How did one of the great­est Jew­ish thinkers of the 20th cen­tu­ry grap­ple with the found­ing of Israel and the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian conflict―one of the most sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal con­flicts of his time? Samuel Hay­im Brody traces the devel­op­ment of Mar­tin Buber’s think­ing and its impli­ca­tions for the Jew­ish reli­gion, for the prob­lems posed by Zion­ism, and for the Zion­ist-Arab con­flict. Begin­ning in tur­bu­lent Weimar Ger­many, Brody shows how Buber’s debates about Bib­li­cal mean­ings had con­crete polit­i­cal con­se­quences for anar­chists, social­ists, Zion­ists, Nazis, British, and Pales­tini­ans alike. Brody fur­ther reveals how Buber’s pas­sion­ate com­mit­ment to the rule of God absent an inter­me­di­ary came into con­flict in the face of a Zion­ist move­ment in dan­ger of repeat­ing ancient mis­takes. Brody argues that Buber’s sup­port for Israel stemmed from a rad­i­cal­ly rich and com­plex under­stand­ing of the nature of the Jew­ish mis­sion on earth that arose from an anar­chist read­ing of the Bible.