33 Facts About Gershom Scholem

Gershom Scholem was an Israeli philosopher and historian.

Widely regarded as the founder of modern academic study of the Kabbalah, Scholem was appointed the first professor of Jewish mysticism at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Gershom 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 the Sefer Yetzirah, its inauguration in the Bahir, its exegesis in the Pardes and the Zohar to its cosmogonic, apocalyptic climax in Isaac Luria's Ein Sof that is known collectively as Kabbalah.

Gershom 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 Gershom Scholem initiated this process of textual and archival recovery and rebirth.

Gerhard Scholem was born in Berlin to Arthur Scholem and Betty Hirsch Scholem.

Gershom Scholem studied Hebrew and Talmud with an Orthodox rabbi.

Gershom Scholem met Walter Benjamin in Munich in 1915, when the former was seventeen years old and the latter was twenty-three.

In 1915 Gershom Scholem enrolled at the Frederick William University in Berlin, where he studied mathematics, philosophy, and Hebrew.

In Berlin, Gershom Scholem befriended Leo Strauss and corresponded with him throughout his life.

Gershom Scholem studied mathematical logic at the University of Jena under Gottlob Frege.

Gershom Scholem was in Bern in 1918 with Benjamin when he met Elsa Burchhard, who became his first wife.

Gershom Scholem returned to Germany in 1919, where he received a degree in Semitic languages at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

Gershom Scholem wrote his doctoral thesis on the oldest known kabbalistic text, Sefer ha-Bahir.

Gershom Scholem was expelled from the party and later murdered by the Nazis during the Third Reich.

Unlike his brother, Gershom Scholem was vehemently opposed to both Communism and Marxism.

In 1946 Gershom 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.

Gershom Scholem spent much of the year in Germany and Central Europe as part of this project, known as "Otzrot HaGolah".

Gershom Scholem died in Jerusalem, where he is buried next to his wife in the Sanhedria Cemetery.

Gershom Scholem became a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Gershom Scholem 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.

Gershom Scholem directly contrasted his historiographical approach on the study of Jewish mysticism with the approach of the 19th-century school of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, which sought to submit the study of Judaism to the discipline of subjects such as history, philology, and philosophy.

At the time Gershom 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 Gershom Scholem's early career, including Martin Buber, Salman Schocken, Franz Rosenzweig, Robert Eisler, Philipp Bloch, Moses Marx, Clemens Baumker, Fritz Hommel and Walter Benjamin.

The analysis of Judaism carried out by the Wissenschaft school was flawed in two ways, according to Gershom Scholem: It studied Judaism as a dead object rather than as a living organism; and it did not consider the proper foundations of Judaism, the non-rational force that, in Gershom Scholem's view, made the religion a living thing.

Elsewhere, in oral presentation or informal reflection, Gershom Scholem inflected the three periods within a different frame of reference: 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 the writings of Franz Kafka or the critical mysticism of his friend and correspondent Walter Benjamin.

The notion of the three periods, with its interactions between rational and irrational elements in Judaism, led Gershom Scholem to put forward some controversial arguments.

Gershom Scholem thought that the 17th century messianic movement, known as Sabbateanism, was developed from the Lurianic Kabbalah.

In contrast to Buber, Gershom Scholem believed in the power of the language to invoke supernatural phenomena.

Gershom Scholem considered the Kabbalists as interpreters of a pre-existent linguistic revelation.

Likewise, though Gershom Scholem was never directly introduced to Franz Kafka, he found out later in life that Kafka approved of his comments in a debate.

Gershom Scholem was friendly with the author Shai Agnon and the Talmudic scholar Saul Lieberman.

Whereas Arendt felt that Eichmann should be executed, Gershom Scholem was opposed, fearing that his execution would serve to alleviate the Germans' collective sense of guilt.

Gershom Scholem has influenced ideas of Umberto Eco, Jacques Derrida, Harold Bloom, Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, and George Steiner.