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Gershom Scholem from Berlin to Jerusalem and Back: An Intellectual Biography. By Noam Zadoff. Translated by Jeffrey Green. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2017. Pp. 320. Paper $40.00. ISBN 978-1512601138.

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Gershom Scholem from Berlin to Jerusalem and Back: An Intellectual Biography. By Noam Zadoff. Translated by Jeffrey Green. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2017. Pp. 320. Paper $40.00. ISBN 978-1512601138.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2019

Marjorie Lamberti*
Affiliation:
Middlebury College

Abstract

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Copyright © Central European History Society of the American Historical Association 2018 

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References

1 Letter from Scholem to Hans-Joachim Schoeps, Nov. 6, 1949, in Scholem, Gershom, Briefe II: 1948–1970, ed. Sparr, Thomas (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1995), 14Google Scholar.

2 Scholem, Gershom, Von Berlin nach Jerusalem: Jugenderinnerungen (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1977)Google Scholar. For an extensive analysis of Scholem's life before 1923, see Biale, David, Gershom Scholem: Master of the Kabbalah (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018), 782Google Scholar.

3 Letter from Scholem to Jutta Bohnke-Kollwitz, Dec. 27, 1977, in Scholem, Gershom, Briefe III: 1971–1982, ed. Shedletzky, Itta (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1999), 166Google Scholar.

4 Shapira, Avraham, “Introduction: The Dialectics of Continuity and Revolt,” in Scholem, Gershom, On the Possibility of Jewish Mysticism and Other Essays, ed. Shapira, Avraham (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publications Society, 1997), xii-xiiiGoogle Scholar.

5 Aschheim, Steven, “The Metaphysical Psychologist: On the Life and Letters of Gershom Scholem,” Journal of Modern History 76, no. 4 (2004): 926–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for an emphasis on Scholem's submission  to “a mainstream view of Zionism,” see Engel, Amir, Gershom Scholem: An Intellectual Biography (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 25, 9697, 168–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Gordon, Adi, “‘Nothing But a Disillusioned Love’? Hans Kohn's Break with the Zionist Movement,” in Against the Grain: Jewish Intellectuals in Hard Times, ed. Mendelsohn, Ezra et al. (New York: Berghahn, 2014), 117–42Google Scholar.

7 Scholem, Gershom and Biale, David, “The Threat of Messianism: An Interview with Gershom Scholem,” New York Review of Books 27, no. 13 (Aug. 14, 1980): 22Google Scholar.

8 In the interview cited in the previous note, Scholem made a distinction between the “vanguard” of men and women who came to Palestine before 1933 to build a new society, and the refugees who “came after 1933 [and] did not have the same idealistic convictions.”

9 Scholem, Gershom, “Against the Myth of the German-Jewish Dialogue,” in Scholem, Gershom, On Jews and Judaism in Crisis. Selected Essays, ed. and trans. Dannhauser, Werner (New York: Schocken, 1976), 63Google Scholar.

10 Gershom Scholem, “Jews and Germans,” in Scholem, On Jews and Judaism in Crisis, 71.

11 Entry for March 5, 1918, in Lamentations of Youth: The Diaries of Gershom Scholem, 1913–1919, ed. and trans. Skinner, Anthony David (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 212Google Scholar.

12 Aschheim, Steven, “Gershom Scholem and the Creation of Jewish Self-Certitude,” in Aschheim, Steven, Scholem, Arendt, Klemperer: Intimate Chronicles in Turbulent Times (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 25Google Scholar.

13 Zipes, Jack, “The Contemporary German Fascination for Things Jewish: Toward a Jewish Minor Culture,” in Reemerging Jewish Culture in Germany: Life and Literature Since 1989, ed. Gilman, Sander and Remmler, Karen (New York: New York University Press, 1994), 1516Google Scholar.

14 For a discussion of why these debates broke out in the 1980s rather than the 1970s, see Maier, Charles S., The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 3436Google Scholar.

