The Renewal of Judaism (1911)

Abstract

When I speak of renewal I am well aware that this is a bold, indeed almost daring, term, which, being at variance with the current outlook upon life and the world, is unacceptable to it. All activities of the typical man of today are governed by the concept of evolution, that is, the concept of gradual change—or, as it is also called, progress—emerging from the collective effect of many small causes. This concept, which, as one begins to realize, can claim only a relative validity even in the realm of natural processes, has, to be sure, greatly stimulated and advanced the natural sciences, but its effect upon the realm of the mind and the will has been highly deleterious. Man’s spirit has been as greatly depressed by a sense of inescapable evolution as it had once been depressed by the sense of inescapable predestination, induced by Calvinism. The extinction of heroic, unconditional living in our time must be ascribed, to a great extent, to this sense. Once the great doer expected to alter the face of the world with his deed and to inform all becoming with his own will. He did not feel that he was subject to the conditions of the world, for he was grounded in the unconditionality [Unbedingtheit] of God, whose Word he sensed in the decisions he made as clearly as he felt the blood in his veins. This confidence in the suprahuman has been undermined; man’s consciousness of God and deed had already been stifled in his cradle; all one could hope for was to become the exponent of some small “progress.”

From On Judaism, by Martin Buber, ed. by Nahum Glatzer, trans. by Eva Jospe, copyright © 1967 by Schocken Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Used by permission of Schocken Books, a division of Random House, Inc.