Gershom Scholem was the master builder of historical studies of the Kabbalah. When he began to work on this neglected field, the few who studied these texts were either amateurs who were looking for occult wisdom, or old-style Kabbalists who were seeking guidance on their spiritual journeys. His work broke with the outlook of the scholars of the previous century in Judaica—die Wissenschaft des Judentums, the Science of Judaism—whose orientation he rejected, calling their “disregard for the most vital aspects of the Jewish people as a collective entity: a form of “censorship of the Jewish past.” The major founders of modern Jewish historical studies in the nineteenth century, Leopold Zunz and Abraham Geiger, had ignored the Kabbalah; it did not fit into their account of the Jewish religion as rational and worthy of respect by “enlightened” minds. The only exception was the historian Heinrich Graetz. He had paid substantial attention to its texts and to their most explosive exponent, the false Messiah Sabbatai Zevi, but Graetz had depicted the Kabbalah and all that flowed from it as an unworthy revolt from the underground of Jewish life against its reasonable, law-abiding, and learned mainstream. Scholem conducted a continuing polemic with Zunz, Geiger, and Graetz by bringing into view a Jewish past more varied, more vital, and more interesting than any idealized portrait could reveal.—from the Foreword by Arthur Hertzberg, 1995

Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality

Religion & Spirituality

SCHOLEM,GERSHOM

Religious Studies

Shocken Books

Few people thought as deeply or incisively about Germany, Jewish identity, and the Holocaust as Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem. And, as this landmark volume reveals, much of that thinking was developed in dialogue, through more than two decades of correspondence. Arendt and Scholem met in 1932 in Berlin and quickly bonded over their mutual admiration for and friendship with Walter Benjamin. They began exchanging letters in 1939, and their lively correspondence continued until 1963, when Scholem’s vehement disagreement with Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem led to a rupture that would last until Arendt’s death a dozen years later. The years of their friendship, however, yielded a remarkably rich bounty of letters: together, they try to come to terms with being both German and Jewish, the place and legacy of Germany before and after the Holocaust, the question of what it means to be Jewish in a post-Holocaust world, and more. Walter Benjamin is a constant presence, as his life and tragic death are emblematic of the very questions that preoccupied the pair. Like any collection of letters, however, the book also has its share of lighter moments: accounts of travels, gossipy dinner parties, and the quotidian details that make up life even in the shadow of war and loss. In a world that continues to struggle with questions of nationalism, identity, and difference, Arendt and Scholem remain crucial thinkers. This volume offers us a way to see them, and the development of their thought, anew.

The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem

Biographies & Memoirs

ARENDT, HANNAH

Professionals & Academics

University of Chicago Press

Perhaps the greatest scholar of Jewish mysticism in the twentieth century, Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) once said of himself, "I have no biography, only a bibliography." Yet, in thousands of letters written over his lifetime, his biography does unfold, inscribing a life that epitomized the intellectual ferment and political drama of an era. This selection of the best and most representative letters--drawn from the 3000 page German edition--gives readers an intimate view of this remarkable man, from his troubled family life in Germany to his emergence as one of the leading lights of Israel during its founding and formative years.
In the letters, we witness the travails and vicissitudes of the Scholem family, a drama in which Gershom is banished by his father for his anti-kaiser Zionist sentiments; his antiwar, socialist brother is hounded and murdered; and his mother and remaining brothers are forced to emigrate. We see Scholem's friendships with some of the most intriguing intellectuals of the twentieth century--such as Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno--blossom and, on occasion, wither. And we learn firsthand about his Zionist commitment and his scholarly career, from his move to Palestine in the 1920s to his work as Professor of Jewish Mysticism at the Hebrew University. Over the course of seven decades that comprised the most significant events of the twentieth century, these letters reveal how Scholem's scholarship is informed by the experiences he so eloquently described.

A Life in Letters, 1914–1982

Arts & Literature

Harvard University Press

For decades, Gershom Scholem kept these diaries locked away, returning to them only to refresh his memory of past events and eloquent observations. They remained unread by others until the meticulously edited German edition of this book appeared in 2002. 
 Lamentations of Youth gives insight into a crucial stage in Scholem's life, beginning when he was a student in Berlin during the First World War, a time of incubation and growth for his later ideas. Much of the journal writing, however, took place in Switzerland, a magnet for radical artists, socialist intellectuals, and revolutionaries fleeing war. The diaries are where Scholem forges his anarchic orthodoxy, and where he chronicles his intense relationship with Walter Benjamin. Many entries have the crisp quality of literary aphorisms crafted in the great German tradition of Kafka and Canetti. 
 For Scholem and Benjamin, the time they spent together in Switzerland spawned an astoundingly original view of literary criticism, interpretation, and cultural transmission. More personally, the themes of friendship, love, and heartbreak that dominate these pages later reemerge in Scholem's scholarship. No longer is the inner life of the critic seen as distinct from his textual criticism--they are deeply and esoterically intertwined.

