[1] Born in Vienna, Buber came from a family of observant Jews, but broke with Jewish custom to pursue secular studies in philosophy.

He produced writings about Zionism and worked with various bodies within the Zionist movement extensively over a nearly 50-year period spanning his time in Europe and the Near East.

[7] Buber, initially, supported and celebrated the Great War as a "world historical mission" for Germany along with Jewish intellectuals to civilize the Near East.

[9][10] In 1930, Buber became an honorary professor at the University of Frankfurt am Main, but resigned from his professorship in protest immediately after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933.

In 1938, Buber left Germany and settled in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine, receiving a professorship at Hebrew University and lecturing in anthropology and introductory sociology.

They helped raise their granddaughters Barbara Goldschmidt (1921–2013) and Judith Buber Agassi (1924–2018), born by their son Rafael's marriage to Margarete Buber-Neumann.

[13] Buber's evocative, sometimes poetic, writing style marked the major themes in his work: the retelling of Hasidic and Chinese tales, Biblical commentary, and metaphysical dialogue.

In stark contrast to the busy Zionist organizations, which were always mulling political concerns, the Hasidim were focused on the values which Buber had long advocated for Zionism to adopt.

In 1904, he withdrew from much of his Zionist organizational work, and devoted himself to study and writing, as in that same year, he published his thesis, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Individuationsproblems, on Jakob Böhme and Nikolaus Cusanus.

Buber described Herzl by saying, "The impulse of the elementally active person (Elementaraktiver) to act is so strong that it prevents him from acquiring knowledge for the sake of knowledge," and, according to Buber, when a person like Herzl is aware of his Jewishness, "In him awakens the will to help the Jews to whom he belongs, to lead the where they can experience freedom and security.

"[20] In that same essay, Buber would draw a parallel between Herzl and Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, arguing that both seek to reinstate the Jewish people, the difference coming in their approaches; Herzl affecting change indirectly via history whereas Baal Shem Tov sought to achieve improvement directly through religion.

In light of the outbreak of WWI, Buber engaged in debates with fellow German philosopher Hermann Cohen in 1915 on the nature of nationalism and Zionism.

[28] Buber believed that it was necessary for the Zionist movement to reach a consensus with the Arabs even at the cost of the Jews remaining a minority in the country.

[29] According to Buber, the Zionist right to establish a country in Israel originates from their ancient, ancestral connection to the land, the fact that Jews have worked to cultivate the land in recent years, and the future prospect that a Jewish state offers as both a cultural center for Judaism and a model for creating a new social organization, referencing the emergence of kibbutzim.

"[31] Buber then uses this perspective to argue in favor of Binationalism as means to establish a combination of potential coexistence and national independence.

Nevertheless, he was connected with decades of friendship to Zionists and philosophers such as Chaim Weizmann, Max Brod, Hugo Bergmann, and Felix Weltsch, who were close friends of his from old European times in Prague, Berlin, and Vienna to the Jerusalem of the 1940s through the 1960s.

For Buber, Israel has the potential to serve as an example for the "Near East" as, in his Binationalist perspective, two independent nations, could each maintain their own cultural identity, "but both united in the enterprise of developing their common homeland and in the federal management of shared matters.

He was particularly vocal about the treatment of Arab refugees, and was unafraid to criticize top leadership like David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister.

[37] From 1905 he worked for the publishing house Rütten & Loening as a lecturer; there he initiated and supervised the completion of the social psychological monograph series Die Gesellschaft [de].

He himself called this translation Verdeutschung ("Germanification"), since it does not always use literary German language, but instead attempts to find new dynamic (often newly invented) equivalent phrasing to respect the multivalent Hebrew original.

[2] However, his work dealt with a range of issues including religious consciousness, modernity, the concept of evil, ethics, education, and Biblical hermeneutics.

'Du' in German means 'you', but is generally only used to a closely-connected person, such as a close relative) is a relationship that stresses the mutual, holistic existence of two beings.

This is based partly on Kant's theory of phenomenon, in that these objects reside in the cognitive agent's mind, existing only as thoughts.

), Buber believed that the expansion of a purely analytic, material view of existence was at heart an advocation of Ich‑Es relations - even between human beings.

[54][55] While his relationship with these two was sometimes unilaterally contentious (with the students occasionally attacking or critiquing their patron somewhat viciously) Buber acted as an impresario, publisher and by various means as one of the great sponsors of their careers and growing reputations.

Scholem was to be amongst the friends and interested parties who helped attend to and orchestrate Buber's eventual emigration to Palestine from the very beginning stages of that discussion during the rise of Hitler.

[54][55] They corresponded also in regards to their work with Brit Shalom, an early think-tank that was tasked with figuring out the dynamics of two-state solution to be brokered between Israel and Palestine more than twenty years before Israel became a nation state—and also about a great many issues regarding their shared interest in ancient, sacred and often mystical Jewish literature whilst keeping tabs likewise on mutual acquaintances and important publications in their fields of interest.

The Hasidic ideal, according to Buber, emphasized a life lived in the unconditional presence of God, where there was no distinct separation between daily habits and religious experience.

Two years later, Buber published Die Legende des Baalschem (stories of the Baal Shem Tov), the founder of Hasidism.

Paul Mendes-Flohr & Peter Schäfer with Martina Urban; 21 volumes planned (2001–) Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten 1897–1965 (1972–1975) Several of his original writings, including his personal archives, are preserved in the National Library of Israel, formerly the Jewish National and University Library, located on the campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem[61]