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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2017
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MARTIN BUBER, philosopher of dialogue and champion of the German- Jewish symbiosis, initially refused to return to Germany in a public capacity after the Holocaust. Yet in the 1950s Buber did return: accepting two important peace prizes and lecturing to university audiences across the country. For this he was roundly criticized by fellow Jews, yet welcomed by the Germans. Why did he change his mind? Buber's decision to return to German soil was not a publicity stunt, not an act of self-promotion, not callousness or stupidity, and not an attempt to confront the past. Rather, Abigail Gillman argues, Buber returned out of sheer philosophical conviction to fight for the future, to reach out to humanists, to encourage like-minded people to fight for human truth in the face of Cold War ideology, to visualize what they have in common, to learn to say “We.” As Abby writes: “Buber denied on many occasions that he was the bearer of a teaching or gospel (Lehre). He did not return to be in a conversation (im Gespräch sein), he went to Germany to be the conversation (ein Gespräch sein). To be the conversation is to carry out one's role as a divinely created being, spoken into existence; to carry the vox humanus across so many hostile borders, even across the abyss of the Holocaust.” In an elegant analysis of Buber's speeches, Abby traces the development of Buber's message to postwar Germany, uncovering and explicating an important and—until now—unrecognized dimension of Buber's postwar philosophy. This is German Jewish Studies scholarship at its best: Abby has broken new ground and laid the framework for future research, for a new type of “dialogue” in the Buberian sense, encouraging us through her own nuanced language and thought to conceptualize a new Zwischen, a new “Between,” in German Jewish Studies, and to think about a philosophical message that has broad implications for a world badly in need of saying “We” today.
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