Abstract
Among the hidden treasures squirreled away in the archives of Israel’s National Library lies a fragmented correspondence that sheds new light on the afterlife of a project that was long deemed the farewell gift to the German language and culture from the remnants of its Jewry. It is an exchange of letters between two scholars, whose interest in the German rendition of the Bible occupied them for many years, first in Germany, and later in the land where Hebrew was vernacular and where one might think there would no longer be a need for translations of the Bible; particularly not into a language that aroused considerable aversion in the aftermath of the war. And yet, the 1963–64 exchange between the two Jerusalemites, the Vienna-born and Frankfurt-crowned philosopher, theologian, and translator Martin Buber and the Riga-born, Berlin- and Marburg-educated biblical scholar Nechama Leibowitz tells a different story. It shows they both believed the project that began under the title Die Schrift, zu verdeutschen unternommen should be revised once again, after its completion so as to underline its ongoing relevance for present and future readings of the Bible tout court, in German and Hebrew speaking lands alike.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Edward Breuer, Mira Ofran, and Benjamin Pollock for their careful and intelligent reading of this text and for their valuable remarks. We are also grateful to Tamar Goldschmidt who is responsible for the Martin Buber estate and Mira Ofran who is responsible for Nechama Leibowitz’s papers for giving us access to the material and allowing us to share it here.
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
