7/29/2019 Buber - The Truth and the Crisis

1/2

The Truth and The Crisis

Martin Buber

(September 1945)

The human world stands today at the beginning of a great crisis. We are able to detectonly its outer symptoms, which to themselves are so horrendous, that usually our attentionis drawn only to them, and we do not dare to proceed inwards. The most awful thing thatnests deep inside is that man that has no truth. By this I do not mean a liar, but a manwho has expelled the belief that truth exists. The source of his despicableness ( ) is inthe fact that he does not see a truth which hovers above, that through which his entire be-

ing is measured, trialed and judged. The thing we refer to as "conscience, which was re-ferred to by Hitler as a Jewish invention, loses its meaning once the ancient inquiry What is the truth - is answered by "What am I able to convince others to believe in". Thecrisis spreads in the human world. The light is slipping away. This is not an eclipse ( )that we are able to measure and estimate, but more; we can say that those who are truth-ful to their spirits feel similar to the sinful Adam and Eve when, according to the Agada, thesun had set for the first time, and they did not know if it would ever rise again

The concept of truth in modern civilization originated in the Greek term that described

the acknowledgement and admission of what is real. The biblical term "truth" has an entire-ly different meaning; it means- the eternal ( ), the trustworthy, the solid. And with that- itis not perceived as something to acknowledge and admit, but rather as something to actupon and experience. Truth is the essence of being and life. It takes place between the ob-

jects. It occurs in the world. It is worthy to occur in the world. To go back to the biblicalsense of the word truth means to say: there is one truth that hovers above your heads, onetruth for all- but it does not enter your world unless you make it, each of you with their owntruth. Whenever you live with things in persistence ( , ) and reliability; that is when

truth occurs. That is when you reveal it as your own truth, as the human truth. The quote ofour sages that the truth is the seal of God emphasizes this. And if it is in fact that seal-what is the beeswax with which this seal is stamped? Being good means to be agile andprepared, as beeswax. "Conscience" is the living recognition that realizes when there is amatch between us and the seal, and when there isnt. When man removes himself from thesealing hand, truth disappears. Light is disappearing from our world

This is said out of the feeling of a great crisis, but as something that can and should bestarted right now of all times. What is the beginning point? When the people of Israel come

to the Sinai desert they are invited by God to become "a holy nation": yet later, when Hegives the laws of the people, the Ten Commandments, He also addresses each individual:

7/29/2019 Buber - The Truth and the Crisis

2/2

He turns to the people alongside by turning to the individual. There can be no true begin-ning but the beginning of each individual with themselves.