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Gershom Biography an Intellectual Scholem from Berlin to Jerusalem and Back Gershom Scholem

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Gershom Biography an Intellectual Scholem from Berlin to Jerusalem and Back Gershom Scholem noam zadoff Gershom Biography An Intellectual Scholem From Berlin to Jerusalem and Back gershom scholem The Tauber Institute Series for the Study of European Jewry Jehuda Reinharz, General Editor ChaeRan Y. Freeze, Associate Editor Sylvia Fuks Fried, Associate Editor Eugene R. Sheppard, Associate Editor The Tauber Institute Series is dedicated to publishing compelling and innovative approaches to the study of modern European Jewish history, thought, culture, and society. The series features scholarly works related to the Enlightenment, modern Judaism and the struggle for emancipation, the rise of nationalism and the spread of antisemitism, the Holocaust and its aftermath, as well as the contemporary Jewish experience. The series is published under the auspices of the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry —established by a gift to Brandeis University from Dr. Laszlo N. Tauber —and is supported, in part, by the Tauber Foundation and the Valya and Robert Shapiro Endowment. For the complete list of books that are available in this series, please see www.upne.com Noam Zadoff Gershom Scholem: From Berlin to Jerusalem and Back *Monika Schwarz-Friesel and Jehuda Reinharz Inside the Antisemitic Mind: The Language of Jew-Hatred in Contemporary Germany Elana Shapira Style and Seduction: Jewish Patrons, Architecture, and Design in Fin de Siècle Vienna ChaeRan Y. Freeze, Sylvia Fuks Fried, and Eugene R. Sheppard, editors The Individual in History: Essays in Honor of Jehuda Reinharz Immanuel Etkes Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady: The Origins of Chabad Hasidism *Robert Nemes and Daniel Unowsky, editors Sites of European Antisemitism in the Age of Mass Politics, 1880–1918 Sven-Erik Rose Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789–1848 ChaeRan Y. Freeze and Jay M. Harris, editors Everyday Jewish Life in Imperial Russia: Select Documents, 1772–1914 David N. Myers and Alexander Kaye, editors The Faith of Fallen Jews: Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi and the Writing of Jewish History Federica K. Clementi Holocaust Mothers and Daughters: Family, History, and Trauma * A Sarnat Library Book Gershom Scholem From Berlin to Jerusalem and Back Noam Zadoff An Intellectual Biography An Intellectual Translated by Jeffrey Green Waltham, Massachusetts Waltham, Brandeis University Press Brandeis University Brandeis University Press An imprint of University Press of New England www.upne.com © 2018 Brandeis University This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. All rights reserved For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data names: Zadoff, Noam, author. title: Gershom Scholem: from Berlin to Jerusalem and back: an intellectual biography / Noam Zadoff; translated by Jeffrey Green. other titles: Von Berlin nach Jerusalem und Zuruck. English description: Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2017. | Series: The Tauber series for the study of European Jewry | Includes bibliographical references and index. identifiers: lccn 2017001006 (print) | lccn 2017042725 (ebook) | isbn 9781512601145 (epub, mobi & pdf ) | isbn 9781512601121 (cloth: alk. paper) | isbn 9781512601138 (pbk.: alk. paper) subjects: lcsh: Scholem, Gershom, 1897–1982. | Jewish scholars — Germany —Biography. | Jewish scholars —Israel —Biography. | Jews —Germany —Intellectual life. | Jews —Israel —Intellectual life. classification: lcc bm755.S295 (ebook) | lcc bm755.s295 z3313 2017 (print) | ddc 296.092 [b] —dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017001006 to mirjam, amos, and emilia For the writer, language is a placenta. Language is not only a sweet and glorious conquest, but legitimization, a home. norman manea, “nomadic language” If authority be required, let us appeal to Plutarch, the prince of ancient biographers. “Nor is it always in the most distinguished achievements that men’s virtues or vices may be best discerned; but very often an action of small note, a short saying, or a jest, shall distinguish a person’s real character more than the greatest sieges, or the most important battles.” To this may be added the sentiments of the very man whose life I am about to exhibit. james boswell, the life of samuel johnson Contents Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: The Metaphysical Clown xv part i “ continuity of the crisis” hope and disillusion (1923–1938) 1 1 Cultural Contexts 3 2 A Political Circle: Brit Shalom 38 3 Religious Contexts 60 part ii the unparalleled catastrophe despair (1939–1948) 73 4 Responses to the Holocaust 75 5 The Journey to Salvage Looted Books and Manuscripts 95 6 The Heart of Odysseus 142 part iii ein tiefes heimweh nostalgia (1949–1982) 155 7 Eranos 157 8 Between Israel and Germany 189 9 Berlin, Again: The Finale 222 Afterword: From Berlin