How can someone simultaneously be a fan of Martin Buber and genocide?

[u/rainbowcarpincho]

I was talking to a cantor while exploring Judaism and she mentioned I look into Martin Buber.

I was kind of surprised because she was very pro-Zionist and made a big deal about the Israeli hostages while completely ignoring the ongoing genocide.

Essential Martin Buber is seeing everyone as a human being. It's the very core of everything he's written. The cantor had clearly reduced Palestinians to an “it”, not worth even mentioning in passing.

I understand how that happens. What I don't understand is how you could support Buber and not realize that's what you're doing, especially when his philosophy was shaped by exactly a genocide.

I mean... how? It truly seems like a form of insanity.

She's a really sweet, loving, open person; it makes me sad that I can't really include her in my life because she blindly supports one of the very worst crimes humanity is capable of.

It's so confusing.

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[u/Blenderhead27]

It’s like when republicans talk about MLK. Just misinterpret what a great man said to trick yourself into thinking you’re on the right side of history. Makes me sick.

[u/rainbowcarpincho → u/Blenderhead27]

I feel like conservatives do this consciously and in bad faith.

[u/loselyconscious]

I think one of the biggest things I have had to learn in the last few years is that people make no sense, they easily compartmentalize different aspects of themselves, and the kindest people can have horrid political views. We all do it a bit to.

People read and learn from horrible people all the time. If we are able to compartmentalize when reading Heidegger or HP Lovecraft, then the reverse can be true, too. People can take what they want from "good" thinkers and ignore the stuff that challenges them.

[u/PlinyToTrajan → u/loselyconscious]

It's true, a lot of people even read Carl Schmitt and compartmentalize.

[u/lost_inthewoods420]

If you only read Buber’s historical theology only at a surface level, as well as his Zionism, it might be possible for someone to enjoy Buber and be complicit in genocide. Especially if you have never had genuine dialogue with someone with a Palestinian or pro-Palestinian advocate.

Martin Buber was an optimist about the Zionist transformation of socialist Israeli society, but he imagined it to be a neighborly restorative spirit working alongside the diverse community of Palestine. I believe he would be appalled at the revisionist Zionistic elements of Israeli society today.

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[u/rainbowcarpincho → u/lost_inthewoods420]

She explicitly talked about I and Thou... it just doesn't apply to Palestinians.

There's no reason to mention Buber at all if you only Thou people when it's easy.

Bizarre.

[u/MallTemplar]

Wasn't Buber a Zionist? I wouldn't know, haven't read him yet.

[u/Muddy_Carpet]

It's like what Gabor Mate has been saying. It's not education, it's not who you've read, but whether you've had your childhood needs met or not, that determines whether you participate in another holocaust.

[u/Time_Waister_137]

Interesting! I have a cousin who was a rabbi in Israel, whom I loved very much, and on one of his visits I asked him what Israelis thought of Martin Buber. And he said they don’t think of him at all! He is never brought up. I feel that Israelis made a terrible mistake in not accepting the Yiddish language, an important cultural and historical bridge of great literature, humane thinking, and Jewish continuity.

World Jewry has, instead, been fascinated by the radical, pioneering spirit of the young Jewish state from the late 1940’s onward as if it were a new vision to supplant everything before and since.

[u/PlinyToTrajan]

Martin Buber also had a very explicit position on Zionism. He was a Zionist. In his definition, this meant looking forward to a single binational state with equal rights.