1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910162715103321

Autore

Engel Amir

Titolo

Gershom Scholem : An Intellectual Biography / / Amir Engel

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago : , : University of Chicago Press, , [2017]

©2017

ISBN

0-226-42877-X

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (241 pages) : illustrations

Collana

Studies in German-Jewish Cultural History and Literature, Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Disciplina

296.092

Soggetti

Jewish scholars - Germany

Jewish scholars - Israel

Zionism - History - 20th century

Mysticism - Judaism

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Chapter 1. The Stories of Gershom Scholem -- Chapter 2. Writing the Myth of Exile: In Search of Political Rejuvenation, 1913-1918 -- Chapter 3. Messianism as Symbol: The Lurianic School and the Emergence of a Mystical-Political Society -- Chapter 4. When a Dream Comes True: Zionist Politics in Palestine, 1923-1931 -- Chapter 5. Against All Odds: Sabbatean Belief and the Sabbatean Movement -- Chapter 6. For the Love of Israel: The Turn from the Fringe to the Mainstream of Zionist Thinking -- Chapter 7. The Man and the Image -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) was ostensibly a scholar of Jewish mysticism, yet he occupies a powerful role in today's intellectual imagination, having an influential contact with an extraordinary cast of thinkers, including Hans Jonas, Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Theodor Adorno. In this first biography of Scholem, Amir Engel shows how Scholem grew from a scholar of an esoteric discipline to a thinker wrestling with problems that reach to the very foundations of the modern human experience.             As Engel shows, in his search for the truth of Jewish mysticism Scholem molded the vast literature of



Jewish mystical lore into a rich assortment of stories that unveiled new truths about the modern condition. Positioning Scholem's work and life within early twentieth-century Germany, Palestine, and later the state of Israel, Engel intertwines Scholem's biography with his historiographical work, which stretches back to the Spanish expulsion of Jews in 1492, through the lives of Rabbi Isaac Luria and Sabbatai Zevi, and up to Hasidism and the dawn of the Zionist movement. Through parallel narratives, Engel touches on a wide array of important topics including immigration, exile, Zionism, World War One, and the creation of the state of Israel, ultimately telling the story of the realizations-and failures-of a dream for a modern Jewish existence.