Word: buber
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...continue his reading of religious literature. "I'm interested in the ways different writers have expressed the religious attitude in different forms--epic, drama, confessions, meditations, lyrical poetry, and theological works." This semester, he has been leading a Directed Study with one undergraduate in the theologies of Martin Buber and Dietrich Bonhoeffer...
...first came under the influence of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchek, a preeminent U.S. Orthodox authority and Kantian scholar who emphasizes Orthodoxy's basic compatibility with secular learning. Riskin went on to become valedictorian at Yeshiva University. Then, journeying to Israel to attend Hebrew University, he sought out Martin Buber, whose works he had been reading since he was twelve. Riskin found that he had a more traditionalist view of Judaism than the great philosopher. "Buber could not understand a God of Love giving a Law," explains Riskin today. "I respectfully differ. A God who loves must give commands, must...
Binding Commandment. Even more important and enduring was the middle- of-the-road view that Rosenzweig took of the Halakhah, the elaborate body of law set down in Jewish tradition. Buber virtually reduced Halakhah to individual inclination, arguing that its prescriptions were useful only to a Jew who found them personally fulfilling. But Rosenzweig saw the law as something stronger, not so much a set of rules as a universally binding commandment to seize every opportunity to perform a good work, or mitzvah. Laws that did not serve such good ends in a particular historical setting simply no longer applied...
...that was enough. With his wife next to him, he would laboriously point out letters of the alphabet to spell words, eventually turning the words into essays, books, even bits of music criticism, which he did as a hobby. Still more incredibly, he found time to collaborate with Martin Buber in translating the Hebrew Bible into German-a translation hailed as the best since Martin Luther...
Rosenzweig died in 1929, still full of faith. He had asked that no eulogy be given. Buber read the 73rd Psalm, a verse of which Rosenzweig had selected for his headstone...