Gershom Scholem | |
|---|---|
| גרשום שלום | |
.jpg) Scholem, 1935 | |
| Born | Gerhard Scholem (1897-12-05)5 December 1897 |
| Died | 21 February 1982(1982-02-21) (aged 84) |
| Nationality | German Israel |
| Alma mater | Frederick William University |
| Notable work | Sabbatai Zevi, the Mystical Messiah Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism |
| Spouse | Fania Freud Scholem |
| Awards | Israel Prize Bialik Prize |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | German philosophy Jewish philosophy |
| School | Continental philosophy Kabbalah Wissenschaft des Judentums |
| Institutions | Hebrew University of Jerusalem |
Main interests | Philosophy of religion Philosophy of history Mysticism Messianism |
Gershom Scholem (Hebrew:גֵרְשׁׂם שָׁלוֹם; 5 December 1897 – 21 February 1982) was an Israeliphilosopher andhistorian. Widely regarded as the founder of modern academic study of theKabbalah, Scholem was appointed the first professor ofJewish mysticism atHebrew University of Jerusalem.[1]
Scholem is acknowledged as the single most significant figure in the recovery, collection, annotation, and registration into rigorous Jewish scholarship of the canonical bibliography of mysticism and scriptural commentary that runs through its primordial phase in theSefer Yetzirah, its inauguration in theBahir, its exegesis in thePardes and theZohar to its cosmogonic, apocalyptic climax inIsaac Luria'sEin Sof that is known collectively asKabbalah.[2][3]
After generations of demoralization and assimilation in the European Enlightenment,[4] the disappointment of messianic hopes,[4] the famine of 1916 in Palestine,[5] and in the midst of the catastrophe of theFinal Solution in Europe[6] Scholem gathered and reassembled these sacred texts from many of the archives that had been disarranged, orphaned, confiscated under Nazi rule or otherwise washed up inGenizah in the middle east. Scholem cataloging the flood of fragments and disordered, decontextualized manuscripts into an annotated and relatively organized sequence of texts available to scholars and seekers within the reception of this tradition in his 1930 bibliography of the Kabbalah, expanding this bibliography in his later works until the end of his life. Many other Jewish scholars assisted in this process of recovery once it was underway, but it is broadly recognized that Scholem initiated this process of textual and archival recovery and rebirth.
As Scholem points out in his memoirs, the canon of sacred Jewish writings from the diaspora and the Middle Ages (re: "Kabbalah") had fallen into such a state of disrepair and oblivion—fragmented and effaced by persecutions from without as well as contortions, conversions and schisms from within Judaism—that many of the "finest writings..."[7] from the major currents of Jewish mysticism could only be found in long block quotations in antisemitic texts, where some "nincompoop who had quoted and translated the most wonderful, the most profound things,"[7] had assembled them "in order to decry them as blasphemies."[7] (This was a strong, somewhat exaggerated statement for expressive effect that Scholem attributes toErnst Bloch in his memoirs—but there he co-signs the sentiment and appropriates it as his own description of the state of affairs in other places.)[8][2][3]
Due to Scholem's efforts, and those of his students and colleagues, the confused and inscrutable condition of Kabbalistic bibliography and provenance would be significantly remedied after the end of the World Wars and the foundation of the modern state of Israel where Scholem worked as head librarian of the National Library in Jerusalem.
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Gerhard (Gershom) Scholem was born inBerlin to Arthur Scholem and Betty Hirsch Scholem. His father was a printer. His older brother was the German Communist leaderWerner Scholem. He studiedHebrew andTalmud with anOrthodox rabbi.[9]
Scholem metWalter Benjamin in Munich in 1915, when the former was seventeen years old and the latter was twenty-three. They began a lifelong friendship that ended when Benjamin committed suicide in 1940 in the wake of Nazi persecution. Scholem dedicated his bookMajor Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Die jüdische Mystik in ihren Hauptströmungen), based on lectures 1938–1940, to Benjamin. In 1915 Scholem enrolled at theFrederick William University in Berlin (today,Humboldt University), where he studied mathematics, philosophy, and Hebrew. There he metMartin Buber,Shmuel Yosef Agnon,Hayim Nahman Bialik,Ahad Ha'am, andZalman Shazar.[9]
In Berlin, Scholem befriendedLeo Strauss and corresponded with him throughout his life.[10] He studiedmathematical logic at theUniversity of Jena underGottlob Frege. He was in Bern in 1918 with Benjamin when he met Elsa (Escha) Burchhard, who became his first wife. Scholem returned to Germany in 1919, where he received a degree inSemitic languages at theLudwig Maximilian University of Munich.[9] Together with Benjamin he established a fictitious school – the University of Muri.[11]
Scholem wrote his doctoral thesis on the oldest known kabbalistic text,Sefer ha-Bahir. The following year it appeared in book form as "Das Buch Bahir", having been published by his father's publishing house.[9]
Drawn toZionism and influenced by Buber, heimmigrated in 1923 to theBritish Mandate of Palestine.[12] It may be considered notable that though Scholem's allegiance to the Zionist cause (or the reclamation of Palestine by the Jewish diaspora) is incontrovertible, his relationship to the manifest ethics of Zionism was more ambiguous and critical than Buber's.[13][14][15][16]
