Martin Zank of The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy proclaims the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber to be one of the most important, yet also one of the most obscure of all modern theologians. Zank notes that the "preponderance in Buber's writings of abstract nouns such as 'experience,' 'realization,' and 'encounter,' make Buber's philosophy difficult to penetrate for some persons who desire a more concrete explaination of how to ethically function the world. However, historian of Israel Motti Friedman notes Buber's intense preoccupation with making his philosophy practical and relevant to modern life, despite this apparent linguistic obscurity. Buber, because of his own political and personal concerns was particularly interested in making his philosophy relevant to topics pertaining to the historical consequences of the Holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel. Buber was one of the first advocates of the need for an dual state solution to the conflict in the Middle East, stating that the Jewish people must proclaim their desire to live in peace and brotherhood with the Arab peoples and to develop a common republican homeland. (Friedman, 1994)
             For Buber, relationality was the key to a peaceable existence both for the individual and for the nation. Only if persons were able to see God in the eyes of another human being, and to work upon entering into a state of 'becoming' through an encounter with another person could a state of wholeness be realized within the human soul, and within the world. Every human being was born incomplete, until he or she established him or herself as part of a community, with reciprocal obligations to others, like the covenant established between the Israelites and God.
             How is this notion of 'becoming' realized in the world today? According to the Buber scholar Asher Biemann's introduction to The Martin Buber ...