For Martin Buber, God is the “Eternal Thou.” Hasidic Judaism teaches God as being omnipresent, with Friedman (1955) describing God as “Absolute Person, a Being which becomes Person in order to know and be known, to love and loved by man” (p. 267). “God creates people so that He could personally converse with them” (Buber, 1952). Buber’s use of religious references in his texts acknowledges his belief that God exists in everything according to how they can best use Him. Buber preferred the religious over philosophy, on the grounds that religion addresses the whole being, whereas philosophy fragments it.
The fragmentation of a man’s soul cannot be done by self-transcendence: to understand the I of the I-Thou relationship, man understands that God is known only by His relation to man. How else better to accomplish this than to follow the words found within the Christian faith? In Two Types of Faith (1955), Buber explains the messianism of Jesus, who he greatly respected but yet did not consider divine. To Buber, Jesus’s faith is similar to the Hebrew term emunah, which advocates a faith in God’s continual presence in the life of each person. Also, Buber’s interpretation of the Bible (for example) postulates that the book is a history of God’s relation to man, from the perspective of man. The use of religious terms in Buber’s writings reflect his advocacy for Zionism in everyday life. Man creates his self by understanding the I-Thou relationship between himself and God.
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