Perhaps the greatest scholar of Jewish mysticism in the twentieth century, Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) once said of himself, "I have no biography, only a bibliography." Yet, in thousands of letters written over his lifetime, his biography does unfold, inscribing a life that epitomized the intellectual ferment and political drama of an era. This selection of the best and most representative letters—drawn from the 3000 page German edition—gives readers an intimate view of this remarkable man, from his troubled family life in Germany to his emergence as one of the leading lights of Israel during its founding and formative years.
In the letters, we witness the travails and vicissitudes of the Scholem family, a drama in which Gershom is banished by his father for his anti-kaiser Zionist sentiments; his antiwar, socialist brother is hounded and murdered; and his mother and remaining brothers are forced to emigrate. We see Scholem’s friendships with some of the most intriguing intellectuals of the twentieth century—such as Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno—blossom and, on occasion, wither. And we learn firsthand about his Zionist commitment and his scholarly career, from his move to Palestine in the 1920s to his work as Professor of Jewish Mysticism at the Hebrew University. Over the course of seven decades that comprised the most significant events of the twentieth century, these letters reveal how Scholem’s scholarship is informed by the experiences he so eloquently described.

“A biography of Gershom Scholem lies in these well selected and edited letters. Reading biographically between the letters’ lines, in the manner of Gershom Scholem, Master Scholar, you can learn how he found his own story between the lines of the Kabbalah’s texts he almost signlehandedly restored to life; and how he wrote his autobiography out so intensely, with such vast erudition and brilliance, in all his commentaries on the Kaballah that it became, over his lifetime, a biography of the whole endlessly resilient, culturally prolific Jewish people, a 20th century national epic.”—Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, author of Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World

“Scholem was a giant in the scholarly study of Jewish mysticism, responsible for bringing Kabbalah in particular to the attention of academia. However, the letters Skinner presents here reveal more of Scholem as a person than as a scholar. Scholem saw the two as intimately connected and would likely argue that these documents do aid in understanding his work. The decision to focus on the personal has the benefit of unearthing several firsthand accounts of critical events in 20th-century Jewish and European history.”—Stephen Joseph, Library Journal

“[Anthony David Skinner] has ably translated and edited a wide-ranging selection of letters from the life of this master scholar of Jewish mysticism. Most of the letters...appear here in English for the first time. [Skinner’s] selection illuminates a question that has always haunted readers of Scholem: How did the personality of this overly dignified and self-confident academic relate to the unbridled otherworldliness in the texts he analyzed with such seeming detachment?”—Publishers Weekly

“Gershom Scholem: A Life in Letters offers a fascinating sample of the 16,000 letters he exchanged with members of his family...His correspondences with brilliant intellectuals of his time make for fascinating reading and provide a close look at the thoughts, beliefs and passions of a man discovering Judaism in a time and place when it seemed to be disappearing...Anthony David Skinner had chosen the letters wisely and offers excellent overviews of the periods in which they were written.”—Sylvia Rothchild, Jewish Advocate
“A lively...collection, which follows Scholem from his fevered adolescence to the sovereign authority of his final years. The editor’s illuminating biographical summaries set out useful links from decade to decade, but it is Scholem’s uncompromising voice that gives this volume its unified force and striking crescendos. In their unstinting energy, the letters show a man exactly where he wanted to be, and conscious of exactly why.”—Cynthia Ozick, New Yorker

“Over seven decades, Scholem sent and received 16,000 letters. The Hebrew University’s Anthony David Skinner has lovingly translated and edited a selection of these...The replies--from such luminaries as Walter Benjamin, Martin Buber, Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt--create an engrossing dialogue. Skinner’s artful annotations render Scholem’s most esoteric notions accessible to the lay reader. And he shows how the adolescent maverick evolved from a "Jewish Zarathustra to Master Magician Emeritus of the post-war years"...It will whet readers’ appetites to read Scholem’s own books. In an age of emails and faxes, Scholem is truly a man of letters--in both senses of the term.”—Lawrence Joffe, Jewish Chronicle

“Anthony David Skinner has done a useful and meticulous job. This is the most readable history of German destruction and Israeli construction I know. And it describes Jewish habits of thought leading to this day and trailing back into the darkness over thousands of hidden years.”—Atar Hadari, Jewish Quarterly

“What can this lucky bookworm say to readers who are not especially curious about the kabbalah or about the history of universities in Israel? A great deal, as this selection of letters to and from Scholem makes clear. Some of its pleasures are simple ones: the spell-binding story of the Scholem clan...But this narrative also asks difficult questions: one is whether cleaving to a particular people and its tradition constitutes a self-imposed exile from a realm of more-universal concerns...[Skinner’s] translations, thankfully, let the correspondents speak in voices that sound like their own.”—The Economist

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Gerhard Scholem who, after his immigration from Germany to Palestine, changed his name to Gershom Scholem (Hebrew: גרשם שלום) (December 5, 1897 — February 21, 1982), was a German-born Israeli Jewish philosopher and historian, born and raised in Germany. He is widely regarded as the founder of the modern, academic study of Kabbalah, becoming the first Professor of Jewish Mysticism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. ^[1] His close friends included Walter Benjamin and Leo Strauss, and selected letters from his correspondence with those philosophers have been published.
Scholem is best known for his collection of lectures, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941) and for his biography Sabbatai Zevi, the Mystical Messiah (1973). His collected speeches and essays, published as On Kabbalah and its Symbolism (1965), helped to spread knowledge of Jewish mysticism among non-Jews.

Contents 1Life 2Awards 3Theories and scholarship 4Debate with Hannah Arendt 5Literary influence 6Selected works in English 7See also 8Notes 9References 10Further reading

Life

Gerhard Scholem was born in Berlin to Arthur Scholem and Betty Hirsch Scholem. His interest in Judaica was strongly opposed by his father, a printer, but, thanks to his mother's intervention, he was allowed to study Hebrew and the Talmud with an Orthodox rabbi.
Gerhard Scholem met Walter Benjamin in Munich in 1915, when the former was seventeen years old and the latter was twenty-three. They began a lifelong friendship that ended only with Benjamin's suicide in 1940. In 1915 Scholem enrolled at the Humboldt University of Berlin, where he studied mathematics, philosophy, and Hebrew, and where he came into contact with Martin Buber, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Hayim Nahman Bialik, Ahad Ha'am, and Zalman Shazar. In Berlin, he first befriended and became an admirer of Leo Strauss (their correspondence would continue throughout his life).^[2] He subsequently studied mathematical logic at the University of Jena under Gottlob Frege. He was in Bern in 1918 with Benjamin when he met Elsa Burckhardt, who became his first wife. He returned to Germany in 1919, where he received a degree in semitic languages at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich. Less notable in his academic career was his establishment of the fictive University of Muri with Benjamin.
He wrote his doctoral thesis on the oldest known kabbalistic text, Sefer ha-Bahir. Drawn to Zionism, and influenced by Buber, he emigrated in 1923 to the British Mandate of Palestine, where he devoted his time to studying Jewish mysticism and became a librarian, and eventually head of the Department of Hebrew and Judaica at the National Library. He later became a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
He 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. In 1936, he married his second wife, Fania Freud.
Scholem's brother Werner was a member of the ultra-left "Fischer-Maslow Group" and the youngest ever member of the Reichstag, representing the Communist Party (KPD) in the German parliament. He was expelled from the party and later murdered by the Nazis during the Third Reich. Gershom Scholem, unlike his brother, was vehemently opposed to both Communism and Marxism.
Scholem died in Jerusalem, where he is buried next to his wife in Sanhedria. Jürgen Habermas delivered the eulogy.

Selected works in English

• Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 1941
• Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and the Talmudic Tradition, 1960
• Arendt and Scholem, "Eichmann in Jerusalem: Exchange of Letters between Gershom Scholem and Hannah Arendt", in Encounter, 22/1, 1964
• The Messianic Idea in Judaism and other Essays on Jewish Spirituality, trans. 1971
• Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1973
• From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth, trans. Harry Zohn, 1980.

• 從柏林到耶路撒冷

• Kabbalah, Meridian 1974, Plume Books 1987 reissue: ISBN 0-452-01007-1
• Walter Benjamin: the Story of a Friendship, trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books, 1981.
• Origins of the Kabbalah, JPS, 1987 reissue: ISBN 0-691-02047-7
• On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead: Basic Concepts in the Kabbalah, 1997
• The Fullness of Time: Poems, trans. Richard Sieburth
• On Jews and Judaism in Crisis: Selected Essays
• On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism
• Tselem: The Representation of the Astral Body, trans. Scott J. Thompson 1987
• Zohar — The Book of Splendor: Basic Readings from the Kabbalah, ed.

ゲルショム・ゲルハルト・ショーレム（גרשם גרהרד שלוםGershom Gerhard Scholem1897年12月5日 - 1982年2月21日）はドイツ生まれのイスラエルの思想家。ユダヤ神秘主義（カバラ）の世界的権威で、ヘブライ大学教授を務めた。1958年にイスラエル賞を受賞。1968年にはイスラエル文理学士院の院長に選ばれた。
彼はベルリンでユダヤ人の家庭に生まれ育った。父はアルトゥール・ショーレム、母はベティ・ヒルシュ・ショーレム。画家だった父は同化主義者で、息子がユダヤ教に興味を持つのを喜ばなかったが、ショーレムは母のとりなしにより正統派のラビのもとでヘブライ語やタルムードを学ぶことを許された。
ベルリン大学で数学と哲学とヘブライ語を専攻。大学では、マルティーン・ブーバーやヴァルター・ベンヤミン、シュムエル・ヨセフ・アグノン、ハイム・ナフマン・ビアーリク、アハッド・ハーアム、ザルマン・シャザールといった面々と知り合った。1918年にはベンヤミンと共にスイスのベルンにいたが、ここで最初の妻エルザ・ブルクハルトを識った。1919年にドイツへ戻り、ミュンヘン大学からセム語研究で学位を受けた。
博士論文のテーマは、最古のカバラ文献סֵפֶר הַבָּהִיר（セフェル・ハ=バヒール; "光輝の書"）だった。シオニズムに傾倒し、友人ブーバーの影響もあって、1923年に英領パレスチナへ移住。ここで彼はユダヤ神秘主義の研究に没頭し、司書の職を得た。最終的にはイスラエル国会図書館のヘブライ・ユダヤ文献部門の責任者となった。のちにエルサレムのヘブライ大学で、講師として教え始めた。
彼の特色は、自然科学の素養を活かして、カバラを科学的に教えた点にある。1933年にはヘブライ大学のユダヤ神秘主義講座の初代教授に就任、1965年に名誉教授となるまでこの地位にあった。ユング等が関わった「エラノス会議」にも参加
1936年、ファニア・フロイトと再婚。
兄のヴェルナー・ショーレムはドイツの極左組織＜フィッシャー＝マスロフ団＞の一員で、ドイツ帝国議会ではドイツ共産党選出の議員だったが、のちに議会から追放され、ナチによって暗殺された。

邦訳著書[編集]

• 『ユダヤ主義の本質』 河出書房新社, 1972年

• 『ユダヤ主義と西欧』 河出書房新社, 1973年

• 『ユダヤ教神秘主義』　河出書房新社, 1975年

• 『わが友ベンヤミン』 晶文社, 1978年

• 『ユダヤ神秘主義』 叢書ウニベルシタス・法政大学出版局, 1985年　別訳

• 『カバラとその象徴的表現』 叢書ウニベルシタス・法政大学出版局, 1985年

• 『ベンヤミンーショーレム往復書簡』 叢書ウニベルシタス・法政大学出版局, 1990年

• 『ベルリンからエルサレムへ　青春の思い出』 叢書ウニベルシタス・法政大学出版局, 1991年

• 『錬金術とカバラ』 作品社, 2001年

• 『サバタイ・ツヴィ伝　神秘のメシア』　2冊組　叢書ウニベルシタス・法政大学出版,　2009年

• 『エラノス叢書』 平凡社全9巻別冊1、1994－95年、数編の論文が所収。