The Father of Jewish Mysticism

Daniel Weidner, Sage Anderson

Description

The Father of Jewish Mysticism offers an incisive look at the early life and writings of Gershom Scholem (1897–1982), the father of modern Jewish mysticism and a major 20th-century Jewish intellectual.

Daniel Weidner offers the first full-length study, published in English, of Scholem's thought. Scholem, a historian ofthe Kabbalah and sharp critic of Jewish assimilation, played a major role in the study and popularization of Jewish mysticism.

Through his work on the Kabbalah, Scholem turned the closed world of mystical texts into a force for Jewish identity. Skillfully drawing on Scholem's early diaries and writings, The Father of Jewish Mysticism introduces a young, soon-to-be legendary intellectual in search of himself and Judaism.

Sujets

• mysticism
• Literary Criticism
• Jewish Studies
• Jewish
• HISTORY
• Cábala
• Jews
• Kabbalah
• Gershom Scholem
• Kabbale

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 04 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253062109
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE FATHER OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
NEW JEWISH PHILOSOPHY AND THOUGHT
Zachary J. Braiterman
THE FATHER OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
The Writing of Gershom Scholem

DANIEL WEIDNER
TRANSLATED BY
SAGE ANDERSON
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Originally published in German as Gershom Scholem by Wilhelm Fink Verlag
Wilhelm Fink GmbH Co. KG, Paderbom 2003
All rights reserved by and controlled through Wilhelm Fink GmbH Co. KG, Paderborn
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.org
2022 by Daniel Weidner
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2022
The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International - Translation Funding for Work in the Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the collecting society VG WORT and the B rsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German Publishers Booksellers Association).
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-06207-9 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-253-06208-6 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-06209-3 (ebook)
CONTENTS
Abbreviations of Frequently Cited Works by Gershom Scholem
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Intellectual History and Writing: What It Means to Read Gershom Scholem
PART 1. POSITIONING SPEECH:
Scholem s Political Education
1. Revolt and Romanticism: A First Language
2. Confusion and Polemics: Taking a Position
3. Asceticism and Silence: Gaining Authority
4. Esoteric Zionism: Politics and Language
5. Victory s Despair: Reality and Crisis
6. Looking Back: Rewriting the Past
PART 2. PRACTICING THEORY:
Scholem s Early Reading
7. Language and Truth: First Steps
8. Lamentations: Thinking Language
9. Tradition, Teaching, Doctrine: A Jewish Form of Truth
10. Paradox: Fragments of a System
11. Prophecy and Messianism: Rethinking History
12. Revelation: Problematic Foundations
13. Philology: Poetically Spoken
PART 3. PRODUCING HISTORY:
Scholem s Scholarship
14. History of Religion: A Paradigm
15. Myth and Mysticism: Fundamental Concepts
16. Gnosticism, Misunderstanding, and Symbolism: More Operative Terms?
17. History of Messianism: Continuity and Rupture?
18. Explosion and Historical Test: The Essential Plot
19. Jewish Modernity: A Test of the Present
Conclusion: Authority and Silence
Bibliography
Index
ABBREVIATIONS OF FREQUENTLY CITED WORKS BY GERSHOM SCHOLEM
GERMAN 1
Br I , Br II ,
Briefe . Edited by Itta Shedletzky and Thomas Sparr.
Br III
3 vols. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1994-1999.
T I , T II
Tageb cher nebst ufs tzen und Entw rfen bis 1923 . Edited by Herbert Kopp-Oberstebrink, Karlfried Gr nder, and Friedrich Niew hner. 2 vols. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1995-2000.
ENGLISH
FBJ
From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth . Translated by Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books, 1980.
JJC
On Jews and Judaism in Crisis: Selected Essays . Edited by Werner J. Dannhauser. New York: Schocken Books, 1976.
KS
On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism . Translated by Ralph Manheim. New York: Schocken Books, 1969.
LL
A Life in Letters, 1914-1982 . Edited and translated by Anthony David Skinner. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.
LY
Lamentations of Youth: The Diaries of Gershom Scholem, 1913-1919 . Edited and translated by Anthony David Skinner. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
MI
The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality . New York: Schocken Books, 1971.
MS
On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead: Basic Concepts in the Kabbalah . Translated by Joachim Neugroschel. Edited and revised by Jonathan Chipman. New York: Schocken Books, 1991.
MT
Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism . New York: Schocken Books, 1961.
PM
On the Possibility of Jewish Mysticism in Our Time and Other Essays . Translated by Jonathan Chipman. Edited and selected with an introduction by Avraham Shapira. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1997.
SS
Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676 . Translated by R. J. Zwi Werblowsky. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973.