Lamentations of Youth: The Diaries of Gershom Scholem, 1913-1919

Leaders & Notable People

Belknap Press of Harvard University Press

A collection of lectures on the features of the movement of mysticism that began in antiquity and continues in Hasidism today.

Major Trends In Jewish Mysticism

Judaism

Schocken

One of the great masterpieces of Western religious thought, the Zohar represents an attempt to uncover hidden meanings behind the world of appearances. It is the central work in the literature of the Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition. This volume of selected passages from the Zohar, culled by the greatest authority on Jewish mysticism, offers a sampling of its unique vision of the esoteric wonders of creation; the life and destiny of the soul; the confluence of physical and divine love; suffering and death; exile and redemption.

Zohar: The Book of Splendor: Basic Readings from the Kabbalah

Reference

Encyclopedias & Subject Guides

Gershom Scholem was the master builder of historical studies of the Kabbalah. When he began to work on this neglected field, the few who studied these texts were either amateurs who were looking for occult wisdom, or old-style Kabbalists who were seeking guidance on their spiritual journeys. His work broke with the outlook of the scholars of the previous century in Judaicaâdie Wissenschaft des Judentums, the Science of Judaismâwhose orientation he rejected, calling their “disregard for the most vital aspects of the Jewish people as a collective entity: a form of “censorship of the Jewish past.” The major founders of modern Jewish historical studies in the nineteenth century, Leopold Zunz and Abraham Geiger, had ignored the Kabbalah; it did not fit into their account of the Jewish religion as rational and worthy of respect by “enlightened” minds. The only exception was the historian Heinrich Graetz. He had paid substantial attention to its texts and to their most explosive exponent, the false Messiah Sabbatai Zevi, but Graetz had depicted the Kabbalah and all that flowed from it as an unworthy revolt from the underground of Jewish life against its reasonable, law-abiding, and learned mainstream. Scholem conducted a continuing polemic with Zunz, Geiger, and Graetz by bringing into view a Jewish past more varied, more vital, and more interesting than any idealized portrait could reveal. âfrom the Foreword by Arthur Hertzberg, 1995

The Messianic Idea in Judaism: And Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality

"These essays, dealing as they do with modern Jewish history, literature, and religion, sustain a continuity of conviction that cannot help but inspire a new generation of Jewish intellectual life."New York Times Book Review
On Jews and Judaism in Crisis presents Gershom Scholem confronting, studying, and judging the important ideas, events, and figures of twentieth-century Judaism. It includes essays on Martin Buber, S. Y. Agnon, and Scholem's friend Walter Benjamin; also his famous 1964 letter to Hannah Arendt. In a 1975 interview, Scholem provides fascinating information about his own life.
"There is a revelation in store…for the Jewish reader who has not previously encountered Scholem, and even for the non-Jewish reader concerned about the meaning and preservation of peoplehood’ in the twentieth century…On the meaning and problems of Israel, on the search through tradition for seeds of rebirth, on the resurrection of Hebrew, on the possibility of a modern Jewish theology, on the Jewish relationship to history, Scholem is precise, passionate, skeptical, wholly original."Kirkus Reviews
"Gershom Scholem is historian who has remade the worldHe is coming to be seen as one of the greatest shapers of contemporary thought, possibly the boldest mind-adventurer of our generation."Cynthia Ozick, New York Times Book Review
Gershom Scholem (18971982) was born in Berlin and educated at the Universities of Berlin, Jena, Bern, and Munich. In 1923, he immigrated to Palestine, where he devoted the rest of his life to the study of the Jewish mystical tradition and the Kabbala. In Jerusalem, he was appointed the first professor of Jewish mysticism at Hebrew University and served as president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Scholem was the author of many books, including Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, and From Berlin to Jerusalem (also now available from Paul Dry Books).

On Jews and Judaism in Crisis

History

Europe

The author traces his friendship with the philosopher and critic, Walter Benjamin, from their youth in Berlin to Benjamin's death in 1940 and includes selections from their letters

Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship

Essays, letters, and articles written by the distinguished Jewish scholar over a fifty-year period show him confronting, studying, and judging important ideas, events, and figures of twentieth-century Judaism

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by SCHOLEM,GERSHOM. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by SCHOLEM,GERSHOM

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by SCHOLEM,GERSHOM. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality

The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem

A Life in Letters, 1914–1982

Lamentations of Youth: The Diaries of Gershom Scholem, 1913-1919

Major Trends In Jewish Mysticism

Zohar: The Book of Splendor: Basic Readings from the Kabbalah

The Messianic Idea in Judaism: And Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality

On Jews and Judaism in Crisis

Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship

On Jews and Judaism in Crisis