Martin Buber, the religious existentialist, was born in Vienna and spent his childhood in L'viv, Galicia, at the home of his grandfather Solomon Buber, a businessman and well-known scholar of rabbinic literature. From 1896 to 1900 he studied philosophy and art history at the universities of Vienna, Leipzig, Berlin, and Zürich. He was early active in the Zionist movement, especially in its cultural and religious aspects, and in 1901 he was appointed editor of the Zionist journal Die Welt. Instrumental in the founding of the publishing house Jüdischer Verlag in 1902, in 1916 he founded the German Jewish monthly Der Jude, which, until it ceased publication in 1924, was the most respected and literate voice of German Jewry. From 1924 until 1933 Buber was professor of the philosophy of Jewish religion and ethics at Frankfurt-am-Main University, the only chair in Jewish religion at any German university. In 1920 he and Franz...