Die Schrift: A Non-Territorial Translation of “The Land”

Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, Die Schrift, vols.I-X (i) Im Anfang; (ii) Namen; (iii) Er Rief (iv) In der Wüste; (v) Reden (vi) Jehoschua; (vii) Richter (viii) Schmuel (ix) Könige (x) Jeschajahu (Berlin: Lambert Schneider, 1926-1930). Buber completed the project of translating all 24 books of the Bible in 1961, republished as Die Schrift: Aus dem Hebräischen verdeutscht von Martin Buber gemeinsam mit Franz Rosenzweig (Deutsche Bibelgeselleschaft, 1992). This latter edition includes revisions and amendments of the work conducted with Rosenzweig.

See Mara Benjamin, Rosenzweig's Bible: Reinventing Scripture for Jewish Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009), pp.121-134; and Abigail Gillman, A History of German Jewish Bible Translation (Chicago IL: Chicago UP, 2018), pp.207-250.

Editor's note: This was not the first Jewish attempt to translate the Bible into good German. For a discussion of Moses Mendelssohn’s Pentateuch translation, see Abigail Gillman, “Moses Mendelssohn’s Be’ur: Translating the Torah in the Age of Enlightenment,” TheTorah (2017).

Martin Buber, "From the Beginning of our Bible Translation," Scripture and Translation, trans. Lawrence Rosenwald and Everett Fox (Bloomington IN: Indiana UP, 1994), pp.177–178.

Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, Die Verdeutschung die Schrift (Berlin: Schocken, 1936). The essays have been translated into English in Scripture and Translation.

Rosenzweig, “The Unity of the Bible: A Position Paper vis-a-vis Orthodoxy and Liberalism,” Scripture and Translation, 23-25. For a recent, comprehensive assessment of the significance of this approach see Benjamin Sommer, Revelation and Authority: Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015) 179–187.

Editor’s note: A similar approach, inspired by Buber and Rosenzweig, undergirds the English translation of Everett Fox. For a discussion of his approach, see Everett Fox, "Torah in Translation: Rendering the Joseph Story in English," TheTorah (2019).

In fact, the entire theme of the poem, which describes how God is furious at Israel’s physical and spiritual decadence, states that the decadence developed as a result of the nation’s enjoyment of the land’s bounty (vv.13–15), which certainly could not have occurred at the point when the poem was purportedly composed.

^{דברים לא:יט} וְעַתָּה כִּתְבוּ לָכֶם אֶת הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת וְלַמְּדָהּ אֶת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל שִׂימָהּ בְּפִיהֶם לְמַעַן תִּהְיֶה לִּי הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת לְעֵד בִּבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל. ^לא:כ כִּי אֲבִיאֶנּוּ אֶל הָאֲדָמָה אֲשֶׁר נִשְׁבַּעְתִּי לַאֲבֹתָיו זָבַת חָלָב וּדְבַשׁ וְאָכַל וְשָׂבַע וְדָשֵׁן וּפָנָה אֶל אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים וַעֲבָדוּם וְנִאֲצוּנִי וְהֵפֵר אֶת בְּרִיתִי. ^לא:כא וְהָיָה כִּי תִמְצֶאןָ אֹתוֹ רָעוֹת רַבּוֹת וְצָרוֹת וְעָנְתָה הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת לְפָנָיו לְעֵד כִּי לֹא תִשָּׁכַח מִפִּי זַרְעוֹ...

^{Deut 31:19} Therefore, write down this poem and teach it to the people of Israel; put it in their mouths, in order that this poem may be My witness against the people of Israel. ^31:20 When I bring them into the land flowing with milk and honey that I promised on oath to their fathers, and they eat their fill and grow fat and turn to other gods and serve them, spurning Me and breaking My covenant, ^31:21 and the many evils and troubles befall them -- then this poem shall confront them as a witness, since it will never be lost from the mouth of their offspring.

Paul Sanders, The Provenance of Deuteronomy 32 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), 1-98. Editor’s note: For a discussion of how and when Haazinu was included in Deuteronomy, see Tzemah Yoreh, "Moses Wrote Down This Song, Deuteronomy 31:22—Which Song?" TheTorah (2018).

Buber, “On Word Choice in Translating the Bible: In Memoriam Rosenzweig,” Scripture and Translation, 89.

Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses. A Translation with Commentary (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004), 1038.

Meine Lehre triefe wie der Regen, (Let my teachings drip heavily like rain)
und meine Rede fließe wie Tau, (and my sayings flow like dew)
wie der Regen auf das Gras (like rain on grass)
und wie die Tropfen auf das Kraut (and like drops on plants)

Similar resonances of German lushness in the description of the bounty that God bestows upon the Israelites in the Promised Land may be found in Buber’s and Rosenzweig’s rendition of Deuteronomy 32:14, where hem’at bakar and halev tzon (cow’s milk butter and sheep’s milk) becomes Rahm von Rindern and Fettmilch von Schafen (bovine cream and sheep’s full milk, respectively). Compare Luther’s literal translation as Butter von den Kühen und Milch von den Schafen (“butter from the cows and milk from the sheep”).

Editor's note: For more on the theme of the dangers of prosperity, see David Frankel, “The Good Land of Israel,” TheTorah (2017); Reuven Kimelman, “The Shema's Second Paragraph: Concern over Israel's Affluence,” TheTorah (2015).

" […] we sought also to draw out the elemental meaning of individual words, i.e., their original concrete sense, wherever by the use of the word, indeed sometimes even by its formation and re-formation, there was expressed fundamental fact of teaching and belief—wherever, that is, there was a clearly prevailing intention to reveal or to preserve for the reader, or rather the hearer, some element of teaching in all its concrete presence." Martin Buber, "The How and Why of Our Bible Translation," Scripture and Translation, 218.

Editor’s note: For a discussion of various options, see Zev Farber, “Haazinu: The Song's Enigmatic Climax,” TheTorah (2016).

This same approach is taken by the NJPS, “and cleanse the land of His people.”

As staunch believers in God's crucial function as creator, they would have considered any soil to be God’s. And hence their coupling of God’s soil with God’s people in the translation of the verse, could plausibly read as an expansion of the bond between the God of Israel and His people to any tract of land, rather than a specific territory.

In one case, Luther doesn’t translated the word eretz at all. In verse 10, Moses recalls in God’s name the first encounter between Israel as nation and their God savior in Egypt. He calls the place where God found Israel אֶרֶץ מִדְבָּר, which Luther renders with the straightforward translation of Wüste (desert), while Buber and Rosenzweig translate literally as Wüstenland (wasteland).

“Land,” Deutches Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm. 16 Bde. In 32 Teilbänden. (Leipzig: 1854-1961) [accessed 11.10.2019]; “Erde,” Deutches Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm. 16 Bde. In 32 Teilbänden. (Leipzig: 1854-1961) [accessed 11.10.2019].

Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, trans. William W. Hallo (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1985; repr. of, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1971), 300; trans. of Der Stern Der Erlosung (Frankfurt am Main: J. Kauffmann, 1921).

For an interpretation of Rosenzweig's view of Zionism see Michael Oppenheim, "Franz Rosenzweig in the Eyes of His Israeli Critics," Modern Judaism 7.2 (1987): 193-206.

The alternation between adama and aretz in the above verses appears to derive from a conflation of P and D sources, reworked by either a Deuteronomist or Pseudo-Deuteronomist redaction. See Chaim (Jeffrey) Tigay, דברים עם מבוא ופירוש [Deuteronomy with Introduction and Commentary], Mikra Le'Israel: Perush Mada'i La-Mikra (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2016), 2.863.