This paper deals with the relationship between culture and politics. Martin Buber, one of the leading representatives of cultural Zionism, believes that a nation must fi rst build its own culture and then establish state institutions or governments based on it. The paper presents Martin Buber’s works concerning the Hasidic world and the reactions that they aroused among Western Jews. For many of them, Buber’s Hasidic stories became the basis for their spiritual and cultural rebirth, as a result of which (...) they began to identify with the Jewish people again. However, the dispute between political and cultural Zionists has not been settled yet. (shrink)