Quotation from Martin Buber “Blood is a deep-rooted nurturing force within individual man” — 1909

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[B]lood is a deep-rooted nurturing force within individual man [...] the deepest layers of our being are determined by blood [...] our innermost thinking and our will are colored by it. Now he finds that the world around him is the world of imprints and of influences, whereas blood is the realm of a substance capable of being imprinted and influenced, a substance absorbing and assimilating all into its own form [...] The people are now for him a community of men who were, are, and will be — a community of the dead, the living, and the yet unborn — who, together, constitute a unity […] That his substance can, nevertheless, become a reality for the Jew is due to the fact that his origin means more than a mere connection with things past; it has planted something within us that does not leave us at any hour of our life, that determines every tone and every hue in our life, all that we do and all that befalls us: blood, the deepest, most potent stratum of our being.

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