to Jerusalem 251 Notes 259 References 295 Index of Names 317 Acknowledgments I wish to thank the teachers, friends, and colleagues who helped me in the different phases of writing this book. To Moshe Zimmermann, Mi- chael Brenner, Itta Shedletzky, Matthias Schmidt, Ada Rapoport-Albert, Rachel Elior, Moshe Idel, David Ruderman, Dan Laor, Jacob Barnai, Richard Cohen, David Myers, John Efron, Jens Malte Fischer, Tilo Schabert, Shaul Magid, Mal- achi Hacohen, and Eric Jacobson, thank you for discussing different aspects of Gershom Scholem’s life and work with me, and for helping me sharpen my ob- servations on the complexities of his life. I am grateful to the friends, colleagues, and students of Scholem who shared with me their memories and insights, especially Jürgen Habermas, Hartmut von Hentig, Mayer Abramowitz, and Avraham Shapira. My gratitude goes also to the archives that opened their doors to me and allowed me to search their collections: the Archives Department at the National Library of Israel, the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem archive and Oral History Division, and the archive of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. I would also like to thank Ernst Peter Wieckenberg for the friendly way he opened for me a window into the intellectual world in Germany after World War II. My parents, Diana and Efraim Zadoff, and my parents-in-law, Huberta and Richard Triendl, were always ready to help with matters concerning the book. The English publication of the book was made possible thanks to generous support from the Israel Institute in Washington and the Borns Jewish Studies Program and the History Department at Indiana University. Special thanks go to Jeffrey Green for his accurate and attentive translation, which shows the strong personal interest he took in the book; to Jeanne Ferris for editing the book metic- ulously and patiently; and to Sylvia Fuks Fried and Eugene Sheppard at Brandeis University Press and Phyllis Deutsch and Ann Brash at University Press of New England for their advice and support. Finally, my thanks to my dearest of all, Mirjam, Amos, and Emilia, whose sup- port and patience made the writing of this book possible. xiii Introduction The Metaphysical Clown “I call myself a metaphysical clown,” Scholem says; “a clown hides himself in a theater.” . How much of Professor Scholem is theater? Scholem: “Ask Mrs. Scholem.” Mrs. Scholem: “One hundred percent.” Cynthia Ozick, “The Fourth Sparrow”1 When the young Jew from Berlin, Gerhard Arthur Scholem —the fourth and youngest son of Arthur Scholem, the owner of a printing house, and his wife, Betty —decided to change his name to Gershom Shalom, he sought to express two great changes in his life. First, by omitting his middle name2 (which was also his father’s name), he was turning his back on the past and on the bourgeois German Jewish culture that his father represented. And second, by changing the remaining names to Hebrew ones, he was facing the future, both the rebirth of the Jewish people and that of Hebrew culture, first in Berlin and later in the Land of Israel. The first time the young man who would become one of the beacons of modern Jewish studies used the Hebrew name Gershom in his writings was in his signature at the end of a letter to his friend Harry Heymann in early 1917, beneath which he wrote: “P.S. Now everyone is changing their name, now I’m Gershom.”3 Taking the name Gershom connected the young Gerhard to the son of Moses in the Bible, who was born while his father was exiled in Midian. He was given that name because “I have been a sojourner [ger in He- brew] in a foreign land” (Ex. 2:22). Evidently the adoption of that name, aside from the similarity in sound to his German name, expressed Scholem’s feelings about the country of his birth. In choosing to take a Hebrew name, he was not alone. He belonged to a generation in which many young people were motivated by Zionism to emigrate to Palestine. Half a year later Scholem signed a letter to his friend Aharon Heller with his full Hebrew name: “Gershom Shalom.”4 (When his last name is transliterated into German or English, it retains the Ger- man spelling, Scholem.) xv A few years ago I bought a used copy of the German volume of Scholem’s correspondence with Walter Benjamin, a friend of his youth. This book was published in 1980, and the copy came from the estate of Hedi Strauss, who had immigrated to Palestine from Germany in 1938 and worked in Jerusalem as an editor in German and English.5 On the first page of the book there is a short dedication in Scholem’s handwriting: “For Hedi Strauss, with heartfelt thanks and good memories (Für Hedi Strauss, mit herzlichem Dank und zur guten Er- innerung).” The fact that in the 1980s, so many years after the turning point in Scholem’s life, he wrote this dedication in German in a book that he gave to a woman from his homeland in the State of Israel made me think that perhaps the step he took was, after all, not as final and decisive as he had presented it.
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