect the more basic Hasidic literature, then it must be the perpetual transcendence of this literature which makes the Hasidim such delightfully refreshing people. Like these joyful dancers, Martin Buber is forever acrobatic enough to leap over, or squeeze behind, the weighty intellectual formula.
In matters Hasidic, Mr. Scholem suffers from having too many feet on the ground.
Eli Burkow
Jewish Institute of Religion
New York City
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To the Editor:
It was with great dismay that I read Professor Scholem’s critique. . . .
He begins by quoting Buber’s reason for having chosen the later and more legendary accounts of Hasidism rather than the earlier theoretical writings as source material: “‘Because Hasidism in the first instance is not a category of teaching but one of life, our chief source of knowledge of Hasidism is its legends, and only after them comes its theoretical literature.’” Scholem finds this reasoning evidence of “a methodological approach which I consider more than questionable.” That is a strong charge, and the basis for it lies, as we find a moment later, in Professor Scholem’s reluctance to accept Buber’s central distinction. “What is a ‘category of teaching’ as opposed to one of ‘life’ when it comes to analyzing a historical phenomenon whose teaching is inextricably tied to the life it preached?” Scholem asks.
In the phrase “inextricably tied to,” Professor Scholem indulges in the same vagueness which he unjustly charges to Buber. For the Hasidim inevitably made a selection—from a large body of theoretical writings—of those teachings which became ethos for them. Moreover, the question as to how they understood those teachings, concretely and in life terms (a question that does not seem to have occurred to Professor Scholem), is a very crucial one indeed. The answer seems clearly to lie in some record of those lives, or in the essence of those lives distilled into myth, that is, legend, “which is truer than the chronicle for those who know how to read it.” . . . Professor Scholem is interested in theology, Buber in the lived concrete. . . .
The second disturbing aspect of Professor Scholem’s article is his suggestion that Buber distorts Hasidic teaching to conform more with his own “anti-platonic, existentialist” thought. . . . The center of Scholem’s attack on Buber, in regard to the supposed distortion Buber’s philosophy forces on his Hasidic interpretation, revolves around a single passage in which Buber says that Hasidism “kindled its followers to joy in the world as it is, in life as it is, in every hour of life in this world as that hour is” and that it taught a “constant, undaunted, and exalted joy in the Here and Now.” Scholem objects, saying: “the ‘undaunted and exalted joy’ which Hasidism certainly did demand of its followers is not a joy in the Here and Now. In joy—or let me say in doing whatever he does in full concentration—man communes not with the Here and Now itself (as Buber would have it) but with what is hidden in the negligible garment of the Here and Now.” . . . A rudimentary acquaintance with I and Thou, however, particularly the passage from section three which begins, “What is the eternal, primal phenomenon, present here and now, of that which we term revelation?” will make it clear that Buber is very much in accord with the Hasidism that communes with what is hidden in the garment of the Here and Now. . . .
The dispute, in this case, rests on the term “negligible” which Professor Scholem applies to the garment of the Here and Now, and it seems, at least to me, that Buber’s subtle cutting through the either/or of spiritual and temporal reality makes much more sense in any reading of the Hasidic lore than does Professor Scholem’s retention of the split. (Witness the saying of Rabbi Bunam: “I should not like to change places with our father Abraham! What good would it do God if Abraham became like blind Bunam, and blind Bunam became like Abraham? Rather than have this happen, I think I shall try to become a little more myself.”) . . .
Professor Scholem then raises the concreteness of the way (both in the sense of particularity and presence) in another context to demonstrate the similarity between Hasidic teaching and the gnostic Cabbala: “Buber’s interpretation stresses the uniqueness of the task confronting every single individual. ‘All men have access to God, but each in a way that is all his own.’ This is indeed true, but it is not a novelty introduced by Hasidism. On the contrary the idea comes originally from the Lurianic Cabbala—that is to say, from that very gnosis at which Buber looks askance.” . . . There is very little difference, according to Scholem, between the abstract notion in the Cabbala (whereby each man lifts up the sparks belonging to his own spiritual root in the great soul of Adam, each according to the particular place he once had in Adam’s soul) and the very concrete Hasidic notion as expressed by Rabbi Bunam. Scholem is right in implying that as ideas these two notions are not very different. But as ethos, there is all the difference in the world, a difference that can never be recorded in religious texts, but only in a community’s legends.
There is a final point that must be made here, because Professor Scholem, attempting to weight his case against Buber (apparently it cannot stand on objective grounds), throws the charge at him of “religious anarchism, which does not acknowledge any teaching about what should be done, but puts the whole emphasis on intensity, on how whatever one does is done.”
In the first place, Scholem, who knows Buber, knows that he has not lived his life anarchistically in this sense, namely, without committing himself to what concretely ought to be done. In the second place, the charge is totally without basis in Buber’s writings; the argument of Buber’s writings is against the exaltation of feeling, or intensity for intensity’s sake, while it is for the development of direction.
Now a direction (which flows out of relation) may seem devoid of concreteness to Scholem, but in order to establish that it is religious anarchism, he would have to demonstrate that profound religious teachings do not emphasize the way, the manner and direction of the deed, rather than its specific content. . . . It is the ossified forms of religious teachings, the canon and law, the theology, the whole gamut of an established orthodoxy, to which the ritual act alone, the rote following the letter, suffices.
