Gershom Scholem : Kabbalah and counter-history

Introduction -- reflections on the science of Judaism. 1 The nineteenth-century legacy. 2 Revision and revolution. 3 From Berlin to Jerusalem. 4 Theology, language, and history. 5 Mysticism. 6 Myth. 7 Messianism. 8 The politics of historiography. 9 Counter-history. Epilogue -- between mysticism and modernity. A birthday letter from Gershom Scholem to Zalman Schocken

'...is the first full-length study of Scholem as historian, Zionist thinker, and modern Jewish theologian. Against the background of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Jewish historiography as well as the crisis of German-Jewish life during World War I, Mr. Biale portrays Scholem's Kabbalistic research as a "counter-history" of Judaism. He suggests that Scholem's Judaism, formulated in opposition to both religious orthodoxy and dogmatic rationalism, is an anarchistic struggle between contradictory forces.'

Hardcover