15 Scholem, Gershom, From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth, trans. Zohn, Harry (New York: Schocken Books, 1980), 63, 135Google Scholar. The same observation applies to Scholem's other memoir: Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship, trans. Zohn, Harry (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publications Society of America, 1981), 212,  223Google Scholar.

16 Nattermann, Ruth, “Diversity within Unity: the LBI's ‘Community of Founders,’” in Preserving the Legacy of German Jewry: A History of the Leo Baeck Institute, 1955–2005, ed. Hoffmann, Christhard (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 6869Google Scholar.

17 Gershom Scholem, “Once More: The German-Jewish Dialogue,” in Scholem, On Jews and Judaism in Crisis, 67; letter from Scholem to Manfred Schlösser, April 6, 1965, in Briefe II, 129; see also the letters from Scholem to Margarete Susman, Jan. 31, 1965, and from Scholem to Margarete Susman, Feb. 26, 1965, in Briefe II, 123, 126.

18 Scholem, “Against the Myth of the German-Jewish Dialogue,” 62.

19 Scholem, “Once More: The German-Jewish Dialogue,” 69.

20 Scholem, Gershom, “Juden und Deutsche,” Neue Rundschau 77, no. 4 (1966): 547–52Google Scholar; idem, Jews and Germans,” Commentary 42, no. 5 (Nov. 1966): 3138Google Scholar.

21 Scholem, “Jews and Germans,” in Scholem, On Jews and Judaism in Crisis, 75–76.

22 Ibid., 75, 77, 89.

23 Ibid., 76–78, 81, 86.

24 Ibid., 80, 86–88.

25 Scholem, Gershom, Judaica II (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1970)Google Scholar; Weltsch, Robert, “Introduction,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 16 (1971): viiCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen, Gerson, “Introduction,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 20 (1975): x-xiGoogle Scholar.

26 Stern, Fritz, “The Burden of Success: Reflections on German Jewry,” in Dreams and Delusions: The Drama of German History (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1987)Google Scholar, 99, 113 (originally published in Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling, ed. Quintin Anderson et al. [New York: Basic Books, 1977]). In addition to the works of Peter Gay and George Mosse cited later, see also the criticism of Scholem's views in Cohen, Gerson, “Introduction,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 20 (1975)Google Scholar: xi, xxiv; Schorsch, Ismar, “From Wolfenbüttel to Wissenschaft: The Divergent Paths of Isaak Markus Jost and Leopold Zunz,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 22 (1977): 114CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lamberti, Marjorie, Jewish Activism in Imperial Germany: The Struggle for Civil Equality (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978), ix-xiGoogle Scholar.

27 Gay, Peter, “Encounter with Modernism: German Jews in Wilhelminian Culture,” in Gay, Peter, Freud, Jews and Other Germans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 95Google Scholar (originally published in Midstream 21 [1975]: 23–65). On Scholem's angry reaction when he read Gay's book, see the letter from Scholem to Robert Alter, Oct. 29, 1978, in Briefe III, 193–94.

28 Gay, “Encounter with Modernism,” 165–68.

29 Mosse, George, Confronting History: A Memoir (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000), 194–95Google Scholar.

30 Leo Baeck Institute Archives, Papers of George Mosse, AR 25137/MF 671, Series II, Subseries 3, box 18, folder 28, Mosse's lecture on the heritage of German Jewry to the New Home Club, an association of Jews from Central Europe in Milwaukee, Oct. 8, 1977; box 42, folder 33, letter from Mosse to Jacob Petuchowski, Nov. 1, 1979. In this letter, Mosse expresses his thoughts about his future lectures on the German-Jewish dialogue and its heritage at Hebrew Union College, writing: “I am quite enthusiastic about my findings and those which future research bring to light.”

31 Papers of George Mosse, Series II, Subseries 3, box 10, folder 22, text of his lecture, “Gedanken zum deutsch-jüdischen Dialog,” delivered at the University of Munich on Feb. 1, 1983.

32 Mosse, George, German Jews Beyond Judaism (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1985), 12Google Scholar, 49, 81–82.