In sum, the difference between the two men (aside from the points on which Scholem simply misunderstands Buber) is philosophic, and in general rests on that original fine distinction between “a category of teaching” and one of “life.” What is distressing about Scholem’s article is that Scholem refuses to recognize this fact and seeks rather to disqualify Buber from the dispute with such unfortunate remarks as “No doubt, for the purposes of aesthetic presentation the legends have a greater advantage and appeal, and lend themselves to a subjectivist interpretation more easily than the theoretical writings which contain a sustained line of argument and on which, in my humble opinion, a discussion of the meaning of Hasidism—even if we call it ‘Hasidic life’—must be based.”
The careful student of Buber, and of Hasidism, will see here an attempt to slur over the real dispute, namely, whether one is, or is not, to distinguish between teachings and life, between the precept as it is given, and the quality of the life as it is lived. . . .
David Horowitz
Berkeley, California
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Mr. Scholem writes:
If Mr. Burkow finds my observations too intellectual, I have no quarrel with him. I believe that an understanding of the great phenomenon of Hasidism does indeed require a certain amount of intellectual effort. If he says that Buber is “acrobatic enough to leap over the weighty intellectual formula,” I am quite prepared to agree with him from my point of view, although I wonder whether Buber would be particularly amused by this kind of praise. . . .
Mr. Horowitz is understandably dismayed by my critique, and being acquainted with the mood of some of Buber’s admirers, I must admit that it was with great reluctance that I embarked upon my critical analysis. My misgivings are borne out by the type of remarks offered by Mr. Horowitz in his answer to me.
He thinks that I indulge in the same vagueness which I charge to Buber because I speak of the teaching of Hasidism as being inextricably tied to the life it preached. As a matter of fact, the meaning of my argument is exactly the opposite of what Mr. Horowitz infers. If the Hasidim made a selection of those teachings which became meaningful in their life, it stands to reason that their greatest masters would not have put into writing teachings contrary to the gist of what Buber (and not the Hasidim) read into some of their legends. I am convinced that the teaching of the Hasidim closely corresponded to their life. They certainly omitted very many things from older literature, which no longer interested them, proving that what they did leave and enlarge upon was regarded as important in the context of their spiritual universe. To play around with the term “life” in order to skip over the only authentic interpretation the Hasidim themselves gave of this life, namely in their teachings—and this is what Mr. Horowitz does—smacks to me of irresponsibility. And so does the use of words or phrases such as “concretely,” “life terms,” “the lived concrete,” all of which are very much in need of analysis, as I attempted to show in my essay. If the answer to the Hasidic secret lies in the record of lived lives, or in legend, then the tremendous effort made during the first fifty years of the movement’s history to express the answer in terms of Cabbalistic concepts would have been wasted indeed. The truth of the matter is, of course, that records of lives are open to an endless number of interpretations on a spiritual level. My point was that the teachings for which the Hasidim themselves assumed responsibility were not only less open to such subjectivist interpretations, but also that they basically contradict the theories about the meaning of Hasidic life which Buber tried to distill from its legend.
“Scholem is interested in theology, Buber in the lived concrete.” Yes, I am indeed interested in theology and so, for that matter, is Buber, whatever the name by which he prefers to call it. Mr. Horowitz is the first reader of Buber of whom I have heard who doesn’t think that what Buber has expounded in his books included a theology of Hasidism. The difference between Buber and me is that I maintain that the theology of a historical phenomenon should be interpreted according to its theological literature, whereas Buber goes on to develop a theology out of his own interpretation of legends without caring whether this construction clashes with the theological literature. To call the legends text and the theology commentary only causes confusion. . . .
As for Mr. Horowitz’s refutation of my central argument about the Here and Now by means of a sentence from Buber’s I and Thou, I fail to see what purpose is served by quoting from Buber one of those statements based precisely on the ambiguity of terms I questioned at length in my discussion. Mr. Horowitz has too facile an answer. Anybody reading my full argument and not only the one sentence Mr. Horowitz chose to quote, will see the difference between a Here and Now which is annihilated in “meeting” God, and one that, according to Buber, is realized in its concreteness.
Legends are texts, and I consider the statement of Mr. Horowitz that ethos can never be recorded in religious texts, but only in a community’s legends, as meaningless. This is the kind of talk to which I take exception in my article. Finally, Mr. Horowitz has not understood my point about Buber’s religious anarchism. True, Buber’s philosophy asks man to take a direction and to make a decision, but he doesn’t say which direction and which decision. Moreover, he says that such a direction and decision cannot be formulated except in the world of the It, so much disparaged in his own thinking. Whatever the merits of this view—which is intrinsically anarchic—my point was that, rightly or wrongly, Hasidism never could share it because Hasidism remained “committed” to Jewish tradition as a teaching in which directions could be formulated, that is to say, as a teaching about what should be done. In Buber’s philosophy this belongs to the world of the It, in which the anarchic life of the dialogue is killed. Buber has always been very honorable and indeed admirable and courageous in standing by this principle, as is well known to anybody who has followed his career. He said you should commit yourself, but he refused to say to what, although he as a person made his choice. This in a precise sense is the meaning of the term “religious anarchism”: Do whatever you do, but do it in a “committed” way; that is to say (if this bogus term of “commitment” is translated), put your moral intensity and responsibility into it; or properly speaking, your heart.
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