RT Article
T1 “Ich Habe Nicht Geantwortet”: Hermeneutics of Secrecy, Religious Silence, and Dialogvergessenheit in Martin Buber’s Exchange with Franz Rosenzweig about Halakhah
JF Naharaim
VO 14
IS 1
SP 103
OP 132
A1 Hadad, Yemima
LA English
PB De Gruyter
YR 2020
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1743143567
AB The exchange between Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig on the status of halakha is a well known, but also frustrating fixture in scholarship. For rather than responding to Rosenzweig’s critique, Buber seems to retreat in silence, claiming to be “unable to speak” about his position on Jewish Law. Scholars have generally tried to explain Buber’s failure to respond on philosophical and biographical grounds. What I propose, by contrast, is to revisit the question of Buber’s silence and secrecy from a hermeneutical standpoint, arguing that Buber engaged in a deliberate strategy of concealment that constituted its own form of response. The hermeneutics of silence discloses a call for religious renewal that follows a state of Dialogvergessenheit, but which cannot be made audible. Neither dialogue nor its remembrance can be commanded. While Buber struggles with his Nichtredenkönnen, he also stands in a tradition of secretive hermeneutics - the Jewish hermeneutics of sod.
K1 Franz Rosenzweig
K1 Martin Buber
K1 Halakha
K1 Hermeneutics
K1 Jewish Law
DO 10.1515/naha-2019-0015