Having read a number of Martin Buber's books and essays over the years, and even recently published an article on Buber, I was fascinated by Maurice Friedman's most recent book, My Friendship with Martin Buber. Friedman died just before its publication, and the book works as a lovely conclusion to a career devoted to applying Buber's philosophy to religion, sociology, and psychotherapy. Friedman was a Buber heavyweight and perhaps the most important articulator of Buber's thought in the United States. As Martin Marty observed, “All subsequent work on Buber must build on Friedman's foundation” (xiv). Friedman came to know Buber while completing his doctoral dissertation on him in 1950. He wrote to Buber for advice and clarification on some of Buber's ideas, and from this a friendship grew. Friedman would eventually organize three American lecture tours for Buber.

My Friendship with Martin Buber reviews their relationship from 1950 to 1965, when Buber died. Throughout the book we learn a great deal about Buber's personal opinions regarding such important thinkers as Jung, Freud, Heidegger, Scholem, Camus, Kafka, and many others; these insights come either from Buber's many lectures—seventy-three in his first American tour alone—or from letters and personal conversations.

What is most important about the book is not, however, the opportunity to gain more insights into the ideas and philosophy of Buber. For that, other works by Friedman, such as Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue, or analyses by other Buber scholars would do better. Rather, this book gives us a picture of the kind of relationship the two enjoyed, which was one of obvious mentoring, both personal and professional, and a clear friendship. What we see is how Buber's commitment to a life of full presence to the other and the giving of oneself wholly to the moment with the other was instantiated in this relationship. What Buber was interested in was presence. Buber writes to Friedman, “Eternal revelation means Presence” (79), and being completely present to oneself and to another in the moment both invited and was predicated on the Eternal Thou of God's presence. Being in relationship with Buber was intimidating and exciting for Friedman exactly because Buber gave and demanded such transparent presence. Friedman recalled a conversation he had with Buber when Buber met T. S. Eliot in 1951. Friedman remarked to Buber that he thought they would be far apart on many issues. “When I meet a man,” Buber replied, “I am not concerned about his opinions but about the man himself” (36). For many intellectuals like Friedman, encounters with others, particularly those with variant points of view, worked like a chess game. For Buber, any meeting was about the encounter of real persons. This is what mattered.

My Friendship with Martin Buber is filled with gems, mostly coming from personal conversations and the many letters back and forth between Buber and Friedman. In this book we glimpse something of the man behind his philosophy, and indeed authentically representative of it. I enjoyed this book, cover to cover. Yet, even as I was reading it, I wondered about its utility. The book presents, for sure, more than simply the personal relationship between two scholars; it is not a mere dialogical mémoire. Yet, it confounds one as to where to place it. For those who know little about Buber, the book could be somewhat confusing. It does not intend any clear presentation of Buber's thought, and I experienced insights into Buber as somewhat scattered throughout the text. In the classroom, and even in a seminar on Buber, it would be difficult to know where to put this book in the syllabus. For a serious student of Buber's thought, however, I recommend My Friendship with Martin Buber wholeheartedly. One sees a good deal of the man behind his voluminous works and his relationship to the existentialism of the day. This book could also be quite useful in imagining how Buber's dense insights might be reinvigorated for the twenty-first century. For those less acquainted with his work, this book might seem a bit opaque.