Dr.

Zvi Leshem

Gershom Scholem, the greatest Kabbalah scholar of the 20th century, was
born in Berlin in 1897 to a middle-class Jewish somewhat assimilated family,
and as a teenager he rebelled by becoming interested in Judaism and
becoming a Zionist and then becoming interested particularly in mystical
element of Judaism, the Kabbalah, and went on to study that in the university,
several universities in Germany and Switzerland, finishing his doctorate in
1922. In 1923 he moved to Jerusalem to become the librarian in charge of the
Judaica section of the Jewish national and university library, and in 1925 he
began to lecture in the Hebrew university, where he became professor of
Kabbalah. During his lifetime he published close to 700 publications in all
fields of Kabbalah, and this is – when he was 80 years old he received this
book which listed almost 600 publications, but typical of Scholem, he added
many many notes here with his additional publications getting closer to 700 by
the time that he died in 1982.

And Scholem also, in addition to working as a librarian and then as a

professor, he became the greatest scholar of the Kabbalah, published articles
and books in almost every field that’s related to Jewish mysticism, raised a
whole generation of scholars who continued his work, and even today where
the Kabbalah research doesn't always agree with him he is still the first
address that everyone has to address before they go on to give their own
theories.

He had tremendous influence on Jewish studies, and also in Jewish

philosophy, modern Jewish philosophy in a sense, he also was considered to
be a very interesting and controversial figure.

Scholem, from his early student days became a book fanatic. He decided that
the only way to do proper research of philological-historical method was to
have all the relevant texts that could be in anyway useful to his studies so he
began to buy books while he is still student in Germany. He writes in his
autobiography that he sometimes would skip meals or eaten only the most
cheapest terrible food in order to save money to buy books, and when he
came to Israel in 1923, at the age of 26, he already brought with him 2000
books, including 600 books in Kabbalah, and in Israel he devoted himself
constantly to acquiring more books, and in the thirties he even published what
he called "a negative catalogue" called "Alu Le-Schalom" – 111 books that
were missing from his library, which he later admitted it was a mistake
because the prices went up very highly of those books, and he was fanatic
about his books, he loved books and even sometimes wrote detailed
discussions about how he achieved a book. This is a book from the 16 th
century – "Be'er Maim Chaim" – where he writes an over two papers about
how he bought the book, traded it for something else, and years later he
received it again from a third party. So, when he decided eventually, actually
at a young age, that he wanted his books become part of the national library,
as part of his sort of Zionist cultural dream, an agreement was reached about
that point, and when he died in 1982 we received about 25000 items from him
– books, offprints, articles, including 600 photocopies of Kabbalistic
manuscripts from libraries all over the world, and today we have almost 35000
items. It is a growing living collection and we always adding to.

Well, as Scholem define, since he was the first academic that dealt
exclusively with the field, he kind of defined the parameters of the field, and
his library reflects that parameters. So it is basically, in the widest sense, what
could be called Jewish mysticism, which is wider than Kabbalah in academic
terminology – it goes back earlier than Kabbalah, for example, Hekhalot
mysticism or the Merkabah mysticism of the Talmudic period, and extends
through Hassidic but not only, also into the 20th century we have a lot of books
about rabbi Kook, the first chief rabbi of Israel, who is a very great mystic, and
wrote extensively about his own mystical and Kabbalistic thoughts and
commentaries. And there is also a lot having to do with Jewish messianism,
including the Sabbatean movement, the false messiah Sabbatai Zevi of the
17th century that Scholem wrote about very extensively. And then we have a
lot also of comparative mysticism – a lot of Christian, Muslim, Hindu and
Buddhist mysticism, and a lot of philosophy and psychology in German
literature, things that interested Scholem. As Scholem himself is a topic of
study, people like to know what was in his library and what wasn't.

Scholem was a kind of a hub of a various range of intellectuals - Jewish and

non-Jewish intellectuals – that began with his meetings with them in Berlin,
and continued there during the many years that he was here in Jerusalem.
One of the first people that he was very connected with in Germany was
Martin Buber, the greatest philosopher, with whom he had a very dialectical
relationship throughout many many years where they were colleagues but
disagreed on many topics about political topics and had a major disagreement
in Jewish scholarship about the nature of the Hassidic movement. That
maybe reflected in this book of Buber about Jewish prophets that he gave to
Scholem, Scholem library has within it close to 1000 books with dedications
from a great variety of people, which sometimes are very fascinating. In this
one from 1942, Buber writes to Scholem in Hebrew and mentions the fact that
they have gone through many ups and downs together, this is a – it's not clear
exactly what he was alluding to, but it could refer to many things. So, Buber is
one example. Another very famous intellectual that Scholem was very close
friend with is Walter Benjamin, the literary critic and in sense precursor of
postmodern philosophy, with whom he was sort of a study partner and friend
within Germany, whom he tried to get to come to live in Israel but things never
worked out, Benjamin was always hesitant and ended up dying in the
Holocaust. This is a book, one of Benjamin's books, "Deutsche Menschen",
German man, with, from 1937, dedication in German where he talks about the
raising of fascism in Europe and how he and Scholem have to in a sense
retreat into their childhood memories in light of this wave of fascism that
swiping over the continent. This is of course of both historical and personal
great interest. So, there were political connections, philosophical connections,
there were a lot of literary connections, Scholem was very very close friend
with the great Israeli author Shmuel Yosef Agnon, and we have here dozens
of books with dedications from Agnon to Scholem. They were in connection in
Germany, again in Israel. We have in the library, in their archives, about a
hundred letters between the two of them that mostly have not been published
yet, which are beautiful letters of both historical and personal importance. And
basically, everyone who was involved in Jewish philosophy, politics, culture in
the 20th century would find himself in Scholem's house. He was very close
friend with Berl Katznelson, the Zionist labor leader, and many many others.

Basically also all philosophers of religion from around the world met with him
in the meetings in Switzerland after the war in "Eranos" he were meet yearly
with people like Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade, Henry Corbin – an expert on Sufism
from France, and all these intellectuals, some of whom quite controversial in
their own right, would meet and engage in comparative religion and
philosophical studies.

The Zohar, which is the most famous and central book of the Kabbalah,
interested Scholem from the very beginning. When he first came to Israel, the
first lecture that he gave in the university, paradoxically was an attempt to
prove that the ancient authorship of the Zohar, the traditional authorship by
rabbi Simeon bar Yochai of the 2nd century of the common era, which all
academics scholars before him had disputed. Eventually he changed his mind
and accepted the common assumption that the Zohar was written in Spain in
the end of the 13th century by rabbi Moses de León. He wrote a lot about
Zohar, and he also wrote a lot in his Zohars – this is an example of part of the
Zohar, the Zohar Chadash. The book itself is from Poland from the 19 th
century – it's not a rare book in itself but it's an example of Scholem's method
that he in many of his books would have a separate page bound next to every
page of text in order to be able to write many many copyist notes, so he did
that in his Zohar, which was reprinted in six volumes facsimile set. Even in
his own books he would sometimes write notes like that when he was
preparing them for the 2nd edition. So he wrote many many articles on the
Zohar, and he also wrote during a course of several decades a kind of a
Zohar dictionary on file cards. In his massive desk has a long drawer that
contains almost 7000 pieces of paper, which every piece of paper is
essentially a Zohar entry into the dictionary with examples of where the word
appears in the Zohar and another Kabbalistic literature, translations into
Hebrew and German, and various commentaries. We recently scanned the
whole thing and it's on the national library of Israel's website, and it's a very
useful tool for Zohar studies in general and Zohar Aramaic studies in
particular.