REACCESS
Zionism, Martin Buber on
REACCESS Martin Buber on Zionism It is impossible to appreciate the real meaning of "Zion" so long as one regards it as simply one of many other national concepts. We speak of a "national concept"...
...This reality was the holy matrimony of a "holy" people with a "holy" land, the local point of which was the name of Zion...
...This belief in divine leadership is, however, at the same time the belief in a mission...
...The name has retained this sacred character ever since...
...If it is not mastered, what has already been achieved will fall into ruin...
...This was inevitable, for, in contrast to the national concepts of other peoples, the one described by this name was no new invention, not the product of the social and political changes manifested by the French Revolution, but merely a continuation, the restatement RLACCESS presents classics and other documents from the Jewish post This essay is on excerpt reprinted by permission of Schocken Books, inc...
...In this sense the Zion concept of the Jewish people can be called a national concept...
...Irving Howe - Strike...
...Even in the life of the individual what has once been neglected can never be made up for in the same sphere and under the same conditions...
...for such is the hard but not ungracious way of life itself...
...but one is sometimes allowed to make amends for lost opportunities in a quite different situation, in a quite different form, and it is significant that the new situation is more contradictory and the new form more difficult to realize than the old and that each fresh attempt demands an even greater exertion to fulfill the task...
...the prophets were appointed to interpret the past and future destiny of the people on the basis of its failure as yet to establish the righteous city of God for the establishment of which it had been led into the land...
...It is no less impossible to imagine this belief as existing before and outside Israel: It is an absolutely historical belief, the belief in a God leading first the fathers and then the whole people into the promised land at historically determined times for divinely historical purposes...
...Just as nature and history were united in the creation of man, so these two spheres which have become separated in the human mind were to unite in the task in which the chosen land and the chosen people were called upon to cooperate...
...Once it is really mastered this may be the beginning of a new kind of human society...
...But its essential quality lies precisely in that which differentiates it from all other national concepts...
...Thus from the very beginning the unique association between this people and this land was characterized by what was to be, by the intention that was to be realized...
...the wandering tribes themselves were inspired again and again by the promise made to their forefathers, and the most enthusiastic among them saw God Himself leading His people into the promised land...
...Zion is "the city of the great King" (Psalms 48, 3), that is, of God as the King of Israel...
...It is not simply a special case among the national concepts and national movements: The exceptional quality that is here added to the universal makes it a unique category extending far beyond the frontier of national problems and touching the domain of the universally human, the cosmic and even of Being itself...
...From generation to generation the Jewish people have never ceased to meditate on this mystery...
...For these tribes divine leadership certainly implied an ordinance concerning the future in the land, and from this basis a tradition and a doctrine were evolved...
...With every new encounter of this people with this land the task is set afresh, but every time it is rooted in the historical situation and its problems...
...In their prayers and songs the mourning and yearning of the people in exile were bound up with it, the holiness of the land was concentrated in it, and in the Kabbalah Zion was equated with an emanation of God Himself...
...Terrence Des Pres - Staying Human David Szonyi and Amy Stone - Jews in Congress Albert Wachtel - A Clean Slate (a story...
...To be sure, the problem proves to be more difficult every time it is tackled...
...MOMENTARILY...
...That it is God who joins this people to this land is not a subsequent historical interpretation of events...
...it was always at the same time a challenge to make of it what God intended to have made of it...
...even by each new revolt against it they recognized its continuing validity...
...Limited It was originally published in 1952 os ISRAEL AND PAl ESTINE THE HISTORY OF AN IDEA of an age-old religious and popular reality adapted to the universal form of the national movements of the 19th century...
...The holy matrimony of land and people was intended to bring about the matrimony of the two separated spheres of Being...
...Just as, to achieve fullness of life, the people needed the land, so the land needed the people, and the end which both were called upon to realize could only be reached by a living partnership...
...It was a consummation that could not be achieved by the people or the land on its own but only by the faithful cooperation of the two together, and it was an association in which the land appeared not as a dead, passive object but as a living and active partner...
...This land was at no time in the history of Israel simply the property of the people...
...Since the living land shared the great work with the living people, it was to be both the work of history and the work of nature...
...and it is still more difficult if one has to reckon with the coexistence of another people in the same country, of cognate origin and language but mainly foreign in tradition, structure and outlook, and if this vital fact has to be regarded as an essential part of the problem...
...However much of the legislation that has come down to us in the Bible may be attributed to later literary accretions, there is no doubt at all that the exodus from Egypt was bound up with the imposing of a law that was taken to be a divine charter, and the positive nucleus of all the later developments was essentially the instruction to establish a "holy" national community in the promised land...
...Moreover, the idea was not named after one of the usual descriptions of this land — Canaan or Palestine or Eretz Yisrael — but after the old stronghold of the Jebusites which David made his residence and whose name was applied by poets and prophets to the whole city of Jerusalem, not so much as the seat of the royal fort, however, but as the place of the sanctuary, just as the holy mountain itself is often so called: Quite early on the name was constructed as that of a holy place...
...It is more difficult to set up an order based on justice in the land if one is under the jurisdiction of a foreign power, as after the return from Babylon, than if one is comparatively free to determine one's own way of life, as after the first appropriation of the land...
...from ON ZION - THE HISTORY Cf AN IDFA by Martin Buber, copyright © 1973 by Horovitz Pub Co...
...We speak of a "national concept" when a people makes its unity, spiritual coherence, historical character, traditions, origins and evolution, destiny and vocation the objects of its conscious life and the motive power behind its actions...
...This is the theme, relating to a small and despised part of the human race and a small a.nd desolate part of the earth, yet worldwide in its significance, that lies hidden in the name of Zion...
...It is impossible to imagine a historical Israel as existing at any time without belief in its God or previously to such belief: It is precisely the message of the common Leader that unites the tribes into a people...
...On the other hand, there seems to be a high purpose behind the increasing difficulty of the task...
...Here is no "nation" as such and no "religion" as such but only a people interpreting its historical experiences as the actions of its God...
...When the Jewish people adopted this name for their national concept, all these associations were contained in it...
...In other respects the people of Israel may be regarded as one of the many peoples on earth and the land of Israel as one land among other lands: But in their mutual relationship and in their common task they are unique and incomparable...
...It is significant that this national concept was named after a place and not, like the others, after a people, which indicates that it is not so much a question of a particular people as such but of its association with a particular land, its native land...
...The same process seems to be true of the life of Israel...
...And, in spite of all the names and historical events that have come down to us, what has come to pass, what is coming and shall come to pass between them, is and remains a mystery...
...The people came to the land to fulfill the mission...
...The story of Abraham, which connects the gift of Canaan with the command to be a blessing, is a most concise resume of the fact that the association of this people with this land signifies a mission...
Vol. 1 • January 1976 • No. 6
