is this kind of influence that I have pointed to as that handing on of the mystery that is above words.”155
According to Buber, the spiritual structure of the Hasidic movement “was founded upon the handing on of the kernel of the teaching from teacher to disciple, but not as if something not accessible to everyone was transmitted to him, but because in the atmosphere of the master, in the spontaneous working of his being, the inexpressible How descended swinging and creating.”156 This initiatory transmission of the depths of life in the spirit transcended words, yet words were Buber’s medium. His challenge was to turn the verbal medium into a vehicle for that which transcends it. The rhetorical tools that he found, invented, and applied were thus necessarily based on indirect communication. These tools are summed up in two metaphors: “bearing witness” and “pointing.” We now turn to consider Buber’s task to transmit his spiritual awakening to others and his very deliberate use of these tools to fulfill it.
35. Grete Schaeder wrote of Buber’s emergence as a spiritual teacher as “his gradual initiation into the being-tradition of the zaddik.” See Schaeder, Hebrew Humanism, 300–9.
36. Henderson, Thresholds of Initiation; see also Kirsch et al., Initiation.
37. Toynbee and Myers, Study of History, 3:248–77.
38. “Study of History,” 130.
39. Ellenberger, Discovery of the Unconscious.
40. Ellenberger, “Maladie Créatrice,” 330–32.
41. Ellenberger, “Maladie Créatrice,” 329.
42. Eliade, quoted in Wasserstrom, Religion after Religion, 42.
43. Eliade, quoted in Wasserstrom, Religion After Religion, 41–42 (my translation).
44. Teshuvah, which lies at the core of the vision of I and Thou, will be examined in detail in chapter 8 below, pages 194–208.
45. Buber, “Postscript,” 128 (translation modified, emphasis added).
46. Buber, I and Thou, §14.
47. Buber, “How and Why,” 205–19.
48. Buber, “How and Why,” 208.
49. Buber, “How and Why,” 213, 212.
50. Buber, “How and Why,” 215, quoting Rosenzweig, “Scripture and Luther,” 59.
51. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 689.
52. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 689.
53. Buber, “Foreword,” xv.
54. Buber, “Foreword,” xvi.
55. Friedman, Martin Buber’s Life and Work, 1:61–62.
56. Buber, “Autobiographical Fragments,” 16–19.
57. Herzl died of heart disease less than a year after this event.
58. Martin Buber to Paula Winkler, August 25, 1903, in Buber, Letters, 100 (emphasis added).
59. Buber, in Friedman, Martin Buber’s Life and Work, 1:73.
60. Stein, “On Modern Initiation,” 96–99.
61. Stein, “On Modern Initiation,” 99.
62. Buber, “My Way to Hasidism,” 59–60.
63. Buber, “My Way to Hasidism,” 58.
64. Schaeder, Hebrew Humanism, 238.
65. Buber, “My Way to Hasidism,” 58.
66. Buber, “My Way to Hasidism,” 58 (translation modified).
67. Buber, “My Way to Hasidism,” 58 (translation modified).
68. Buber (my translation), quoting from Ba’al Shem Tov, Tzva’at HaRivash 1:20.
69. Buber, “Baal-Shem-Tov’s Instruction,” 185.
70. Buber, “Baal-Shem-Tov’s Instruction,” 214n1 (translation modified).
71. Buber, “My Way to Hasidism,” 59 (my translation). Bracketed words present Dan Avnon’s helpful amplifications of this passage (Avnon, Martin Buber, 82–83, 237n4).
72. Buber later asserted the centrality of “religiosity” (Religiosität) in his 1913 lecture, “Jewish Religiosity,” 79–94.
73. Avnon comments: “The perfect man” is the one “whose life is oriented to the task of translating ‘the Adam as created in the image of Elohim’ into actual, realized human life” (Martin Buber, 83).
74. Buber, “My Way to Hasidism,” 58–60.
75. Buber, “Commentary,” 72–73, 76–77. See chapter 6 below [x-ref].
76. Buber, I and Thou, §36c.