The Correspondence of I and Thou

This book review originally appeared in The Forward.

The Letters of Marin Buber: A Life of Dialogue, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer and Paul Mendes Flohr, trans. Richard and Clara Winston and Harry Zohn, Schocken Books, 722 pp., $45.

In 1951, when he was 73 years old, Martin Buber received a heartfelt letter from a Mr. Litvin, an American Jew from a Chasidic family that had emigrated to the United States at the turn of the century. Mr. Litvin writes to Buber that on his recent visit to “Eretz Israel” he fulfilled one of his dreams, that of seeing “his rabbi and teacher,” by meeting with Buber for over two hours. But, Mr. Litvin continues with pained puzzlement, during the five months he spend traveling throughout Israel he did not hear a kind word spoken about Buber. Instead, wherever he went, his respectful references to Buber prompted nothing but complaints: that Buber had married a goy; that Buber lived among Arabs; that Buber belonged to an organization that dealt with Arab problems.