After his emigration from Berlin to Palestine, Scholem became a librarian, heading the Department of Hebrew and Judaica at the National Library. In 1927 he revamped theDewey Decimal System, making it appropriate for large Judaica collections.[17] During the period that he was a librarian of ancient manuscripts at the library ofHebrew University, fragments of the newly discoveredDead Sea Scrolls and inventory from theCairo Genizah--just to name a few notable exemplars--moved through the collections he was overseeing. Though he started teaching smaller seminars at an earlier date, Scholem was not appointed as a full professor at Hebrew University until Hitler rose to power.[18][19][20]
Scholem's brotherWerner was a member of the ultra-left "Fischer-Maslow Group" and the youngest ever member of theReichstag, or WeimarDiet, representing theCommunist Party of Germany. He was expelled from the party and later murdered by the Nazis during theThird Reich. Unlike his brother, Gershom was vehemently opposed to bothCommunism andMarxism. In 1936, he married his second wife, Fania Freud. Fania, who had been his student and could read Polish, was helpful in his later research, particularly in regard toJacob Frank.[21]
In 1946 Scholem was sent by the Hebrew University to search for Jewish books that had been plundered by the Nazis and help return them to their rightful owners. He spent much of the year in Germany and Central Europe as part of this project, known as "Otzrot HaGolah".[9]
Scholem died inJerusalem, where he is buried next to his wife in theSanhedria Cemetery.Jürgen Habermas delivered the eulogy.[22]
Scholem became a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He taught the Kabbalah and mysticism from a scientific point of view and became the first professor of Jewish mysticism at the university in 1933, working in this post until his retirement in 1965, when he became an emeritus professor.
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Scholem directly contrasted his historiographical approach on the study of Jewishmysticism with the approach of the 19th-century school of theWissenschaft des Judentums ("Science of Judaism"), which sought to submit the study of Judaism to the discipline of subjects such ashistory,philology, andphilosophy. According to Jeremy Adler, Scholem's thinking was "both recognizably Jewish and deeply German," and "changed the course of twentieth-century European thought."[23]
At the time Scholem entered his field of study, Jewish mysticism was acknowledged as Judaism's weakest scholarly link by many of the scholars, publishers and cultural leaders of the Jewish community and gentile German scholars who sponsored Scholem's early career, includingMartin Buber,Salman Schocken,Franz Rosenzweig,Robert Eisler,Philipp Bloch [de], Moses Marx,Clemens Baumker,Fritz Hommel andWalter Benjamin.[6][13]
Scholem told the story of his early research "at the start of my path" in 1922 when he went to Berlin to visit "the only Jewish scholar who had engaged in the study of Kabbalah in the previous generation."[24] Gesturing at the rabbi's library of documents, manuscripts and autographs written by the authors of the Kabbalah, some of which had been inscribed inearly modern ormedieval centuries, Scholem remarked, "How wonderful it is, Herr Professor, that you have read and learned all this!" to which "...the elderly gentleman replied: 'What! And Ialso have toread all this nonsense?!"[24] (Though he does not mention the name of the Rabbi in his canonical account of this visit, Scholem explains elsewhere that this scholar—once the Rabbi ofPoznań—was Phillip Bloch.[6][24])
The analysis of Judaism carried out by theWissenschaft school was flawed in two ways, according to Scholem: It studied Judaism as a dead object rather than as a living organism; and it did not consider the properfoundations of Judaism, the non-rational force that, in Scholem's view, made the religion a living thing.
In Scholem's opinion, the mythical and mystical components were at least as important as the rational ones, and he thought that they, rather than the minutiae ofHalakha, were the truly living core of Judaism. In particular, he disagreed with what he considered to beMartin Buber's personalization of Kabbalistic concepts as well as what he argued was an inadequate approach to Jewish history, Hebrew language, and theland of Israel.
In theworldview of Scholem, the research of Jewish mysticism could not be separated from its historical context. Starting from something similar to theGegengeschichte ofFriedrich Nietzsche, he ended up including less normative aspects of Judaism in the public history.
Specifically, Scholem in his scholarly writing that Jewish history could be divided into three periods:
Elsewhere, in oral presentation or informal reflection, Scholem inflected the three periods within a different frame of reference:[25][26][9] there was the primordial inscription and enunciation of the Law in the Torah and the Talmud, the mystical reflections of the Kabbalah, and the post-metaphysical phase of mystical writings represented by (for example) the writings of Franz Kafka or the critical mysticism of his friend and correspondent Walter Benjamin. Scholem often told his students that the modern reader must read Franz Kafka in order to enter into the frame of mind native to the Kabbalah, and elsewhere remarked that, "among the peculiarities" Benjamin's writings was its "enormous suitability for canonization; I might almost say for quotation as a kind of Holy Writ."[26]
The notion of the three periods, with its interactions between rational and irrational elements in Judaism, led Scholem to put forward some controversial arguments. He thought that the 17th century messianic movement, known asSabbateanism, was developed from theLurianic Kabbalah. In order to neutralize Sabbateanism,Hasidism had emerged as aHegelian synthesis. Many of those who joined the Hasidic movement, because they had seen in it anOrthodox congregation, considered it scandalous that their community should be associated with a heretical movement.
