The Political Theology of Binationalism: Judah Leib Magnes and Martin Buber

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Judah Leib Magnes and Martin Buber collaborated to promote the binational cause in Palestine, driven by their religious worldviews. Buber was committed to a prophetic-moral solution to the conflict in Palestine, which coincided with his understanding of Zionism as the political realization of the covenant among God, the land, and the people. He perceived the “Arab Question” as the moral acid test of Zionism, yet there was an apparent lack of conviction in his relation to the binational cause. For Magnes, the binational program was a political-theological platform. It was the outcome of an American belief in the power of political structures and covenants to enforce political equality and the centrality of Reform ethical monotheism in his religious worldview.