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Emmanuel Levinas, a twentieth century French Jewish philosopher, taught that from the moment of birth, we are obligated by the mere “gaze” of another. The very essence of relationship is the responsibility to engage the Other, to respond. Philosopher Mattin Buber called this the “I-Thou” relationship. The Other is not an inanimate “It”; the Other is a personal “Thou” that demands a response.
Social constructivists like Peter Burger and Kenneth J. Gergen argue that virtually everything we experience is a function of relationships, not some inherent quality of the thing itself. In a sense, we are all, always, in relation to someone or something else.
This obligation to each other is rooted in the biblical notion that that every human being is made in the image of God. The image of God is within, but the presence of God is found in the “in between”, in our relationships.
--Dr. Ron Wolfson, Relational Judaism: using the power of relationships to transform the Jewish community, 2014, p. 37.
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