In the same way, Scholem produced the hypothesis that the source of the 13th century Kabbalah was a Jewishgnosticism that preceded Christian gnosticism.
The historiographical approach of Scholem also involved a linguistic theory. In contrast to Buber, Scholem believed in the power of the language to invoke supernatural phenomena. In contrast toWalter Benjamin, he put theHebrew language in a privileged position with respect to other languages, as the only language capable of revealing the divine truth. His special regard for the spiritual potency of the Hebrew language was expressed in his 1926 letter toFranz Rosenzweig regarding his concerns over the "secularization" of Hebrew. Scholem considered the Kabbalists as interpreters of a pre-existent linguistic revelation.
Scholem's closest peers included, most famously,Walter Benjamin andLeo Strauss.
Though his relationship withFranz Rosenzweig was of shorter duration, it was also a deeply influential one. Likewise, though Scholem was never directly introduced toFranz Kafka, he found out later in life that Kafka approved of his comments in a debate.[7] Scholem and Benjamin's discussions of Kafka, spanning decades, played no small role in the elevation Kafka's literary and epistolary writings to canonical status in both secular and mystical literature as writing that was prophetic or premonitory of theHolocaust while also having qualities of a kind of post-metaphysical kabbalah.[27][28][29][25][15]
It is a measure of the depth of Scholem's friendship with Benjamin that he wrote two memoirs at the end of his life: his own autobiography[30] tends to be less read or frequently cited than his "Autobiography of a Friendship" recounting his lifelong relationship and work in partnership with Benjamin prior to the latter's death in flight from the Gestapo in 1940.[7] In addition to his Kabbalah scholarship, a significant portion of Scholem's working life postwar was spent recovering, editing and promoting the literary estate of his dead friend.[5]
Martin Buber was a patron, publisher and sponsor of the careers of both Scholem and his best friendBenjamin (despite Benjamin's frequent ingratitude and incorrigible blowing of deadlines and Scholem's occasionally scathing critiques of the elder figure).[7][5]
Though Scholem's relationships withHannah Arendt,Theodor Adorno,Hans Jonas, andErnst Bloch were more characteristically turbulent than those relationship just mentioned, the frequent citation of these figures in Scholem's published writings and private correspondence demonstrates that they were among his closest and most influential colleagues. Selected letters from his correspondence with thinkers, critics and philosophers have been published.
Though appearing as a friend and protegé late in his career,Cynthia Ozick merits mention among those in Scholem's inner-circle. His late-career relationships withAllen Ginsberg,Harold Bloom, andGeorge Steiner were also significant (though his relationship with Steiner was, characteristically, somewhat combative). Scholem was also friendly with the authorShai Agnon and the Talmudic scholarSaul Lieberman.
As a major, unofficial but widely acknowledged figurehead of mystical, historical and theological currents within bothReform and (much more controversially)Conservative Judaism after World War II and theDestruction of the European Jewry in the Holocaust, Scholem's stature within Jewish tradition is roughly comparable to the role played before theFirst World War and during the interwar period byMartin Buber.[31][32]
In the aftermath of theAdolf Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, Scholem sharply criticisedHannah Arendt's book,Eichmann in Jerusalem and decried her lack of solidarity with the Jewish people (Hebrew:אהבת ישראל "love of one's fellow Jews",ʾahəvaṯ ʾiśrāʾēl).[33] Arendt responded that she never loved any collective group, and that she does not love the Jewish people but was only part of them.[34] The bitter fight, which was exchanged in various articles, led to a rift between Scholem and Arendt though they remained mutually respectful thereafter and continued to work alongside one another on various projects, particularly in their work on the literary estate of Walter Benjamin.[35] In an apparently wrathful moment, Scholem wrote to Hans Paeschke that he "knew Hannah Arendt when she was a socialist or half-communist and... when she was a Zionist. I am astounded by her ability to pronounce upon movements in which she was once so deeply engaged, in terms of a distance measured in light years and from such sovereign heights."[36] Differing perspectives on the appropriate penalty for Adolph Eichmann further illuminate differences between the two authors. Whereas Arendt felt that Eichmann should be executed, Scholem was opposed, fearing that his execution would serve to alleviate the Germans' collective sense of guilt.[37][38]
Various stories and essays of the Argentinian writerJorge Luis Borges were inspired or influenced by Scholem's books.[42] He has also influenced ideas ofUmberto Eco,Jacques Derrida,Harold Bloom, Italian philosopherGiorgio Agamben, andGeorge Steiner.[43] American authorMichael Chabon cites Scholem's essay,The Idea of the Golem, as having assisted him in conceiving the Pulitzer-Prize winning bookThe Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.[44] The same essay influenced, and is cited by,Bruce Chatwin'sUtz.Chaim Potok'sThe Book of Lights features a lightly disguised Scholem as "Jacob Keter."[45]
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