The Legend of the Baal-Shem

Martin Buber was one of the best-known Jewish thinkers in the Western world in the twentieth century. His neoromanticism and use of völkisch terms of analysis in his early writings exerted an enormous influence on Jewish youth in Central Europe, as did his popular (and frequently unreliable) accounts of Hasidic teachings. Perhaps more than any individual he was responsible for introducing Hasidism to Western-educated Jewish audiences. In 1923, he published his best-known philosophical work, I and Thou. In 1938, he moved to Jerusalem, where he was given a chair at the Hebrew University. Before 1948, he was among those in the Yishuv (mainly German-speaking, Central European intellectuals) who advocated a binational state in which Jews and Arabs would cooperate. After World War II, he was much lauded, both in Europe and America, as a great humanitarian.