1 . Passages from Scholem s letters and diaries that are not included in the English collections A Life in Letters and Lamentations of Youth have been translated from the German by Sage Anderson.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
DECADES AGO, WHEN I PREPARED my master s thesis on Sigmund Freud and Walter Benjamin, friends suggested that I have a look at Benjamin s intimate friend Gershom Scholem. So I went to get a book on the symbols of Kabbalah, a topic that was for me then probably the most obscure I could imagine. I was surprised to read its lucid and brilliant description of kabbalistic symbolism, a description that came along with striking insights into the nature of language, history, religion, and tradition. I continued to read Scholem and was taken by the richness, depth, and elegance of his thought and writing as well as by the trajectory of his life and his different friendships, mirrored by a rich correspondence that allows the reader to witness rigorous and dramatic intellectual dialogues.
Some years later, when preparing my dissertation, rumors of more material had already reached me. Ambitious texts from the young Scholem, which had circulated only in fragments, were just about to be published as part of Scholem s early diaries. After some inquiries and conversation, there was a scene I still remember, when Herbert Kopp-Oberstebrink handed me a couple of thick folders containing the manuscript of the second volume of these diaries that he, as well as Friedrich Niew hner and Karlfried Gr nder, kindly allowed me to consult. I began to conceive a doctoral thesis that should deal with the relationship of Benjamin and Scholem, encouraged by my supervisor, Gerd Mattenklott. I marked excerpts, making notes upon notes on what seemed to be a vast dialogue between Benjamin s and Scholem s early esoteric writings. I traveled to Jerusalem to find even more materials in the Hebrew National Library with the kind support of Margot Cohnn and later Stephan Litt, and I had countless conversations in the cafeteria of that library where you always find someone working in this field. I felt that something large was emerging and that I simply lacked the key to unlock this huge mystery, the one perspective from which everything would fall in place.
In the end, I did not find the key. Friends and colleagues made skeptical remarks about my ideas, and I realized that I could not put them together in a coherent way. Sketches and notes generated further sketches and notes, but nothing like a dissertation. I remember many helpful conversations in these days, with Carsten Allefeld, Stefan Beier, Iris H lling, Thomas Meyer, Christoph Schulte, and others. At some point, I took a step back and decided to limit my thesis to Scholem and to change my approach: it seemed to me that I first had to describe what was happening in Scholem s texts before I could try to unlock their deeper, systematic meaning. And that is what this book mostly does, resisting the temptation of finding the esoteric key but trying to understand how Scholem writes and what effect this has for his intellectual project. In this way, with more modest claims, I finished my dissertation, which was defended in 2000 and came out as a book in German in 2003 with the patient help of Susanne Hetzer.
The story does not end here. I did not immediately continue to work on Scholem, but he remained a good guide into the field of religion and literature, modes of secularization, and German-Jewish culture in a broader sense-the major topics of my work in the decades after my dissertation. This work was possible only with the kind support and close collaboration of a number of colleagues and friends, beginning with Sigrid Weigel and Eva Geulen, the directors of the Berlin Center for Literary and Cultural Studies, my academic home for a long time, along with Center colleagues Ernst M ller, Martin Treml, Stefan Willer Kai Bremer, Claude Haas, Caroline Sauter, Yael Almog, and other friends in Germany and Switzerland, including Stephan Braese, Robert Buch, Birgit Erdle, Joachim Jacob, Andreas Kilcher, Andreas Mauz, and Andrea Polaschegg. No less important were international colleagues and friends David Biale, Brian Britt, Carolin Duttlinger, Amir Eshel, Peter Gordon, Mike Jennings, Nitzan Lebovic, Vivian Liska, David Myers, Gerhard Richter, and Liliane Weissberg, who allowed me to take part in discussions that interestingly came back to Scholem again and again over the years. Friends and colleagues from Israel-Amir Engel, Ilit Ferber, Paul Mendes-Flohr, Menachem Lorbeerbaum, Rivka Feldhay, Galili Shahar, and Yfaat Weis-gave me glimpses of the complex, forceful, and, at times, tragic aspects of Israeli existence that was so central for Scholem. I gratefully remember so many discussions from Berlin to Jerusalem that helped me understand, at least for a moment, what was at stake in the texts I had read and reread over the years; or, more modestly and more often: moments in which I understood that I had misunderstood these texts. I thank all those mentioned and many others, among them my students, for such moments that I hope will also continue in the future.
During these years, some friends finally convinced me that it might be