Born in 1878 in Vienna, Buber was raised by his grandfather in Lvov – that city whose national affiliation has ebbed and flowed so over the last century, as anyone who has read Phillipe Sands' remarkable East-West Street will know.
Lvov is now, of course, Ukrainian, that is to say, all our thoughts are drawn to the besieged nation of Ukraine. Ahh.
In 1930
Buber was appointed professor in Frankfurt, but resigned from the post
immediately after Hitler's election as Chancellor in 1933. Buber loved the
Germany he knew before the rise of Nazism. Beginning in 1925 he worked with
that other giant of Jewish thought of the age, Franz Rosenzweig, on a
translation of the Jewish Bible into German that could challenge Luther's
translation. But in 1933 he turned towards trying to provide strength to the
Jewish community. He founded the Central Office for Jewish Adult Education,
which became increasingly important as the Nazis banned Jews from public
education and lingered in Germany as long as he could, but by 1938 at the age
of 60, Buber knew he had to leave. He moved to Jerusalem and spent the rest of
his career at the Hebrew University.
Mahatma
Gandhi was, of course, one of the great figures of the last century, A towering
political genius and a man of extraordinary bravery. And a man deeply committed
to a very particular vision of how to improve the world. At the heart of
Gandhi's worldview was Satyagraha - non-violence. It was how Gandhi fought for
the rights of human beings in the country of his birth - South Africa and, of
course, in the independence movement in India, the movement to which he gave his
life.
Gandhi
had Jewish friends and fellow journeyers in South Africa, particularly Hermann
Kallenbach who helped found the Tolstoy Farm. And the suffering of the Jews
under Nazi rule clearly weighed heavily on his mind. In November 1936 Gandhi
wrote, in his weekly Harijan newspaper;
"My sympathies are all with the Jews.
I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them became life-long
companions."[1]
And he
wrote to advocate non-violent resistance to the Nazis, by the Jews of Germany.
"Can the Jews resist this organized
and shameless persecution ? Is there a way to preserve their self-respect and
not to feel helpless and forlorn ? I submit there is.”
Gandhi
suggested the plight of the Jews of Germany had much in common with the Indians
of South Africa who had harnessed the remarkable power of Satyagraha. And he
urged the Jews of Germany to change the heart of their oppressors in the same
way. In fact, Gandhi wrote,
“The
Jews of Germany can offer Satyagraha under infinitely better auspices than the
Indians of South Africa.” “The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in
a general massacre of Jews (but) to the God-fearing, death has no terror… No person who has faith in a living
God need feel helpless or forlorn. ” (1938)’.
And in
February 1939, Buber responded,[2] with a public letter [3] to the
man he called, “My dear Mahatma Gandhi,”
The
letter opens full of respect for the Indian sage,
“When a voice that he has long known and
honoured, a great voice and an earnest one, pierces the vain clamour and calls
him by name, he is all attention. Here is a voice, he thinks, that can but give
good counsel and genuine comfort, for he who speaks knows what suffering is; he
knows that the sufferer is more in need of comfort than of counsel; and he has
both the wisdom to counsel rightly and that simple union of faith and love
which alone is the open sesame to true comforting.” But ...
And the
letter continues with a juddering ‘But’
But what he hears - containing though it
does elements of a noble and most praiseworthy conception, such as he expects
from this speaker - is yet barren of all application to his peculiar
circumstances. These words are in truth not applicable to him at all. They are
inspired by most praiseworthy general principles, but the listener is aware
that the speaker has cast not a single glance at the situation of him whom he
is addressing, that he neither sees him nor knows him and the straits under
which he labours.
Buber
accuses Gandhi of missing, terribly. Gandhi has, Buber accuses, allowed his
general love of praiseworthy generalities to deprive him of paying attention to
the very facts on the ground.
Buber
writes that he has "read and re-read these sentences in your article
without being able to understand.” He has weighed the words of his friend and
inspiration, but
no, it is not a just [suggestion for
behaviour]! And the armour of (my) silence is pierced. The friendly appeal
[that is to say Gandhi's words] achieves what the enemy's storming has failed
to do; [I] must answer.
Particularly,
Buber claims, in his suggestion that the fate of Indians in South Africa, as
victims of a racist precursor to formal Apartheid, is similar in its cause and
in how it can be overturned, Gandhi has missed the nature of the Nazi
oppression of the Jews.
He
continues;
In the five years I myself spent under the
[Nazi) regime, I observed many instances of genuine satyagraha among the Jews,
instances showing a strength of spirit in which there was no question of bartering
their rights or of being bowed down, and where neither force nor cunning was
used to escape the consequences of their behaviour. Such actions, however,
exerted apparently not the slightest influence on their opponents. All honour
indeed to those who displayed such strength of soul!
An effective stand in the form of
non-violence may be taken against unfeeling human beings in the hope of
gradually bringing them to their senses; but a diabolic universal steamroller
cannot thus be withstood.
I don't
think it will come as a surprise why this remarkable, and crushing rebuttal of
Gandhi's good intentions, comes to my mind this holy Shabbat.
It
didn't take the woman, standing next to me at the demonstration outside the
Russian Embassy yesterday with her placard reading ‘Poland 1939 = Ukraine.’
It
didn't take Putin's deceitful gaslighting of the Ukrainians as Nazis to put me
in mind of where the civilized world stood just a blink of an eye ago - 80
years, less than the life of our beloved member Michael Morris whose passing we
commemorate today.
And
while I'm not suggesting Putin a reincarnation of Hitler, he is, I believe he
has exposed himself to be this week, entirely as incorrigible, and without a
care for what anyone outside his inner circle think. He is an autocrat megalomaniacal
and deeply terrifying.
As Jews
we love debate, we love peace, we believe that peace can come through debate.
But through time we've been aware of the line that exists between the debate
partners we can debate with, and the debate partners who are in some other
place
a place where debate is laughed at - as
Putin so clearly has been laughing at the West for months now,
a place where protestations of human
dignity and decency are seen as weaknesses – as Putin so clearly does,
From
the time of Amalek, to the time of Edom and on and on, Jews have known that
such a debate exists. To be clear, I'm not advocating an all out war against
Russia, I'm not advocating a specific geo-political solution at all. But I am
clear in my mind that the invasion of the last week has revealed the political
leadership of Russia to be, in a phrase that I mean in its deepest historical
sense, Beyond the Pale.
It's
inappropriate to hope that this will calm down. It's unacceptable to decry this
invasion with words that are not matched with strength
It's
unethical to mourn our own losses at the hands of autocratic bullies and not be
prepared to stand with Ukraine at this time in ways that are meaningful and
profound.
I
accept that this invasion is an attack on the civilized way of life we have
taken for granted, it is not an attack on a mere Soviet satellite out of mind
and out of the concerns of our heart and our tradition.
I'm at
the Stand with Ukraine demonstration in Central London this afternoon in
spirit. I've given to the emergency campaign to support the terrified Jews of
Ukraine run by World Jewish Relief.
Al
Taamod Al Daam Reicha - do not stand by the blood of your fellow, teaches our
scripture.
For we
all created in the image of the divine, and we all have a right to self-determination,
security and peace.
Shabbat
Shalom
[1]https://www.jstor.org/stable/2708297readnow=1&refregid=excelsior%3A97e4c6b0cf5e3cd8c978452e4d67f132&seq=1#page
and https://www.mkgandhi.org/mynonviolence/chap27.htm.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment