Martin Buber's Formative Years: From German Culture to Jewish Renewal, 1897-1909 (review)

150 SHOFAR Winter 1997 Vol. 15, No.2 theology yet problematic to his anthropology and ethics, Benor offers the intriguing distinction between intellectual knowledge of God, which is apparently precluded, and speculative thought of God, which is not. It is the latter, fueled by attributes of action according to Benor, which suffices to support Maimonides' understanding ofhuman perfection and his ethics of imitatio Dei. I find minor points of disagreement with Benor's treatment. His shift from intellectual knowledge to speculative thought of God, for example, seems to overlook the emphasis Maimonides gives to demonstration in the cognitive process of denying attributes to God. Yet demonstration is a requisite of knowledge, while its absence leads to speculative thought. likewise, Benor is right in stressing attributes of action. But he suggests that this also allows us to speak descriptively of God, in particular to predicate "Hearer ofprayers" to God. For Maimonides, however, attributes of action serve, not to describe, but to identify an agent. They tell us more about the world than they do about God. Such disagreements, however, hardly detract fro~ the overall strength of the book, which I believe lies in the way Benor manages to see contrasting elements in the thought of Maimonides merge into a unified interpretation. Two instances have already been mentioned: the integration of the theoretical and the practical into a single ideal of human perfection and of supplication and meditation into a single expression of worship. But more generally, Benor succeeds in showing-by illustration more than argumentation-how philosophy and religion are indispensably interconnected in the thought of Maimonides. Therein also lies the interest of Benor's book to contemporary readers, who are inclined to disassociate the one from the other. The medieval Maimonides, as presented by Benor, is seen to be thoroughly philosophical yet thoroughly Jewish. Joseph A. Buijs St. Joseph's College University of Alberta Martin Buber's Formative Years: From German Culture to Jewish Renewal, 1897-1909, by Gilya Gerda Schmidt. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1995. 177 pp. $29.95. Gilya Schmidt, Judaic Scholar of Religion at the University of Tennessee, has explored in depth this early period of Buber's life that hitherto has seen very little critical scholarship. This alone would make her Book Reviews 151 book a valuable contribution to the growing literature on Buber. Each chapter examines a major aspect of his "apprenticeship"; Schmidt wants to present a composite picture ofBuber's early development that led to his search for a new type of Jewish personality and a new type of Jewish community. She begins with Buber's claim that society at the end of the nineteenth century was in the throes of a crisis of culture and community. Buber was critical of the contributions of Hugo von Hoffinannsthal, Peter A1tenberg, and many other turn-of-the-century Viennese intellectuals. In the absence of strong leaders Buber looked to culture, not to religion or politics, for a new type of community. Buber's early cultural Zionism may have some of its roots here. In the second chapter she explores Buber's student days when he occupied himself primarily with the study of an and philosophy. (In an interesting appendix Schmidt supplies us with the courses Buber pursued each semester ofhis university studies, insofar as these are available, along with the professors ofeach course.) Her section on Huber's doctoral thesis dealing with Nicolas of Cusa and Jakob Bohme is unusually dense and is indicative perhaps that the author is on unfamiliar terrain, with the result that much of the chapter reads like an extended thesis abstract. Schmidt next points to Buber's interest in Zionism as the way by which he renewed ties to his Jewish roots. By no means, however, did it mark a return to traditional rabbinicJudaism, which, in Buber's mind, had suppressed the creative energy ofJudaism and made it a prisoner of the Law. Buber's confrontation with the Zionism of Theodor Herzl strengthened his conviction that Herzl was a Jew who was out of touch with Jewish tradition and with the Jewish masses, "a whole man, but not a wholeJew." His response to Herzl, and later to Ahad Ha-Am...