Paul Mendes-Flohr - The Jewish Chronicle

The American born Israeli intellectual historian, Paul Mendes-Flohr, who has died aged 83, was an 18 year old volunteer on an Israeli kibbutz, when he was first introduced to the writings of the German-Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. The teenager, who became a leading authority on Buber, would later admit: “Of course, I didn’t understand a word.”

But at Brandeis University the Austrian Jewish scholar Nahum Glatzner took him under his wing and introduced him not only to the writings of Buber, but to the whole aura of German-Jewish thought — “the earnestness, the urgency of modern Jewish thought as it took shape in Germany,” Mendes-Flohr recalled.

This pivotal turning point in Mendes-Flohr's student life would lead to him being hailed one day as the leading Martin contemporary Buber scholar and a central figure in Modern Jewish thought and history. His study of Buber’s philosophy was comprehensive and profound. He co-edited with Bernd Witte a 22-volume German edition of Buber’s collected works, Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent (2019) which was praised in a New York Times review by the scholar, Robert Alter as “a scrupulously researched and perceptive biography of Buber that evinces an authoritative command of all the contexts through which Buber moved.”

In a Times of Israel memorial blog to his friend, Paul Mendes-Flohr, the psychiatrist Alan Flashman wrote: “Paul was as close to a public intellectual as Israeli culture allows. He devoted decades to editing the voluminous complete writings of his intellectual and spiritual inspiration, Martin Buber. His beautifully composed biography of Buber reveals as much about Paul as it does about Buber, himself. Paul was deeply gratified when the volume appeared in Hebrew translation in relatively short order, perhaps re-opening the hearts of younger Israelis to the teachings of dialogue.

Buber’s philosophical and theological writings, notably in Ich und Du (I and Thou), made significant contributions to religious and Jewish thought, philosophical anthropology, biblical studies, political theory, and Zionism. "

Flashman, who taught Ich und Du to family therapy classes at the Hebrew University, described Paul Mendes-Flohr as one of the most open-minded thinkers he had ever encountered.

“When he organized a conference in Berlin on Buber as a multiple disciplinary thinker, the description fitted Paul no less. He generously invited me to discuss Buber’s influence upon family and systems thinking, an area of scarce interest to Buberian ‘scholars.’”

As Flashman discovered, Mendes-Flohr was a passionate supporter of dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians. As editor of A Land of Two Peoples: Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs, he was deeply influenced by I and Thou, which offers a path to genuine dialogue between individuals and peoples, and which inspired Mendes-Flohr to apply this to the Israeli-Arab conflict.

“We even talked about issuing a dual-language edition of I and Thou in Hebrew and Arabic”, Flashman added. “As I write I can think of no better monument to Paul than bringing such a work to completion.”

But it was not the study of Buber alone which captivated Mendes-Flohr. He had earlier specialised in such 19th and 20th-century Jewish thinkers as Franz Rosenzweig, Gershom Scholem, and Leo Strauss, and wrote, co-authored and edited some 62 books. They include German Jews: A Dual Identity, Progress and its Discontents, Divided Passions: Jewish Intellectuals and the Experience of Modernity, and the Jew in the Modern World; the last with Jehuda Reinharz.

In 1987 he co-authored with Arthur A Cohen Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought: Original Essays on Critical Concepts, Movements and Beliefs, which was described as a landmark survey of how modernity, the Holocaust and the creation of the state of Israel had shaped Jewish thought.

His most recent work, Cultural Disjunctions: Post-Traditional Jewish Identities, was published in 2021.

Paul Flohr was born and raised in Brooklyn in 1941. He went on to study at Brooklyn College and Brandeis University, where he met his future wife, the photographer Rita Mendes, whose name he decided to add to his own. The couple moved to Israel in 1970 after he received his Ph.D. from Brandeis, and raised their two children.

With his deep, penetrating eyes and wide, firm-set mouth, Mendes-Flohr looked every inch the academic, but his students recall his soft voice, warm smile, as well as his intellectual clarity of thought. Samuel Brody, a student and colleague, described him as a “scholar” and a “mensch.” He would enquire after his students’ families so often that they would sometimes forget what they had come to talk to him about.”

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz of Valley Beit Midrash, an adult learning centre in Scottsdale, Arizona, where Mendes-Flohr was a popular scholar-in-residence, recalled: “His fascination with history and great literature of the past was balanced by his dreaming of a peaceful future.”

Mendes-Flohr taught for 30 years at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, before joining the University of Chicago faculty in 2000. In a 2022 essay for Sources Journal, “Why Is America Different?”, Mendes-Flohr was optimistic about Jewish life in the United States.

He wrote: "Today, at a time when many harbor growing doubts about the promises of America, some historical perspective is in order: in view of the anguished and tragically ill-fated struggle for Jewish emancipation in Europe, American Jews, spared that ordeal, can both avoid complacency and express a healthy mistrust of the city even as they join in a robust song of thanksgiving for their uniquely pluralistic and prosperous home and the unprecedented opportunities it still affords.”

His titles included professor emeritus of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University and Dorothy Grant Maclear professor emeritus of modern Jewish history and thought at the University of Chicago Divinity School,

He is survived by Rita, his two children, both artists. and four grandchildren,

Paul Mendes-Flohr: born April 17, 1941. Died October 24, 2024

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Martin buber